VC Should Be Plan F, Not Plan A: A Conversation with Kat Weaver

Kat Weaver has been on both sides of the fundraising table. She started her first company, Locker Lifestyle, in college after her valuables were stolen from a gym locker, built it into a real business, and sold it in 2022. Along the way she taught herself to pitch so well that she won 22 of the 23 pitch competitions she entered. Now she runs Power to Pitch, where she has helped founders raise tens of millions in grants and venture capital, and she has worked with everyone from scrappy startups to FedEx.

What makes Kat worth listening to is that she is not selling the fantasy. She has watched thousands of founders chase the wrong kind of money for the wrong reasons, and she is unusually direct about it. This conversation is about what founders consistently get wrong about raising capital, the psychology of investors versus what founders imagine investors want, and the emotional pressure behind fundraising that almost nobody talks about in public.

Venture capital is Plan F, not Plan A

Kat's central argument is that founders reach for venture capital first when it should be nearly last. Going the investor route is the most expensive form of capital on the food chain, and yet it is the one everyone glorifies. Her line is deliberately blunt. Venture capital should be Plan F, not Plan A.

Why is it so glorified? Because it makes the headlines. The flashy raise looks good in your feed, on the news, and on a LinkedIn profile. She has literally had a founder tell her they wanted to go the VC route so they could put it on their profile, as if it were a badge. But the headline is fleeting, and the consequences are not. Once you take that money you have legal obligations, a board to report to, and people whose personal capital is on the line. Venture math needs billion-dollar outcomes to make up for all the companies that fail, and she cites the public statistic that around 75 percent of venture-backed companies do not make it. She also points at the Forbes 30 Under 30 lists, where the honorees have collectively been charged with more in fraud than they ever raised in capital, as a sign of just how over-glorified the whole thing has become. Her takeaway is one every founder should tape to the wall. Not all money is good money.

The capital stack nobody teaches

The problem, Kat says, is that founders are never taught the other options, so they skip straight to the hardest and most expensive one. She lays out an order of capital that most people have never seen written down.

Start with customer financing and pre-sales. You can pre-sell almost anything, and if you are not willing to have those conversations with customers, that is laziness, and no investor will pay you to do the work you would not do yourself. Next come corporate grants, which she loves for companies under a million in annual recurring revenue. They are free, non-dilutive, usually between a thousand and a hundred thousand dollars, pay out in a few weeks, come with no strings on how you spend them, and often bring PR. Government grants are real too but slower and more niche. After grants comes debt, which is cheaper than equity, whether that is credit cards, lines of credit, or leverage against your presales and purchase orders. Only after all of that come individual angels and angel groups, then family offices, and finally venture capital, last, because of the extreme growth targets a fund has to hit for the math to work. The point is not that venture is bad. It is that every check from an outsider should be strategic, and there is no such thing as silent money.

Investors buy the founder before the company

Storytelling, in Kat's framing, is not a soft skill you either have or you do not. It is a life skill that can be learned, and it carries far beyond fundraising. She learned to pitch after losing her first company's inventory in a fire, starting from nothing, and drilling it through thousands of hours of reps until she was winning almost every competition she entered. Even then she would black out from nerves, wear black so the sweat would not show, and forget the first pitch entirely. The skill was built, not born.

Her clients tell her the same thing happens to them. Once they learn to pitch, their website changes, their proposals change, and they get into more retailers, because the ability to communicate clearly transcends the raise itself. And storytelling is not just the founder's origin story. Your product is a story, your target market is a story, your financials tell a story, and they should be ordered like a book so an investor can follow, repeat, and retell them on your behalf. That matters because at the earliest stages an investor is buying into the founder before the company. If you are not emulating the confidence that you will do right by their money, you will not get far, regardless of how strong the underlying business is.

The four traits she screens for

Before Power to Pitch agrees to work with a founder, Kat screens for four traits, in a specific order. Coachability first, because if someone is not coachable there is nothing she can do for them. Grit second, because a pivot or a setback is coming and the founder has to be willing to sacrifice through it. Passion third, because no investor will ever be as excited about the company as the founder is, and that energy has to originate with them. Transparency fourth, because an investor knows the growth path is a rollercoaster, not a straight line, and a founder who hides the difficulties cannot fix them.

She interviewed a lot of investors while building this list, and they named the same traits. The transparency one produces the strangest stories. One founder did not want to disclose that their co-founder was their own son, until Kat pointed out that capital providers would find out anyway through social media. Founders instinctively want to present a perfect front, and the whole point of her screen is to find the ones who will be honest about what is actually going wrong.

Relationship building beats being strong on paper

One of the puzzles Kat gets asked about is why objectively strong companies, with good revenue and retention and teams, sometimes struggle to raise, while weaker ones get funded hand over fist. Her answer is relationships built early. The founders who raise well, raise repeatedly, and get investors reinvesting and referring them are the ones who built the relationship before they needed the money. They asked for intros and help, and they told investors when something was going wrong, because that investor might have an answer or a connection.

Investors love deal flow from other investors, so a believable champion carries enormous weight. Kat describes being convinced to back a company almost entirely because a respected advisor had put their own money in first. She also points to the emotional mechanics of it, citing Rich Moy's VC Minute and his pool party concept. Nobody wants to be the first one in the water, but once the first person jumps, the second and third follow, and eventually you feel like an idiot for standing on the deck. That is why smart founders put deadlines on a raise instead of leaving it open forever, because deals close faster with a little manufactured momentum. And she is clear that angel investing is far more emotional than venture, because it is an individual's own money rather than a fund's, with no benchmarks to hit, which is exactly why she tells founders to work the angel layer before they ever get to VC.

Pitch to the person who will pitch for you

The most common mistake Kat sees is a psychological one. Around 99.9 percent of founders pitch as if they are talking to their target consumer, or to someone already inside their industry who will understand the jargon. That is the wrong audience. The most advanced founders pitch to someone who will then go and pitch their target consumer for them, on their behalf, and they know exactly who that person is.

The skill, then, is to make it simple enough that an outsider feels invited into the world and can visualize the business without needing to use the product or study a deck. She tells founders to bring it down to a level a five or ten year old could grasp. When an investor does not get it, that is not the investor being slow, it is the founder failing to communicate. Founders are too close to their own product, too passionate, and it is genuinely hard to step outside of it, which is exactly why she rates translation as one of the most advanced founder skills there is.

The lie founders tell themselves, and the TJ Maxx card

Ask Kat what lie founders tell themselves when they start raising, and she names it instantly. I will do this, or invest in myself, once I am ready or once I have more time. There is never more time and there is never a right moment. Investors want to see you build now and build the relationship now, so they can watch your growth and decide whether you are worth backing. Waiting until you feel ready is waiting forever.

She practices what she preaches, sometimes to an uncomfortable degree. Because she did not have enough business credit when she was between her first and second companies, she started Power to Pitch on her personal TJ Maxx credit card. The charge was big enough that TJ Maxx texted her to confirm it was really her. She had not told her husband yet, and when she did, he looked at her, said he believed in her, and asked what on earth was going on. She did it, she says, out of an insane belief in herself, not in the idea. She has never had an experience where investing in and betting on herself failed to pay off, a mindset she traces back to being a college athlete who knew what it took to outwork the room.

Grow until it breaks

Kat's counterintuitive definition of healthy growth is that your business should be constantly breaking. She learned it from a business coach and wishes she had heard it sooner. The goal is not to reach a state where everything is finally fixed and calm. The goal is to grow at a rate that continuously creates new problems, because a company growing 50 percent every three to six months should be breaking, and that is a great sign. She spent too long believing that if she just fixed one more thing she would feel complete, when the real work is to keep tackling bigger problems.

She also warns that quick success tends to make founders worse operators, not better, because the flashy early win sets a false expectation. And her single most important piece of advice for anyone who wants to raise within the next year is to show up online now. Investors look at your Instagram, LinkedIn, and X, and consistency there has become a real layer of credibility. Building in public brings opportunities and relationships to you. She knows founders who closed rounds from followers they built up, and she says LinkedIn changed her own life, bringing investors, speaking slots, and deal flow to her inbox without her having to ask.

Key takeaways

A few things worth keeping.

Venture is the most expensive money there is. It should be one of the last options you consider, not the first. Not all money is good money.

Learn the capital stack. Pre-sales, corporate grants, and debt all come before angels, family offices, and venture. Most founders skip straight to the hardest, most dilutive option because nobody taught them the rest.

At the early stage, investors back the founder. Before the numbers exist, they are buying your ability to tell a clear, credible story and to do right by their money.

Screen yourself on four traits. Coachability, grit, passion, and transparency, in that order. They are what experienced investors say they look for too.

Build the relationship before you need it. The founders who raise easily built trust with investors early, asked for help, and were honest about problems. That is why weaker companies sometimes out-raise stronger ones.

Frameworks worth stealing

The capital stack, in order

Work the cheapest, least dilutive money first and move up only as you have to. Customer pre-sales, then corporate grants, then debt, then individual angels and angel groups, then family offices, and venture capital last. Match the type of capital to your stage and goals rather than defaulting to the option that makes headlines.

The four-trait founder screen

Before you take someone's money, or before an investor takes a bet on you, run the screen. Coachability first, because nothing works without it. Then grit, then passion, then transparency. If you cannot be honest about what is breaking, you cannot fix it, and investors already know the path is a rollercoaster.

Pitch to your evangelist, not your customer

Stop pitching as if the room is full of your target users. Pitch to the person who will go and sell your product to those users on your behalf, and make it simple enough that an outsider can repeat it without the deck. Clarity for the non-expert is the advanced skill, not depth for the insider.

Build the relationship before the raise

Start talking to investors long before you need a check. Ask for intros and advice, share the wins and the struggles, and let them watch you grow. Deal flow that comes recommended from another investor closes faster than any cold pitch, so become the founder people want to refer.

Quotes worth keeping

The lines I wrote down.

Venture capital should be Plan F, not Plan A.

Not all money is good money.

At the really early stages, an investor is buying into the founder before the company.

There's no such thing as silent money.

And the one that reframes what growth is supposed to feel like.

If you're growing 50 percent every three to six months, the business should be breaking, and that's a great sign.

Rapid fire round

Same questions every guest. No prep, no warning. Here is how Kat handled it.

Best advice you've ever received? Everything is negotiable.

Advice you ignored or wish you had listened to? A mentor once told her she should sell her company for a dollar just to say she sold it. She got rid of that mentor quickly.

What would you tell your younger self? Invest in yourself sooner, and spend the money to do it. You are the best investment you will ever make.

Ongoing challenge that keeps you up at night? How to reach more founders while still keeping the life and balance she wants, which means building something that scales beyond her own voice. Her first company made her the face of everything, and now she is learning to grow past that.

Favorite spot? Sushi. A real treat for her, to the point that a live tuna cutting was the reward she set for hitting a business metric.

Tool you can't live without? Manus AI. She uses it to pull in and organize information, build systems and dashboards, and automate her workflow, and even had it run a task audit of her calendar to find missed opportunities.

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Kat Weaver is an exited founder and the creator of Power to Pitch, where she helps early-stage founders raise capital through clear, compelling communication. She has won more than twenty pitch competitions and helped founders raise tens of millions in grants and venture capital. Find her at powertopitch.com, on LinkedIn, or on Instagram, where she shares a free Capital Calculator to help founders figure out what and how much to raise.