So You Didn’t Hit $100M ARR in 6 Months — Fundraising Advice for The Rest of Us

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You’ve seen the headlines: startups hitting $100M ARR overnight. You’re not one of them. So how do you raise money?

We’ve all seen the headlines about startups with ridiculous growth. But the reality for most founders is a lot less glamorous.

Grinding out growth bit by bit. Trying not to run out of money.

How does the average founder go about raising capital in 2026? The key is to get into a position of strength…

Understand the Investor’s Perspective

Imagine you’re an investor….

It’s 9am. You’ve got a nice big cup of iced coffee next to your laptop. Time to go through your inbox.

You’ve got 15 emails. 10 are from pre-revenue companies. 4 are from companies growing 1-2x year over year.

And that last email? A startup that’s made it to $1M ARR in two months.

Put yourself in the investor’s position. What deal are you going to do?

What’s Changed Since I Started Investing

I started angel investing in 2021. At that time, 3x year over year growth was considered incredible. You’d definitely be able to raise.

It doesn’t work that way anymore. AI is helping some startups grow faster than anything we’ve ever seen.

Those supergrowth startups are competing with you for capital.

In 2026, the bar to get investors excited isn’t 3x year over year growth. It’s more like 10x.

That’s a crazy bar, I know! But it’s what the market dictates.

How to Respond: Get to Break Even

Let’s say you’re growing, but not at those eyepopping rates. Maybe you’re scaling revenue 25%, 100%, or 200% year over year.

My best advice: get to break even.

This will mean painful decisions, like big layoffs or taking a pay cut.

But the reality is that you cannot rely on venture capital right now. The supergrowth companies will get funded. You may not.

If you keep burning and fail to raise, you’re going to go broke. Your company will cease to exist.

That’s a lot more painful than making some cuts now.

Every single cost is on the menu: headcount, office space, travel. Cut, cut, cut.

The Position of Strength

Once you’re at break even, you hold the cards.

You don’t need venture capital anymore. It becomes a nice-to-have.

If the money’s there and the terms are reasonable, take it. If not, no worries!

And if you can re-accelerate growth to at least 5x, you may find investors getting excited again.

But you need time to figure out a path to faster growth. Getting to break even buys you that time.

Wrap Up

There’s nothing easy about being a founder.

Even before AI, entrepreneurship was a struggle. Today, it’s a mad race for customers and investor dollars.

In a market this competitive, the average founder can’t count on raising venture capital. So you need to learn to operate without it.

Get your company to break even, no matter what it takes. Control your destiny.

Then raising capital becomes optional.