Investor playbook
Helping post-close
📖 10 min read · 🎯 Active investors · Updated April 2026
The cheque is necessary; it's not sufficient. Founders rank investors by usefulness, not by ownership %. Get your post-close model right and your deal flow improves on its own — founders refer founders.
The four high-leverage post-close activities
1. Hiring intros
The single most-asked-for help. Build a referral pipeline:
- Maintain a private list of 50+ operators-on-the-bench in your sectors.
- When a portfolio founder shares a job spec, forward it within 24 hours to 5 relevant people.
- Track every intro — outcome, time-to-hire, retention — to know who's actually useful.
2. Customer warmups
Warm intros to potential customers, ideally pre-qualified. Don't blast every name in your contacts; pick 2–3 specific buyers per company and write a tailored email each time.
3. Follow-on prep
Months 9–15 are the run-up to the next round. Your job: pressure-test the founder's positioning, run dry-run pitch sessions, introduce 5–10 next-stage investors before the formal process.
4. Quarterly diagnostic reviews
Not a board meeting. A 90-minute working session with founders. Topics rotate: pipeline review (Q1), org review (Q2), product strategy (Q3), fundraise prep (Q4). The cadence builds the relationship.
The "what would a great chairperson do?" filter. Before any post-close interaction, ask: does this make the founder more effective, or just more grateful? The two are not the same. Activity that's warm but not useful is theatre.
What founders actually want
From the PocketFund 2026 founder survey of 240 funded companies:
- 74% — hiring intros (engineers, then sales, then VPs)
- 61% — pre-A relationship building with next-stage investors
- 58% — sounding board for hard people decisions (firing, restructure, co-founder issues)
- 52% — customer intros
- 34% — product / strategy feedback
- 21% — board mechanics / governance help
Notable: only 12% wanted "general guidance" or "office hours". Specific, on-demand help beats vague availability.
The monthly check-in
15-minute calls. Same time each month. Two questions only:
- "What's working?" — celebrate, capture for the LP report.
- "What's hard?" — listen, surface help.
If you have nothing useful to add this month, say so. "I don't have a great answer here — let me think on it and come back next week" is a kindness. Bullshit answers cost trust.
What NOT to do
- Mass-CC intros. "I'd love to introduce you to all 12 of these people in the same email" is lazy and rarely converts.
- Follow-up requests for monthly updates 3 days late. If a founder is late, they're heads-down. Wait a week before nudging.
- Force advisory meetings. "Let me set up a call with my friend who runs sales" — without consent — wastes everyone's time.
- Push your own narrative on hires. A great VP candidate is great regardless of whether they're "your guy".
The investor's calendar
If you have 25 portfolio companies and you give each one 2 hours a quarter, that's 200 hours / year — about 4 hours a week. Bake this into your calendar from day one. Investors who under-invest in post-close fall behind on deal flow within 3 years.
Related playbooks