Invisible Breaks, Visible Consequences: The People Side of Fundraising

We recently kicked off our masterclass, The Invisible Breaks of Fundraising starting, naturally, with my favourite topic: People.

In our first session, a roundtable with Jash Radia FCMA (Investor & Portfolio CFO), Be Kaler Pilgrim (serial founder), Lothifa Chowdhury
(startup & scale-up expert), and myself, we shared honest, sometimes funny, but most importantly practical experiences of what it really takes to get fundraising-ready.

One clear theme emerged: fundraising acts as a stress-test for a business. The people habits set by the founding team early on tend to persist, and small cracks can shape how the organisation evolves over time (Stinchcombe, 1965).
A common “invisible break” is leadership, team, and culture not yet being set up to scale, often showing up most clearly in a few key areas:

1️⃣ Leadership misalignment
Pressure tends to bring tension to the surface. When conflict is avoided or not handled effectively, decisions slow down, credibility erodes, and leaders struggle to take the team on the fundraising rollercoaster.

What helps: be explicit about your decision-making hygiene, including who holds the final D. Build strong habits for constructive conflict and role-model them consistently to your team. Keep conversations anchored on the issue and the work at hand, rather than defaulting to process or getting pulled into relationship dynamics.

2️⃣ Talent gaps & delegation constraints
Fundraising often shines a light on talent gaps. Founders and leaders can only go as far as the team around them, and delegation becomes essential as fundraising takes on a life of its own. Weak bench strength can create delivery bottlenecks, drives rushed, reactive hiring causing friction in the team and drag founders and leaders back into firefighting.

What helps: assess the strengths and skill gaps across the team (including founders), put a hiring process in place with robust selection criteria, set out clear responsibilities, and let go of control.

3️⃣ Ambiguity in execution
When expectations, goals, and feedback aren’t clear or consistent, ambiguity creeps in. That can lead to assumptions, unclear accountability, and inconsistent delivery.

What helps: set clear, agile goals and revisit them regularly, communicate expectations explicitly, and keep feedback loops active so everyone knows where they stand.

The takeaway
People and leadership aren’t “nice-to-haves”; they’re what underpin how a business scales and performs. As a study by McKinsey found investors attribute around 65% of portfolio company failures to people and leadership issues.

The companies that raise aren’t always the ones with the flashiest idea. They’re the ones whose leadership, team, and culture are ready for what’s next.
Thoughtful attention now goes a long way later.