Funding rounds and the 90 days after

A funding round is a promise to investors. The 90 days after it are when the company works out how to keep it.

That's your window. Not the day of the announcement. Every vendor emails that day.

What the money is for

Companies raise to do specific things. Build product faster. Expand into a new market. Hire a sales team. Replace systems they've outgrown. The announcement usually says which, in plain language, and so do the CEO's posts that week.

Read both carefully. The stated use of funds is your first hypothesis. A company that says it'll scale the platform for enterprise customers is about to discover its architecture was built for a different stage.

What happens in the 90 days

The first month is hiring. Leaders get named. Job posts multiply. Everyone's excited and nobody has time.

The second month is planning. The new leaders look at what they've inherited. Gaps show up. They realize hiring alone won't hit the milestones the investors expect by the next board meeting.

The third month is when outside help gets bought. The board asks about progress. The plan needs to move faster than the team can grow. Services firms that understood the pressure early get the call.

Show up in week one with congratulations and you're noise. Show up in week five with a specific guess about the gap between the plan and the team, and you're useful.

Stack it with other signals

A funding round alone is a middling signal. It ranks below RFPs, new leaders, business pressure, hiring and direct engagement. It gets strong when other signals stack on it.

A round plus a new CTO tells you the technical plan is about to change. A round plus a wave of job posts for data engineers tells you where the money's going. A round plus a leader posting about scaling pain tells you where it hurts.

Signals lose weight with age. The announcement fades over weeks. The hiring and the new leaders keep the account warm. The buying signals guide covers how stacking works.

An example opener

Say a healthcare software company raised a growth round to expand into hospital systems. Two months later, they've hired a new VP of engineering and posted several roles for integration engineers.

You joined as VP of engineering a few weeks after the round, and the integration roles on your careers page say hospital customers are the priority. My guess is the roadmap promised to investors assumes integration capacity you're still hiring for, and the first enterprise customers will arrive before the team does. Is that close, or is the pressure coming from somewhere else?

It ties the money, the seat and the hiring to a single misery. It's easy to answer.

Who to write to

Growth companies have smaller committees, but they're still committees. The CEO or founder often signs. The new functional leader is the champion. A senior engineer or architect is the technical lead who'll judge whether you know what you're doing.

Finance matters more after a round than you'd expect. A new CFO or VP of finance is often hired around the same time, and they'll watch burn closely. A services engagement has to look like it speeds the plan without adding headcount risk.

What to avoid

Don't mention the dollar amount. Everyone does, and it sounds like you're counting their money.

Don't pitch the full transformation. Funded companies want speed and focus, not a twelve-month program. Propose the narrow thing that unblocks the next milestone.

And don't wait too long. By month four, the plan is set, the hires have landed and the gaps have been filled by someone. Usually someone who reached out in month two.

Watch the champions too

Funding rounds pull in senior people from bigger companies. Some of them were your clients. A former champion who joins a newly funded company as a VP is the warmest start you'll find. They know how you work, they've got a mandate, and they've got budget for the first time in years.

Track where your past champions land. When one shows up at a company that just raised, write that week.

For what new leaders do in their first months, read the first 90 days of a new CIO. Same rhythm, different trigger.