Before Launch, Check Five Things

People often ask whether the check can be finished on the way. We say it cannot.

The line in the Institute still stands: a startup is like a spacecraft flying into unknown deep space, often with no way back. The moment a spacecraft most needs checking is while it is still on the ground. Why? Because after launch the room to intervene narrows by the day. So there are five things we check before the formal start.

One, Fuel. Two, Seals

One, fuel. What day does the cash run to? Provision for the longest route, not the smoothest one. The typical window for a round is sixty days, eight nodes meshed end to end. But when the window does not come, we have sat on the bench with a company for ten months. The optimistic case does not need checking.

Two, seals. The fine cracks in equity, terms, governance and information rights are invisible on the ground and become large holes in deep space. Most rework is not caused by a wrong direction but by one piece of wording that was never aligned. Changing a page costs about nothing. Changing a timetable is counted in months. So seal the cracks first.

Three, Supplies. Four, the Same Boat. Five, Acceleration

Three, supplies. The resupply stops have to be set before departure. And if they cannot be? Then take off later. The window does not open because you need it to.

Four, the same boat. This is the one we weigh most heavily. The expectations of existing shareholders, co-founders and the core team have to be on one table before take-off. Discord inside the boat is more trouble than the weather outside it. We hold ourselves to the same ruler. Our own capital is co-invested in the projects we serve deeply, so we worry about what the investors worry about.

Five, acceleration. The slope itself persuades. The same revenue reached in six months and in eighteen reads as two different companies. There is a background to this: AI distribution is already in place, and once something good appears it fills the market in months. Slow is not steady. Slow is showing your hand to everyone else first.

And if the check finds a problem? Do not launch yet. Some will say to set off and fix it in flight. That holds in other businesses. It does not hold on a spacecraft: what takes a day to fix on the ground takes a quarter to repay once you are up. So the evidence gets assembled before launch.

We take twenty or thirty mandates a year, half new and half old clients coming back for the next round. Check slowly and you take on fewer. But we hold in awe all the youth, effort and sunk cost a founder has put in. Once the five are checked, the ship sails. What happens on board is the next piece.