Playbook: How to announce a funding round
An operating manual for turning fundraising announcements into momentum
For startups, fundraising announcements are free media events that can be used to draw attention to their company. Used correctly, they attract interest from potential investors, customers, and hires.
As a venture capitalist, I work closely with my portfolio companies on their funding announcements, stealth exits, and major launches. After doing this dozens of times, and help shape messaging, coordinate launches, and plan day-of execution - I realized there’s a repeatable playbook. But most of what’s available online is fragmented, anecdotal, or too high-level, so I wanted to write something digestible, comprehensive, and actionable. This is that playbook.
This document is meant to be a guide, a step-by-step operating manual for startups planning to come out of stealth or announce a major funding round.
Deciding when to announce the fundraise
Don’t take the decision lightly. It is a free media event that you can use to get attention from the public. Coming out of stealth is a particularly important type of fundraising announcement, as it creates a first impression with the market.
There are three reasons for startups to announce a funding round. To attract and gain credibility among:
1) Future investors
2) Potential hires
3) Prospective customers
A fourth reason becoming more common is to dissuade would-be competitors. Especially if it’s a monster round for a company in a new category, where the company has a chance at category leadership. Investors are moving earlier and more aggressively for these types of rounds among AI-native software companies in a strategy known as king-making, but that’s another post.
The point is - the way to make the most of a fundraising announcement is by being ready to absorb any inbound that you might get from those three groups - investors, hires, and customers.
In other words, startups should ask: Are we ready to raise a new financing round? Are we actively making new hires? Is our product mature enough to absorb new customers today?
If the answer is no to any of those questions, it is worth considering delaying the announcement.
If the answer is yes to all three - congrats, you’re ready to announce.
Preparing to make the announcement
Startups should aim to create multiple media artifacts that can be distributed throughout the announcement process, including:
Press release
News article
Social media posts
Website blog posts
Launch video
Customer testimonials
As a first step, founders should think about the story they want to convey to the public. Three key elements to any startup’s story are: 1) the founder’s journey and vision for the company, 2) the market the startup operates in and the tailwinds propelling the company’s growth, and 3) the traction/customers/proof-points that serve as leading indicators for the company’s future growth.
Crafting the press release
Even if you never publish it, creating a press release is a great foundation for your company’s strategic narrative that you’ll push as part of the announcement.
Founders should create a first draft of their press release, get feedback from key team members, and circulate it with trusted advisors with expertise in marketing/comms/PR.
A good funding announcement press release has a few key elements:
Make the company feel bigger than it really is - tell the world about the vision while making the product tangible and grounding the language in today, not the future
Explain what the product is, what types of customers use it, why they use it (and what they were doing before), and the value it provides them
Size up the market opportunity and tell how/why the product is aligned to key shifts that are transforming the market
Announce the funding round and investors who participated
Share traction metrics that are vague enough to not provide exact details on the company’s size, but specific enough to reflect traction (millions in revenue, hundreds of customers, 10x growth, etc.)
Founding team’s background and a quote from the CEO
Customer quotes about why they use the product
Tell prospective customers & employees how they can get in touch with you
A recent great example from one of my investments is Angle Health’s Series B press release.
Here is a core template:
Headline: [Company] raises $X to scale [vision] for [ICP]
Subhead: Founded by [founder], [company] is reshaping [market] with platform trusted by [customers]
Problem: Before [Company], teams had to [bad workaround]
Solution: Now they can [better outcome] with [fewer resources, less time, etc.]
Traction: Used by [range] customers across [industries]
Quote: CEO vision
Quote: Customer outcome
Executing a news strategy
Once you’ve drafted your press release, pick a news platform - TechCrunch, Axios, WSJ, etc. and pitch them the opportunity to get the exclusive on your fundraising story.
Try to find a warm intro to a journalist, because journalists who cover financing rounds are inundated with pitches. Anyone with experience in marketing/comms should have some journalist connections, but investors can often help here too.
Three rules of thumb when pitching journalists:
Offer the journalist access to an exclusive - this is an opportunity for them to publish the story before anyone else, and it makes it a more enticing pitch if they can get exclusive access to an interesting story.
Give the reporter at least a week or two heads up prior to your launch date. It needs to accommodate both their writing schedule and give them time to write the story.
Share enough information so that they can get interested in the story and agree to an exclusive. The fewer details you share up-front, the harder it can be to get the reporter attention. Offer to make the founders, investors, and key customers (if possible) available for interview.
If the journalist agrees, make sure to get aligned on an embargo date - the day of your launch - prior to which they agree to not share any information with the public. Share the press release and other information with them, and use the opportunity to get to know them.
All of that being said, if the funding round is small (sub-$3M), it will likely be challenging to get a reporter to do the story (unless there is a special hook).
In that case, the best bet is to go for daily deal newsletters. Axios Pro Rata is an example. They typically include any deal regardless of amount, but there isn’t a story - deals get one-line features in a list of deals. However, they often link to press releases that can give readers more information, and it’s better distribution than nothing.
Finally, make a decision around whether or not to publish the press release via a wire service. The upside is that each of the major media outlets focused on venture/business deals will receive the press release and can choose to publish their own article. The downside is it costs a bit of money ($1k) and it’s unlikely any news outlets pick up an article based just off the press release unless it’s a significant funding round.
PR agencies can help with all of the above, but they come with additional costs.
Writing a blog post for your website
Blog posts on startups’ website are an important part of executing an effective launch/press day. They’re often linked to via press releases, social media posts, and news stories, which gives company websites a traffic boost. If done right, that can mean prospective customers sign up for the product and potential hires apply for a job.
When writing the blog post, use the material from the press release, but throw in videos such as customer testimonials/interviews and short product demos. This makes the blog more engaging than a typical press release, and adds context for prospects.
A great recent example of a blog post I liked was Serval’s Series A funding announcement.
Once the announcement is made and the blog post is live, there should be a banner at the top of the website homepage that links to the blog post.
Ensure there is a clear call to action that allows prospects to request a demo and potential hires to apply for open roles.
Gathering customer testimonials
Customer testimonials are a great way to showcase the companies who use your product and the use cases they have for it. They become referenceable for future customers, and lend credibility to potential hires and investors.
At a minimum, quotes from key customers are helpful. If you can conduct customer interviews and string them together in a short-form video that can be shared on socials and your website, that’s even better.
Create a social media strategy
Social media offers the most upside for attention on your announcement, but it requires the most attention and creativity to drive that attention.
If you manage to get an article placed with a major news outlet, make sure you time your social media posts to coincide after the article has been published on the news outlet’s website, and make the article a key artifact you share on socials.
Launch videos have become another key artifact around startups’ fundraise announcements in 2025. If the video is short, creative, and attention-grabbing, it can drive millions of impressions. Cluely kicked off the launch video craze this year with their “cheat on everything” ad. A less controversial example for B2B businesses I like is Cofounder. If you’re looking for something more creative, I love this Kalshi commercial and Cotool’s launch video (which parodied the Deel/Rippling spy drama, which was a dominant meta narrative on tech twitter at the time).
There are lots of ways to structure an effective launch video, and in the age of AI they can be done cheaply using Veo, Nano Banana, and Adobe Premier.
Between the press release, website blog post, news article, customer testimonials, and launch video, that is a full docket of artifacts to share on launch day.
Plan out each of the social media posts ahead of time - when, where, and what will be posted. Don’t leave any decisions to make the day of the announcement.
Executing an effective Launch Day
The day before launch day, founders should send an email to employees, investors, and other relevant stakeholders letting them know you plan to make your announcement the next day.
Provide a timeframe they should expect the story to be published in the news and on your social accounts, and ask that they withhold any posts until they’ve seen you post first.
Once the story is out, amplify it by sharing the launch artifacts across your personal and company social media pages.
Once you’ve posted, send an email again to your investors, employees, customers, and other stakeholders pointing them to the news article, press release, company blog post, and your social media posts.
The email should highlight several things:
The coverage from a top business media outlet, reflecting your company’s growing leadership in the market
The capital you raised will allow you to accelerate your product roadmap to better delight your customers and continue your mission
The customer testimonials and investor relevance to the company’s mission
Links to each artifact
A call to action for them to post on their social media channels. Make sure the people in your network with the largest followings are actively posting
Examples of text they could use in their post/re-shares on social media
Follow-up the next 1-2 weeks by sharing additional artifacts beyond whatever you initially shared. Create dedicated posts focused on sharing customer stories, product demo highlights, or spotlighting the founder’s background. The goal should be riding the momentum from the announcement to maximize chances of driving inbound traffic to the company.
Closing Thoughts
Treat your funding announcement as a GTM event, with the same rigor you’d have as your sales motion or fundraising process. Funding announcements should compound brand, pipeline, hiring, and downstream capital raising - don’t waste it!
If you’ve made it this far, hopefully you’ve found this post helpful. I put together a checklist with 15 action-items from this post that startups can use to execute an effective fundraise announcement. If you’d like to get a copy of the checklist, reach out!