Three ways to work with me on your fundraise.
Which way of working fits your stage, how we work, what it costs.
You're reading this because we have been in touch about your round, or because one of your investors sent you this page, and you want to know how working with me looks in practice. There are three ways to work with me. Below: the fit for each, the investment, and a few results.
Who I am
Former VC, CEO and founder.
As an investor: Venture Partner at EQT Ventures, Senior Advisor at No Label Ventures, Managing Director at Samsung NEXT Ventures, Managing Partner at Delin Ventures and Bauer Venture Partners.
As an operator: Managing Director at Microsoft ScaleUp, Wix and C3 Creative Code and Content, Europe's leading content marketing agency. And founder of several startups.
I don't know anyone else in Europe who brings all of this to a founder's raise.
And I stay in the background. The founder leads. The deal closes.
I work with companies that have a technology core: software, AI, deep tech, biotech, hardware, and everything in between.
I also host DEALMACHER, a German-language podcast where I talk with leading investors and dealmakers about how they really decide. Guests include Filip Dames (Cherry Ventures), Philipp Möhring (Tiny Ventures), Dominik Stein (EQT Ventures), Robin Haak (Robin Capital) and Daniel Keiper-Knorr (Speedinvest).
My role in your raise
Some CEOs hand their round to a bank or a corporate finance advisor. My conviction is that the CEO has to run the raise, personally. Investors read it as a signal: a founder who wins them without a middleman can do it again in the next round. A banker in between blurs that signal.
But running it yourself does not mean running it alone. An investment bank does the work for you. A pitch coach polishes your story and stops there. I do neither: I make you better at every step, from the first line of the equity story to the last call before signing, and you stay the one in front of the investor.
That is the gap. I fill it in three ways of working together, depending on your stage, needs and budget. The full picture is in my Fundraising & Capital Advisory deck.
At a glance
1. FundraisingCOUP
The group program: for founders who want to build the skill for this round and every round after.
You get my 4P content system (People, Psychology, Pitch & Communication, Process), a weekly live call with me and a couple of other founder teams, and a community where I answer between calls. Deck, story, verbal pitch, data room, investor emails, tactics: everything gets tested before an investor sees it.
Most founders in the program raise between €1M and €20M. Some join while already raising, others 6 to 12 months ahead.
Full details and FAQs: FundraisingCOUP program overview. The program website, with founder voices and my video walkthrough: fundraisingcoup.com
€10,500 net upfront, one-time. Or €7,500 net upfront plus €6,000 once you raise at least €100,000.
2. 1:1 Fundraising Advisory
The 1:1 format: you and me, on a monthly retainer, for the whole round. For CEOs who want a senior advisor next to them from round preparation to first investor contact to signing.
I'm the red phone
A term sheet lands at 10pm, a lead goes quiet, a partner meeting is tomorrow morning. You pick up the phone or write me on WhatsApp, and you get an answer. For my founders I'm the number one shortcut during the raise.
Four slots, no more
The red phone only works if I can pick it up. So I run at most four 1:1 mandates at a time. When they're full, they're full, and a new one opens when a round closes.
Two hours a week, a format proven over many rounds
In most cases 1 hour live and 1 hour asynchronous. For most cases, this is the exact right amount. In the first weeks it's often more live: we need to talk a lot to build the equity story, design the process, rehearse the pitch. As the round moves, the weight tends to shift to asynchronous: feedback on documents, review of investor emails, a WhatsApp question before a negotiation.
From story to close, in three layers
- Equity story: built with FORGE, my four-layer equity story framework.
- Process: designed with my 4P framework, from investor targeting and data room (sometimes I even do and record customer calls) to timing, orchestration and the psychology of a competitive round.
- You in the room: pitch delivery, executive presence, negotiation tactics, handling existing investors, board and stakeholder management.
Plus full access to the FundraisingCOUP content and frameworks.
Intros
Not part of the retainer. Building your investor access is your job as CEO, and one of the things we work on. In selected cases, though, when the founder wants it, I introduce investors from my network, agreed separately.
The math
Put €24,000 next to the round you're raising. One term improved, one more investor in the process, one month less on the road: each one alone pays for the retainer many times over. And you run the round with someone who has been through it many times, from both sides of the table, instead of on your own.
€6,000 net per month, minimum 4 months.
3. Focused Sprints
Intensive sessions for one specific challenge: pressure-testing an equity story, preparing a decisive partner meeting, or restarting a process that has stalled.
Sprints are the exception for me. A round is rarely won in a few hours. Most raises need weeks of work on story, process and presence in the room, and I want every engagement to end as a success case. So sprints fit when the groundwork is done and one specific piece needs a senior eye. They don't include access to my frameworks.
On request. Selected engagements only.
Selected results
A few cases, labeled by format. More on fundraisingcoup.com and in the advisory deck.
Malte Kosub wanted a €12.5M Series A. He raised €20M in 2.5 months, with EQT Ventures and Mosaic. Later: €66M Series B, €105M Series C, $350M Series D from General Catalyst, Altimeter and Reid Hoffman. Today a $3BN unicorn. Malte's own number for the return on the program: 70,000x. Listen to my podcast with Malte (in German), a fundraising masterclass many VCs forwarded to their portfolio companies.
Anna Bojic needed $8M in a hard market with a topic that wasn't trendy. She raised it, led by Earlybird. Anna afterwards: “This would not have been possible without Iskender.”
More than €100M raised. The hardest part was the story: a technology so complex that explaining it was the biggest hurdle of the raise. The round is not announced yet.
René Fergen aimed for a €3M seed. He closed €6.5M, oversubscribed, via the program. For his Series A in 2026 he came back for 1:1 advisory and raised €13M in a crowded legaltech market.
Moritz Maier set out to raise a €25M Series B with a strong vision and weak perception. We reframed the story from “promising tech” to “inevitable infrastructure” and built a data room that answered diligence before the questions came. Result: €35M, heavily oversubscribed, on attractive terms. “Best data room we've seen.” (Partner at a leading growth VC)
€50M round, more than planned, closed out of a highly competitive process with several term sheets from top European growth investors. The round is not announced yet.
Next step
If one of the three ways of working together fits your stage and your budget, just reply to my email: tell me which one, and we set up a first call to get to know each other. For 1:1, tell me your timing too, so I know whether a slot is open when you need it.
