When should a founder announce their fundraise?

Announcing your company's fundraise is a big deal - but when is the right time to announce it? and more importantly, why should you be announcing it?

Salonie:

So many times, founders choose to not announce their fundraise for the obvious reason. And purely from the perspective of not wanting their competitors to find out. Do you think that’s the right thing to do?

Avnish:

I’m not so sure, in my view ultimately businesses are built on the back of execution. Very rarely - - you know in the US, in Silicon Valley, there is this stealth mode start-up, even in the US its going down. I think people - - there is this new philosophy saying that stealth mode startup used to be lets go build some really great product and we’ll launch it with a big fan fair.

I think the new world is built quickly and launch first quickly. You can see it with Clubhouse and some of these right. So I think the philosophy has changed, that’s no one. So it is even more about the execution than about the idea.

Second, one has to factor in that even though your competition might find out, your competition might also get locked out of funding because you’ve gotten funded. And whoever was going to fund that business might come and look at you now. And if you are the best and you think you are the best, capital might actually concentrate towards you. Third, you may find out more about what others are doing and other competition, because people will reach out to you.

And fourth, which I think is very important is it helps attract talent, and therefore by not announcing you might be delaying that flywheel kind of process