The call: raise, or extend the runway?
The founder of a Series A B2B SaaS company sat across from a binary decision: open a new round at today's terms, or cut burn hard enough to push the runway out by another three to four quarters. Alfred framed the question with full context on the business — ARR, growth rate, net revenue retention, gross margin, and the cash position month by month — and laid out what each path would actually cost in ownership, leverage, and optionality.
The situation
The company was roughly nine months from zero cash on its current spend. Growth was healthy but not spectacular, the market had cooled since the last round, and a strong inbound interest from one fund put a live term sheet within reach. The founder needed a clear-eyed read: take the money now and accept the dilution, or protect ownership by trimming burn and raising later from a position of strength.
Alfred pressure-tested both paths. On the raise, he ran the dilution math against the likely valuation band and showed what a 15-to-25% give-up did to the founder's stake and to the option pool. On the extend, he rebuilt the operating plan at lower burn — which roles to hold, which to defer — and stress-tested whether the slower growth would still clear the bar the next round would demand.
The conclusion was deliberate rather than reflexive: raise now, but at a tighter round size than the founder first reached for — enough to fund eighteen clean months and the two hires that actually move the metrics, without over-diluting on a market that was unlikely to re-rate soon. The founder closed on those terms and kept the runway question off the table for a year and a half.
