Your first capital raise shouldn’t feel like your first capital raise.

The first round is when the stakes are at their highest.

Cap tables, term sheets, diligence depth, the language of follow-ups, the order of meetings, the difference between an investor who’s curious and one who’s going to write a check. Every piece of a financing has a learning curve. Your first time through is when those pieces are most opaque, and also when getting them right matters most.

We’ve been in the seat you’re in.

Ben Shaw has raised over $1.3 billion across thirteen companies, four of them as CFO. The original Rockpiper Group, which he founded in 2009, was a boutique consultancy doing exactly this work: capital strategy and process management for founders. The current firm applies that same playbook with a deeper bench around it.

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What working with us looks like.

An honest readiness assessment first. We won’t put you in front of investors before you’re ready, and we’ll tell you straight what’s missing. Translation of your deck, numbers, story, and data room into the language investors actually use. Coaching for the meetings themselves: what to expect, how to read the room, how to follow up. And steady hands on the process from term sheet through wire (pipeline management, diligence response, vendor coordination) so the round doesn’t break on operational details.

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You stay in the chair.

The CEO of the company is still you. We don’t take meetings on your behalf, we don’t solicit investors as a placement agent, and we don’t paper over the parts of your story that aren’t yet strong. We help you become the kind of CEO who walks into the room sharper, more prepared, and harder to dismiss.