Preparing a funding round. Strategy, execution and closing.

On 12 June 2026, the ONE Platform held the webinar “How to prepare a funding round in 1 hour”, a session designed to give you a clear, structured and actionable view of the capital-raising process.

The session featured Enric Ayala, CEO of Nexen Capital and Pitch & Shark, and former Venture Capital analyst, who shared the experience he has gained both from inside investment funds —having worked at the Bolsa Social Fund and Ático Ventures— and from supporting startups through their funding rounds. 

As he himself summed up, his goal was to share a methodology capable of “hacking the process of raising rounds”, explaining “how these funds analyse a company and how you yourselves can present yourselves”. The session was structured in two parts: a first, more theoretical section on strategy, and a second featuring a real practical case.

Raising capital is a process, not an event

The first major message of the session was an invitation to understand fundraising not as a one-off act, but as a process that requires preparation, focus and consistency. To illustrate this, Enric Ayala pointed out that raising capital is very much like looking for a job. In both cases, you begin by asking yourself what you want and what you are willing to accept, and then you prepare thoroughly; in the same way that we work on our CV before an interview, in a funding round we prepare the deck, the financial plan and the rest of the documentation. And, as in any competitive process, it is worth keeping the scale of the challenge in mind, since, as he mentioned, “an investor may analyse up to three thousand companies a year”.

That level of competition helps put some figures into context. Fewer than 2% of startups manage to raise capital, and 9 out of 10 companies that secure a first round fail to close the next one. Hence his insistence that “success is not measured solely by closing the current round, but by doing so without compromising the future”.

When does it make sense to open a funding round?

This section conveyed the idea that raising capital should not be seen as an objective in itself, but rather as a tool that serves growth. In this regard, it was stressed that “not every startup needs to open a round at the same time, but rather when there is a clear alignment between traction, market and objectives”.

Enric Ayala asked attendees to keep one idea in mind, framed as a question worth asking before getting started: “if we are going out to seek funding, where do we need to be in 12 to 14 months’ time to remain attractive to the next investors?”.

This means knowing the metrics the business needs to achieve and having already spoken with the investors involved in the next stage. When this is communicated well, it shows investors that the company has “done its homework” and that the round has been prepared professionally.

A strategy to speed up the round from 11 months to 5

At this point, Enric started from a reality many founders know all too well: through the traditional route, a funding round usually takes between 8 and 11 months of work. Against that backdrop, he proposed a methodology —inspired by what he observed in companies such as Payflow and now applies at Nexen Capital— capable of cutting that time down to less than five months and, in the process, significantly easing founders’ workload.

The key to that time saving lies in understanding the investor funnel in order to stay one step ahead of it. It is worth remembering that around 60% of the companies an investment fund receives are ruled out at the first stage simply because they do not fit its investment thesis, so a prior fit analysis helps avoid wasting time and focus on those who can genuinely invest. From there, the idea is to be so well prepared that the investor can skip the initial phases of their own process: if they are given all the information they need from the outset, they will see that “this project is ready” and move through their analysis much more quickly.

Along the same lines, Enric stressed that the way the opportunity is communicated is as much a part of the strategy as the content itself. Language, for instance, is no minor detail: he recommended preparing the documentation in English as well as Spanish, because it conveys an ambition for international expansion and suggests that conversations are also taking place with international funds. He also paid special attention to generating FOMO, that fear of missing out on an opportunity that so often drives investment decisions. Not for nothing, he noted, “the best fundraisers are precisely those who know best how to create that FOMO, organising contacts so that the sense of competition works in their favour”.

Preparing the materials: deck, financial plan and data room

On the more operational side, the session went through the materials every startup should have ready. Continuing the CV analogy, Enric described the deck as that 15-to-25-slide calling card used to show investors where the company wants to go, accompanied by a 36-month monthly financial plan. To these he added the data room, the space where all the company’s information is organised in detail, and for this he recommended Notion because of how easy it is to navigate from an investor’s perspective.

It was at this point that he issued one of the key warnings of the session, regarding the use of artificial intelligence. Although AI is very useful for speeding up drafting and building the data room, it is best not to delegate the design of the deck to it: “if you create the deck with artificial intelligence, it makes a very bad impression on the investor”, he explained, because it tends to produce the same design for everyone in a process that, precisely, rewards differentiation. 

Identifying investors, building the pipeline and making contact properly

Attracting investors was another of the blocks with the most practical content. Enric’s starting point was clear: “investing in startups is, above all, a people and trust business, where a strong introduction carries far more weight than cold outreach”. Sending the same generic message to everyone, he warned, sends exactly the opposite signal from the one you want, because it suggests that the opportunity has already passed through half the ecosystem.

On a more tactical level, he recommended building a list of at least 300 investors, classifying them by fit and affinity —high, medium and low— and managing them through a CRM that allows you to know what stage each conversation is at. He also returned to an idea that neatly captures the rhythm of the process: “a funding round is both a sprint and a marathon”. It is advisable to concentrate outreach within a short window of time so that all investors move forward more or less in parallel, so that if several show interest, that overlap creates a healthy sense of competition between them.

Practical case: preparing a funding round in under an hour

The session included a practical block aimed at grounding the concepts covered throughout the webinar and showing how to apply them to a real case in a short period of time.

Using a real case prepared interactively with the AI tool Claude, Enric used Glovo as an example to bring all of the above down to earth. The exercise began by defining the round strategy —how much to raise, what dilution to accept and at what valuation— showing how, in a case involving half a million euros, dilution of between 10% and 15% would place the valuation between 3 and 5 million post-money, a figure that should then be benchmarked against the market through comparable rounds.

From there, the walkthrough showed, step by step, how to identify the right investors, prepare introductions with support from founders in the portfolio, organise the pipeline in a CRM and draft outreach messages. The exercise culminated in the negotiation stage, respecting the logical order of the process: first the deck, then —only if there is genuine interest— access to the data room, and finally the investor’s proposal to lead the round on their terms.

The example also served to reinforce one of the webinar’s underlying ideas: the weight perception carries in valuation. Enric recalled the case of a company backed by Bolsa Social that, having initially sought 400,000 euros, generated so much interest that it ultimately closed 4 million. The conclusion was clear: “the greater the perception of potential you are able to convey, the higher the valuation the market will also be willing to recognise”.

A space to resolve doubts and turn learning into practice

The session ended with a Q&A in which attendees were able to raise their questions and explore the topics covered in greater depth. This space made it possible to ground the content and adapt it to specific situations, reinforcing the practical nature of the webinar. 

Would you like to know all the details? You can watch the full webinar video and access, step by step, the main recommendations shared during the session.

If you do not want to miss the upcoming sessions, check the webinar schedule of the ONE Platform.