Raising your first round can feel like running a marathon without a map — every turn looks promising until it doesn’t. The right fundraising services can make the route shorter, but with more than a hundred consultancies, brokers, and advisors across the UK, the challenge is knowing which actually add value.
After a sharp fall in early-stage deal volume — down 15% in 2024 according to the British Business Bank — competition for funding has intensified. In this market, having an expert network and a well-prepared strategy can mean the difference between a round that drags for months and one that closes fast with aligned investors.
A fundraising service (sometimes called a startup fundraising consultant) helps early-stage founders prepare for and execute an investment round. They combine investor knowledge, financial modelling, and pitch readiness to improve your odds of success. Typical projects range from £2,000 to £25,000, and many work on a mix of fixed fees and success-based commissions.
Beyond introductions, strong fundraising consulting services bring structure and credibility — tightening your narrative, building data rooms, and positioning you to attract the right investors faster. The best advisors act as an extension of your founding team, offering guidance that’s hard to replicate through informal networks or generic crowdfunding platforms.
Most fundraising consultants specialise. Some focus on deep-tech or AI, where investor due diligence is data-heavy and timelines are long. Others work in healthtech or clean energy, where regulation and grant funding overlap with equity capital. A London-based consultancy might leverage its access to angel syndicates, while regional firms often cater to pre-seed startups with limited traction but strong technical talent.
Expect each to set its own filters — stage, sector, and minimum raise size. Understanding those boundaries upfront helps you avoid mismatched expectations and wasted time.
Before engaging any service, check three things:
Profile match – Do they regularly work with startups at your stage and sector?
Engagement style – Are they hands-on (weekly calls, pitch prep) or more transactional?
Fee structure – Are costs fixed, success-based, or a mix of both?
If you’re pre-revenue and time-poor, choose a partner that’s efficient and transparent about what they deliver — not one that promises access without clarity. For founders with traction, a specialist who can refine your investor story may justify a higher fee.
Fundraising will always demand effort, but it shouldn’t demand guesswork. With the right service and a clear sense of fit, you can spend less time chasing leads and more time building momentum. The smarter you plan your raise, the faster you’ll reach the investors who actually fit your vision.
Our mission is to connect startup founders with strategic investors worldwide, in order to maximize fundraising success.
We've built up a network of investors all around the world, and we're putting it to work on innovative, high-impact projects.
We focus on Seed and Series A projects with positive societal and environmental impacts, driving progress that benefits both people and the planet.
Join us at Awake Partners to turn visionary ideas into global success stories and create meaningful connections that spark innovation and drive positive change.
Together, we believe in the vibrancy of the UK’s small and medium businesses. Post-Brexit and in the middle of a pandemic, the country desperately needs to find leadership and inspiration from this sector.
Since 2008 we saw the collapse in commercial support that the high street banks had been offering to the SME business sector. As the banks struggled to rebuild their own balance sheets, they pushed up the cost of finance to SMEs when rates were at a record low for everyone else.
We didn’t like that. So we created Funding Nav to help SME clients compete on even terms for funding and marketing. If a business can’t grow due to a lack of capital, funding, vision or sales, we can remove those constraints.
We are a full-service advisory exclusively working with Start-ups, Founders, SMEs, and Scale-ups to assist and enable you to be investor-ready prior to presenting to our investment community and panel of focused engaged investors.
With over 30 years’ experience, we offer real advice and support based on our expertise in improving investment decks and presentations, from full preparation, research, and design of Pitch Decks, Investment Memorandums, Pitch Presentations, and MVP R&D design & development, R&D Tax Credits, full or P/T Board Advisory including NEDS and Chairs as your business grows and scales.
Our Panel members consist of leading investment sector professionals Angels, HNW, VC, PE, etc
DR-Ventures is a strategic growth advisory firm supporting technology businesses from early-stage startups to venture capital funds and family offices since 2022.
We specialize in investor relations, education and mentorship, round modeling, and growth strategy.
Advisory, Finance and Wealth services and expertise for SMEs in the consumer, Climate, Technology & Data, Property and Health & Life Sciences sectors.
Have you had a good or bad experience raising recently?
Leave a verified review of a previous service and get one month’s free access to ThatRound.
LeaVE A REVIEW