Investor Matthew Le Merle Backed 80 Unicorns. This Is What Founders Get Wrong About Fundraising
What if the reason investors reject your company has less to do with your product and more to do with what you failed to tell them in the first minute?
Matthew has spent decades on both sides of strategy and capital. His team's investment strategies have exposure to more than 1,500 companies, including over 80 unicorns. Before investing full time, he advised major companies and leadership teams through firms including McKinsey, Kearney, and Monitor.
Yet one of his most valuable observations for founders has nothing to do with blockchain, AI, or predicting the next technology wave.
It is about something far more immediate.
Why investors say no.
Your Pitch May Be Solving The Wrong Problem
Picture the fundraising meeting.
You have prepared for weeks.
You know the market.
You know the product.
You know the technology.
You can explain why customers need it, why competitors are vulnerable, and why your solution is better.
You walk into the room believing your job is to explain all of that as convincingly as possible.
And that may be exactly where the trouble starts.
Matthew has watched thousands of CEOs and founders present to investors. His observation is painfully simple:
“Fundraising is not about you.”
Most founders enter the room prepared to answer one question:
Why is my company exciting?
The investor is asking something different:
Why should I put my capital at risk here instead of somewhere else?
That gap can kill a fundraising conversation before the founder even realizes the investor has mentally checked out.
The Investor Starts Closer To No Than Yes
Here is the uncomfortable part.
Founders often enter the room excited.
Investors often enter the room skeptical.
Matthew explains that many professional investors may see 100 opportunities and invest in only one or two.
That means rejection is not an unusual outcome.
It is the default operating environment.
As Matthew puts it:
“90% of the time and more they're looking for reasons to say no.”
Think about what that means for your pitch.
You are not starting from neutral.
You are overcoming resistance.
And the resistance is not personal. It is structural.
The investor has limited capital, limited attention, competing opportunities, portfolio requirements, risk thresholds, and an obligation to eventually generate a return.
The founder who ignores that reality may spend ten minutes passionately explaining a product to someone who mentally decided no in minute one.
The Hidden Skeleton In Your Fundraising Story
At Deep Wealth, we talk about skeletons as weaknesses hiding inside a business that reduce profits, growth, deal certainty, or enterprise value.
A weak fundraising narrative can become one of those skeletons.
Not because your company is weak.
Because the story is incomplete.
Matthew says founders are generally comfortable talking about the product. The breakdown often happens when the conversation moves beyond it.
How much capital will the company require?
Can the economics work?
Can the company scale?
Can its advantage be defended?
What could the eventual exit look like?
Most importantly, how does the investor make money?
Matthew says:
“That back end, most entrepreneurs forget altogether.”
That is not a presentation mistake.
That is a capital formation mistake.
And depending on where you are in the company-building journey, it can become a growth mistake.
The funding you fail to attract today may delay hiring, distribution, product development, acquisitions, market expansion, or the very inflection point that could have changed your trajectory.
Stop Pitching Your Company And Start Seeing Through Their Eyes
Here is the only in Deep Wealth reframe.
A fundraising pitch and a future buyer narrative share the same fundamental discipline.
You must stop looking at your company exclusively through your own eyes.
The founder naturally sees sacrifice, opportunity, innovation, customer impact, and years of work.
The person across the table sees risk, alternatives, economics, strategic fit, and potential return.
Neither perspective is wrong.
But only one controls whether that person writes the check.
This is why thinking like a future buyer or investor is so powerful.
It forces you to ask a better question:
What must be true for the person across the table to want this opportunity?
That changes your presentation.
It changes which facts deserve the first minute.
It changes how you frame risk.
It changes how you describe your X-Factors.
And it exposes the gaps you were hoping enthusiasm would cover.
Your First Minute Is More Expensive Than You Think
Matthew describes the founder's challenge with brutal clarity.
You have to overcome as many major objections as possible very quickly.
Team.
Opportunity.
Solution.
Scalability.
Profit potential.
Defensibility.
Capital efficiency.
Exit potential.
Not with a 40-slide data dump.
With clarity.
The goal is not to answer every possible question immediately.
The goal is to create enough credibility that the investor stops searching for the polite exit and starts wondering whether this could be one of the rare opportunities worth pursuing.
Matthew describes that shift:
“This could be a situation that I might say yes to.”
That is the moment you want.
The investor leans in.
Now you have earned attention.
And attention is the gateway to everything that follows.
Timing, Future-View, and the Unicorn Pattern
Entrepreneurs need a clear view of the future and the inevitable directions of travel. Digitalization of everything is one. Clean energy, fully bioengineered personalized medicine, and space are others. Most innovation improves existing products and services—faster, cheaper, easier—rather than inventing entirely new categories. The rare “Steve Jobs wow” moments exist, but they are exceptions.
Across the companies he has seen, patterns emerge. Early stage: great founders who can articulate the opportunity and overcome objections. Seed to Series A: a working product that real customers will pay for. Mid-stage and beyond: the quality of the investors you attract becomes the biggest differentiator. Top-tier capital and boards compound advantage. Average capital does not.
The Dangerous Founder Assumption
There is another trap here that goes far beyond fundraising.
Successful founders often assume that because they understand the value of their company, other people will understand it too.
They will not.
Employees do not automatically see what you see.
Customers do not.
Investors do not.
Future buyers certainly do not.
Value must be translated into the language of the person evaluating it.
That is why narrative matters so much.
Your company may contain extraordinary Rembrandts, unique capabilities, intellectual property, customer relationships, data, talent, positioning, recurring revenue, or market advantages.
Yet a Rembrandt nobody recognizes can be treated like an ordinary painting.
The economic value exists only when the other side understands why it matters to them.
The Investor You Choose Can Change Your Future
There is another insight from Matthew that founders should not miss.
Getting capital is not the finish line.
Who provides it matters.
As companies move beyond the earliest stages, Matthew argues that the quality of investors can become one of the biggest differentiators in determining which companies break away from the pack.
That should change how founders think about fundraising.
The objective is not merely to get someone to say yes.
It is to attract the right yes.
Capital can bring introductions, credibility, strategic guidance, recruiting leverage, follow-on financing, market access, and future buyer visibility.
The wrong capital can create an entirely different set of problems.
This is why the best deal is rarely just about the highest number on the term sheet.
The people around the table matter.
Their incentives matter.
Their capabilities matter.
Their time horizon matters.
Their alignment with where you want the company to go matters.
Your Vision Still Has To Fit The Investment Clock
Founders are told to think big.
Matthew agrees, with an important qualification.
Your vision should be future back, but an investor still needs to see a credible path within a timeframe they can underwrite.
For venture investors, Matthew points toward a five-to-ten-year horizon.
Go too short and the opportunity may look ordinary.
Go too far into the future and your vision becomes speculation.
That tension matters.
Great founders see around corners.
Investable founders also explain how the company gets from here to there.
The vision creates excitement.
The path creates confidence.
You need both.
Before Your Next Fundraising Meeting
Before you rehearse another slide deck, ask yourself a harder set of questions.
If I were the investor, where would I say no?
What risk have I ignored because I know the business too well?
Can I explain why this company can scale?
Can I explain why the advantage is defensible?
Can I show how capital will be used efficiently?
Can I articulate the economic outcome without making fantasy projections?
Most importantly, can I answer the question hiding underneath every fundraising conversation:
What's in it for the investor?
That is not abandoning your story.
It is finally telling the complete story.
Hear The Full Conversation Before Your Next Pitch
Matthew Le Merle brings decades of investor experience into a conversation that moves well beyond fundraising into AI, blockchain, digitalization, investor selection, timing, and the autonomous digital economy.
But for a founder raising capital, the lesson alone is worth the listen.
Your company can be excellent and still receive a no.
Your product can be impressive and still receive a no.
Your vision can be enormous and still receive a no.
Because investors are not investing in your enthusiasm.
They are evaluating whether your opportunity belongs in their portfolio.
Because the expensive mistakes in business are rarely the ones you already understand. They are the blind spots you do not see until somebody who has been on the other side of the table points them out.
And if you want to go beyond recognizing those blind spots and build a company that is profitable now, stronger tomorrow, and positioned for investors or a future buyer, that is exactly the deeper work behind Deep Wealth Mastery.
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In 90 days, Deep Wealth Mastery helps you uncover the blind spots, profit leaks, and hidden strengths that make your company stronger, more profitable, and more valuable.
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