We tell every founder the same thing on the first call: at seed you will have an answer within fourteen days. This is not a slogan. It is a constraint we put on ourselves, and it shapes how the whole firm works.

Slow is a decision too

A fund that takes eight weeks is not being careful. It is waiting to see who else commits. That costs the founder weeks of runway and tells them nothing they can use. A slow answer is not a careful one; it is only a late one.

The work that decides a first cheque is small. Before there is revenue there is no data room worth the name. There is a founder, a problem and a reason the timing is right. Two weeks is enough to understand all three, if one person is responsible for doing it.

How the days are spent

• Day 0 is the pitch: a call, with or without a deck
• By day 2 one partner has taken the company and booked a second call
• By day 6 that partner has written the six-page memo
• Day 10 is the partner meeting, where everyone has read it
• By day 14 there is a term sheet, or a clear no with the reasons

Between the calls the partner speaks to people who have had the problem you are solving. We do the checking ourselves and do not hand it to anyone else.

What you get at the end

A no comes with the page of the memo that worried us. You may disagree with it, and some founders have come back a year later having proved that page wrong.

A yes comes with the cheque size and the price, not a range. You do not have to negotiate to find out what we meant.

You should never have to guess where you stand with us.

The other stages

The clock changes with the stage. At pre-seed there is less to read and we decide in ten days. At Series A there are customers to call and accounts to go through, and we take twenty-one. Whatever the stage, the day count starts at the first call and we tell you the date on it.