Pre-Raise Systems Checklist

The real reason rounds stall

It's rarely the idea.

Most startups that burn through their funding and end up in the "NGMI" column aren't there because of a bad idea or a weak market. They're there because they raised money without operational systems in place.

Investors have seen this movie

A promising company gets funded, scales too fast without infrastructure, and implodes under the weight of its own chaos. Dozens of times. They price that risk into how they read you.

They test for it quietly

Nobody says "show me your onboarding plan." They ask a question, watch how fast you answer, and decide whether the number you gave them was pulled from a system or from the air.

The fix is unglamorous

Seven systems, most of them a spreadsheet and a recurring calendar invite. Boring to build, decisive in the room. And far cheaper to do now than during a live raise.

What's inside

Seven systems, and what "good" looks like for each.

For every system you get why investors care, the specific standard they're measuring against, and one concrete action you can finish this week.

Try one

This isn't a PDF you skim once.

The checklist is an interactive assessment. You mark where you actually stand on each system, and it tells you which gap to close first. Here's the first one — go ahead and answer it.

System 01

Financial visibility & burn rate management

Can you pull up your cash position, weekly burn, and weeks of runway in under two minutes — without opening your bank?

Your read

Fit

Who this is built for.

Made for you if

You're raising pre-seed or seed in the next two quarters
You're a founder or small team wearing most of the operating hats
You've been asked a metrics question and had to say "let me get back to you"
You've raised before and want the next round to be less chaotic
You'd rather find the gap yourself than have a partner find it for you

Probably not if

You want a pitch deck template — this is about what sits behind the deck
You have a COO and a finance lead who already run all seven
You're looking for an intro to investors rather than readiness for them
You want theory. Every section ends in something you have to go do

Who's behind it

Tess Robinson

I started at the bedside as an intensive care provider, where the job was to read a system fast, find what was failing, and fix it before it cascaded. That's still the job — the patients just became companies.

Since then I've spent over a decade in operations, integration, and business strategy: building go-to-market plans, rebuilding brands, writing the SOPs, and standing up the sales and reporting infrastructure underneath. Today I sit on both sides of the table — as a fractional operator for founders, and as an investor backing pre-seed and seed companies out of Silicon Valley.

That's where this checklist came from. The same seven gaps kept showing up in diligence, and they were almost always fixable months earlier, for free, by a founder who simply knew to look.

HER is an acronym I gave myself as a daily reminder: Help Everyone Rise.

HER Connections is how I pay that forward — resources, mentorship, and connections that are usually hard to reach, for founders building without a full executive bench.

Questions

Before you give me your email.

What actually lands in my inbox?

One email with a link to the interactive checklist. You can work through it in the browser, or print it. After that, occasional notes on founder operations — the same material I use with clients. Unsubscribe in one click, and I don't sell or share your address.

How long does it take to go through?

About ten minutes to score honestly. Fixing what it surfaces takes longer — but each of the seven ends with a single action sized to fit inside one week.

Do I need revenue or a full team to use it?

No. Several systems are easier to build before you have either, which is exactly the point. If a system doesn't apply to you yet, mark it "not yet" and note why — that answer is itself useful in a partner meeting.

Is this a pitch for your consulting?

The checklist stands on its own and costs nothing. If you'd rather have help building the systems than build them yourself, that's what I do at HER Connections, and you can book a call. No obligation either way.

Get the checklist

Seven systems. Ten minutes. No cost.

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