Founder Fundraising Clinic: Seed to Series A

A working clinic for African and African-diaspora women founders preparing for institutional fundraising rounds. The session focuses on the seed-to-Series-A trajectory specifically, where the structural challenges for women founders of color have documented patterns and where the practical operational work of preparing for a raise has specific components that can be developed across a structured working session.

The clinic structure is a 90-minute event with three 30-minute components. The first 30 minutes is framework-instruction: the seed-versus-Series-A investor-segmentation calibration, the round-size-and-dilution math, the metric thresholds that institutional investors expect at each stage, and the cap-table considerations that affect the subsequent fundraising trajectory. The second 30 minutes is structured deck-review: attendees submit their decks in advance and a curated subset of decks is walked through in detail with specific notes on framing, narrative, financial model, and investor-segmentation. The third 30 minutes is open Q&A with attendee-submitted specific questions about active fundraising conversations.

The clinic is led by Fatou Diallo, a partner at Sahel Capital and a senior investor with significant experience across African and pan-African fundraising rounds. Her deck-and-model feedback is direct and operationally specific. Attendees who expect affirmation will not get it; attendees who expect rigorous professional assessment will get it and will leave with a specific revision list.

Who this is for: African and African-diaspora women founders of for-profit ventures preparing for seed or Series A fundraising. Across the technology, fintech, agritech, healthtech, and consumer-internet sectors. Across the African continent, the United States, the United Kingdom, and adjacent diaspora operating contexts.

What attendees will leave with: specific deck and model revision notes for the founders whose materials were reviewed in detail. The framework as a written document covering the seed-versus-Series-A calibration. Specific investor-segmentation guidance for the attendee's specific sector and stage. Access to Fatou's individual mentor practice for one-on-one follow-up sessions for founders with active raises.

Logistics: virtual via the platform's event infrastructure. 90-minute total duration. Capacity 50; registered count tracked at the platform-event-detail level. Recording available to registered attendees only; deck-review portions of the recording are redacted or replaced with founder-presenter summaries to protect the proprietary information shared in the session.

Pre-event prep: attendees submit decks and financial models at registration; deck-review submissions are accepted up to 72 hours before the session. A curated subset is selected for detailed review during the session, with attention to variation across sectors, stages, and operating geographies. Non-selected attendees still benefit from the framework instruction and the patterns that emerge across the reviewed decks.

Post-event continuation: a follow-up monthly thread in the Finance, Investing and Wealth network and the African Women in Tech Leadership network for founders in active fundraising. Individual mentor sessions with Fatou are available through her mentor profile for founders with extended follow-up questions.

Cost: sliding-scale ticket with attention to the specific financial conditions of founders at pre-seed-and-seed stages. The pricing supports the platform's broader founder-development infrastructure. Scholarships are available for founders for whom the ticket cost is a barrier; the request is at the bottom of the registration form.

This clinic has run multiple times across the platform's events program. Attendees from prior cohorts have reported specific outcomes: completed seed and Series A rounds, modified fundraising approaches based on the framework calibration, and specific investor-introduction conversations that arose from the session networking. The clinic structure is replicable and the broader platform infrastructure supports running additional clinics as demand justifies.

The platform's broader founder-development infrastructure supports this clinic series. The Series A-to-Series B clinic runs in a separate quarterly slot for founders at a later stage. The founder peer-circle within the Social Entrepreneurship Builders and Finance Investing and Wealth networks provides ongoing peer-conversation between clinic sessions. The platform's senior-investor mentor practice provides individual follow-up sessions for founders with active raises.

The fundraising-preparation conversation has historically been carried by individual founders working with their advisors and angel investors. The clinic format provides structured senior-investor feedback that early-stage founders typically receive only after an offer process has begun. The pre-fundraising-process feedback differentiates the clinic from more typical pitch-event formats.

Registration opens four weeks before the event date and typically reaches capacity within two weeks. Cancellation policy follows the platform's standard event-cancellation framework with specific provisions for founders in active fundraising who may need to reschedule due to investor-conversation timing.

Accessibility provisions include live captioning of the framework-instruction and Q&A segments, recorded captions on the post-event recording with deck-review portions redacted as described above, and scheduled-pause-points in the discussion. The deck-review segment uses screen-sharing with live narration to support attendees with varying visual capacities.

The clinic format has evolved across multiple iterations. The early iterations were panel discussions with multiple investors; attendee feedback consistently surfaced the value of structured deck-review feedback over panel conversation, leading to the current single-investor-led structure with the deck-review segment as central.

The clinic is one component of the platform's broader founder-development infrastructure. Adjacent programming includes the Series A-to-Series B clinic for founders at later stages, the founder-mental-health peer-support circle, the annual African Founders Retreat, and individual mentor sessions with Fatou Diallo and other senior investor-and-founder members.

The clinic series has been a primary fundraising-preparation pathway for many founders in the African and African-diaspora ecosystem across the past three years. Attendees from prior clinic iterations have closed seed and Series A rounds totaling significant aggregated capital across the cohort. The clinic structure is part of the broader infrastructure-investment the platform has made in African founder development.

The platform's event registration confirmation includes a calendar invitation, the platform's video-conferencing access details, and the structured pre-event preparation checklist for founders submitting decks and financial models. The platform's broader confidentiality framework applies to all deck-review and financial-model discussion. The platform requires a signed non-disclosure acknowledgment before registered founders submit confidential materials; the NDA covers both the lead facilitator and the broader attendee cohort.

The clinic series participates in a broader African and African-diaspora founder development ecosystem. Adjacent organizations, programs, and infrastructure that founder-clinic attendees engage with include accelerator programs targeting African and African-diaspora founders, fellowship programs supporting early-stage founder development, and specific investor-development programs that the platform's broader Finance, Investing and Wealth network supports.

Members of the platform's founder-development infrastructure are encouraged to engage with the broader ecosystem alongside the clinic and its post-clinic follow-up structures. The platform's broader cohort thread shares specific external-program registrations, investor-network details, and founder-community intelligence that founder-clinic attendees report as useful for their broader fundraising work.