Keynote: The Ten Commandments of Fundraising

Carbon Equity's founder on ten rules for raising capital

1,845 words · ~9 min read · 5 sections

🎬 Overview click to collapse

Keynote by Jacqueline, founder and CEO of Carbon Equity (a platform that democratizes access to climate/clean-energy venture, private equity, and infrastructure funds, letting individuals invest from €10,000 instead of the usual €1M+ minimum). She walked through her own career and fundraising journey, then delivered ten numbered rules for raising capital well, followed by audience Q&A. Source: `Evoluon 3.m4a` (first half).

📖 Her Journey click to collapse

Started in strategy consulting, then was unexpectedly recruited into private equity at a firm referred to as "Hall Investments" despite having no finance background — she studied valuation on Wikipedia the night before her final interview and got the job. After years buying companies, she felt she was "on the wrong side of the table" watching entrepreneurs and wanting to build instead of invest. She quit, joined Rocket Internet (known for replicating proven US e-commerce models internationally), and moved to Manila to build a real-estate platform from 1 to 100 people over three years, later becoming CEO of a 500-person fintech doing remittances and mobile money across Southeast Asia.

She became an investor a second time almost by accident — pitching an idea to Dutch SaaS investor Peak Capital led to a partner offer instead. She nearly took it, but a personal turning point intervened: reading The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert in 2019 crystallized for her that climate change was an existential threat on the same order as nuclear war or uncontrolled AI, and that career success without a livable planet was pointless. That reframed her own career logic: money decides what grows and what dies — like a conductor setting the tempo of an entire economy — so redirecting capital at scale toward the clean economy was the highest-leverage thing she could do with what she'd learned in finance. Carbon Equity was the result.

Carbon Equity's own fundraising: pre-seed (€1.2M) six months in, seed (€1.8M) twelve months later, Series A (€6M) another twelve months later — a fast, clean trajectory through 2021-2023 riding a genuine climate-tech funding wave. Then, starting November 2024, her co-founder left after an unresolved disagreement over company vision; in January 2025 political headwinds (a shift away from climate policy priorities) hit commercial traction (sales down 30% year over year) at the exact moment their runway was running out. They ultimately closed a Series A extension (~€7M) not from new VCs, who had turned cold on climate, but from their own existing client base — the people who already believed most in what they were building.

🧩 The Ten Commandments click to collapse

Raise only when truly necessary. Too many founders treat fundraising as a default milestone rather than a real need, often raising before product-market fit exists. This is costly twice over: (a) earlier raises happen at lower valuations, so the same amount of equity given away is worth more of the company — a cited Carta benchmark: founders hold ~56% of their company at seed on average but only ~9.5% by Series E; (b) having money reduces spending discipline — companies tend to spend down whatever they raise within 12-24 months regardless of the amount, so more capital raised early tends to just mean more burn, not more focus. Airbnb's actual seed (~$20K from Y Combinator, $600K from Sequoia) was cited as a reminder that very successful companies often start from very modest raises. Before product-market fit, anything that distracts from finding it is a distraction — and product-market fit means the market pulling the product from you, not you pushing it onto the market.
Find the right form of finance. VC is not inherently the "best" or most prestigious form of capital — it's simply optimized for one thing: hitting outsized ("unicorn") returns, the way a bank optimizes for not losing money. Different capital sources fit different company stages and shapes: value-added angels early on, family offices for long-horizon/mission-led companies not aiming to sell in 6-8 years, debt or grants once there's positive cash flow. Deep tech companies especially often need all of these simultaneously — build a full capital stack, not a single-source plan.
Start close to home, and be selective. Early on, proof is scarce, so credibility rests almost entirely on the founder and their existing relationships — there's an inverse relationship between how much proof you have and how far from your existing network you need to reach for capital. As proof accumulates, the reachable investor pool widens. Also: founders should be selective, not merely selectable — actively choose which investors to work with rather than just pitching everyone. Not all check-writers are equal: roughly half of Carbon Equity's angel investors generate several times the value of the rest simply by being genuinely engaged (opening doors, being ambassadors, becoming customers) versus writing a check and disappearing.
Understand the psychology of VC before raising from one. VC economics run on the power law: a typical fund only makes real money from 1-3 investments across an entire 15-20 company portfolio; ~60% of VC returns come from just 6% of portfolio companies, and roughly 65% of VC investments return less than the capital put in. This means VCs are structurally searching for fund-returning, 10x-or-better outcomes — a genuinely good, profitable business that isn't shaped for that kind of return is not a VC-fit business, regardless of its quality.
Raise enough money. 44% of startups fail specifically because they couldn't raise enough capital — not always about wanting more, but about managing burn so you don't run out. Fundraising itself typically takes about 9 months, so raising only enough runway for 18 months means starting the next raise almost immediately (at the halfway point); aim instead to raise for 2-3 years of runway, especially in deep tech. A cited cautionary example: an e-commerce logistics company that raised a large Series B during the COVID e-commerce boom, expanded its office and headcount aggressively expecting the growth to continue, and then had to reverse all of it (including re-subletting a newly renovated office) when post-COVID demand collapsed and the cost base had already outrun reality.
Thou shalt not be greedy — raise at a fair valuation, not the maximum available one. A high valuation raises the bar for the next round disproportionately (e.g., a €20M valuation implicitly demands roughly a €40M valuation next time, doubling the growth an investor needs to see to hit their own 10x target). Overshooting valuation increases the risk of a future down round; staying at a valuation you can credibly grow into protects the company even through a market downturn. This applies with extra force during any hype cycle (cited examples: climate tech in 2021, AI now) — even when money is being thrown at you, raise at a number you believe is sustainable, not the highest number offered.
Build relationships early — well before you need the money. Carbon Equity's own pre-seed included one VC who joined not because they were pitched, but because they asked to join, based on a relationship built years earlier through informally bouncing ideas off that investor. Practical mechanisms: newsletters, regular informal check-ins, and simply staying visible to investors long before a raise is live, so trust already exists by the time you need it.
Run a tight process when you do raise. Venture capital, in Jacqueline's words, runs substantially on gossip and FOMO. A founder can create real, productive FOMO by preparing materials well in advance (competitive landscape, market sizing, traction decks), building a complete target investor list, approaching them all together rather than sequentially, and running the whole process on a tight, disclosed timeline — creating genuine competitive tension between interested investors rather than negotiating each one separately and sequentially.
Marry wisely. The average VC-founder relationship outlasts the average marriage, and the range between the best and worst investors is enormous. Good investors open doors and act as genuine strategic advisors; bad investors take advantage during weak moments and pile on onerous terms. Always do reference calls with other portfolio founders and specifically ask what went wrong, not just what went well — and be aware that even a great lead partner can be replaced mid-relationship (Jacqueline's own example: a strong Series A board partner who went on leave was replaced by someone described as "an absolute blocker").
Reframe the emotional posture of fundraising. Fundraising can feel like a long series of job applications where you're hoping to be picked — but the healthier mental model is that you are in control of your own destiny, and funding is only a means to an end. Once Jacqueline stopped trying to "convince" reluctant VCs and instead focused on finding people genuinely enthusiastic about the company's actual mission, family offices, existing clients, and a handful of aligned funds joined the extension round that got them through their hardest period.

🎯 Q&A Highlights click to collapse

On her proudest and hardest moment: the co-founder split. In hindsight, losing a co-founder who had become the informal center of a divided internal loyalty (a "Jeff camp" vs. a "Jackie camp" within the company) was traumatic in the moment but ultimately let the company re-unify around a single direction and build a stronger management team from internal promotions — a reminder that what feels like the worst moment can become, in retrospect, one of the best things that happened to the company.
On whether Carbon Equity's investments account for the environmental footprint of what they fund (e.g., AI/data-center energy use): she noted the platform has funded roughly 400 distinct climate solutions to date (from seed-stage to unicorn-scale), and flagged a genuine tension in the sector right now: renewable electricity capacity is growing exponentially and is now ~99% of new grid capacity added even in the US, but total energy demand (driven substantially by AI) is growing even faster than renewables can displace the existing fossil baseline — meaning the replacement race, not the growth of renewables itself, is currently being lost.

🗣️ Notable Quotes click to collapse

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"Money decides. Money decides what companies grow and what companies die. Money decides, like an orchestra conductor, what goes crescendo and pianissimo."
on why she moved from operating companies into directing capital at climate solutions.

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"Venture capitalists are bankers in Patagonia vests."
on VC being a means to an end, not a status symbol.

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"Product market fit isn't about fitting your product to the market, but your market pulling the product out of your hands."
her core test for whether a company is actually ready to raise venture capital.

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"Why am I trying to sell my company, why am I trying to convince you? This is my company... I want to find the very best people that are truly enthusiastic about building my company."
the mindset shift that got her through the hardest stretch of her own fundraising.

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"The moment that your startup is not on fire, you should enjoy the moment, because there are so many moments that your startup is or will be on fire."