Share
Since the start of 2025, I’ve had more conversations than I can count with founders who have felt the true impact of the shift in the market. Investors are taking longer to make decisions. Non-dilutive funding streams have disappeared. Customers are slower to sign on. Capital that used to flow more freely now comes with more strings attached and a sharper eye on risk.
This isn’t just a seasonal slowdown. It’s a different environment entirely.
For founders—especially those in deep tech—today’s market demands a level of preparation that used to be “nice to have” and is now absolutely essential. The bar for investment has gone up, and the scrutiny starts earlier. A few years ago, an early-stage founder in Massachusetts could walk into a meeting with a compelling vision, a promising technology, and a general plan for how it might reach the market. If the idea was strong enough, they could get funding to figure the rest out along the way.
That era is gone.
Now, we, as investors, want to see a clear sequence of de-risking milestones and evidence that a founder knows exactly what will get them from prototype to product, from idea to revenue. They want to see that regulatory pathways have been mapped, not just guessed at. They want a story that connects technical milestones directly to commercial traction. And they want to see governance habits—clean data rooms, transparent reporting—before the first check is written.
For founders who have been through multiple cycles or who are already plugged into strong investor networks, this is a challenge they can rise to. For first-time founders, and especially those from underrepresented backgrounds who may not have those networks, the new bar can feel like a wall.
In my time with MassVentures, I’ve seen talented founders with transformative technologies struggle to get traction in this climate—not because the market doesn’t need their solution, but because they can’t get past the preparation gap. They’re pitching too early, without the artifacts that build investor conviction. They’re not able to translate their technical expertise into an investable story.
This is where preparation changes everything.
When a founder walks into the room with a regulatory brief that outlines costs, timelines, and potential roadblocks… when they can point to real customer discovery data instead of anecdotal conversations… when their financial model is grounded in actual supply chain realities… the conversation shifts. It’s not about the pitch, it’s about the story. Instead of spending the meeting trying to convince the investor that their technology could work, they’re talking about how they’re going to bring it to market and what the capital will accomplish. That’s the difference between a polite pass and a real path forward.
At Founders School, we see our role as making sure founders are ready for this tougher environment—because it’s not going away anytime soon. We work with them to map the milestones that matter most to investors, run structured customer discovery, prepare regulatory strategies, and establish governance habits from the start.
The result? When our founders sit down with investors, they’re not hoping to be believed. They’re getting into some of our country’s most competitive accelerator programs and they are showing proof that they’re ready to execute.
This is also why I think the “funding slowdown” narrative misses the full picture. Yes, capital deployment has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. Money is still moving toward founders who can present a clear, de-risked plan for building something valuable. The difference is that there’s less tolerance for uncertainty and less appetite for “figure it out later.”
For founders, that means you have to close the preparation gap before you start the funding conversation. For investors, it means looking for signals of readiness—not just in the technology, but in the way the founder thinks, plans, and communicates. The market may be tough right now, but tough markets have a way of sharpening the best founders. The ones who adapt—who do the work to prepare at a higher level—are the ones who will not only survive this cycle but be in the strongest position when the next wave of capital flows more freely.
And that’s what we’re building toward at Founders School: founders who can not only get through today’s market, but come out the other side stronger, faster, and ready to scale.
If you’re an investor looking for founders who are already prepared for this climate—or a founder who wants to be—you know where to find us.
Sep 9, 2025