Capital-intensive startups in sectors like clean tech, energy, and hardware face unique fundraising challenges often overlooked by standard SaaS-focused advice. This guide highlights key differences, common pitfalls, and tailored strategies – helping founders target the right investors, set realistic milestones, and navigate complex regulatory and operational landscapes successfully.

SEIS and EIS can boost your appeal to UK investors – but they’re not the only way to raise capital in the UK, and you can approach the topic in your pitch with or without eligibility. This guide breaks down how to leverage your eligibility (or navigate around it), with practical tactics and support from Pitchwits.

At Pitchwits, we help pre-seed founders assess their investor-readiness. Take the time to reflect on each of these key eight questions to evaluate your startup’s strengths, gaps, and growth potential – so you can approach investors with clarity, confidence and a compelling case for funding.

Part 2 guides founders to avoid common startup traps – premature scaling, vanity metrics, and generic stories – by focusing on real needs and learning. Pitchwits partners with startups to sharpen your narrative and strategy, helping you build investor-ready pitches that inspire confidence and support resilient growth across all fundraising stages.

Many founders fall into the cargo cult trap – mimicking startup signals and chasing investor optics instead of focusing on real progress and unique business needs. This leads to generic pitches, misaligned metrics, and lost confidence. The Pitchwits team helps you identify the cargo cult risks in your business.

Founders often cling to early certainty – but building a successful startup requires treating ideas as hypotheses, not dogma. At Pitchwits, we coach founders to test assumptions, measure outcomes over outputs, and model a culture where learning from failure is praised.

Founder-led sales are crucial for early growth, offering deep customer insight and rapid feedback. But they don’t scale. The Pitchwits team identifies how, when and why founders can move to successful team-led sales.

Diversification can fuel growth, or derail focus. The Pitchwits team breaks down five common founder motivations behind diversification and how to navigate them wisely to help you stay strategic, not reactive.

VC funding can be transformative and painful. Before diving in, ask yourself some tough questions. At Pitchwits, we help startups build thoughtful, tailored fundraising strategies, whether that means VC, grants, or going it alone. Explore the trade-offs and find what’s right for your business.