Dispatch #01: The one thing all Founders should ask (and currently don’t)
‍

“How did I do?”
‍

As a Founder you know it all too well: the call with another VC ends. And – that’s it.
‍

You may get a polite email in a week or two, with a broad reason for passing on the investment. All too often, there’s no email at all. Founders are left guessing. Was it the pitch? The deck? Did the numbers not stack up? Was the TAM too small? Or was it just not in thesis for this particular investor?
‍

Usually there’s just silence — and that silence teaches a Founder nothing.
‍

Over the years, we have been on hundreds of first calls with Founders who, for one reason or another, we’ve decided to pass on, and none of them ever ask for feedback. Multiply that across every fundraise happening right now and you’ve got thousands of Founders repeatably making the same fixable mistakes, because nobody on the other side of the table tells them what they’re doing wrong – and because most of them don’t realise they’re allowed to ask.
‍

The problem isn’t that the conversation is awkward, or that Founders can’t handle feedback. It’s that almost no investor offers it without being asked, and Founders rarely ask for it because they don’t know they can.
‍

Access to investors is a black box – we get it!
‍

Finding investors to pitch is hard. First, you have to find out who your cohort of investors are. AI has unlocked part of this process, but just because you know who they are, doesn’t mean they’ll take your call. Accessing investors requires a network, and convincing them to hear your pitch eats up time Founders don’t have, and pulls them away from the work they’re actually good at.
‍

And, when you do get to speak with an investor, the rules of fundraising are so opaque that it’s impossible to know until you know.
‍

What’s one transformative thing you can do that hardly anyone does?
‍

Ask for feedback.
‍

If you get a rejection, ask what wasn’t a fit. Not in a challenging way, but in a way that reflects you want to understand and improve.
‍

If it wasn’t a fit for them, ask if there’s anyone else they would suggest you reach out to.
‍

If they liked you, they may send you on to someone in their network, and a warm introduction is far easier to convert than a cold outreach.
‍

In a series of Dispatches on Substack, Archipelago Co-Founder Lucy Mortimer will prise the lid off the VC box and offer her insights on what Founders need to know about accessing investment.
‍

Here’s what she’ll be writing about:
‍

• What actually gets a pitch funded. The patterns we see across first calls that make us want a second meeting, and the ones that don’t. In plain English.
• The tech that inspires us. Deep tech and Circular Economy ideas that will one day transform our world and deserves a wider audience.
• The occasional look behind the curtain. What fundraising and running a fund look like on an ordinary Tuesday.
  ‍

So, if you’re building something, trying to work out how to talk about it to investors, or just curious about the transformative tech solutions we see on the horizon — you’re in the right place.
‍

The next Dispatch: the most common reason Lucy says no in the first five minutes of a pitch.
‍

Until then, subscribe to Lucy’s Substack and be first to hear her Dispatches from the frontline of investing.