How AI Can Transform Your Fundraising Process

We recently invited Danny Setiawan to run an interactive workshop with founders and entrepreneurs about using AI in fundraising. Having raised capital for my previous startup, I can't say I was the most efficient in my process back then. It was great to see how today's AI tools can streamline what used to be an incredibly time-consuming and often frustrating journey. It’s still going to be a full-time job, but it will be a lot less frustrating experience.

The session was designed to help founders understand where AI can actually be useful in fundraising, how to audit and improve pitch decks using these tools, and see live demonstrations of effective prompting techniques.

If you don't have time to watch the full video, I've pulled out the key insights below that could save you weeks of work.

The Four Areas Where AI Actually Helps

1. Investor Research

This is probably where I wasted the most time. You end up pitching to investors who don't even invest in your stage or sector, or worse, you miss out on perfect matches because you simply didn't know they existed.

Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini can analyze investor portfolios, extract their investment theses, and help you filter for the right targets. Instead of spending hours manually researching each firm's website and portfolio, you can automate the matching process to focus on investors who actually make sense for your business.

2. Pitch Development

Your pitch deck needs to tell a clear story around "Why this? Why now? Why you?" You need to keep in mind that you're not pitching to customers, you're pitching to investors. The language, focus, and structure need to be completely different.

This is where AI really shines. You can get feedback on your storytelling structure, spot missing elements, and identify poor narrative flow. One particularly useful approach is to prompt AI to simulate how a busy VC with only two minutes might react to your deck. It's brutal but honest feedback that can save you from real-world rejections.

3. Financials and Data Room Prep

Market sizing, competitive analysis, and financial projections take a long time to build. AI can help with market research, create visualizations of your financial projections, and even help you organize your due diligence materials so they don't look like a mess when investors start asking for details.

4. Outreach and Relationship Management

Template-based emails to investors produce limited results. You need to be personal without being creepy, show you've done your homework without being obvious about it, and somehow stand out from the hundreds of other emails they receive.

AI can help personalize outreach based on an investor's background, manage your CRM and follow-up sequences, and even adapt to their communication style. One founder in the workshop shared how they used AI to write outreach emails in an investor's specific linguistic style. Apparently this investor was into NLP and even astrology, so they tailored their approach accordingly. It sounds quirky, but it worked.

Live Pitch Deck Audit

During the workshop, we watched Danny use Claude to review a real pitch deck in real-time. He prompted the AI to act like a VC quickly scanning between meetings and asked for a score from 0-10, specific improvement suggestions, and an effort-versus-impact analysis.

The key question to ask AI is: "Why not lower? What can I fix to go from a 4 to a 6?" This forces the AI to be specific about actionable improvements rather than generic feedback.

AI is also great at identifying blind spots: missing sections like go-to-market strategy, competitive moats, or unclear use of funds that you might have overlooked because you're too close to your own business.

Making It Look Professional with Design Tools

Tools like Gamma can take your rough content and turn it into something that actually looks investor-ready. It's not perfect for deep content work, but it's incredibly fast for visual polish.

The workflow that seems to work best is starting with structure and content in Claude or ChatGPT, using Gamma to make it look professional, then feeding it back to Claude for scoring and refinement. Other tools worth considering are Beautiful.ai, Canva, and Figma AI if you want more design control.

Getting Better at Prompting

The quality of your AI output depends entirely on how well you prompt it. Roleplay prompts work incredibly well. For example, you can say "act as a busy VC with 2 minutes between meetings.” it’ll give you much better feedback than "Review my pitch deck" prompt.

For quick feedback and brainstorming, zero-shot prompting (just asking directly) works fine. But for deeper analysis, like detailed pitch reviews or complex financial modeling, you want to use multi-shot prompting with examples and extended thinking.

If you're using tools like Claude regularly, setting up system prompts or projects can maintain context across conversations, which is incredibly useful for iterative deck improvements.

Don't Rely on Just One AI

The workshop team tested the same prompts across Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok. Each AI has its own personality and strengths. Claude tends to be better for structure and detailed analysis, while ChatGPT might give you more creative approaches to storytelling.

The smart move is using multiple models in parallel to triangulate quality. If all the AIs are giving you similar feedback, you probably need to listen. If they're split, that tells you something too.

Personalizing Outreach at Scale

Run your investor lists through AI tools five names at a time for the best results. You can customize outreach based on their past investments, blog posts they've written, their fund's thesis, and even their communication quirks.

One founder created a spreadsheet system where AI generated personalized emails, one-pagers, and even custom slide decks for different investors. It sounds like a lot of work upfront, but it's far more efficient than manually customizing everything.

AI is Your Thinking Partner

AI isn't going to write your entire pitch for you, and it shouldn't. But it can dramatically improve the clarity, flow, and targeting of your fundraising materials. These tools can now deliver about 80% of a decent deck or investor memo very quickly, but you still need to refine it for quality and authenticity.

The real value isn't in the initial output; it's in using AI as a thinking partner to evaluate and improve your work. Think of it like having a very smart intern who never gets tired of giving you feedback and can work through multiple iterations without getting annoyed.

Most founders spend way too much time on the wrong parts of fundraising. AI can help you focus your energy on building relationships with the right investors and telling your story in a way that resonates. The tools are there, so you just need to know how to use them effectively.