Should I use a broker to raise my funding round?

It’s one of the most common questions early-stage founders ask: should I hire a broker to help me raise? The short answer is no — at pre-seed and seed, at least. Here’s why, and what you should do instead.

The case against brokers at early stage

In the early stages, you are the story. No one can sell your vision better than you can, and no one should have to.

Fundraising is a sales process. You might not like sales, or be particularly good at it yet — but learning to sell is non-negotiable for any founder. You’ll need to sell to customers, to early hires, and yes, to investors. Using a broker at this stage doesn’t solve that problem; it just delays it.

There’s also the question of access. VCs are always in deal-sourcing mode. If what you’re building is interesting, you’re not bothering them by reaching out directly — finding people like you is their job.

Get help preparing your deck. Get plenty of pitch practice. But do the fundraising yourself. You learn through doing, not through outsourcing.

A practical note on workload

Fundraising at pre-seed often does become close to a full-time job. If you have a founding team, the right move is to have one founder lean heavily into the raise while the others stay focused on building the business. That split is far more effective than hiring an intermediary.

Where brokers do make sense

Later in a company’s life, the picture changes. There are situations where a broker can genuinely add value:

•       When you need access to specific pools of capital — corporate VCs, family offices, or overseas institutional funds — where warm introductions matter and cold outreach has low hit rates.

•       In structured, complex institutional rounds where running a proper process (and having someone manage it) makes sense.

Even then, the broker’s reputation and alignment matter enormously. A well-connected, fee-aligned adviser at Series B is a different proposition from a percentage-on-close broker pitching you at seed.

The bottom line

For pre-seed and seed: keep your money, keep your authenticity, and tell the story yourself. The founders who close these rounds well are almost always the ones who leaned into the process rather than outsourcing it.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.