Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Fundraising Consultants
Toptal hand-matches leading startups with top fundraising consultants, advisors, agents and specialists. Hire freelance fundraising consultants from Toptal to help prepare your financial model, pitch deck, and business plan for your upcoming capital raise.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since November 15, 2016
Aleksey served in CFO roles of public and VC-backed private companies. As an investor, he contributed to 25+ private equity deals that have deployed $500 million. He has advised 50+ clients on raising $1.6 billion in equity in the healthcare, consumer, media, software, energy, and industrial sectors. Aleksey enjoys working with officers of early-stage and mature small-cap firms, and he freelances because it exposes him to a wide range of companies.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since August 31, 2016
Josh is an investment banker turned VC who lives in Denver, CO. At Morgan Stanley, he covered the world's top hedge funds and sold over $5 billion in IPOs for companies like Alibaba, LendingClub, GrubHub, and more. He also has experience in M&A, startup fundraising, and as a founder. Currently, Josh is one of the managing partners of Konvoy Ventures, a VC firm focused on esports and video gaming.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since November 21, 2017
A data scientist and Harvard MBA with distinction, Erik co-founded a global venture capital fund and has invested in 50 startups that have raised over $500 million, realizing six exits. He previously led analyses for cases including restructurings of $3 billion in global operations and M&A deals worth over $10 billion. Erik's work has been noted in Forbes, CNBC, and HBR. He speaks four languages and serves as Toptal's Chief Economist, leading analyses on the talent economy and future of work.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since September 30, 2019
George has worked on M&A, IPO, and fixed income transactions with a cumulative deal value of $20+ billion at renowned Wall Street banks including Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley. A Fulbright scholar, George is active in the fintech startup sector and was on the management committee of Houston’s largest independent bank. At Toptal, he enjoys refining business models and optimizing financing structures to maximize flexibility and profitability.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since January 16, 2019
Bertrand is a 25-year finance veteran with a true 360 experience, honed as an investment banker, venture advisor, project developer, CFO, and expert witness consultant in international arbitrations. He has advised and partnered on over 100 transactions and investment initiatives totaling over $16 billion. Bertrand is a seasoned problem solver and decision-maker with expert facilitation skills. Bertrand advises on M&A, corporate development, venture growth, project development, and financing.
United StatesFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since April 30, 2020
Will is an executive consultant with a wealth of experience supporting startups and mid-sized business growth. He has successfully led M&A transactions for $350 million, developed pricing and GTM strategies for emerging-technology startups, and supported clients through VC pitches. Will has a genuine passion for helping businesses navigate volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) to fundraise, refine their strategy, and ultimately accelerate growth.
IndiaFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since June 4, 2018
Dhruv has worked on successful finance and consulting projects worth over $1 billion, focusing on tech, energy, and life science companies across the US, Asia, and Africa. He currently serves as a fractional CFO for multiple startups, is a partner at AND Business Consulting, and has more than 15 years of experience in FP&A, fundraising, startup consulting, M&A, and project finance. With an MBA in finance, Dhruv enjoys the exposure and sheer variety of assignments that come with freelancing.
United KingdomFreelance Fundraising Consultant Since June 27, 2022
William is a seasoned entrepreneurial executive, having co-founded the UK's largest student lifestyle business, growing it by £2.5 million in turnover straight after university. He has structured £200+ million of transactions and advised startups on internationalization. His latest venture Delic, a music tech platform, has onboarded 1,450 users, raised £700,000+ in VC, and is CreaTech 2021 Ones-to-Watch listed. William joined Toptal to support entrepreneurs with financing and growth strategies.
Fundraising consultants guide startup founders and CEOs through the process of raising the right amount of capital on the best terms from the right investors. This guide to hiring fundraising consultants explains how to describe your job, evaluate candidates, and conduct interviews to identify the best fundraising consultant for your organization.
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Martin so far is a complete Rockstar.
His first bit of work produced a tool for us to model and forecast our financials and is far and away worth every penny we paid and more.
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Pete Pellizzari
CEO
Erik has been an extremely valuable member of our team who has tremendous breath of experience with start ups in our lifecycle phase. What makes his contribution unique and highly effective is not only his excellent financial modeling skills and knowledge, but also the emotional intelligence with which he manages each relationship at Vault, understands our team dynamics, and helps us tackle start up challenges effectively. It is rare to find a part-time consultant who makes you feel like he/she is genuinely invested in the success of your company.
Romy Parzick
COO
Toptal has been an incredible key partner for Sidekick. As an early-stage start-up, we’ve leveraged both design and financial talent. The experience has been incredible, with those professionals bringing creativity, expertise, and advice to ensure Sidekick succeeds. My Toptal financial expert helped steer Sidekick’s business model, which resulted in an initial ROI of 650x! My experience with Toptal has given me great confidence in the future.
Doug MacKay
Founder / CEO
Chris was great to work with and was always available on my schedule. His communication skills and personality were a 10/10. His outputs on the project were top notch and allowed us to develop more efficient forecasting and initiative prioritization frameworks. I would definitely use Chris again.
Chris Pozek
CEO
What really sets Toptal apart is the caliber of finance talent available in their network. I had a very specific and pressing need, and Toptal quickly matched me with the perfect person for the job. The expert produced a thoughtful and robust financial analysis that has ultimately allowed us to forecast and prioritize initiatives much more efficiently.
Chris Pozek
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How to Hire Fundraising Consultants through Toptal
1
Talk to One of Our Industry Experts
A Toptal director of finance will work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics.
2
Work With Hand-Selected Talent
Within days, we'll introduce you to the right fundraising consultant for your project. Average time to match is under 24 hours.
3
The Right Fit, Guaranteed
Work with your new fundraising consultant for a trial period (pay only if satisfied), ensuring they're the right fit before starting the engagement.
Find Experts With Related Skills
Access a vast pool of skilled finance experts in our talent network and hire the top 3% within just 48 hours.
At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our fundraising consultants to ensure we only match you with talent of the highest caliber. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, fewer than 3% make the cut. You’ll work with finance experts (never generalized recruiters or HR reps) to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics. The end result: expert vetted talent from our network, custom matched to fit your business needs.
Can I hire fundraising consultants in less than 48 hours through Toptal?
Depending on availability and how fast you can progress, you could start working with a fundraising consultant within 48 hours of signing up.
What is the no-risk trial period for Toptal fundraising consultants?
We make sure that each engagement between you and your fundraising consultant begins with a trial period of up to two weeks. This means that you have time to confirm the engagement will be successful. If you’re completely satisfied with the results, we’ll bill you for the time and continue the engagement for as long as you’d like. If you’re not completely satisfied, you won’t be billed. From there, we can either part ways, or we can provide you with another expert who may be a better fit and with whom we will begin a second, no-risk trial.
Erik is a co-founder of a global venture capital fund that has invested in 50 startups (raising more than $500 million) and has realized six exits. He serves as Toptal’s Chief Economist.
Companies Looking to Raise Capital Can Benefit From Fundraising Consultants
Raising venture capital (VC) and other funds is highly competitive in the best of times. Approximately 5% of startups that seek VC funding receive it, and the most established investors fund less than 1% of the opportunities they review. Only one in three startups that raise a pre-seed or seed round go on to raise a Series A round successfully. According to the most recent data available, VC funding is at a fraction of the historic highs of 2020 and 2021.
Given these odds, for many companies it makes sense to hire a fundraising specialist—someone who’s an expert in the specialized concepts, terminology, requirements, and processes of startup fundraising. A top-notch consultant can help you navigate the landscape and win the funding your company needs.
Fundraising is as diverse as the organizations that undertake it—from tech startups to foundations, universities, and other nonprofits looking to expand their fundraising capacity and impact. For startups, many factors play into the difference between raising the round or not, to say nothing of whether that round is the best option for a company. Company narratives, metrics, and investor profiles differ across funding rounds. For example, raising your seed round from angel investors and your Series A from venture funds involves vastly different rules, and correctly executing your current round requires you to understand it within the context of the next round. Then there are terms that must be negotiated with funders that can substantially impact valuation, dilution, controls, and more. Even the amount raised must be carefully considered, as raising too much can be just as dangerous as raising too little. That’s because it can result in awarding your investors more equity than you’d otherwise need to and/or mean that your company valuation is higher than it otherwise would be, which can affect fundraising efforts further down the road.
Complicating the situation further, venture finance sources are evolving rapidly. New players, such as angel funds, family offices, in-house corporate funds, and crowdfunding platforms increasingly operate in the same space as traditional venture funds. Each investor type brings unique trade-offs and a wide range of investment theses, abilities, resources, and attitudes toward their portfolio companies. That’s why hiring the right fundraising expert or fundraising consulting firm can be a worthwhile investment.
In this guide, we discuss why, how, and when to hire a fundraising consultant, outline the attributes and skills to look for, and provide sample interview questions to help you select the best fundraising specialist for your goals. While we focus on VC fundraising, we also discuss the needs of nonprofits.
What attributes distinguish quality Fundraising Consultants from others?
Fundraising entails a complicated, high-stakes transaction, and a quality fundraising consultant must have significant experience in multiple funding rounds as a founder, investor, or both. There’s no substitute for this direct involvement with the specific deal terms, types, and language used in transactions with VC investors and other funding sources. Experience with different market conditions is particularly beneficial since venture funding follows a cyclical trajectory with vastly different fundraising environments and best practices at different moments.
As you consider experience, it’s key to look for a consultant who has been involved with similar projects—for example, startups versus nonprofits. Fundraising for nonprofits, such as foundations, universities, and impact-driven organizations, requires the same overall skill set as fundraising for business ventures, but the key aspects of fundraising are applied in a different landscape with different funding sources and processes. The core commonality is the importance of a compelling narrative on the organization’s mission and expected impact that breathes life into the numbers and other technical elements of a pitch. The core distinction is that the assumption for a private venture investor is the acceptance of a significant risk of loss in return for the prospect of disproportionate financial gain, while nonprofit donors typically seek the assurance of an enduring legacy with significantly less risk.
While depth and relevance of experience are more important than duration, a general guideline is to look for at least five years working on transactions similar to the one at hand.
An expert fundraising consultant should also demonstrate a clear desire to help entrepreneurs navigate this critical and sometimes make-or-break moment. As mentioned, they should have closed deals, and they should be motivated to share the knowledge they may have wished they had at the time.
Finally, look for the consultant’s willingness to use tough love. Their job is to prepare you for a potentially stressful transaction, so they must be willing to bring all blindspots or shaky assumptions to your attention before investors do. This demonstrates their commitment to helping you succeed, no matter how intense the process becomes.
How can you identify the ideal Fundraising Consultant for you?
Fundraising is a means to an end—to achieve company goals and get closer to your long-term vision. Above all, identifying the right fundraising consultant for your business requires clarity on how you plan to use the capital and what you seek from those who provide it. The ideal fundraising consultant will translate your company vision and goals into a customized fundraising plan that includes how much to raise, what terms to offer, the types of investors to approach, and how to make your company as attractive as possible to potential funders. Thorough fundraising planning demands far more than financial prowess; the fundraising consultant must demonstrate not only previous experience, but also proven creativity in bringing these elements together.
Since the fundraising expert will work alongside you to create your pitch deck and then receive and negotiate a term sheet, they should be able to articulate clearly what makes your company unique and the risks and challenges you face. You should also feel that you and they communicate well and have compatible work styles.
Finally, the ideal candidate will offer a mix of hard and soft skills to craft and prepare you to present your investment narrative in numbers and words. Beyond relevant fundraising expertise, the fundraising consultant you choose should have as many of these complementary skills as possible:
Effective investor materials use key metrics, such as client growth, retention, engagement, acquisition costs, and lifetime value. Data analysis can also add value if your company’s product relies on data-driven technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning because the consultant’s grasp of the product’s functionality and potential will strengthen the fundraising narrative.
Your company’s historical and projected financials, and the insights and narratives gleaned from them, will be a core element of your fundraising materials. Investors will use your financial model and conclusions to evaluate your understanding of key matters, such as the evolving cost structure, growth plan, key sensitivities, and scenarios for your company’s future.
Extensive experience with Excel is essential, not only for working with the financial model but also for other analyses, such as cap table scenario analysis, market sizing, and client/user analyses.
Presentation software skills
Software like PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote, or Canva will be needed to create the pitch deck, which is central to the investor materials.
Written and oral communication
These skills are vital for creating and honing the language and visual content in your pitch deck, executive summary, investor emails, demo day or conference presentations, and other outreach efforts to capture investors’ attention.
A strong familiarity with CRM systems and practices can help the consultant and investors appreciate your journey to understand and build enduring relationships with your target customers.
Finally, bear in mind that if your resources allow, your fundraising expert may benefit from the support of a junior or mid-level analyst or even a fundraising team to help with research and analysis.
How to Write a Fundraising Consultant Job Description for Your Project
You don’t need specific knowledge of fundraising to write a good job description. The fundraising consultant’s role includes familiarizing you with the relevant terminology and practices and guiding you every step of the way. Your aim in the job description is to clearly convey your company’s unique value proposition, fundraising history, growth trajectory, and overall fundraising goals (both the amount of capital you’re trying to raise and why). Your fundraising target will probably evolve as you work with the consultant, but providing a general estimate—for example, $5 million, $20 million, or $100 million—helps to establish the type of round and investors you’re seeking, which will help candidates self-select based on their experience. If you’re not ready to provide this estimate, a clear overview of your company’s stage and fundraising history should suffice.
The most important candidate requirement to specify in your job description? They should have prior involvement in successfully closing fundraising rounds analogous to yours in terms of size and stage. You can also list direct experience in your industry as a plus, but it should rarely be a requirement. Many top venture investors are generalists who invest across multiple industries, and your company may pivot and enter additional markets over time. If you work in a frontier technology or industry with a highly specific market and investor base—think quantum computing or space tech—industry expertise may be more relevant but is probably still not an absolute necessity. The fundraising expert’s ability to grasp your business model and market potential is what’s really needed to help you complete your funding round.
What are the most important Fundraising Consultant interview questions?
By the interview stage, you should have information about the depth of the consultant’s experience in closing deals. In the interview itself, focus on exploring the lessons they learned from their experiences and evaluate their explanations of how those learnings apply to your company objectives. Your discussion should also help you determine whether the candidate would be a good overall fit for your business’s culture. The following sample questions will help you evaluate each fundraising consultant’s ability to meet your needs.
What specific fundraising strategies or techniques have you used successfully?
When you begin fundraising, it’s wise to assume that the process will take several months or longer. Given this time commitment and the many activities involved, the ideal consultant should be able to explain their approach to strategic planning for this investment of time and resources. Fundraising follows a sequence of stages—preparation of materials and investor research, pitching, and negotiating once offers are extended—but this will be an iterative process as you receive investor feedback and your company evolves. A quality fundraising consultant should be able to explain how they balance strategic planning and tactical processes, including the minimum outreach you should conduct per week.
How do you approach developing fundraising strategies tailored to an organization’s unique needs?
Fundraising experts should be able to speak to how they would customize their fundraising approach to these key dimensions of your company: your underlying technology, your geography, your cost structure, and your target market (and, as a corollary, what types of investors would add the most value). Debt financing, for example, may prove too risky for a pure SaaS company in its early stages, but it may be highly beneficial as part of the round for a robotics company with significant needs for hardware and working capital.
What are the legal and ethical considerations involved in fundraising, and how do you ensure compliance?
Entrepreneurship and innovation carry great risks. Many notorious scandals in the technology world show the dangers of uncertainty accumulating and driving a company toward collapse. A fundraising expert should be able to articulate how they strike the right balance between providing the most compelling narrative possible to your investors—including what you expect to achieve in the future—and being transparent about where your company is right now. This skill is both qualitative (in terms of how they prepare your company narrative) and quantitative (in terms of how they convey key metrics such as growth, retention, engagement, annual run rate, customer acquisition costs, and lifetime value).
What is your process for conducting investor (or donor) research and identifying potential funding sources?
Given the low odds of getting funding, startup leaders will generally want a substantial initial list of at least 100 investor prospects. Online sources that consultants use include independent rankings and lists, investor websites and social media, publications that track venture investing activity, and paid or freemium platforms like Crunchbase, PitchBook, and wealth screening solutions. (For nonprofit fundraisers, PitchBook also includes capital sources typically associated with that sector, including government, university, and impact investors.)
A good fundraising consultant should be able to explain their standard approach to efficiently finding and narrowing down your best prospects from this abundance of information. There are many viable strategies for this, but the consultant should be able to explain a specific approach that has delivered results in the past.
What are the biggest mistakes you’ve witnessed people in my position make while fundraising?
Just like entrepreneurship, a great deal of fundraising comes down to avoiding the many pitfalls. Some of the worst mistakes can be dangerous precisely because they seem positive in the moment—for example, raising too much capital or accepting a valuation that’s too high. A fundraising expert should be able to provide their own war stories—much of their value lies in the challenges they’ve overcome. Beyond the bare facts, the answer demonstrates the consultant’s ability to learn from mistakes, which is a foundational survival skill in both entrepreneurship and fundraising.
To what extent do you involve yourself directly in the fundraising process?
It’s important to discuss this question in initial conversations to ensure alignment on expectations before you begin to work together. Generally, a fundraising consultant works with you to craft and execute your fundraising strategy but does not pitch on your behalf and does not provide direct introductions to investors. Potential funders will expect to speak directly with the founder(s) or CEO of your company. A fundraising consultant’s job is to provide the knowledge and support you need to complete the round yourself.
What advice would you give me about how to approach investor (or donor) relations?
Whether you are fundraising for a startup or a nonprofit, ongoing communication and relationships with donors or investors increase the probability that they will add value through their knowledge and contacts and participate in future funding rounds. Beyond those direct benefits, having a good relationship with funders also serves as a positive signal to prospective donors or investors. Candidates should know that investor communication typically occurs on a quarterly basis, but you may also seek investor counsel at certain key moments—when launching a new funding round, for example, or making a major decision, such as acquiring a company or entering a new market. It’s important to keep the process as focused and efficient as possible to maximize its impact and minimize the demands on time for you and your investors. An experienced fundraising consultant can help you create the reporting system, process, and template to ensure that the most relevant information is communicated with as much automation as possible.
Based on everything you know about my company at this moment, hypothetically, why would you invest, and why would you not invest?
The interview doubles as an unofficial feasibility study for your fundraising goals. This question requires fundraising consultants to give a clear answer as to what they see as the key opportunities and risks for your company from an investor perspective. They should be willing and able to give at least one concrete answer to each part of the question and demonstrate their grasp of your company and their willingness to use tough love when required.
Why do companies hire Fundraising Consultants?
Companies hire fundraising consultants because the right expert can dramatically increase the likelihood that they will achieve their capital fundraising goals with favorable terms and value-added investors. When you’re approaching a first funding round, hiring a quality fundraising consultant can mean the difference between success and failure in terms of closing the round and achieving beneficial terms. Even if the business owner has deep experience in fundraising, a top consultant’s fresh perspective and ongoing support can identify blind spots, strengthen the fundraising strategy, and perfect the narrative.
When is the right time to hire a Fundraising Consultant?
The moment to hire is when you’re facing a decision or task related to fundraising that you feel would benefit from expert help. That said, it’s generally wisest to start working with an expert early in the fundraising process. That’s because the first key questions may be whether to raise external capital at all and, if so, how much and in what timeframe—topics on which a quality fundraising consultant can provide unbiased input. Once the decision to raise capital is made, collaborating with a consultant on key aspects of fundraising, such as positioning your company, researching the right investors, and preparing the materials, can add considerable value well before the pitching and negotiating begin.
How do you measure the ROI of hiring a Fundraising Consultant?
When you hire a fundraising consultant, the most important return on your investment is closing a funding round with terms and investors you’re pleased with. It’s impossible to know what the outcome would have been without the consultant. But the difference between your materials, confidence, and progress before and after hiring them should help you estimate the value that you’ve received.