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Scaling Up in the New Nordics

35 million people. 85+ unicorns. The world’s highest unicorn density outside Silicon Valley. And yet — the New Nordics is still leaving enormous value on the table. Here’s why that’s about to change.

What is the New Nordics?

The New Nordics isn’t just a geography. It’s a mindset. Traditionally, “the Nordics” meant Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland — a prosperous, high-trust, sustainability-driven corner of the world known more for ABBA and flat-pack furniture than for billion-dollar tech companies. With recent AI winners like Lovable, Legora and deeptech companies like Oura Health, that story is changing.

The New Nordics extends the frame. It brings Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the picture — creating a combined region of 35 million people, world-class technical talent, battle-tested digital government, and a startup density that outpaces virtually every other region on earth. Think of it this way: Sweden gave the world Spotify and Klarna. Estonia gave us Skype and Wise. Lithuania gave us Revolut’s first e-money license. Finland is home to Supercell and 15 unicorns. This is not a collection of small countries.

This is one of the world’s most formidable innovation corridors — when and if it acts like one.

Why the New Nordics is Punching Above Its Weight

Let’s look at the numbers. The Nordic startup ecosystem is now valued at $552 billion — 16 times its value just a decade ago. In 2024 alone, Nordic startups attracted $8.2 billion in VC funding, with international investors contributing two thirds of the capital. The region produced 82 unicorns by 2024, up from just 9 in 2014. For a region with 4% of Europe’s population, it accounts for 17% of all European unicorns. Per capita, the New Nordic countries are second only to Silicon Valley in unicorn production.

What’s driving this? Three unfair advantages that most regions dream about.

First, a culture of building for the world from day one. Nordic and Baltic domestic markets are simply too small to sustain a scale-up. This isn’t a disadvantage — it’s a trigger function. Founders here think globally from the first pitch deck. They have to in order to scale. Second, extraordinary digital infrastructure. Estonia runs the world’s most advanced digital government. Finland treats broadband as a legal right. Sweden has fibre optic networks reaching 96% of households. This isn’t a backdrop — it’s a competitive weapon. Third, a deeply rooted engineering culture combined with a pragmatic attitude toward risk. Strong social safety nets reduce the downside of failure. Technical universities produce founders, not just employees. And the culture of trust — among founders, investors, and public institutions — keeps transaction costs low and collaboration high.

Early Success Stories from the New Nordics

The success stories are no longer just from the last generation. They’re happening right now. Lovable, the Swedish AI startup, scaled to $200 million in annual recurring revenue within its first year — a trajectory that would turn heads in Palo Alto. Legora closed a $550M series D, with a who’s who on the cap table. Stendr raised a $5.4M pre-seed to build AI-powered drone defence systems in Norway, in an industry few investors would have touched just 24 months ago. Stegra, the Swedish green steel company, raised $1,6BN for industrial sovereignty. Kelluu secured Nato Innovation Fund’s first deal, a $15M series A, in Finland.

On the fund side, Voima Ventures closed a €100M+ Fund III focused on deep tech across the Nordic-Baltic region. Final Frontier is leading a new pack of defense funds. Norrsken VC committed €300 million to “AI for Good.” Maki.vc launched its third €100M fund for deep tech and brand-driven startups. Capital is no longer the bottleneck it once was.

On the ecosystem side, the launch of the Nordic Deep Tech Valley initiative in May 2023 — led by Startup Estonia alongside partners in Finland and Sweden — represents perhaps the most important strategic bet the region has made. The premise is simple but powerful: in the global competition for deep tech talent and capital, it is regions, not countries, that win. Estonia, Finland, and Sweden are pooling resources, aligning policies, and presenting themselves as a unified deep tech hub to the world.

The first Nordic-Singapore Innovation Days in 2025 took joint Nordic delegations to Asian markets — a tangible sign of what coordinated regional strategy looks like in practice.

Barriers That Are Holding the New Nordics Back

So why isn’t the New Nordics already Europe’s answer to our entrepreneurship ecosystem challenges? Because four stubborn barriers remain.

The European Paradox — alive and well in the north. The gap between world-class scientific research and commercial success is a genuine, region-wide problem. I see this very clearly in my work across Sweden and Finland. The Nordics produce exceptional researchers. They do not always produce exceptional deep tech companies. Labs and universities are full of breakthroughs that never find their way to market. Despite $2.4 billion in deep tech funding in 2024, early-stage ventures remain underserved.

Fragmentation. Walk into a startup event in Tallinn and ask who the key players are in Gothenburg. You’ll get blank stares. In Bergen, ask who the key angels in Copenhagen are, same thing. Cross-border cooperation happens, but far below its potential. There is no coherent big picture. Ecosystems compete for talent and capital that could flow across borders freely if the infrastructure existed.

The capital gap at the growth stage. Pre-seed and seed funding has improved dramatically. But the Series A, B and C gap — the so-called “valley of death” for scale-ups — remains. European investors tend to be more conservative and metrics-focused than their US counterparts. In our work at Link Capital, we see this across our portfolio as founders prepare to scale. Rounds are smaller, valuations lower, timelines longer. A company that raises $5 million in Oslo might raise $25 million for the same business in San Francisco.

Liquidity & exits – or lack thereof. We see this clear as day. Across Scale Up! Masterclasses, founder programs, angel workshops and venture fund discussions. We are not generating the liquidity that the ecosystem deserves. It is a systemic challenge. Founders are not prepared for it (we see this crystal clear in Scale Up!), angels and VCs don’t structure for it, and the secondaries funds are still too few and far between. Fix the liquidity, and more (pension) capital will flow. But it starts with the founders at day one.

Fixing liquidity with the Outcome Canvas, in Dubai. Now, we’re back in the Nordics

How to Solve Them The region needs to make four big moves — and it needs to make them together.

Move 1: Industrialize research-to-company pipelines. Estonia has set a target of 500 deep tech companies by 2030. Singapore — a city the size of a small Estonian island — already has 1,300. The gap is not in the research. It is in the infrastructure that converts research into startups. Entrepreneur-in-residence programs, IP frameworks, research accelerators, and cross-border mentorship need to become standard features of every university and science park in the region. Initiatives like the Nordic Deep Tech Valley’s Research Accelerator for HealthTech are the template.

Move 2: Build the common narrative — and stick to it. International capital is not interested in Norway or Finland or Sweden. It is interested in the region. The New Nordics needs a single, compelling story told consistently at every global stage — from Slush to TechArena to Singapore Innovation Days. This is what the ecosystem needs. Nordic Deep Tech Valley initiative is already building it, and it matters enormously. When the region acts as one, it carries weight on the other side of the globe. In my work with innovation clusters and ecosystems, we can do so much more to integrate our region far better.

Move 3: Fix the growth-stage funding gap. More regional fund-of-funds. More pension capital. More collaboration between Nordic institutional investors and international growth-stage capital. More angel networks — particularly those focused on deep tech — operating across borders. The Baltic and Nordic angel communities need more connective tissue. Structured syndication, shared deal flow, and regional SPV frameworks are not glamorous. They are the plumbing that turns a good ecosystem into a great one. We need to enable more of it.

Move 4: Boost liquidity across the investment landscape. Look to Sweden, study how Sweden has become an investment powerhouse. Study Nasdaq First North Growth Market in Stockholm, now Europe’s Leading Marketplace for growth companies. Set up more secondaries funds. Make partial liquidity at A and B a real, accepted option for early-stage investors to cash out. Train and prepare founders for how to think ‘value’ and ‘liquidity’ at every step of the journey.

The Moment Is Now

Here is the thing about building ecosystems: windows open and close. Right now, the window is open. Silicon Valley is expensive, politically turbulent, and increasingly unattractive to international founders. Europe is hungry for an innovation identity. Genuine deep tech is having its moment — quantum, AI, climate, defence, biotech — and the New Nordics is positioned at the intersection of all of them. The foundations are extraordinary. What has been missing is the will to act as one region, not separate countries competing for the same scarce resources and founders.

Exploring Nordic Markets in Scale Up Nordics!

This is the challenge that inspired our work on Scale Up Nordics!

With over 7.000 participants; from startups, scale ups, angel networks, VCs, FoF’s, innovation agencies and ecosystem developers, it was time to do our part to support the New Nordics. It was time for Scale Up Nordics!

A new growth initiative, to support the startup- and scale up ecosystem across the New Nordics. We’ve developed the tools, the simulation, the academic foundation and the experience to support a generation of New Nordics founders, investors and ecosystem developers.

It’s time for the New Nordics to live up to its potential. It’s time to Scale Up!

Want to explore how your ecosystem or organization can be part of Scale Up Nordics? Get in touch.

April 16, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Accelerator, Insights, Strategy

12 ways to win at Scale Up!

With 100’s of sessions and 1000’s of participants, we’ve seen every outcome imaginable in Scale Up! One thing we learned: clearly define a ‘winning goal’ that resonates with your participants. Here are 12 ways you, the facilitator can define ‘winning’ in Scale Up!

Why winning matters

In Scale Up! founders, investors, students, angels, ecosystem builders form teams, select a case company and race to outcompete their fellow ecosystem founders. With Accenture in London a few years ago, we had 15 teams. In Vancouver recently, we had 12 teams, in Dubai we had four teams; all leaning in to outcompete the market.

Just like in real life, scaling a young startup is a race, it is a competition. You are competing for market share, for investor attention, for the best advisors and, ultimately, for the best outcome for the people sitting on your cap table. Startups are inherently competitive. So, it makes perfect sense to bring the same attitude, the same animal spirit into the Scale Up! programs. In fact, there is no doubt, that pushing the competitive spirit, pushing the ‘winning’ narrative move the best teams to step up and scale up. Winning, if you will, make everyone do their best work.

How…… winning?

So, if that’s the case, who should teams be structured to win? What should or could be the winning aspiration? What’s the goal line? In real life, these goal lines are fledging. Raising a seed round marks a big LinkedIn celebration, hitting 25M ARR and securing a Colt title in Dealroom’s data set is ‘winning’, hitting Unicorn is ‘winning’, even delivering a wildly successful IPO is ‘winning’, even if it might crash just weeks later (case in point, Figma (down 42%), Klarna (down 65%) and Stubhub, down 71%). I guess, in some cases, doing an IPO might need feel like winning just weeks after (remember, most shareholders have six-month lock-ups….)

Given that, how can you, as facilitator structure ‘winning’ in Scale Up? We offer three categories and 12 options you can explore.

Winning also happens online; running Scale Up Africa Rising! with global south founders, 2026

Introduction level

For entry-level participants, your definition of ‘how to win’ should be simple to understand and simple to achieve. Yes, might want to throw in some Founder Tasks, Strategic dilemmas and canvases, but the idea is, keep it simple. This also applies if your are running short Discovery sessions, where time is limited.

1. First team to complete a round (one year)

2. Raise three rounds, make it across the ‘goal line’

3. Raise 10M, make it across the ‘goal line’

4. Hit 10M ARR, make it across the ‘goal line’

1. First team to complete a round (one year) The first one is easy. First team that makes it one round around the board, without going bankrupt, wins. Using a single dice, that should be around 10-15 throws of the dice. Enough for a taster.

2. Raise three rounds, make it across the ‘goal line’ More interesting, more realistic even, is the ‘equity fundraise’ focus. Raise three rounds (psss…, you can select ‘any instrument’ or ‘only priced rounds’. Once a team has completed three rounds, you need to review and approve their cap table. Then, they still need to pass whatever space is left to pass ‘goal’. This version allows you to keep a tight focus on equity fundraising.

3. Raise 10M, make it across the ‘goal line’ Almost identical, but with a slightly different metric. First team to raise 10M in investor financing – and make it across – wins. Allows for more luck and randomness, as a single round can be 50.000 or 20M depending on deal terms.

4. Hit 10M ARR, make it across the ‘goal line’ Similar, but with a go-to-market, market expansion and revenue focus. Secure 10M ARR, by any mean possible, and make it across ‘goal’. This version allows you to push cap tables and deal structures way into the background. Great for shorter sessions or with teams with a limited understanding of entrepreneurial finance.

Across these first four, they are all simple to follow, require only a limited amount of prep work and reduce cap table math to a bare minimum.

Entry-level groups, keep cap tables on paper. Easy, Austria, 2020

Intermediate level

At this level you expect more from the participants. You expect people to be more experienced, more prepared and better equipped for the work ahead of them.

5. Outperform

6. Survive

7. Expand

8. Five rounds

5. Outperform In this scenario, you select a widely recognized scale up in the ecosystem and ask ‘can you outperform’? For MENA, we use Careem, $3,1BN exit in just seven year. In Africa, we use MOOVE, $2BN valuation and global market expansion. For Europe we use Helsing’s Rocketship journey, with €12BN Series D in just four years. You can choose your own ‘outperform benchmark’, but the point is you use an actual, real-life company everyone can recognize and challenge teams to outperform them before time runs out. Personally, I’ve seen this work very well multiple times, and you can score winning on valuation, dilution and time to get there.

6. Survive Can you scale to a 1BN valuation – or a 10BN valuation – before going bust? Can you race against rising burn rates, demanding investors and meticulous cap table requirements? Can you survive to Unicorn? In this version, you focus on equity fundraising, cap table management and ‘first team to hit unicorn’. You also turn up the heat, the burn rate and keep tough market news coming. In Survive, you expect most teams to go bankrupt, move back, start over again, and run fast for a second or even third time. This is fast-paced, hard-charging scale up entrepreneurship in action.

7. Expand First team to (XX) Active Markets – and make it across the goal line wins. In this version, global expansion is the name, and aggressive growth is what it takes. You set the target, I prefer 20 active markets, first team wins.

8. Five rounds This feels a bit simple, but first team to complete year five is another easy winning milestone. I don’t really like it, as I expect more at the intermediate level, but for an easy facilitated session, this works pretty ok.

Can you scale to Colt, Unicorn or Elephant? 2026

Advanced level

In advanced, you want to make sure you have scorecard mindset, and aim for a successful exit transaction. You also keep a strict eye on the cap table, auditing all transactions.

9. 50M ARR, 10 markets, 1 syndicated round, ‘best’ exit

10. 100M ARR, 15 markets, ‘best exit’

11. 100M ARR, 15 markets, ‘best exit’, founders retaining 40% equity

12. Best IPO outcome

How to win, Scale Up BC! Masterclass, Vancouver, BC, 2026

9. 50M ARR, 10 markets, 1 syndicated round, ‘best’ exit A great, balanced approach. Teams have multiple milestones to hit, but none of them too challenging. The 10M ARR can be delivered by most teams. The 10 markets are possible but more challenging. A syndicated investment round is not too difficult. Along the way, teams are likely going to raise between two and 15 rounds of financing, raising capital, taking dilution hits and trying to keep their cap table clean. Ending that the best possible exit outcome is a great way to run a Scale Up! Counting ‘best exit’, leave a bit of flexibility for the facilitator, considering highest exit value, lowest dilution, best outcome for investors and best outcome for founders. Sometimes, in low- and medium case exit transactions, we’ve seen preference shares and liquidation stacks really bite. Good lesson, all around.

10. 100M ARR, 15 markets, ‘best exit’ Along the same lines, but more expansive. We here aim for 100M ARR (which should imply a 1BN valuation), more active markets and still the ‘best exit’. Run this if you have more than two days. If not, stick with the one above.

11. 100M ARR, 15 markets, ‘best exit’, founders retaining 40% equity Ok, this winning scenario is really interesting. We recently ran a version of this in Canada. Turned out, not a single team could claim undisputed winning. ARR, markets and exits; all good. But retaining 40% equity going into the exit transaction, turns out to be really hard. Equally, scaling to 100M ARR requires hard focus, and we see teams slipping up and forgetting that 40% founder equity was even a target.

12. Best IPO outcome Advanced groups only, let them race towards ‘best IPO outcome’. Sure, revenue, product development, GTM and market expansion all matters, but ultimately, teams are only assessed on their IPO performance. This scenario is suitable for real-life startups, like the teams we worked with in Dubai recently, where an actual, real-life IPO is something tangible on the horizon. For very early-stage founders, don’t’ try this one, as they might find it ‘too unrealistic’, given the early stage they are at.

Do you want to learn more about the Strategy Sims methodology? Check out the 2025 Strategy Sims in Action report, co-authored by the global ST community. Get it today.

Planning your next session

For your upcoming Scale Up! session, think about your audience, think about their interest, think about how much time you have available and use that to set your ‘winning’ scenario. Only got a few hours? Keep it simple with the entry-level options.

Got an advanced group? Aim for a balanced scorecard with a mega-exit at the end? Got early-stage founders who are raising their first or second round of financing in real life? Aim for Outperform and have some fun with early-stage investment instruments, conversion and cap tables cleanliness as companies scale. Whichever you choose, feel free to experiment with what winning looks and feels like in your program.

Want to bring Scale Up! to your ecosystem, classroom or accelerators? With over 50 certified facilitators globally, we deliver high-impact Masterclasses and Programs for innovation agencies, accelerators, angel networks and investment firms globally. Contact us today.

April 14, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Strategy, Tools

Taking Scale Up! to Market

Scale Up! is a powerful tool for building entrepreneurial skills, supporting founders, angels, investors and ecosystem builders. Globally, 6.000+ have been through Scale Up! But, as a new Scale Up! Facilitator and Partner, how do you actually take Scale Up! to market? In this article, we explore elven proven ways to bring Scale Up! to your market.

By Chris Rangen, Sanjana Rehaja & Stuart Morley

Congratulations, you have gotten trained, certified on Scale Up! Or, maybe you want to support the ecosystem by taking Scale Up! into your part of the world. Maybe you are ready to bring Scale Up Africa Rising! Into the African ecosystem? Or Scale Up MENA! into the MENA ecosystem? or maybe ready to bring Scale Up Europe! into the European ecosystem?

But how, exactly, do you start on taking Scale Up! to market? What are the first steps and what are the best ways?

Before tactics, partnerships, or pilots, there is one uncomfortable truth: Scale Up! does not spread because it is good. It spreads because someone decides to take personal ownership for bringing it into their market.

In every ecosystem where Scale Up! has taken root, there has been at least one individual who stopped waiting for inbound, funding, or perfect conditions—and instead acted with full accountability for the outcome.

This mindset shift matters. Because the early phase of taking Scale Up! to market is not an institutional motion; it is an entrepreneurial one. You are not “rolling out a program.” You are compounding credibility, relationships, and proof—one decision, one session, one conversation at a time.

If you are looking for certainty before you act, you will wait too long. If you are willing to act before certainty, the market starts to respond.

In our experience, working with global partners across 50 countries, these are the nine most common ways to bring Scale Up! to market.

Who attends Scale Up? Nor sure who your target participants are? Check out this article first.

Note, this article discuss how to take Scale Up! into a new market. Once you are in the market, once you have run your first 5-6 paid programs, the dynamics changes a bit.

Scale Up! is now available in Scale Up! (Global), Scale Up Angel!, Scale Up X!, Scale Up MENA!, Scale Up Africa Rising!, Scale Up Europe! and Scale Up Nordics! In this article we use the term ‘Scale Up!’ covering all or any of these.

Who buys Scale Up!? Not sure who the buyers are? Check out this article first.

Before we start… What’s your level of Scale Up! expertise?

Running Scale Up! is challenging. It’s technical. It requires you to do cap table math in your head, explain 3x liquidation preference and convert five stacked SAFE notes with different terms, while at the same time you need to teach the Founder’s Journey, explain long-term funding strategies and share personal experiences from scaling a high-growth tech startup.

If you are planning to run Scale Up!, you should have a meaningful amount of experience across the startup ecosystem, as an operator, founder, investor, program manger or startup mentor.

Your expertise should cover two domains; domain knowledge about all things startup growth and facilitation knowledge, to run complex groups. If you don’t have sufficient depth in both domain areas, bring one or more partners to work with you.

Alone -or in groups? Anyone can run Scale Up! by themselves, but that does not mean you should. We have much more fun, we learn more and it usually becomes a better experience for everyone if you have a team with you. Two people work well, three or even four people is absolutely a possibility. You decide.

Faculty, mentor, early-stage investor, global Scale Up! Expert, Few can match the expertise level of Scott B. Newton.

The eleven Ways to Bring Scale Up! to market

Existing clients
Existing relationships
Domain expert
The first one is free
Engaging the ecosystem
The targeted approach
The mapping approach
Find the problem-owner approach
The hard work approach
Scale Up! GTM Workflow
Being active, waiting for random luck

1. Existing clients

The fastest way to get Scale Up! into the market is simple. Work with already existing clients. They trust you. You have a relationship. You already have ongoing work. All you have to do is plug Scale Up! into a workshop or a program you are already running. There is no sales process, no discussions around budget because you already have a contract or collaboration you are working off of.

When Rick first got his hands on Scale Up! back in 2019, it was pretty easy for him to bring Scale Up! into his classroom in Silicon Valley. He was already teaching. This would fit perfectly into one of his already planned classes.

If you have pre-existing clients, projects, programs or classes, bringing Scale Up! into your market is an obvious quick fix. If that option is available to you, go for it.

Rick, our #1 Scale Up faculty, bringing Scale Up! from Europe to the Valley

2. Existing relationships

With existing relationships you already know your buyer. Maybe you’ve worked together in the past. Maybe she is a for former client. Maybe he just transitioned into a new role in the startup ecosystem. Reaching out to existing relationships will usually lead to a fast uptake of Scale Up! They know you, trust you and are – usually – willing to follow your recommendations.

When Michael first saw Scale Up! in Norway, during the Master Trainer program, he knew exactly who he needed to bring this to. In an instant, he knew the buyers, the pain points and how much they would love seeing Scale Up! in Canada. With strong, pre-existing relationships, Michael could easily and without much delay bring

A useful filter for “existing relationships” is this question: Who already trusts your judgement when you say, “This matters—now”?

In practice, early Scale Up! adoption rarely comes from cold outreach. It comes from people who have already seen you operate under pressure, solve real problems, or lead through ambiguity.

When you frame Scale Up! not as a product, but as the next logical move for their founders, investors, or portfolio, decision-making accelerates. You are not selling; you are guiding.

Trust collapses sales cycles. Credibility compounds adoption.

3. Domain expert

A domain expert is already recognized as an expert in this field. You are possibly business school faculty teaching entrepreneurial finance or startup ventures. Maybe you are the founder of the leading accelerator in your region, or head of investments at a pre-seed VC fund.

In your role, people recognize you as an expert; when you bring Scale Up! into the market, there is only a short path for you to find your buyers and sponsors. It might even happen within your own university or your own startup programs.

First time Mohammed saw Scale Up MENA!, he knew he had to bring it back to his ecosystem in the Middle East. “Can I take this with me?”, was one of his first questions; and he did. As a domain expert, there are usually multiple programs to explore for bringing Scale Up! into the ecosystem.

Being a domain expert is not only about credentials—it is about pattern recognition. Founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders listen to people who can clearly articulate:

What most startups get wrong
Why those mistakes repeat
And what disciplined alternatives actually look like

Scale Up! gives domain experts a structured way to translate lived experience into repeatable learning. When positioned correctly, the program becomes an extension of your professional identity—not an add-on offering.

This is where authority turns into leverage.

Mohammed, Rumbi, Chris working with Falak Startups & the Egyptian ecosystem

4. The first one is free (or, a lot of free pilots)

With the first one is free, you bypass the traditional client and buyer profile. Instead, you go directly to the ecosystem. You engage with founders, not gatekeepers. Following ‘the first one is free’, you run a large number of pilot sessions, free to attend, free for everyone. These are unlikely to be full, multi-day Masterclasses, but they are significant enough that startup founders, angels, investors and ecosystem builders get a sufficient taste for Scale Up!; and get a chance to realize the value and benefits of Scale Up! Of course, your skills with Scale Up! need to be decent, or at least rapidly improving.

‘’WOW! Every startup should learn this”, said Costa Rican tech founder Juan Carlos Marti, of Remora XYZ, after attending a free pilot Scale Up! workshop in Oslo, in early 2019.

In total, as we have been rolling out Scale Up!, we have probably delivered 50+ free, unpaid Scale Up! sessions, maybe more. Test sessions, pilots, free Train-the-trainers, discovery sessions; they all serve the same goal, get many more people to try out Scale Up! – and then ask for more, spread the word and help take this into programs and buyer connections.

A dual bonus with ‘the first one is free’ is obviously, you get a lot of practice. From rapid-fire introductions to explaining tricky term sheets for the 12th time; free pilots double as your training ground. Make use of it!

Importantly, going to market with ‘the first one is free’ requires a few more steps to be successful.

“Free” only works when it is intentional.

The purpose of early free pilots is not generosity—it is momentum. Each session is a compounding asset:

Your facilitation sharpens
Your language tightens
Your confidence increases
Your reputation spreads

The facilitators who succeed treat every pilot as if it will be quoted, referenced, and remembered—because eventually, it will be.

The goal is not volume alone. The goal is belief transfer: when participants leave convinced that Scale Up! is something their ecosystem cannot afford to ignore.

Capture, capture, capture

Use this to get photos, quotes, comments, feedback. Write blogposts. Write case studies or even mini-cases. Capture quotes. Capture learnings.

2. Ask for referrals, introduction and ‘where should we take this’?

When running free pilot sessions, carve out at least 15. Minutes at the end to ask for ‘where should we take this?’, and ‘is there any program you’d like to see us run this in?’ or ‘is there anyone you know we should talk to’.

3. Follow-up

Immediately after, reach out to the new contacts and referrals. Be disciplined about reaching out to everyone while this thing is still warm. 24 hours, 48 hours tops. Be active, reach out and follow-up.

Going to market with ‘the first one is free’ can be a great way to break into a new market, and you can reach a lot of startup founders early on, helping you build momentum and a following around your work with Scale Up! Expert facilitator Enrico recommends 20 or more sessions in the first year to build your facilitator mastery; that’s easily achieved with this approach.

5. Engaging the ecosystem

Engaging the ecosystem is a tricky way to get to market. Often, it entails many conversations. Many loose meetings. Many coffee conversations. We have seen this approach take up a lot of time, but yielding little results.

With ‘engaging the ecosystem’, you go out and have a large number of conversations. That’s a good thing, but we find that these conversations sometimes lack a plan, a structure and a clear go-to-market workflow. Engaging the ecosystem can lead to great insights from local accelerators, wonderful discussions with key team member at the innovation agency and great conversations with founders. But that all comes to naught if there is no clear distinction between champions, buyers and sponsors.

Many people, first time exploring their local markets for Scale Up! end up, almost accidentally, ‘engaging the ecosystem’, and it kind of stops there. Don’t be that person.

Ecosystems do not move because they are informed. They move because someone takes responsibility for alignment.

“Engaging the ecosystem” fails when conversations remain polite but non-committal. Progress happens when you deliberately classify people into:

Champions (who advocate)
Buyers (who decide)
Sponsors (who fund or legitimize)

If every meeting does not move one of these three closer to action, you are networking—not building a market.

Engaging the ecosystem, Digital Switzerland, 2019

6. The targeted approach

In your ecosystem, find one of the top three ecosystem players, be it an accelerator, incubator, business school, innovation agency or economic development agency.

Reach out to them with a clear understanding of the current challenges and problems they are working on. Position Scale Up! to be a part of their solutions roadmap. Partner closely with one or more of these top three ecosystem players.

Build (Scale Up!) programs that are designed around their strategies, their mission and their key performance metrics. Go to market in close, close partnership with one of these three. Using this approach, you can easily end up working ‘under’ your client, with the program becoming theirs, not yours.

Be aware of this and collaborate constructively on joint communications, case studies and post-program learning.

When Marcus first brought Scale Up! to Japan, he knew exactly which conference he wanted to partner with for the first-ever Scale Up! Masterclass in Japan.

Scale Up! goes to Japan, highly targeted

7. The mapping approach

Like the name implies, the mapping approach requires a deep insight and understanding of your local market.

You need to spend time to appreciate the key challenges, the struggles and setbacks local founders experience. You are likely a recognized mentor, startup coach. You have access to founders; you spend time with founders. You know the market and the ecosystem in detail.

With this foundation, you spend time, using any tool, to map out and clearly segment, structure and identify the market. once you have a crystal-clear market map, and only then, do you engage with the top stakeholders.

Always, starting from a position of understanding the challenges and how your Scale Up! programs can solve them.

ST partners at work in MENA, with Sanjana,

8. Find the problem-owner approach

Every ecosystem has challenges, problems and gaps between ambition and reality. If you can find, connect and address the owners of these problems, you might find a very short path to a positive outcome.

What are the key problems the ecosystem has?

Who feels them? (often, startup founders, ecosystem builders)

Who owns them, and are responsible to get them solved?

Who lies awake at night, thinking about how to solve these?

Use your toolkit and network. Ask and listen. Do your research. But map out and find the problem-owner. Connect with high-quality content. Be relevant. Be helpful. Be understanding. Be empathic to the problems. Be clear on the solution. You might find this to be a good path to solving real client problems and also bringing Scale Up! to market.

9. The hard work approach

Like the name indicates, our next approach takes …. a …. lot … of work. Here are the steps we have identified.

A. Map the market

B. Define the problem-statement

C. Define the problem-solution

D. Build your domain expertise

E. Learn case studies from the ecosystems (study top companies and investors)

F. Revisit the problem-solution

G. Nail your solution-statement

H. Run three free pilots (small, short)

I. Capture video, photos, quotes and testimonials. Get references and referrals

J. Build your skills

K. Identify GTM partners

L. Identify target participants

M. Test your value proposition

N. Engage with your Champions, Buyers and Sponsors

O. Run three more pilot sessions

P. Capture video, photos, quotes and testimonials. Get references and referrals

Q. Write three case studies and blog posts from your sessions and insights to date Capture different angles, focus on the problem-solution narrative. Focus on outcomes.

R. Identify your Champions, Buyers and Sponsors (three ICP)

S. With the case studies, go back to your buyers, verify the problem-solution-value proposition. Focus on how Scale Up! can help the ecosystem and your buyers

T. Secure 2-3 paid pilots

U. Run pilots

V. Capture video, photos, quotes and testimonials. Get references and referrals

W. Write 2-3 case studies from pilots and evolution so far

X. Write 2-3 content expert pieces. Publish in different channels

Y. Launch a dedicated website, possibly a sub-page, focus 100% on the problem-solution-value proposition. Develop the page with Bolt, Gamma or Lovable, but write it with a Problem-Solution framing

Z. Use your video, photos, quotes and testimonials.

AA. Engage with the next set of Champions, Buyers and Sponsors

BB. Secure next 20 paid programs and Masterclasses

CC. Scale from there

DD. Become a widely recognized domain expert

That’s all. but, seriously, the ‘hard work approach’ is built around a few key steps.

– Start small, pilot and ramp up

– Focus on the problem-solution, every step

– Run pilots, but make sure to capture everything

– Communications, communications and communications

Run many programs, develop, become an absolute expert over time

This approach is not for everyone. It requires a long-term mindset. It requires dedicated. But most of all, it simply requires a lot of hard work.

The hard work approach succeeds for one reason: it rewards consistency over intensity.

No single workshop changes a market. No single partnership creates credibility. No single post generates sustained demand.

What does work is disciplined repetition—showing up, delivering value, capturing proof, and doing it again.

This is not a launch strategy. It is a leadership practice.

10. Scale Up! GTM Workflow

Over the past few months we have been exploring the topic of Scale Up! go-to-market, in-depth. “How can we get more full-sized Scale Up! Masterclasses, in successful collaboration with our global partners?”

We had building blocks, elements, but not the entire go-to-market playbook. So, we developed it. For Strategy Tools Partners and certified Scale Up! expert facilitators, we share the entire, 18-step, GTM workflow.

ST Community GTM workflow. Join us to unpack this together.

Not yet partner or expert facilitator? Explore how you can partner with Strategy Tools.

11. Being active, waiting for random luck

Eleventh and last, we wait for luck. If you are already using Scale Up! in one market, you can run it here, across education, accelerators, ecosystem development. You use social media well. Run a great IG account. Write great content on LinkedIn, and suddenly your inbox pings. “Hey, can you come and run….”, from a brand new market. It happens. It’s happened to us more than once. You just need to be active – in some markets – and then wait for luck to strike. It happens.

Time to get started

If this all feels familiar, it should.

Taking Scale Up! to market follows the same logic founders face when going from zero to one:

There is ambiguity
There is resistance
There is no shortcut to credibility

But there is also upside. When done well, you are not just running programs—you are shaping how an ecosystem thinks about growth, capital, and decision-making.

And that impact compounds long after the first cohort ends.

Late stage founders, hard at work, Scale Up MENA!, Dubai 2025

If you are a certified Scale Up! facilitator, you fully understand the early stages of 0-1, of early product-market fit, of nailing your ICPs, your channels, your value proposition. It’s the same here.

You are, in some respect, a founder with a new product in a new market. How you go to market, matters, a lot.

Hopefully, this article has helped shed light on some of your future options, on how you can take the Scale Up! series to market in your region – and hopefully build a sustainable, lasting business, while also driving development of the ecosystem.

After all, that’s why we developed Scale Up! in the first place, to better develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem and help more founders scale.

Want to learn more about the Scale Up! series? Check out ST.io

Interested to join the global partner community? Visit our Partner page.

Curious to bring Scale Up! to your ecosystem? Get in touch today, Chris@strategytools.io

April 13, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Startups, Tools

Startup Founder? 15 Steps to Upgrade Your Deck.

We have just finished reviewing a large number of startup pitch decks. Founders from across the ecosystem, at various stages, preparing for fundraising. Some early-stage, some early growth-stage. Some first-time founders, others serial entrepreneurs.

It was a revealing exercise.

There is a lot of raw founder talent out there. Real problems being solved. Genuine ambition on display. And yet, deck after deck, we kept seeing a pattern of missed opportunities. The same structural gaps. The same underselling of genuinely strong companies.

So we wrote it all down.

What follows are 15 firm, honest, and we hope — useful — recommendations for any founder currently building or upgrading their pitch deck. These are not abstract principles. They come directly from what we saw, and what we know many investors look for.

Take them seriously. Your deck is often the first impression. Make it count.

1. Don’t build tiny companies.

This may sound blunt, but it needs to be said. If your deck describes a business that will generate $2M in revenue and employ 12 people, you are not describing a venture-backable company. You may be describing a fine business. But not a venture-backable one. Investors are not looking for small. They are looking for transformational. Before you write a single slide, ask yourself honestly: are we building something genuinely big?

2. Do build scalable, high-growth companies.

The corollary to point one is this: build for scale from day one. That means a business model that can grow without linear cost increases. A product that can reach new markets without rebuilding from scratch. A team that can scale with the company. When you sit down to work on your deck, ask: where does the hockey stick come from? If you cannot answer that clearly, the deck is not ready.

3. Know which deck you are building.

There is not one pitch deck. There are several. The teaser deck. The investor deck. The demo day deck. The full due diligence deck. Each has a different purpose, a different length, a different level of detail. We see founders send a 40-slide full due diligence deck as their first outreach. We see others send a 6-slide teaser when they are already in detailed conversations. Know your audience. Know your moment. Build the right deck for the right context.

4. Don’t waste prime real estate.

Every slide has a headline. Most founders waste it. Instead of writing “Market Size”, write: “The European SaaS market is €48B and growing at 22% annually.” Instead of “Team”, write: “We are the most qualified team in Europe to solve this problem.” The slide headline is your most valuable real estate on the page. Use it to make a point, not label a category.

A practical habit: write the slide type — Team, Market, Ask, Traction — in the upper right corner of the slide. Then use the headline to deliver the key message. Every. Single. Slide.

5. Be more ambitious.

We say this with respect, because we know how hard the founder journey is. But time and again, we see founders undersell themselves, their markets and their vision. The TAM is presented conservatively. The projections are modest. The ambition is hedged. Investors fund ambition. They fund founders who believe they can change an industry. Your deck should reflect that belief. If you don’t believe it, work on that first. If you do believe it, let it show.

6. Make your roadmap longer than 24 months.

A 12 or 18-month roadmap is not a vision. It is a project plan. Investors are thinking about 5-15 year return cycles. They need to see where you are going, not just what you are doing next quarter. Build a roadmap that goes beyond 24 months. Show the milestones, the market expansion, the product evolution, the team build-out. A longer roadmap signals strategic thinking. It shows you understand the journey ahead.

7. Share your funding plan alongside the roadmap.

The roadmap and the funding plan should live together. For each phase of growth, show what capital is required, what it will be used for, and what milestones it unlocks. This is not just good storytelling — it is good investor communication. It shows you understand the relationship between capital deployment and value creation. It makes the investment thesis clear. Roadmap without a funding plan is a wish list. Roadmap with a funding plan is a strategy.

8. Improve all things financials.

This is non-negotiable. Weak financial slides kill deals. If your revenue model is unclear, fix it. If your unit economics are missing, add them. If your projections have no logic behind them, rebuild them. Investors will stress-test your numbers. You need to know them cold, and the deck needs to show them clearly. This includes your burn rate, your path to profitability or next funding milestone, your key financial assumptions and your LTV/CAC ratios. Do the work. The numbers matter.

9. Focus on your top 3 selling points.

We see decks that try to say everything. They end up saying nothing. Identify the three most compelling reasons to invest in your company. Make those three points impossible to miss. Put them front and centre. Repeat them across the narrative arc of the deck. Everything else is supporting evidence. Investors remember three things. Make sure you choose which three.

10. Show your AI slide.

If you are building in 2026 and you do not have a clear AI story, you are leaving a major question mark in the investor’s mind. This does not mean adding “powered by AI” to a bullet point. It means showing how AI is structurally embedded in what you are building. For example: “We have built a unique end-to-end AI stack. Two people and ten agents work like a team of twenty would have done two years ago.” Show the leverage. Show the efficiency gain. Show the defensibility. Your AI strategy is now a core part of your investment thesis.

11. Add your own GTM slide — and make it count.

There are certain slides that should appear in every deck, yet we regularly see them missing or buried. Your deck must clearly address: your value proposition, your beachhead market, your go-to-market channels, your traction to date, and your early customer love. Do not assume investors will piece this together from context. Give each its own moment. A great customer quote, an early logo wall, a clear pipeline breakdown — these build confidence rapidly. These slides tell investors that you understand your business, your market, and your customer.

12. Address investor liquidity and exit — head on.

This is a sensitive topic. Some founders love talking about it. Some feel it is premature. Some worry it signals they want to exit early. Here is our view: the topic is too important to ignore, and ignoring it does not make it go away. Investors in your company have a fiduciary obligation to return capital. They need a credible path to liquidity. Show that you have thought about it. Present your exit strategy — whether that is an M&A pathway, a strategic acquirer, an IPO horizon, or a secondary transaction mechanism. You do not need to have all the answers. But you need to have the conversation.

Talk liquidity and exit from first investors coming in.

13. Show the round, the momentum and the closing strategy.

Your Ask slide is not just a number. It is a story of momentum. Who is already in? What are the terms? What is the timeline to close? What milestones will this round unlock? Strong rounds have social proof and urgency. Show that the round is moving. Show that serious people are already leaning in. If you have a lead investor, say so. If you have soft commitments, reference them. Investors want to join a round that is moving — not one that is stuck.

14. Show how you can build a venture-size, backable company.

This is the meta-question behind every investor review. Can this company return the fund? Is this a real venture opportunity? The entire deck, in a sense, is an answer to this question. But it is worth addressing it directly. Show your market scale. Show your margin structure at scale. Show your competitive position five years out. Show why this company — with this team, in this market, at this moment — can become something truly significant. That is what backable means. Make the case.

15. Focus on your top key metrics.

Founders often drown investors in data. More metrics do not equal more credibility. In fact, the opposite is often true: a founder who can identify and explain the three or four metrics that truly drive their business demonstrates a level of strategic clarity that inspires confidence. Pick your north star metric. Show its trajectory. Show what drives it. If you are pre-revenue, show the leading indicators that matter. If you are post-revenue, show ARR growth, NRR, CAC payback and gross margin. Know your numbers. Own your narrative.

A Final Word

The founders who raise successfully are not always the ones with the best product. They are often the ones who communicate their vision most clearly, who understand what investors need to see, and who treat the deck as a serious strategic document — not an afterthought.

Use this list. Work through it slide by slide. And go build something great.

April 9, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Ecosystem, Insights, Strategy

Who Attends the Fund Manager Masterclass?

This year we will pass 2.000 participants in the Fund Manager! Masterclass. Since launch, participants from 50+ countries have mastered new elements of the venture capital fund journey with the Masterclass. But who are they, and who joins the Fund Manager! Masterclass?

70+ Masterclasses. 5 Continents. 33 Participant Groups

In most parts of the world, venture capital has historically been a ‘black box’, hidden, secret, unavailable to most. This insight led to the development of the Fund Manager! simulation. Today, across emerging and established markets alike, a new generation of fund managers, fund investors, and ecosystem developers is rising. They are structuring new investment funds, deploying capital into underserved markets, and redefining what it means to build the venture capital ecosystem from the ground up.

Based on 70+ Masterclasses, in places like UK, North America, Germany, Fiji, Singapore, Dubai, Western Balkans, Switzerland, Nordics, Mauritius, Egypt, South Africa, Belgium and numerous online cohorts, we’ve seen firsthand how diverse, and how powerful, the participants in a Fund Manager Masterclass can be.

Developing early investment strategy. Cairo, Egypt, 2024

Five Categories. 33 Groups. We’ve Seen Them All

Over these 70+ Masterclasses, we have observed a consistent, fascinating truth: the room is never just one type of person. Based on experience across every program we’ve run, we categorize participants into five main categories — spanning 33 distinct types of participants.

Each group brings different questions, different urgencies, and different assets to the room. Together, they create something extraordinary: a living simulation of the full venture capital ecosystem.

We’ve structured these five categories, 33 groups into the “Who attends a Fund Manager Masterclass” canvas, a handy overview for any ST partners, clients, Masterclass partners and business schools. Download it here.

Five groups, 33 categories of Fund Manager Participants

1. Aspiring and Future Fund Managers — Building Tomorrow’s Funds (8%)

These are the people that show up to learn, to soak in and translate the new knowledge into new, actual venture funds. Participants in this this category come from many different backgrounds. Consulting, finance, corporate; many are MBA candidates,.

They share one thing; a desire to learn ‘all things venture capital’, with the goal of either starting their own fund in the future or seeking a job in the venture capital industry.

Out of this group, we see 5% – 8% following through and launching their own funds, going from masterclass to market in just a few years.

“Wow, there is a lot to take in, and a lot to manage. Extremely challenging and extremely helpful” is a common phrase heard amongst the Aspiring and Future Fund Managers

Following Fund Manager Masterclass participants transition into first-time fund managers. Belgrade, Serbia, 2025

2. Emerging Fund Managers — The Builders of New Funds (40%)

Emerging fund managers, and their new team members, are the true pioneers in the VC space. Many join a masterclass with a fund strategy forming in their minds. Some are deep into legal setup, regulatory requirements and LP pitches.

Emerging fund managers are raising their fund I, II or III. For many, this can be a 10-year journey, maybe more. Some emerging fund managers build out teams, bring in new team members and recruit young talent; suddenly realizing they also need to be training their teams, while also navigating the learning journey themselves too.

“Even with years of experience, there are plenty of concepts we don’t fully utilize or grasp. This program clarified them significantly and gave me new insights.“

-Enrique Alvarado-Hablützel, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Chi Impact Capital

“This is so realistic. These are just the challenges we are facing right now”, is a common theme heard amongst emerging managers.

Emerging fund managers, in deep concentration closing a deal. Toronto, Canada, 2024

3. General Partners and Current VC Team Members — The Operators of Today’s Funds (30%)

At the core of every Masterclass are the active GPs and their teams — the fund architects already in the field, deploying capital, managing portfolios, and navigating the full complexity of fund lifecycle management.

These participants don’t come to learn what venture capital is. They come to sharpen what they’re already doing — and to solve the hard problems that don’t come up in LP reports. When they join, they understand the basics of thesis, strategy, deployment pace and LP reporting. But, two challenges stand out. Number one, how to ‘get better at exits and liquidity’, second, how to better embrace the 15-year life span of a fund, and using that insight to manage multiple funds on the same platform.

Senior GPs and Founding Partners

These participants are operating funds — often regional or sector-focused — and arrive to explore advanced themes: portfolio construction at scale, follow-on strategy, exit & liquidity strategy and LP alignment ahead of a new raise.

In one recent European cohort, several founding GPs used the Strategy Tools canvases to redesign their LP stack and stress-test their fund economics in real time — with peers who had done it before.

Managing Partners and Investment Partners

Driving investment decision-making, managing the portfolio, and building LP relationships — these participants often use the Masterclass to pressure-test their fund model and build a shared language with their team before entering a critical fundraising window.

Venture Partners and Operating Partners

Part-time, sector-specific partners who need a full-system view of how a fund works — and how their role fits into the larger GP machine.

Investment Team: Principals, Associates, Analysts

From deal flow analysts to senior associates, junior team members join to build a holistic view of how funds operate — from fund mechanics and portfolio modeling to LP relationship management and exit dynamics.

The result? They walk out able to contribute at a level far beyond their job title.

“It’s one thing to read about VC in books, but you only ‘get it’ under pressure.”

— IMD VAM Participant, Lausanne, Switzerland

Seasoned fund managers, partners and investment associates, online 2026

4. Limited Partners — The Capital Behind the Funds (15%)

Every great fund manager needs a counterpart: the Limited Partners who provide the capital, mandate, and long-term stability that allow funds to be born, grow, and ultimately deliver returns.

In the Masterclass, LPs join for two critical reasons: to understand how to identify and back the right GPs — and to co-design new investment structures that align with their own mandates and constraints.

The LP participants we see span the full spectrum of capital:

High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and Angel Networks evolving from direct startup investing into fund-level participation — moving from writing cheques to committing to fund structures
Family Offices seeking diversification, access to innovation, and long-term exposure to early-stage growth
Corporate Ventures (CVCs) and Fund-of-Funds, participating to identify sector-focused or geography-specific GP partners
Foundations and Endowments exploring catalytic capital models and impact-first fund structures
Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) playing a foundational role in developing VC ecosystems
Pension Funds and Insurance Capital beginning to explore venture as an asset class — a shift accelerating across Europe and emerging markets alike

In Egypt, institutional LPs and national agencies explored how to design new LP frameworks that would enable more first-time fund managers to launch — sitting in the same room as the GPs they would later consider backing.

In the IMD classroom, some of the largest LP organizations in the Middle East, used the experience to sharpen their LP skills for future fund allocations in ultra-competitive markets.

In 2X Ignite, South Africa Masterclass, DFIs worked on new fund structures to channel growth capital into underserved markets, learning alongside the very fund builders they intended to support.

This cross-pollination — between capital providers and fund builders, in the same room, on the same simulation — is one of the defining features of the Fund Manager Masterclass.

Family offices, Fund-of-funds and an Australian DFI, working alongside emerging fund managers, 2X. Singapore, 2023

5. The System Builders — Designing the Venture Ecosystem Itself (7%)

Then there’s the fifth group — and perhaps the most fascinating.

These are not the fund managers. Not the LPs. These are the architects of the broader venture capital system — the people designing national strategies, regulatory frameworks, accelerator programs, and the policy environments that either enable or constrain everything else.

System builders arrive at the Masterclass because they seek to understand the full machine — not from a textbook, but from the inside. They include:

VC ecosystem builders and program funders creating national accelerators, sector programs, and capital formation strategies
Government agencies, innovation authorities, and regulators exploring how fund structures, incentives, and public-private co-investment can drive growth
Economic development organizations and capital market institutions looking to mobilise private capital into strategic sectors
Universities and faculty members designing or evolving courses, research programs, and academic ventures into fund strategy and ecosystem design
Service providers — lawyers, fund administrators, accountants, and advisors building practices around the VC ecosystem
Journalists and analysts gaining first-person insight into how venture capital truly operates behind the scenes
MBA students and research fellows exploring fund management as a career path or research domain

In Fiji, Egypt, and Singapore, government innovation agencies and DFIs attended side by side — using the Masterclass to co-design a more dynamic national VC landscape. In the DFDF VC program, national ecosystem builders used the immersive experience to strengthen the collaborative tissue between various GPs in the ecosystem.

In Mauritius, service providers, fund administrators and fund-of-fund allocators came together to gain a deeper appreciation of the complexities of managing a full 15-year fund journey.

This system-level participation is what makes each cohort genuinely unique — connecting micro (fund-level) thinking and macro (ecosystem-level) design in a single, intense learning environment.

Connecting the ecosystem, ocean impact x pacific. Fiji, 2025

Inside the Fund Manager Masterclass

Each Masterclass blends strategic learning, competitive simulation, and hands-on fund design. The core simulation — Fund Manager! — compresses 10–15 years of fund lifecycle into just a few intensive days. Participants don’t just learn about venture capital. They live it.

Across the Masterclass, participants work through the full fund journey:

Early team formation – owning the key roles on a GP team
Fund design and investment thesis — scoping strategy, sector focus, geographic mandate, and fund size
LP engagement and capital stack design — sourcing, pitching, and closing Limited Partners on Fund I, II and maybe III
Portfolio construction and follow-on decisions — deploying capital, managing dilution, and defending the portfolio
Exit execution and DPI optimization — navigating acquisitions, secondary sales, and IPOs
Outcomes and performance — tracking record performance, managing LP distributions and outperforming peer fund managers

Accenture Fund Manager Masterclass. Frankfurt, Germany, 2025

The numbers from recent cohorts speak for themselves. At the IMD Venture Capital Asset Management Programme in Lausanne, six teams collectively deployed $2.2 billion across 153 investments, executing over 100 exit transactions — with fund returns ranging from a respectable 3.0x to an extraordinary 672x net DPI.

In Belgrade, eight competing funds from across the Western Balkans deployed $1.8 billion in simulated capital across 84 investments and 55 exits — in three days.

“I honestly didn’t believe it is possible to transmit that much information in such a short timeframe. Your unwavering support, energy and patience made sure everyone was at their highest learning potential!”

— Nastja Preradovic Visic, Western Balkans Masterclass

A Global Community of Fund Builders

From Cairo to Copenhagen, Toronto to Lausanne, Brussels to Mauritius, the Fund Manager Masterclass attracts a truly global cohort — connected by a shared ambition: to design, learn, build, and scale the next generation of venture capital funds.

The alumni network spans:

GPs raising their first or second fund, now with a global peer group to call on
LPs exploring new emerging markets— with the GP relationships to match
DFI’s with a newfound respect for the complexities of managing investment funds
Policy shapers designing capital market reforms and national VC infrastructure
Innovation agencies building the scaffolding for entirely new ecosystems
Corporate leaders engaging with emerging GPs for strategic collaborations

Together, these participants represent the full system of venture capital — from the first dollar raised to the last exit realised.

Designing the Future of Venture Capital

The Fund Manager Masterclass is more than an executive program. It’s a catalyst for VC ecosystem transformation. Each session becomes a micro-lab for fund design, VC innovation, and cross-border collaboration — the kind of convergence that doesn’t happen at conferences.

Whether delivered by European Women in Venture, Invest Europe, IMD, Newton Venture Program, Dubai Future District Fund, or in partnership with national development agencies, the experience is built around one fundamental belief:

Anyone can learn to navigate the full 15-year fund journey, ultimately unlocking a new generation of GPs, LPs and VC ecosystem developers globally.

Download the canvas

Get the “Who attends a Fund Manager Masterclass” canvas. Download it here.

About the Fund Manager Masterclass

The Fund Manager Masterclass is a Strategy Tools program delivered globally in partnership with governments, DFIs, business schools, and ecosystem programs. It has been run in 20+ countries across 5 continents. For information on hosting or partnering for a Masterclass, contact Chris Rangen (Chris@strategytools.io) or visit Strategytools.io

April 1, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Startups, Tools

Entrepreneurial Finance Readiness Level

Entrepreneurial Finance Readiness Level (TRL, but for founders raising capital)

Most startups are familiar with the technical readiness of their product, commonly referred to as ‘TRL’ or Technology Readiness Level. But what about ‘investor readiness level’. What would a EFRL, Entrepreneurial Finance Readiness Level look like? Based on our work with 1000’s of founders across 1000’s of fundraising programs, processes and Masterclasses, we explore what a similar EFRL might look like.

Our key insight: very few founders around the world are actually ‘investor ready’. Much work remains in most ecosystems and the various ‘supporting infrastructures’ the ecosystems operate.

EFRL – Entrepreneurial Finance Readiness Level (Rangen, 2026)

How to read the EFRL

Level 0: not at all investor ready

Level 1-3: Not investor ready, but might still land some early-stage financing

Level 4-6: Investor ready, should be able to negotiate and secure investments at seed-to-Series A

Level 7-9: Fully investor ready. Should be able to raise capital into venture- and growth stages

Founders studying a record number of term sheets. Scale Up Europe! (angel) Masterclass, Cluj, Romania, March 2026

0. Below minimum

Not familiar with a basic cap table
Unable to manage a simple cap table exercise and update
Unable to read, understand and analyze a basic term sheet
Not familiar with how SAFEs, CLAs work
Not familiar with conversion into equity
Unable to structure two or more seed-stage funding rounds correctly
Lacking basic understanding of investor expectations and liquidity
Unable to articulate or discuss liquidity scenarios

Entry level term sheets from friends, family, angel networks and Speedinvest. Scale Up Europe!

1. Minimum

Understand the basics of a cap table
Understand the difference between company issuing equity and founders selling equity
Understand the basics of SAFE, CLA

2. Basic

Familiar with the basics of cap tables, including 2-3 updates and changes
Familiar with pre- and post-money valuations
Able to identify price per share and why it matters
Able to read and understand most entry-level term sheets
Able to read standard SAFE and CLA

3. Getting it

Comfortable with a basic term sheet, including standard provisions
Familiar with a basic shareholder agreement
Can follow a conversion process for SAFE, CLA into equity
Comfortable with cap tables, including doing 3-5 rounds of new equity raises in a cap table

Interesting term sheets from Global Ventures, Lightrock and World Fund. Scale Up Europe!

4. Entry level

Can spot good, bad and standard terms in a SAFE and CLA
Understand the basic idea of value creation and value uplift for investors and founde
Can set up and structure ESOPs correctly
Can set up and structure advisor shares, board shares,
Comfortable converting standard SAFE, CLA into equity, including correctly using caps, discounts and MFNs
Can read, structure and discuss term sheets from seed into series A/B

5. Competent

Very comfortable with cap table math
Able to spot ‘good’ and ‘bad’ term sheets easily, including excessive terms
Comfortable with most key terms in a term sheet
Can navigate most aspects of a SAFE or CLA instrument, including stacked conversions
Understand common shares vs. preference shares, and the long-term implications, including liquidation preferences, anti-dilution mechanisms and more
Understand investor expectations
Understand investor protection mechanisms
Understand the basics of investor liquidity and returns
Can structure 2-3 rounds ahead, and discuss entry-valuation, uplifts and return multiples

6. Qualified

Can develop a long-term capital strategy, including structuring 3-5 funding rounds, with clear 3X value uplift between each of them
Can easily manage a full cap table from start to exit, often across 5-12 equity rounds, including ESOPs, advisors, common and preference shares
Comfortable with all key terms in a term sheet, can spot and negotiate on the most critical ones
Comfortable structuring secondaries and basic partial liquidity solution

Evantic Capital, ICONIQ and Local Grlow (aka PCG), here representing later stage term sheets. Scale Up Europe!

7. Advanced

Can easily write up a full Outcome canvas, with outcome scenarios and outcomes math (less than 10. Minutes)
Can write and discuss a full investor memo
Can easily spot good/bad/standard terms in a term sheet in just seconds
Fully understand the long-term implications of various investor terms and protections

8. Expert

Able to easily discuss different liquidity strategies, exit scenarios, current market conditions, key value drivers and how to ensure optimal exit outcomes
Can easily spot errors, mistakes in cap tables
Fully understand how to structure a fundraising round based on investors’ timelines and return requirements

9. Pro

Able to quickly flesh out a ‘Fund returner’ math case in investor conversation

Late stage founders structuring multiple investor term sheets into Series C and D. Scale Up! Masterclass, Bergen, Norway, November 2025.

Summary

The idea of a EFRL is still forming. We hope this overview can be helpful to your work.

We explore this topic in-depth in the Scale Up! Masterclasses. Delivered globally, the Scale Up! Masterclasses allows founders, angels, investors, ecosystem developers and innovation agencies to master the founder’s journey, growth strategy, term sheets, investment instruments and cap tables in just a few days of work.

Scale Up Masterclasses Case Studies

Scaling to exit with Dubai Future District Fund

Read the full case study.

From Advisors to Growth Partners: How Norway’s Largest Bank DNB Elevates Startup Advisory with the Scale Up! Masterclass

Read the full case study.

Scaling up in the rising Egyptian ecosystem

Read the full case study.

March 29, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Startups, Tools

The Founder’s Web Summit Checklist: 10 Things You Need to Prepare

Hey, founders. If you’re heading to Web Summit — or any other major startup and investor conference — you probably need to prepare a little bit. That’s okay. That’s exactly why we put together this 10-item checklist.

A lot of founders zero in on the pitch deck, and yes, that matters. But as you’re about to see, there’s so much more you can do to show up ready. Here are the 10 things every founder needs before hitting the conference floor.

This article is part two in our three part-series helping startup founders prepare for major startup- and investor conferences. Read also part II and part III.

1. Your 30-Second Pitch

Know it cold. Short, concise, sharp — and ending with a very clear call to action. You’ll deliver this dozens of times in hallways, at the coffee bar, and in elevator banks. It needs to roll off your tongue effortlessly, sound natural, and leave the other person knowing exactly what you do and what you want from them

Practice makes perfect. Just remember that key question at the end to draw your audience in.

2. Be Curious

The best founders at conferences aren’t the ones pitching the hardest. They’re the ones asking the best questions. Go in genuinely curious about the people you meet — their thesis, their portfolio, their thinking. Curiosity builds rapport faster than any pitch. And investors remember the founders who made them think.

3. Your One-Pager — Easy to Share

A clean, single-page summary of your company — problem, solution, traction, team, and ask. Make it visually sharp and scannable in under 60 seconds. And make it frictionless to share: one link, mobile-friendly, always ready to send before the conversation ends.

4. Know Your Numbers Cold

Know your metrics by heart. Revenue, growth rate, burn, runway, unit economics — whatever drives your business. Nothing kills momentum in a great conversation like fumbling for your stats. If you have to check your phone for your MRR, you’re not ready.

Know your numbers. Maybe more important than your deck.

5. Your Pitch Deck, Financial Model, and Key Financials

Have your full deck ready for sit-down meetings, a trimmed 5-slide version for quick follow-ups, and your financial model clean and accessible. Investors will ask. Be ready to share on the spot — a single link, not an email attachment chain.

6. Your Target Investor Profile

Know exactly who you’re looking for before you walk in the door. Stage, check size, sector focus, geography, value-add beyond capital. The founders who waste the least time are the ones with a clear ideal investor profile — and the self-discipline to stay focused on it.

7. Your Customer Pipeline — In Detail and Full Color

Your pipeline is proof. Have it ready: named accounts, stages, deal sizes, timeline to close. Investors love traction, and a detailed, credible customer pipeline tells a story your deck can’t. Know it well enough to walk someone through it in three minutes without notes.

8. Your Key Questions

Prepare the questions you want to ask — and make them good. Not “are you investing?” but thoughtful, specific questions that open real conversations. What does their ideal Series A look like? Who are their best portfolio companies and why? What do they wish founders asked them more? Good questions signal you’ve done the work.

9. Your Data Room

Have it built, organized, and ready to share with one link. Financials, cap table, legal docs, product overview, team bios. When an investor asks for it — and the good ones will ask fast — you want to send it within the hour. Delays signal unreadiness. Speed signals confidence.

10. Your Round, Timeline, Momentum, and a Clear Close

Know your round inside out: how much you’re raising, on what terms, what you’ve already closed, who’s in, and when you’re closing. Investors want to feel momentum — not desperation, but clear forward motion. Have a closing date and hold it. Urgency is a feature, not a pressure tactic.

The bottom line: Your pitch deck is just one piece of the puzzle. The founders who get the most out of conferences are the ones who do the work before they arrive. Use this checklist, show up prepared, and make every conversation count.

Good luck out there.

This article is the first in a three piece series to help founders prepare for key conferences. Part I: The Founder’s Web Summit Checklist: 10 Things You Need to Prepare. Read it here. Part II: Meeting the Investors? Here’s what they’ll ask. Read it here. Part III: Going to Web Summit? Here Are the 15 Questions You Need to Prepare For the Investors You Meet. Read it here.

March 27, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Startups, Tools

Meeting the Investors? Here’s what they’ll ask

Going to an investor conference this month? Here are the 15 questions you should know cold — to nail your conversations and leave a lasting impression.

This article is part two in our three part-series helping startup founders prepare for major startup- and investor conferences. Read part I and part III.

Investor conferences are not pitches. They are conversations. But make no mistake: in the 10 minutes you have with a partner over coffee or an principal at a cocktail table, you are being evaluated. The investors in the room have heard thousands of founders. They can smell preparation — and they can smell the lack of it just as fast.

The good news? The questions are largely predictable. Below are the 15 questions that come up again and again at early-stage investor conferences. Master these, and you walk in with confidence. Wing them, and you are luck to walk out with a polite “send me your deck” hanging in the air.

We’ve split them into three tiers — and then we’ll follow two founders, Jack and Jill, as they each work the room.

The 15 Questions Every Founder Must Know Cold

Part 1: The Easy Ones

These should roll off your tongue without hesitation. If you stumble here, the conversation is already over.

1. What’s your revenue? Know your current ARR or MRR, your growth rate month-over-month, and whether you’re pre-revenue. Be precise. “Around half a million” is not an answer. 50.000 MRR; growing 30% month-over-month is.

2. What does your team look like? Who are the co-founders, what’s their background, and why are they the right people to build this? Investors bet on teams first. Have a crisp, confident answer.

3. How many customers do you have? Total customers, paying customers, and ideally your logo mix. If you’re B2B, name a few if you can. Numbers here signal traction — or the absence of it. Add in conversion rates to spice up the conversation.

4. What’s your business model? How do you make money? Subscription, usage-based, transactional, licensing? Keep it simple. If your business model requires a slide to explain, practice explaining it without one.

5. What stage are you at? Pre-seed, seed, Series A? How much have you raised, from whom, and what did you accomplish with it? Set the context clearly before anything else.

Part 2: Intermediate Level

These separate the prepared founders from the casual ones. Investors use these to gauge how commercially sharp you are.

6. What’s your (funding) timeline? When are you planning to close? Are you actively raising right now, or exploring? Investors need to know if there’s urgency — and whether their timeline can match yours.

7. Do you have a lead? If you’re approaching a seed or Series A, investors want to know who is anchoring the round. If you don’t have a lead yet, have a clear answer about who you’re in conversation with and what your lead criteria look like.

8. What are your key unit economics? CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC ratio, payback period. Know these numbers cold. If you’re early and don’t have statistically significant data yet, say so — but explain what signals you’re seeing and what you expect them to mature into.

9. Walk me through your top metrics. Beyond unit economics: churn, NRR, DAU/MAU, GMV, fill rate — whatever is most relevant to your business. Know your north star metric, and know why it’s the right one to track.

10. What does your cap table look like? Who owns what? Are there any messy early structures, convertible notes piling up, or SAFEs that will create issues at a priced round? Clean cap tables signal clean thinking.

Peak conference season, and every investor is looking for hot deals and raw data points. First step: Talk to founders.

Part 3: Advanced Questions

These are the questions that sort the truly prepared founders from everyone else. Nail these, and you’ll be remembered.

11. How much capital do you need — fully funded? Investors often think in terms of the full journey, not just the current round. How much total capital will it take to build a market-leading company? Walk them through the current raise and the longer-term capital roadmap. Don’t have the number? Go to work

12. Walk me through your economic scenarios — high case, mid case, low case. What probabilities do you put on each? This is where investors test your intellectual honesty. They want to see that you understand the range of outcomes, can articulate what drives each, and aren’t just pitching the dream scenario. Assign real probabilities. If you say 80% chance of the high case, they will push back hard.

13. What are you doing for early investor liquidity? Especially relevant at growth stage: are you thinking about secondaries, structured liquidity programs, or anything that allows early backers to realize some return before a full exit? This signals maturity and respect for your investor relationships.

14. What’s your exit strategy? IPO? Strategic acquisition? Are there natural acquirers in your space? Who has bought comparable companies, at what multiples, and when? You don’t need a fixed answer — but you need a thoughtful one.

15. Who else is in the round, and can we see their papers? Investors do diligence on each other. Who are your co-investors, what are the terms, and is the round structured in a way that works for all parties? Experienced investors will want to know they’re sitting alongside people they respect.

Bonus — The One That Catches Everyone Off Guard: “What’s the probability that you build a globally top-tier company in this space?” This is the hardest question of all. Not because you can’t answer it — but because answering it well requires both conviction and intellectual honesty in the same breath. We’ll see how Jack and Jill handle it below.

The Two Founders: Jack vs. Jill

To bring these questions to life, let’s follow two founders through the same investor conference. Both are raising a seed round. Both have interesting companies. But only one of them has done the work.

Jack — Founder of BuildStack

The Company: BuildStack is a project management platform for construction subcontractors — a sector Jack believes is massively underserved by tools like Procore and monday.com.

The Idea: Strong. The market: real. Jack himself spent four years working for a mid-size electrical contractor, so he knows the pain intimately. On paper, he’s a compelling founder.

At the Conference: Not so much.

Jack arrives with energy and enthusiasm. He works the room well socially. But when a partner from a well-regarded construction-tech fund pulls him aside for a conversation, things unravel fast.

Investor: “So what’s your revenue right now?”

Jack: “We’re still pretty early, so we haven’t fully focused on revenue yet — we’re more in the product-building phase. But we have some pilots going.”

What went wrong: Saying “we haven’t focused on revenue” at a seed-stage company raises immediate flags. Even if revenue is zero, Jack should own it confidently: “We’re pre-revenue. We have four paid pilots at $500/month each that convert to full contracts in Q2.” That’s a story. “We haven’t focused on it” is not.

Investor: “How many customers do you have?”

Jack: “We have about 15 companies that are using the product in some form.”

What went wrong: “In some form” is a killer phrase. It tells the investor that Jack doesn’t distinguish between paying customers, free users, and tire-kickers. The answer should be: “We have 4 paying customers, 8 in active pilots, and 3 who’ve signed LOIs.”

Investor: “Walk me through your unit economics.”

Jack: “Yeah, totally — so we’re working on getting that data together. It’s still early, so the numbers aren’t fully baked yet. But we think LTV is going to be really strong because construction contracts are multi-year.”

What went wrong: Completely. Even with limited data, Jack should have a model. “Our current CAC is approximately $1,200 based on our last three closed deals. At $500/month and an expected 24-month contract length, we’re looking at an LTV of $12,000 — a 10x ratio. We expect CAC to drop as we build outbound, but we’re being conservative.” That’s a founder who knows his business.

Investor: “What probabilities do you put on building a top global company in this space?”

Jack: “I mean — I think we can definitely get there. The market is huge and nobody’s really nailed it for subcontractors specifically. I’m very confident.”

What went wrong: Confidence without structure reads as naivety. Investors don’t want cheerleading. They want calibrated thinking.

Jack leaves the conversation with a “send me your deck.” The investor is polite but moves on within minutes.

Jill — Founder of ClearClose

The Company: ClearClose is a B2B SaaS platform that automates compliance documentation for independent mortgage brokers — a segment Jill identified while working as a compliance officer at a regional bank for six years.

The Idea: Niche. Precise. Exactly what early-stage investors tend to love: a founder with deep domain expertise, attacking a specific, painful problem in a large market.

At the Conference: Jill has prepared for this like she’s running a marathon. She knows her numbers, her narrative, and her answers — but she delivers them like a human, not a robot reading from a spreadsheet.

Investor: “What’s your revenue?”

Jill: “We’re at $28K MRR, growing about 18% month-over-month for the last four months. All from inbound — we haven’t touched paid acquisition yet.”

Why it works: Precise, contextual, and ends with a hook. The investor immediately wants to ask a follow-up.

Investor: “How many customers do you have?”

Jill: “32 paying customers. Average contract is $875/month. Our largest is a broker network with 14 offices — they came in at $3,200/month. We’ve had one churn — a one-person shop who closed down their business.”

Why it works: She distinguishes volume from value, gives a flagship customer example, and proactively addresses churn before she’s asked. That last part builds enormous trust.

Investor: “Walk me through your unit economics.”

Jill: “CAC right now is around $900, almost entirely organic — referrals and content. LTV at current churn of 2.5% monthly is around $35,000, which gives us a roughly 38:1 LTV:CAC ratio. We know that’s unusually strong for this stage, and we think it’s partly because we’re solving a compliance problem — customers don’t leave compliance tools lightly. Our payback period is under two months.”

Why it works: She knows the numbers cold, contextualizes them honestly (“unusually strong”), and explains the structural reason — which also doubles as a competitive moat narrative.

Investor: “Walk me through your economic scenarios. What probabilities do you put on each?”

Jill: “Sure. In our base case — which I’d put at around 55% probability — we close this $1.8M seed round, hire two engineers and one sales rep, and exit next year at $500K ARR heading into a Series A. In our high case — maybe 25% — the broker network deal becomes a full channel partnership, which accelerates us to $1.2M ARR in the same timeframe. In the low case — I’d say 20% — sales cycles stretch and we hit $280K ARR. In that scenario, we extend the runway by staying lean and push the Series A 12 months. We don’t see a scenario where the core problem goes away — compliance burden on independent brokers is only increasing.”

Why it works: Specific numbers. Real probabilities that add up to 100%. An honest low case. And the framing of the low case as a delay, not a death — which is almost always true in strong businesses.

Investor: “What’s the probability you build a globally leading company in this space?”

Jill: “Honestly? I think there’s a 30 to 35% chance we become the dominant compliance platform for independent mortgage brokers in the US — and I think that alone is a very valuable business. The international angle is real but it’s a 5-year story, not a 2-year story, and I don’t want to oversell it. What I can tell you is that in my base case, we build something worth building and worth backing regardless of whether we go global. The optionality is real. The dependency on it is not. You can also see our outcome analysis in our Investor Presentation and our Memo if you want all the details.”

Why it works: She doesn’t inflate the probability to seem visionary, and she doesn’t deflate it to seem humble. She reframes the question around the base case value — and shows the investor that she’s protecting their money, not just pitching her dream. Big bonus, she’s pointing to the materials, without bringing a full data room into the conversation.

Jill ends the conversation with three business cards, two follow-up meetings booked for the following week, and one investor who pulls his partner over mid-conversation to introduce them.

The Takeaway

Jack and Jill didn’t have dramatically different companies. In some ways, Jack’s market is larger. But Jill walked in having done the work — not to perform preparedness, but because she genuinely knew her business inside and out.

That’s what investors are actually testing. Not whether you can recite your LTV:CAC ratio. Whether you’ve thought hard enough about your company that the numbers are just something you know — the way you know your phone number.

The questions above are predictable. The preparation is entirely in your hands.

Walk in like Jill.

Good luck.

(Want to dig deeper? Check out Pawel’s list of 300 questions investors will want to ask).

This article is the second in a three piece series to help founders prepare for key conferences. Part I: The Founder’s Web Summit Checklist: 10 Things You Need to Prepare. Read it here. Part III: Going to Web Summit? Here Are the 15 Questions You Need to Prepare For the Investors You Meet. Read it here.

March 27, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Insights, Startups, Tools

Going to Web Summit? Here Are the 15 Questions You Need to Prepare For the Investors You Meet.

Did you know, pitching might not be your secret weapon after all. Instead, pitch less , and ask your investors better questions.

This article is part two in our three part-series helping startup founders prepare for major startup- and investor conferences. Read also part II and part III.

You’re heading to Web Summit — or any major investor conference. You’ve got your deck polished, your financials modeled, your slides tight. That’s what most founders spend their prep time on. We call that the internal lens.

Smart founders do something different. They prepare for the investors they’re going to meet.

Here’s how. If you know which investors will be at the event — and for most major conferences, you can find out in advance — feed their names into your AI tool of choice (Claude works great for this) and ask it to write a one-page profile on each investor. Then, based on each profile, generate five key questions you should ask them specifically. Highly targeted. Highly effective. This will show you’ve done your prep work.

But what if you don’t know who you’re meeting? Cold contacts. New faces. You have no idea who’s going to walk up and hand you a card.

That’s what these 15 questions are for. Use them as written. Use them as inspiration. Flex and experiment. But go in prepared.

Part 1: The Easy Questions

These are your openers. Softball, yes — but notice they’re all open-ended. Every single one invites a conversation, not a yes or a no.

1. What are you typically looking for? Simple. Broad. Let them talk. You’ll learn more from this one question than from ten minutes of pitching.

2. What are the metrics you want to see before you invest? Get specific early. Every investor has a mental model. This question surfaces it.

3. What stages do you typically invest at? Don’t waste their time or yours. Know where you fit before you go deeper.

4. What investment instruments do you commonly use? SAFEs, convertible notes, priced rounds — know what they’re comfortable with.

5. What does your investment process look like? Set your expectations. Understand the journey before you start it.

Part 2: The Intermediate Questions

You’ve broken the ice. Now you go deeper. These questions are designed to reveal how they actually operate — not just what they say they do.

6. Can you walk me through your investment process from first contact to close? First meeting, term sheet, due diligence, round structure, closing. What does that typically look like, and what timeline do you prefer to work within?

7. Talk me through your due diligence process. What are you looking for? What makes a company easy to diligence? How can we best prepare so you get exactly what you need?

8. Walk me through some of your most recent investments. What did you like about them? Why did you pull the trigger? What are the key insights from your most recent deal? This is where you learn what actually excites them — not what’s in their deck.

9. Once you’ve invested, how do you typically work with your portfolio companies? Board seats, advisory support, introductions, hands-on or hands-off — what’s your typical engagement model?

10. Who are the co-investors you most like to work with? Any strong preferences on who else is at the table? Any names we should know?

I wanna be your best deal ever! How can I return your fund in just five years? – OK, now you would have any VC’s attention.

Part 3: The Advanced Questions

These aren’t openers. Don’t lead with these. These are for the second conversation — over a beer, over dinner, when you’ve earned a real seat at the table. This is where relationships are actually built.

11. Walk me through your most successful investments ever. From the very first touchpoint, through the scaling journey, through the exit. How did you work together? What did the outcome look like — including the financial outcome? What made those relationships work? What was your MOIC?

12. We know the next two rounds will be critical. How would you typically work with us to get there? We’re not just raising this round. We’re thinking about the full journey. What does that partnership look like?

13. Let’s talk fund math. What’s your fund size, and what does the math look like for us to deliver a fund returner for you? We want to make sure that if you come onto our cap table, we have complete alignment on what success looks like — for you and for us. What numbers do we need to hit together to make you look great, and make your next fund a guaranteed raise?

14. Let’s talk exits. Given the current market, how are you thinking about liquidity? What’s your preferred timeline, and what mechanisms do you like to see? How do you structure your liquidity strategy?

15. If we were your single most successful investment ever — what would that look like? What would we need to deliver? What would we need to build together to make it, without any question, the best deal you’ve ever done across any of your funds? That’s the conversation we want to have. And we hope you want to have it too.

The Bottom Line

Fifteen questions. Entry level, intermediate, advanced.

Use them as examples. Use them as a starting point. But when you walk into Web Summit, remember this: you’re not there to pitch. You’re there to engage. You’re building a relationship with a long-term business partner — someone who might be in your corner for the next decade.

The founders who close the best rounds aren’t the ones with the slickest decks. They’re the ones who ask the best questions.

Go prepared.

This article is the second in a three piece series to help founders prepare for key conferences. Part I: The Founder’s Web Summit Checklist: 10 Things You Need to Prepare. Read it here. Part II: Meeting the Investors? Here’s what they’ll ask. Read it here.

March 27, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

Ecosystem, Innovation, Insights

Four Steps to Building a World Class Angel Network

It started in 2012 with five words: “I have someone you should meet.” That introduction led to one of my earliest angel investments — a Norwegian drilling technology company that would eventually IPO, jump from 1 to 60 per share, and remind me that angel investing is rarely a straight line. But it works. And when you bring a community of angels together around a shared mission, the results can be extraordinary.

Angel networks are one of the most powerful, and most underbuilt, parts of any startup ecosystem. Done well, they funnel early capital to ambitious founders, help experienced investors make smarter bets together, and create a flywheel of returns, stories, and momentum that attracts even more talent and capital into the ecosystem.

I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of emerging angel groups, fund managers, and ecosystem builders across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. From Transylvania to Kigali, from Bergen to Dubai — the patterns are surprisingly consistent. And so are the mistakes.

Here’s what I’ve learned about how the best angel networks are built.

Step One · Year 1–2

The Spark: Get the First People in the Room

Every world class angel network starts the same way. Not with a grand strategy. Not with a board of directors and a slick website. It starts with one or two people who are genuinely excited, a handful of curious investors, and the courage to organise a dinner.

The founding energy matters enormously. That early spark — the sense of mission, the theme, the “why are we doing this?” — is what gets the first 10 to 30 people loosely engaged. It’s what keeps them coming back. Without it, an angel network is just a mailing list.

Key Success Factors at Stage One

1–2 key people with genuine enthusiasm, driving the process and bringing people together
A clear theme or sense of purpose — technology, impact, a region, an industry
Early trust-building between participants: dinners, meetups, conversations
A simple angel investor email list to start sharing deals and ideas
2–4 events or meetups in the first 12 months — quality over quantity
1–2 deals actually getting done within the first year
Securing early grant financing to cover operations for the first 2–3 years
Basic education: how to structure a deal, what to look for, how to make your first investment

The goal here is not perfection. It’s momentum. You’re building relationships, not infrastructure. You’re developing early trust between people who might one day co-invest in a startup together. That trust takes time. It happens over a shared meal, a spirited debate about a pitch, a WhatsApp message at midnight: “Have you seen this deal?”

Getting 1–2 deals done in year one is more important than any governance document you’ll ever write. Nothing builds belief in a network like watching it actually work.

Step Two · Year 2–4

The Structure: Build the Foundation for Real Operations

If Stage One is about sparking interest, Stage Two is about building something durable. This is where most early angel networks either mature into something real — or slowly fade out as the founding energy dissipates.

The shift from a loosely organized group to a functioning network happens when someone steps up as a proper manager. Often part-time at first. But having a dedicated person handling operations, deal flow, communications, and member development is the single biggest indicator of whether a young angel network survives into its third year.

Key Success Factors at Stage Two

First part-time (possibly full-time) angel network manager in place
Early governance: a board or advisory board beginning to take shape
A website and basic deal flow platform established
Social media presence — angels and founders need to find you
An early business model: grants, sponsorships, or an initial membership fee
Template documents circulating: term sheets, investment agreements, NDAs
4–10 events per year, with steady, interesting deal flow
Angel investors beginning to develop their personal investment strategy

It’s also the stage where the network starts to professionalize its deal flow. Early on, deals come in through personal connections. At Stage Two, you start building systems: a submission form, a basic screening process, a template for how startups present. Nothing elaborate. But enough structure that founders know what to expect — and members feel like they’re part of something organised.

Don’t underestimate the power of documentation. Template documents — a standard SAFE note, a simple term sheet, a co-investment agreement — save hundreds of hours, reduce friction, and signal to founders and investors alike that this is a professional operation. Your legal partners will thank you. Your members will too.

Angel portfolio management. Remember where you put your money. From Scale Up Europe Angel! Masterclass, Cluj

Step Three · Year 3–6

The Scale: Build the Team, Build the Brand

Stage Three is where a good angel network becomes a great one. This is the phase of deliberate growth — recruiting a diverse membership, building a real team, and establishing workflows that can handle serious deal volume without falling apart.

At this stage, the network can no longer run on the passion of one or two founders. You need a wider leadership group — 3 to 5 key people spreading the work and bringing different networks, perspectives, and skills. You need professional staff. And you need a governance structure that protects the network as it grows.

Key Success Factors at Stage Three

A core leadership team of 3–5 people, alongside 1–3 full-time staff
Robust governance: a proper board and advisory board
A clearly defined workflow — from onboarding new members to closing investments
A consistent cadence of events, pitch sessions, and meetups throughout the year
A relentless focus on angel training, upskilling, and quality improvement
Deep relationships with industry partners, sponsors, and service providers
A sustainable business model beginning to take shape — membership fees, sponsor packages

One of the most important things you can invest in at this stage is the quality of your Deal Managers. A great angel network Deal Manager does four things: they prepare startups to present well, they bring the right angels together around the right deals, they structure the investment cleanly, and they help get deals across the line. This sounds straightforward. It isn’t. It’s a craft that takes time to develop, and training your people in this role will pay dividends for years to come.

The shift from Stage Two to Stage Three is not about adding more events. It’s about building a machine that produces high-quality deals, educated investors, and closed rounds — reliably, repeatedly, month after month.

Member diversity deserves its own emphasis here. The best angel networks I’ve worked with are intentional about recruiting members with varied backgrounds — serial founders, corporate executives, family office principals, domain experts, diaspora investors. Diversity of experience leads to better due diligence, broader deal access, and wiser investment decisions. Don’t let your network become a monoculture

Angel investor coaching founders on cap tables and term sheets.

Step Four · Year 5+

The Standout: World Class Execution, World Class Returns

There are thousands of angel clubs around the world. There are very few world class angel networks. The difference is not just size — it’s the quality of what happens inside.

At Stage Four, the network has become a destination. Top founders seek you out. Institutional investors want to co-invest alongside you. The best local and regional angels want to be members. And exits — real ones — are starting to happen, with returns circulating back into the ecosystem as reinvestment capital and war stories that inspire the next generation.

Key Success Factors at Stage Four

A solid, recognised brand — locally, regionally, possibly globally
High-volume, high-performance deal flow systems: groups like Hustle Fund review 1,000+ deals per month, sharing the top 5–6 with a 2,000+ angel squad
Full-time professional staff running day-to-day operations
High-quality champions: board members, sponsors, and mentors who add real value
A clearly defined, sustainable business model — typically a mix of membership fees and sponsorship
A growing portfolio at Series A, B, and C — companies that started in the angel network
Rising chatter about exits, returns, and liquidity events
Multiple success stories: “Were you part of the deal where investors made 80x last year?”

That last point is worth dwelling on. Stories travel. When a member of your network posts publicly about a meaningful return — a 10x, a 30x, an exit that changes their financial life — it sends a signal to everyone watching. It tells founders that patient, smart capital exists in your ecosystem. It tells prospective angel investors that this is worth their time and money. It tells corporates and governments that the network deserves support.

The events at Stage Four are also qualitatively different. They combine in-person and online formats, attract high-calibre speakers and deal flow, and feel less like networking nights and more like strategic gathering points for the most informed investors in the region. Members arrive prepared. Discussions are substantive. Commitments follow.

The ultimate measure of a world class angel network is not the number of members or the total capital deployed. It’s this: are the companies that came through your network building great businesses? And are your investors growing wiser, wealthier, and more generous with each passing year?

Angel investors going hands-on with the team. Time to build.

A Few Things I’ve Learned Along the Way

Anyone can build an angel network. But it requires leadership. Not management. Leadership. The ability to inspire people to take a risk on something new, to trust strangers with their deals and sometimes their money, and to build a culture where the best behaviour — generosity, transparency, long-term thinking — becomes the norm.

Financing matters more than most people admit. The majority of angel networks in their early stages survive on grants and public innovation funding. That’s fine — and often the right approach. But have a plan for transitioning to a self-sustaining model. Membership fees, deal fees, sponsor packages, and training programs are all viable paths. The networks that last are the ones that figure out their economics early and don’t wait until the grants run out to start thinking about it.

The long game is the only game. Building a world class angel network takes five to ten years. The networks I most admire didn’t become great quickly. They evolved through each stage with patience, consistency, and a refusal to cut corners on quality. They had a strategy to evolve over time — and they stuck to it even when it was hard.

From Norway to Romania, from Rwanda to Malaysia, I’ve watched communities of passionate investors come together, build trust, and begin to change the trajectory of startups — and entire ecosystems — around them. It’s some of the most meaningful work happening in the world of finance today.

And it all starts with getting the right people in the room.

Ready to Build?

Let’s Build Your World Class Angel Network Together

Whether you’re launching a new angel group, professionalising an existing network, or developing an ecosystem-wide angel investment program — we bring hands-on experience from hundreds of engagements, programs and Masterclasses across the globe.

Get in Touch

Chris Rangen is a strategy advisor, business school faculty member, and serial angel investor. He has made 150+ investments, supported 250+ emerging fund managers, and trained over 10,000 people in investment readiness across the globe. He is co-founder of Strategy Tools, visiting faculty on venture capital and entrepreneurial finance, and chairman of three venture capital firms.

The Scale Up Angel! Masterclasses has been delivered globally, supporting angel networks, angel groups and ecosystems from early spark to world class expertise.

March 26, 2026/0 Comments/by Christian Rangen

With 100’s of sessions and 1000’s of participants, we’ve seen every outcome imaginable in Scale Up! One thing we learned: clearly define a ‘winning goal’ that resonates with your participants. Here are 12 ways you, the facilitator can define ‘winning’ in Scale Up!

Why winning matters

How…… winning?

Introduction level

Intermediate level

Advanced level

Planning your next session

Before we start… What’s your level of Scale Up! expertise?

The eleven Ways to Bring Scale Up! to market

1. Existing clients

2. Existing relationships

3. Domain expert

4. The first one is free (or, a lot of free pilots)

5. Engaging the ecosystem

6. The targeted approach

7. The mapping approach

8. Find the problem-owner approach

9. The hard work approach

10. Scale Up! GTM Workflow

11. Being active, waiting for random luck

Time to get started

This year we will pass 2.000 participants in the Fund Manager! Masterclass. Since launch, participants from 50+ countries have mastered new elements of the venture capital fund journey with the Masterclass. But who are they, and who joins the Fund Manager! Masterclass?

70+ Masterclasses. 5 Continents. 33 Participant Groups

Five Categories. 33 Groups. We’ve Seen Them All

1. Aspiring and Future Fund Managers — Building Tomorrow’s Funds (8%)

2. Emerging Fund Managers — The Builders of New Funds (40%)

3. General Partners and Current VC Team Members — The Operators of Today’s Funds (30%)

4. Limited Partners — The Capital Behind the Funds (15%)

5. The System Builders — Designing the Venture Ecosystem Itself (7%)

Inside the Fund Manager Masterclass

A Global Community of Fund Builders

Designing the Future of Venture Capital

Download the canvas

About the Fund Manager Masterclass

How to read the EFRL

Summary

Scale Up Masterclasses Case Studies

Scaling to exit with Dubai Future District Fund

From Advisors to Growth Partners: How Norway’s Largest Bank DNB Elevates Startup Advisory with the Scale Up! Masterclass

Scaling up in the rising Egyptian ecosystem

The 15 Questions Every Founder Must Know Cold

The Two Founders: Jack vs. Jill

Part 1: The Easy Questions

Part 2: The Intermediate Questions

Part 3: The Advanced Questions

A Few Things I’ve Learned Along the Way

Let’s Build Your World Class Angel Network Together

ENGAGE//INNOVATE

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