Rami Zeneldin

Co-founder & Senior Partner @ Zaidwood Capital

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Spent time with an institutional investor a while back, a serious one. Multi-Million dollar mandate, Tech and Energy focus, and turned down a company generating $35M yearly.

A founder had just finished pitching him.

Deck was polished.

Numbers were strong.

The founder had clearly spent weeks preparing for that meeting.

The investor passed within 48 hours.

I asked him why.

He didn't mention the revenue.

Didn't mention the market size.

Didn't mention the growth rate.

He said one thing "I couldn't figure out what happens to that business if he gets hit by a bus."

That was it.

A $35M business passed on because one person couldn't see how it survived without the person standing in front of him.

Here's the thing, institutional investors are not evaluating your business the way you think they are.

They're not sitting there calculating your TAM or debating whether your projections are achievable.

They're asking a completely different set of questions.

Does this business work without this specific person?

Are the cash flows real and repeatable or are they relationship dependent?

What breaks first under pressure?

Who else knows how this operates?

What does the business look like in year three if growth slows?

In reality, institutional capital is not funding your upside.

It's underwriting your downside.

The investor who writes the cheque needs to be able to explain to their own stakeholders why this is a safe and intelligent deployment of capital, not just an exciting one.

The best way to think of this, before you walk into that room, stop asking yourself how to make your business sound impressive.

Start asking yourself how to make it sound durable.

Impressive gets you the meeting. Durable closes it.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

If I got paid for the amount of time's I've heard the market is the issue, I would give Elon and Bezos a run for their money.

Met a founder eighteen months ago running a manufacturing operation just north of $20M.

Good business on the surface, growing year on year, solid customer base, decent margins.

He'd been turned down by three different capital sources in the span of six months and couldn't understand why.

He came to us convinced the problem was the market. That investors weren't deploying. That the timing was off.

It wasn't the market.

We spent two weeks going through the business properly.

What we found wasn't a revenue problem. It was a clarity problem.

Customer concentration sitting at 60% with one client.

No formal contracts, relationships held together by handshakes and history.

Margins that looked strong at the top line but compressed significantly once you stripped out the owner's personal expenses running through the business.

And a growth narrative that changed depending on who was asking the question.

None of those things are fatal.

All of them are fixable.

But to an investor doing diligence, each one is a reason to pause and enough reasons to pause becomes a reason to pass.

Here's the thing, fundability isn't a revenue threshold.

It's a trust threshold. Investors are asking one fundamental question underneath all the others: if I put capital into this business, is what I've been shown actually what I'm getting?

The businesses that close capital aren't always the fastest growing or the most profitable.

They're the ones where the story, the numbers, and the operations all tell the same version of the truth.

In reality, most businesses that struggle to raise aren't unfundable.

They're just unprepared.

And those are two very different problems with very different solutions.

One you can fix. The other you can't.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Had a conversation with a founder last year that I haven't stopped thinking about.

$28M in revenue. Strong margins. A business that any serious investor would want to look at.

He'd been in a deal process for seven months, what should have taken ninety days had dragged into the better part of a year.

By the time he reached out to us, he was exhausted, frustrated, and about to accept terms he never would have agreed to at the start.

I asked him one question. Who's been running this process?

He paused. Then said, "honestly, I'm not sure anymore."

That's how founders lose their deals. Not in one dramatic moment.

Gradually. Quietly.

Through a series of small concessions that each seem reasonable in isolation until you look up seven months later and realise you're no longer the one driving.

It starts with giving investors too much time. Then too much access.

Then too many revisions to the deck, the model, the structure.

Every accommodation feels like progress.

In reality, each one signals that you'll move if pushed and once investors know that, they keep pushing.

Here's the thing, deal momentum is everything.

A process that drags isn't just frustrating.

It's structurally damaging.

It gives the other side time to find problems, change their mandate, bring in new stakeholders, and reset expectations on price.

The founder who closes in sixty days almost always closes on better terms than the one who closes in six months.

The best way to think of this, you don't just need a good business to close a good deal.

You need to control the pace, the narrative, and the options on the table at all times.

The moment you lose any of those three, the deal stops being yours.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

The next 24 months will produce the largest wealth transfer in energy and infrastructure since the post-GFC rebuild.

Here's what I'm seeing on the ground across MENA, and what it tells me about where capital is moving globally:

Sovereign wealth is accelerating deployment into hard assets.

Energy security has replaced yield as the primary mandate for some of the largest pools of capital on earth.

The geopolitical reshuffling happening right now, supply chains, trade routes, resource nationalism, is forcing institutional money to move faster and further than it has in a generation.

In reality, we are at the beginning of a decade-long infrastructure supercycle: Data centres, clean energy, natural resources, advanced manufacturing.

The capital is there. The appetite is there.

What's missing on most deals is founders who know how to meet that capital correctly.

The founders who learn to:
Speak the language of institutional capital
Understand how to structure and present durability over potential
Build relationships before they need them

Those are the ones who will be successful.

It’s an exciting time - save this post and in 24 months you’ll know that this prediction is correct.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

The biggest lie in capital raising is that the best businesses get funded.

They don't.

The best positioned businesses get funded.

When i first got into the space i would see companies that i was astonished how they struggled to get funded.

There's a difference and most founders never figure it out until they've already lost the raise.

Here's the thing, investors are not evaluating your business in isolation.

They're evaluating it against every other opportunity sitting in front of them at the same time. That means how you show up, how you frame the opportunity, and how you control the narrative matters as much as the underlying numbers.

A $15M revenue business that understands its own story will raise faster and on better terms than a $40M revenue business that can't articulate why now, why them, and why this structure.

In reality, raising capital is a sales process.

And like any sales process, the worst position you can be in is needing the deal to close.

The moment you need it, you've handed control to the other side of the table.

The founders who raise well don't pitch.

They qualify. They walk into conversations already knowing what they want, what they'll accept, and what they'll walk away from.

They treat investor meetings like a two-way interview, because that's exactly what it is.

The best way to think of this, you are not asking for capital. You are offering access to something that is going to grow with or without this investor.

The raise is an opportunity you're extending, not a favour you're requesting.

That one mindset shift changes everything. The terms, the dynamic, the outcome.

Most founders never make it. That's why most founders raise on someone else's terms.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

@paolo_scales Cowork

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Most founders think dilution is the cost of raising capital.

It’s not.

The real cost is decision rights and they don’t disappear evenly. You can own a large percentage of a company and still lose control over:
– timing
– risk tolerance
– exit pressure

By the time this shows up, it’s usually too late to renegotiate.

Capital is rarely neutral.

It just feels that way early on.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Most Founders Fail Not Because They Lack Capital But Because They Mismanage Leverage.

Capital doesn’t decide your leverage.

Your decisions do. And most founders give away leverage without realising it.

In every raise we advise, the founders who struggle aren’t the ones with weak numbers, they’re the ones who misplay their leverage long before the first investor call.

How founders lose leverage without noticing:

- raising when the runway is low
- pitching before the story is clean
- talking to the wrong investor cohort first
- setting valuation expectations too early
- leaking desperation through inconsistent behaviour
- negotiating from emotion instead of data
- entering the raise without clear milestones or sequencing
- assuming “interest” means “leverage”

Leverage isn’t about confidence. It’s about options. And options come from preparation, momentum, clarity, and timing.

We see this in real deals. The founders with leverage always do the same things:

- They fix the business first.
- They structure the round intentionally.
- They control the sequence.
- They hit meaningful milestones (not vanity ones).
- They enter the market from a position of strength, not hope.

And investors can feel it immediately.

Capital doesn’t create leverage, it rewards it. If you want better terms, build the leverage before you start the raise.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

The Founder Shift

You don’t need more opinions on your valuation.
You need proof the market can’t ignore.

Ask yourself:
✅ Do I have a repeatable acquisition system?
✅ Can I predict next quarter’s sales?

If not start there before your next raise.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

The 2 Levers That Actually Move Valuation

What my first business taught me about raising capital and why most founders overcomplicate it.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Why These Two Matter

Marketing = consistent customer acquisition.
Sales = the system that turns leads into revenue.

When these run on autopilot, you stop “pitching value”
and start showing it.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

@termsheetinator 52

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Every great exit starts 24 months before anyone calls it an exit. Here’s how we’re doing it right now for one of our clients.

Bankers don’t create exits, they shape them. They prepare companies to look inevitable. That means:

1. Clean Financials & Audit-Ready Data

We’ve had clients come in with financials scattered across systems, nothing reconciled, nothing ready.

Investors would go quiet the moment they opened the data room and rightfully so, we almost turned the deal down because of it.

This is a bigger deal than founders realise. Once we rebuilt and cleaned the data, we detailed the models and structured funding terms to show, how much capital was needed, how it drives growth, and how returns and ownership are shared.

Only then did we start investor introductions.

If we’d brought the deal to market before that, it would have damaged both the founder’s reputation and ours and investors rarely give second chances.

2. Strategic Debt & Convertible Rounds

For several clients, we’ve structured interim rounds designed to de-risk the next capital event.

These instruments fund the right milestones before a full raise, which means higher valuations and access to top-tier investors who can take them further.

One of these clients is now on a clear path to unicorn status and being primed for IPO within three years.

3. Partnerships & Contracts That Turn Narrative Into Certainty

Great stories don’t sell companies proof does.

Every strategic partnership or multi-year contract we help secure makes the next raise easier and the exit more predictable.

When founders wait until the exit to prepare, they leave 20–30% of potential value on the table.

For an 8 or 9 figure exit, that’s a painful amount to leave behind.

When they start early with the right structure and story we can position them for premium multiples or IPO-level readiness.

They say all great things take time.

If you want a great business, one that sells itself, it’s the same.

Because at the end of the day, great businesses don’t chase exits, they attract them.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Most founders think investment bankers only show up when it’s time to raise capital, sell or go public. That’s like calling a coach when the game’s already started.”

Investment bankers don’t just execute, they engineer outcomes.

They help founders

- Structure the business for better valuation multiples.
- Align financials with investor expectations.
- Connect with the right strategic capital and partners... not just the loudest check.

From pre-raise preparation to full exits and IPOs, their job is to translate operational performance into capital value.

A good banker doesn’t make your company look better, they make it valued better.

If you want a one-pager on how Zaidwood helps founders becomes ready before the deal even starts, comment "Structure" below or DM me.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

@freddiebambo Linkedin

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

@termsheetinator PS

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

Relationships start conversations. Strategy, structure, and storytelling close them.

Most founders believe firms use their relationships to get deals done and that’s it.

It’s only a small part of the raise.

Yes, relationships are important and that’s why firms like Zaidwood Capital spend years developing them.

But relationships alone don’t close complex transactions.

The real value comes down to three things

1. Positioning and Storytelling
Being able to present and sell your deal in a way that resonates.
The best story wins when it’s backed by real fundamentals and clarity.
Positioning isn’t just about how you pitch, it’s about timing and strategic awareness.

It’s knowing when to move, how to present, and which narrative fits the current capital market climate.

That’s why part of our job is to advise clients and large companies on the right and wrong time to raise, restructure, divest, acquire, exit or even enter new markets.

The raise itself is often just the mechanism that unlocks everything else expansion, acquisition, liquidity, and long-term compounding.

2. Advisory and Leadership
Advising and leading founders toward the most successful avenue for future growth with the right partners and capital structure behind it. It's all about positioning and understanding points of leverage in your business and then positioning it to the investors to have favourable terms for both parties.

3. Financial Architecture
This is where real scale begins.
Investment bankers understand how markets move, how capital behaves, and how to structure companies so growth compounds not just expands.
It’s about designing a capital foundation that strengthens with every raise, every acquisition, and every market cycle.

Relationships open doors.

But execution, positioning, and financial clarity that’s what gets the deal across the line.

[Rami Zeneldin @RamiZeneldin]

The Founder’s Leverage Curve, now every founder starts a raise with leverage, until they don’t.

Leverage decays the moment urgency increases. There's a difference between tactical urgency and desperation and its the latter that kills deals.

When your cash runway shortens, when payroll pressure builds, or when the narrative starts to drift… the investor feels it before you admit it.

We’ve seen it happen at every level, even 8–9 figure businesses.

Strong operators lose negotiating power not because the business is weak, but because they raised too late or positioned the raise reactively.

Here’s how smart founders protect leverage:

1. Raise from strength, not survival.

Start conversations while cash flow is strong, not when liquidity is tight. We hear all the time "we aren't ready to raise capital", there are some circumstances when this is valid for example, reaching milestones set to increase valuation but there is a fine line.

This is where convertible notes become a powerful tool to bridge timing intelligently.

2. Control your timing. You can’t dictate investor behaviour, but you can manage your urgency, getting ahead of this will set you up for a strong raise in terms of leverage and attain strategic investors that may decline later on for multiple reasons like runway.

3. Build optionality. Always have multiple paths to liquidity, whether it’s debt, equity, or asset-backed capital. Optionality creates confidence. And confidence attracts capital.

The best deals don’t come from need. They come from choice.

That’s the difference between raising capital and commanding it.

A lot of founders are experts in their business and industry, expertise is the reason why investment banks exist

Most founders are experts in their own business and industry.

That’s exactly why investment banks exist, not just to bring investors to the table, but to structure, prepare, and position a raise for sustainable growth from a finance expert’s perspective.

This is where real leverage is created.