Every summer you hear the same line: don’t bother raising until September, the VCs are all on a boat. Half true. And that “half” is exactly what decides how your autumn round goes.
Because while everyone waits for September, the founders who raise well in autumn are already building something right now: relationships. No pitch, no ask. Here is why that works, and how to put the quiet weeks to use.
The myth of the dead summer
Let’s start with what the numbers say, not the gut feeling. Analyses of more than 42,000 funding rounds show that July lands at roughly the yearly average. The genuinely quiet months are not July and August, but January and February, when funds are stuck in their planning cycles.
There is a European asterisk, though. August really is slow here: funding often runs well below the June level because a large share of partners are on holiday. Getting a full partnership to a yes in mid-August is hard. Globally, startup funding in a recent August even dropped to its lowest monthly total in years.
So the honest truth is not “summer is dead.” It is this: fewer deals close in summer, and the ones that move take longer.
What actually happens in summer
VCs are human too. They have kids, holiday plans, an out-of-office. Decisions take longer because everyone is rarely at the table at once. That is the risk: you lose momentum when someone is always “back next week.”
But there is a flip side, and it works in your favour. In summer, fewer founders are competing for investors’ attention. Send a smart, low-key message now and you don’t land in a crowded inbox. You land at the top.
Relationship before round
Here is the part most people skip. A funding round is not decided the moment you open it. It is decided in the weeks before, when a relationship forms.
The founders who raise with ease in autumn used the summer to build relationships with no ask attached: a coffee with no deck, a thoughtful reply to a post, a short “no pressure, just keeping you posted” update with one number that has moved. None of it asks for money. All of it builds trust.
When you open the round in September, you are not a cold pitch among a hundred others. You are a name the person already knows and has quietly been rooting for.
Raise the relationship before you raise the round.
A simple framework: the five that count
You don’t need to spend half your life networking. A focused plan is enough:
- Pick five. Not fifty. Five investors you genuinely want on your cap table because they fit your stage, sector, and personality.
- Find the warmest path. A cold email rarely converts; a trusted intro opens doors. Ask yourself: who can introduce you?
- Start a real conversation. Not a pitch, but a question, a thought, an honest update. Human, not transactional.
- Stay in touch without pushing. A short sign of life every few weeks, with one concrete piece of news, keeps you present.
- Write it down. A relationship fizzles the moment you lose track of who said what last. Keep every touchpoint in one place.
That is exactly why we built a free Investor Relationship Tracker: one row per investor, every touchpoint and next step in one place, and it turns red the moment a follow-up is overdue.
Why relationship beats timing
You can’t control the calendar. Whether August is slow, or whether a partner is sitting on a boat, is out of your hands. What you can control is one single thing: whether you are a known quantity when the round opens.
Timing helps. Relationship wins. And unlike the weather, relationship can be planned, right now, while it is quieter and you have the headspace for it.
If you’d like to prepare your autumn raise with someone, book a free intro call and find out whether the Sandborn Academy is right for you 🚀
And so no relationship slips through the cracks: download our free Investor Relationship Tracker here.