How long should a pre-seed fundraising workshop be?

Two hours is the sweet spot for a single working session: long enough for four hands-on exercises with real artifacts, short enough to hold attention. If you have a cohort over a full program, split this into two or three sessions and add a peer pitch rehearsal. The rule that matters more than length is ratio: keep founders doing the work at least half the time rather than watching slides.

What should founders actually produce in the session?

Concrete artifacts they keep: their own round number tied to a runway and a milestone, a simple cap-table calculation showing what a SAFE cap does to their ownership, a check of their cumulative SAFE dilution against the warning zone, and a first drafted investor email. A workshop that ends with notes but no artifacts has taught about fundraising rather than taught fundraising.

How do I teach SAFEs and cap tables without losing non-technical founders?

Use one worked example with round numbers and have every founder compute their own version alongside you, rather than explaining the concept abstractly. Start with a single SAFE and a cap, show the ownership it locks, then add a second SAFE to show stacking. Doing the arithmetic once on their own company removes far more fear than any slide, and it surfaces the questions founders are too shy to ask cold.

What is the most common mistake facilitators make?

Lecturing. Most fundraising workshops are a person talking through slides while founders passively listen, which produces recognition without ability. The fix is to convert every teaching point into an exercise the founder does on their own numbers. The facilitator's job is to frame, prompt, and correct, not to perform. Aim for founders working more than half the total time.

Can I run this without being a fundraising expert myself?

Yes, if you use a structured agenda and worked examples and let peer discussion carry part of the load. You are facilitating practice, not delivering original expertise. A clear run of show, a couple of prepared numeric examples, and good prompting questions let a program lead run a strong session. Bring in an experienced founder or investor for the pitch-and-objection segment if you want an outside voice.

How to Run a Pre-Seed Fundraising Workshop: A Facilitator's Timed Agenda and Exercises for First-Time Founders

Run a pre-seed fundraising workshop as a two-hour working session, not a lecture. Frame the raise briefly, then take founders through four hands-on exercises: sizing the round, modeling SAFE dilution, checking the SAFE stack, and drafting outreach. Each produces a real artifact. Founders should leave with their own round number, their cap-table math, and a first investor email drafted.

The reason most fundraising workshops fail to change what founders do is that they teach about fundraising instead of teaching fundraising. A person talks through slides, founders nod, and a week later nobody can size their own round. The fix is structural: convert every teaching point into an exercise the founder runs on their own company, and measure the session by the artifacts it produces. This is a runnable plan to do that, timed to two hours, with the exercises and the facilitator prompts spelled out.

The principle: artifacts over slides

Before the agenda, the rule that governs it. A founder who has computed their own dilution once understands SAFEs better than one who has seen ten slides about them. So the design target for every segment is a work product the founder keeps: a number, a calculation, a draft. If a segment does not end in an artifact, cut it or convert it. The best treatment of what to teach across a whole program is how to teach first-time founders fundraising as a sequenced curriculum; this piece is the single-session, hands-on companion to it.

The two-hour run of show

Here is the minute-by-minute agenda. Times assume a small group, six to twelve founders. Scale the exercise minutes up for a larger cohort.

Segment	Minutes	Exercise	Artifact produced
Frame and diagnostic	0-15	Each founder writes their raise number and why	A starting number to pressure-test
Size the round	15-40	Runway and milestone math	A defensible round size
SAFE dilution	40-70	Compute ownership after one SAFE cap	A cap-table calculation
The SAFE stack	70-90	Add SAFEs, check cumulative dilution	A stack check against the warning zone
Outreach	90-110	Draft one investor email	A first cold or warm email
Commit and close	110-120	Each founder states one next action	A committed next step

Frame and diagnostic (0-15)

Open by asking every founder to write down, privately, how much they plan to raise and one sentence on why. Collect the range out loud. You will see numbers all over the map with weak justifications, which is the point: it creates the felt need for the next 90 minutes. Do not correct anyone yet. The gap between their number and their reasoning is the tension the workshop resolves.

Size the round (15-40)

Teach round sizing as runway-to-milestone, not as a round number founders copy from headlines. Walk one worked example: monthly burn, months of runway you want, and the specific milestone that runway has to buy. Then have each founder compute their own. The teaching point is that a pre-seed should buy 18 to 24 months and a concrete proof point, and the artifact is a round size each founder can defend. Ground the exercise in how much to raise at pre-seed, which gives you the framing to hand out.

SAFE dilution (40-70)

This is the segment founders fear, so make them do the arithmetic once on their own company. Use one worked example: a $500K SAFE at a $6M post-money cap locks the investor near 8.3 percent, which comes straight off founder ownership. Then every founder computes their own version with their own numbers. Keep it to a single SAFE and a cap first. For the underlying mechanics you can point them to afterward, cap table math for first-time founders walks the same calculation step by step. Carta's pre-seed funding guide and CRV's cap tables explained are solid external references to leave with the group.

The SAFE stack (70-90)

Now add a second and third SAFE and show how ownership stacks. The teaching point that sticks: the danger is rarely one SAFE, it is the stack, and cumulative SAFE dilution in the 20 to 25 percent range before a priced seed is a widely cited warning zone. Have founders add up their planned SAFEs and see where they land. Several will be surprised. The artifact is a stack check that tells them whether their planned raise is quietly overcommitting the cap table before the priced round arrives.

Outreach (90-110)

Shift from math to motion. Have each founder draft one investor email in the room, 80 to 130 words, using a simple structure: the specific reason for that investor, one plain sentence on what they build, two or three points of progress, and a clear ask. Then pair founders to read each other's out loud. Hearing it read back is the fastest edit. The artifact is a first email they can send that week.

Commit and close (110-120)

End with each founder stating one concrete next action out loud, a commitment device that lifts follow-through. Send them out with the artifacts they built and a short reading path.

Common failure modes to avoid

Three things sink these sessions. Lecturing, which you avoid by holding founders in exercises more than half the total time. Abstraction, which you avoid by always working real numbers on real companies rather than hypotheticals. And myth reinforcement, where founders arrive with wrong beliefs the session never surfaces. A useful pre-read or opener is the pre-seed fundraising myths your founders believe, which lets you clear the biggest misconceptions before the exercises land on top of them. The whole approach, plan the raise then practice it, is the spine of The Funding Framework, and a workshop is simply that framework run live with a room of founders.

The one-line version

Design the session so founders leave holding four things they made themselves: a defensible round number, their own SAFE dilution math, a stack check, and a drafted investor email. Teach by making them do the work, keep every segment tied to an artifact, and the workshop will change what they do on Monday instead of just what they know.