How to actually raise your round

14 Months, 100 Rejections, $45M

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Hey there! 👋
Skander here.

The headline is “Genomines raises $45M to farm metal from daisies”. But what actually happened behind the scenes?

Einstein supposedly said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. He didn’t actually say this, but the internet believes he did, which tells you something about how we construct shared reality through repetition until fiction becomes fact.

Fabien Koutchekian, founder and CEO of Genomines, spent 14 months doing exactly that: same company, same pitch, same investor objections. Hundreds of conversations. Same polite rejections.

Then he closed $45 million from 12 funds.

This isn’t the LinkedIn breakdown with champagne emojis and “oversubscribed” humble brags. This is the guide where I tell you that he visualized money in his bank account every morning to avoid mental collapse. Where he walked away from a termsheet, tried to come back, and found the door permanently closed.

So let’s talk about what it takes to raise a round. Not because it’s secret. Because it’s messy and non-linear and involves way more psychology than Excel, and admitting that feels like admitting you’re doing it wrong.

🌊 Let’s dive into it

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PS: This goes deep on one case study (Genomines’ Series A), so it’s not “everything you need to know about fundraising.” But a lot rang true for my own fundraising experience, which is why I’m writing this.
It’s especially relevant for Series A founders in deep tech, raising in times of AI.

PPS: This is based on a fireside chat I had with Fabien shortly after he closed the round. Register here to join the next time.

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How to actually raise your round

Fabien of Genomines raising these plants

The thing nobody tells you about fundraising

Here’s what they tell you: build a great company, create a compelling narrative, find product-market fit, show traction, and investors will come.

Here’s what actually happens: you build a great company, create a compelling narrative, find product-market fit, show traction, and then spend 14 months having the same conversation with hundreds of investors, most of whom will ghost you, some of whom will waste your time, and a few of whom will say yes for reasons you’ll never fully understand.

Fabien’s company, Genomines, does something genuinely wild: they plant hyperaccumulator plants on nickel-rich soil, let them grow for 4-6 months while the plants extract and concentrate the metal in their biomass, harvest them, and process them into nickel concentrate for automakers like Hyundai. It’s biology meeting mining meeting agriculture meeting climate tech.

Exactly the kind of deep-tech play VCs claim they’re hunting for.

And it took 14 months to raise.

Not because the company was struggling. They closed a $45M round (one of the largest climate rounds in Europe this year) with 12 funds including Engine Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Hyundai, Forbion BioEconomy and more. They were eventually oversubscribed.

But because fundraising is a fundamentally irrational process that depends on timing, psychology, narrative fit, relationship building, and approximately 47 other variables you can’t control.

Let’s talk about the ones you can.

The shittiest moment (and why it matters)

Every fundraise has one. Fabien’s came when a fund pushed through internal approval quickly, but wanted them to raise less than planned. Take less now, raise again later. The classic investor hedge.

Genomines said no. They needed the full amount. They walked away.

Then the raise dragged on. Due diligence with other funds was “quite time consuming.” Doubt crept in. Maybe they’d made a mistake. Maybe they should have taken the money.

They went back. The door had closed.

“It was a bit concerning,” Fabien deadpanned with French understatement.

But here’s why this story matters: the shittiest moment isn’t actually about that one door closing. It’s about what happens in your head when it does. When you start questioning every decision. When the gap between effort and results feels unbridgeable. When you wonder if you’re the only person who sees the vision.

This is where most founders break. Not from lack of conviction in the product, but from the psychological weight of rejection after rejection after rejection.

Fabien’s solution? “I worked on myself quite a lot on psychology. I had a coach. I started doing a lot of meditation, a lot of visualization. I would visualize the money in my bank account. Me opening Société Générale and seeing the money.”

He paused. “No kidding.”

This is the part of fundraising nobody writes about because it feels too soft, too woo-woo, too far from the spreadsheets and the pitch decks. But it’s the most important part. If you don’t believe you’ll make it (really believe it, in your bones) investors will read it. Your pitch will subtly shift. Your energy will change. The conviction that makes people want to bet on you will evaporate.

The best pitch deck in the world won’t save you if your psychology breaks first.

The art of narrative focus (it’s not a pivot)

Genomines started the raise planning to be vertically integrated: extraction and full refining. By the end, they’d narrowed focus to extraction and partial processing, stopping before the capital-intensive, lower-margin refining stage.

Was this a pivot? Not really.

Was it a change in narrative focus? Absolutely.

Here’s how it happened: not through clear, direct feedback (though some investors gave it), but through pattern recognition across dozens of conversations. “We focused on certain parts of what we were doing rather than wanting to do everything at the same time,” Fabien explained. “The global story didn’t change. We’re still extracting metal with plants. We just removed the refining part.”

The lesson here is subtle but crucial: you’re not looking for consensus from investors. You’re looking for signal. When enough investors push back on the same element (even indirectly, even without saying it explicitly) you need to interrogate whether that element is core to your value proposition or a distraction from it.

For Genomines, refining was a distraction. It scared investors (high capex, low margin) without being central to the core innovation (plants that extract metal). So they cut it from the narrative.

But (and this is important) they didn’t change the business fundamentally. They changed what they emphasized and what they de-emphasized. They sharpened the story.

This is different from pivoting based on investor feedback. Don’t build your company to please investors. But do pay attention when the market is telling you that your narrative is obscuring your value instead of illuminating it.

The Q&A Strategy: fighting FUD with facts (And presentation)

Here’s a framework Genomines used that every founder should steal: when investors pushed back, they didn’t just answer the question. They built a Q&A document. Then they kept building it.

By the end of the raise, they had a doc with hundreds of pages of Q&A that addressed every concern they’d heard.

By the end, one investor alone received a 60-page Q&A document.

But sometimes even that wasn’t enough. For one fund, they created an entirely separate presentation focused not on technical details but on “debunking the myth”. Helping investors shift their mental model to accept that yes, you actually can extract metal with plants at scale, and no, that’s not crazy.

“Sometimes even if they do understand and they say ‘it should work,’ their brain can’t adapt to the fact that it’s actually possible,” Fabien explained. “You need to adapt to each investor. You need to really think through the psychology of the investor and try to understand exactly what is the blocking point on their side.”

This is exhausting. This is why fundraising takes 14 months. But it’s also why some rounds close and others don’t.

Here a quick framework:

1. Build a master Q&A as you go. Every question gets documented and answered once, thoroughly. Then you recycle.

2. Pay attention to psychological blocks, not just factual ones. Is the investor struggling with the concept itself? Do they need a different mental model?

3. Create custom materials when necessary. Don’t be precious about your pitch deck. If an investor needs a different entry point, build it.

4. Stay neutral when you get pushback. Fabien’s advice: “Having very neutral reactions to any pushback or feedback is very helpful because then people feel more comfortable giving feedback.”

You can’t get offended. You can’t take it personally. You need the real objection, not the polite one. And you only get that if you make it safe for investors to tell you the truth.

Why you should never cold email an investor

Fabien was clear on this: “Never ever reach out to an investor. Never. Never do that.”

Why? Because the likelihood they’ll respond is “extremely low.” Investors get hundreds or thousands of emails per month from founders seeking funding. Yours will drown.

Instead: play the introduction game.

The hierarchy of intros, from best to worst:

1. Portfolio company founder intro (best by far: investors trust founders they’ve backed)

2. Direct connection to the fund (friend, colleague, advisor)

3. Meeting organically at events (but only if this is your superpower. Fabien knew founders who could work a room and meet 50 investors; for him, not so much)

4. Cold email (don’t)

“For an investor, from their point of view, they’re getting hundreds if not thousands of emails every month,” Fabien explained. “You need to find a way to make sure they will answer to you and optimize your chances.”

The best way to do this? Build relationships with founders first. Look at a fund’s portfolio. Reach out to those founders. Have genuine conversations. Ask for advice. Help them if you can. Then, when it’s natural and you’ve built real rapport, ask for an intro.

This is slower than cold emailing 500 investors. It’s also infinitely more effective.

The corollary: Start this process early. You can’t manufacture these relationships quickly. You need to plant seeds.

Let’s talk about FOMO: How to go from “Not that attractive” to oversubscribed

For most of Genomines’ 14-month raise, they didn’t have FOMO. Fabien was clear about this. Then, toward the end, something shifted. Multiple funds wanted in. They became oversubscribed. They had to cut a fund before closing.

What changed?

Fabien’s honest answer: “I’m not sure what happened exactly.”

But he offered theories:

• Timing and investor capacity: Some investors were busy with other deals and couldn’t focus. When those closed, Genomines became priority.

• Comprehension threshold: Deep tech takes time to understand. As more investors did the work to grasp it, word spread.

• Momentum compounds: Early commits from credible investors signaled quality to others.

• Communication strategy: They weren’t in stealth mode this time, and they used LinkedIn actively to show progress.

But there’s a deeper insight here: FOMO in deep tech isn’t manufactured the way it is in B2B SaaS. You can’t just drop a “we’re oversubscribed in two weeks” line and watch term sheets roll in.

Instead, you need:

1. Genuine technical progress (Genomines hit 7.6% concentration in their plants, a key inflection point)

2. Strategic hires (they brought on a Director of Operations during the raise)

3. Credible early commits (Lowercarbon Capital in seed, Engine in Series A)

4. Persistent, professional relationship building

5. Founder psychology that radiates conviction

And then, maybe, if you’re lucky and the timing is right and you’ve done everything else correctly, momentum starts to compound.

The key insight: you can’t force FOMO, but you can create the conditions for it. Keep shipping. Keep hiring. Keep showing progress. Keep talking to investors even when they say no. Eventually, if the business is real, the momentum becomes real too.

The Team Management Challenge: How to fundraise without destroying your company

Here’s an underappreciated truth: fundraising doesn’t pause the business. You still need to execute. Your team still needs to deliver. And they’re watching you disappear into endless investor meetings while wondering if they’ll have jobs next quarter.

Fabien’s approach:

• Prepare the team early: “Most employees have never lived through a raise. When they enter into that, they’re like ‘Oh wow, what’s happening? We need to work and raise at the same time?’ Yeah, absolutely.”

• Set response expectations: They tried (and often failed) to maintain a 24-hour response rule for investor questions. But the expectation was clear: investors are priority.

• Never show fear to the team: “You can show it to your co-founders. But you should never show that to your team because they need to keep working and delivering.”

That last point is crucial. Your team doesn’t need to know you’re visualizing money in your bank account at 6am because the alternative is despair. They need to know you’re handling it.

But here’s the thing Fabien implied: a year-long raise is incredibly hard on a team. People get tired. They get cynical. They wonder why they’re still answering investor questions instead of building product.

You need to balance transparency with protection. Tell them it’s hard. Tell them it takes time. But don’t transfer your anxiety onto them. That’s your job as founder: to carry the psychological weight so they can focus on execution.

And execution is what ultimately closes the round anyway. Because the investors aren’t really betting on your pitch deck. They’re betting on your ability to deliver under pressure. And your team’s output during the fundraise is the proof.

The art of investor due diligence (from both sides)

Some wild details from Genomines’ process:

• A fund mandated a psychologist to review the team. Multiple team members, including Fabien, had sessions. “That was a first for me,” he said. “I found it pretty cool.”

• An expert spent 10 hours (7am to 5pm) doing deep due diligence on their plant biotechnology, then wrote a comprehensive report.

• A German fund required them to open a German company and bank account, which meant Fabien traveling to a small border town, sitting through German legal documents he couldn’t understand, and signing papers through a notary.

The European funds were “extremely analytical”. The US funds were “very visionary” and “advanced fast.”

But here’s what matters: every investor brings something different. Not just capital. Not just network. But approach, rigor, geography, customer access, operational expertise.

Genomines ended up with 12 funds, and Fabien could articulate what each one brought. Some provided deep mining industry knowledge. Some offered access to automaker customers. Some brought geographic diversification. Some were strategic investors who were also clients.

The lesson: you’re not just raising money. You’re assembling a board and an extended team. Think carefully about what you need beyond capital. Then construct your cap table accordingly.

And on the flip side: do your due diligence on investors. Fabien mentioned they cut a fund right before closing because “under pressure, especially on the closing, you can see the true face of some people. We had one really really bad experience with one fund that we preferred to cast out.”

How do you vet investors? Fabien’s answer was frustratingly human: “It’s a question of feeling. You need to follow your guts.” But he added: “Respect is very important. This is still our company. I understand there’s a capital provider and people who need capital, but we’re still in control. There needs to be a relationship of trust.”

Red flags to watch for:

• Disrespect during the process (especially at closing)

• Lack of professionalism under pressure

• Misalignment on values or vision

• Unable to articulate what they’ll bring beyond capital

If you’re lucky enough to be oversubscribed, use that leverage to cut the wrong investors. They’ll be on your cap table for years. Choose wisely.

The updates strategy: Keeping lukewarm investors warm

Not every investor who passes is gone forever. Some are wrong timing. Some need more proof points. Some just need to see you keep winning.

Fabien’s approach to managing the “lukewarm investor” problem:

1. Add them on LinkedIn (basic but essential)

2. Post regularly about progress (authentically, not just company PR)

3. Send monthly updates (short, focused on key inflection points)

4. Be selective about who you keep warm: “Don’t keep all investors aware of development. It’s very dangerous. If something goes sideways, you’ve put all your eggs in the same basket.”

That last point is subtle but important. You want 5-10 investors you think could really jump in later, and you nurture those relationships. The rest, let them forget about you a bit. When you come back in 12 months with a different story and better traction, it’s a fresh conversation.

What goes in the updates? Fabien recommended:

• Very short (investors get too many emails)

• Informal tone

• Focused on genuine inflection points (hitting 7.6% concentration, key hires, major customer wins)

• Your excitement matters more than the metric itself: “If they see your excitement, maybe they’ll understand to what extent it’s really important for you.”

And remember: these relationships pay off over years, not months. Even if an investor passes this round, they might lead your next one. Even if they never invest, they might make an intro that changes everything. Treat every investor interaction as a long-term relationship, not a transaction.

The things that don’t matter as much as you think

Based on Fabien’s experience, here are some things founders obsess over that matter less than you’d expect:

❌ Geography of investors: US vs Europe vs Asia matters far less than you think. Genomines has investors from Singapore, South Korea, US, France, Germany. “You can truly get investors everywhere,” Fabien said. What matters more: does their mandate and thesis fit your business?

❌ Perfect pitch deck: Yes, you need a good deck. But Fabien created custom presentations for specific funds to address their mental blocks. The deck is a starting point, not the end.

❌ Video pitches: This came up in the Q&A of our session. One founder asked if video pitches convert better. The answer from investors in the room: “It depends how long the video is.” The truth: investors have short attention spans. A Tik-Tok-length video beats a 30-minute YouTube explainer. But what really matters is the one-sentence story they can repeat.

❌ Industry-specific investors: Fabien used a Venn diagram of industries (plant biotech, agriculture, mining, climate) to map target investors. “It didn’t work at all,” he admitted. There’s too much information asymmetry. You can’t really know what investors want until you talk to them.

The things that matter more than you think

Conversely, here’s what actually moves the needle:

✅ Founder motivation: This is 50%+ of the game. Maybe more. You need genuine conviction that radiates to every conversation. If you don’t believe you’ll make it, neither will they.

✅ Speed of response: Genomines tried to maintain a 24-hour response rule to investor questions. They often failed (too many questions), but the intent mattered. Momentum in fundraising is real.

✅ Quality of your Q&A: By the end, they had 60-page Q&A documents. They’d answered every objection thoroughly. This isn’t just about having answers; it’s about showing you’ve thought through every angle.

✅ Portfolio company intros: This is the single highest-leverage tactic for getting meetings. Everything else is distant second.

✅ Team quality during the raise: Investors are watching your execution. Bringing on a strong Director of Operations during the process sent a signal. Hitting technical milestones sent a signal. Your team’s output is your best pitch.

✅ Long-term relationship building: 2 funds took a year from first meeting to close. You can’t shortcut trust.

If I were raising today

Based on everything in this conversation, here’s what I’d do:

Pre-Raise (6-12 months before)

• Build relationships with founders at target funds (not the investors, the founders)

• Start posting on LinkedIn consistently about your space (become a reference point)

• Identify your 5-10 most important technical or business milestones

• Hire a coach or therapist (seriously—the psychology matters more than the spreadsheets)

Early Raise (Month 1-3)

• Get warm intros to 20-30 funds (through portfolio founders)

• Have exploratory conversations, focus on learning their thesis

• Start building your master Q&A document

• Set a 24-hour response expectation (internally)

• Prepare the team: “This will take 6-12 months, we’ll be executing and fundraising simultaneously”

Mid Raise (Month 4-8)

• Keep shipping product and hitting milestones (this is your real pitch)

• When you get repeated feedback on a narrative element, consider focusing/de-emphasizing

• Build custom materials for investors who need different mental models

• Stay neutral and curious when you get pushback (you want the real objection)

• Practice visualization/meditation/whatever keeps you psychologically resilient

Late Raise (Month 9-14)

• As funds commit, leverage them for additional intros (”Who else should be in this round?”)

• If you get oversubscribed, use it to cut problematic investors

• Don’t show your team the stress (show your co-founders, your coach, your support system)

• Trust your gut on investor fit. You’re choosing partners, not just capital

Post-Raise

• Celebrate (but invite the investors who passed. FOMO is real)

• Set up monthly updates to your “warm but didn’t invest” list (5-10 investors)

• Post on LinkedIn about the close (and what you’ll use the capital for)

• Take a week off (you just ran a marathon)

The real lesson

Fundraising is not a rational process. It’s a mental endurance test dressed up as a business transaction.

You can have the best company, the best team, the best traction, and the best pitch deck, and still spend 14 months getting rejected. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because you’re asking people to believe in a future that doesn’t exist yet and give you millions of dollars to build it. That requires trust, and trust takes time.

What separates the founders who close from those who don’t isn’t usually the quality of the opportunity. It’s the ability to:

1. Maintain conviction when everyone says no

2. Keep executing when fundraising would be a full-time job

3. Manage their psychology so it doesn’t poison their pitch

4. Build relationships over months/years, not weeks

5. Stay curious and neutral in the face of rejection

6. Know when to push and when to walk away

These are not skills they teach you in business school. They’re not in the Y Combinator playbook. They’re the messy, human parts of building a company that nobody writes about because they’re hard to systematize.

But they’re also the parts that matter most.

So if you’re in the middle of a fundraise right now, if you’re exhausted, if you’re questioning everything, if you’ve been rejected by 50 investors and you’re wondering if number 51 will be different: know that you’re not alone. Every successful founder has been exactly where you are. The visualizing money in bank accounts at 6am. The wondering if you made a mistake walking away from that term sheet. The feeling that you’re the only person who sees the vision.

The difference between the founders who make it and the ones who don’t isn’t that the winners never feel that way. It’s that they feel it and keep going anyway.

That’s the real secret to fundraising. Not the pitch deck. Not the intro. Not even the traction.

It’s the refusal to quit when every rational person would.

And then, maybe 14 months later, you wire $45 million into your bank account and get to write the LinkedIn post about being oversubscribed.

But first, you have to visualize it. Every single morning. Until it’s real.If you like this essay (and want to spread something positive today), share it with your friends, family and frenemies:

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