What four decades of reading balance sheets teaches you.

Capital available on merely acceptable terms is the most expensive kind of money there is. It arrives when you do not need it, on terms you would not accept if you did, and it sets a valuation you then have to grow into.

Every founder we have backed twice has, at some point, declined money that was on the table. If you can reach the next meaningful milestone on what you have, waiting two quarters is usually worth several points of dilution and a great deal of negotiating leverage.

The exception is genuine strategic timing — a market opening, a competitor stumbling, a hiring window. Take the money then. Do not take it because it is Tuesday and somebody offered.

We have audited companies for four decades and we have never once seen a company with disciplined statutory filings and chaotic operations. The reverse is common. The ledger is a leading indicator of everything else.

This is not a moral point, it is a practical one. When a term sheet arrives with a 45-day exclusivity, the company whose books are current signs in six weeks. The company reconstructing two years of records loses the round to timing.

Getting the boring things right early is what lets you move quickly at the exact moment speed is worth the most.

Show us how the first equity was split and we can usually tell you how the tenth employee will be treated.

A co-founder who left with nothing after two years of work, an early engineer promised equity that never materialised, an angel squeezed out in a restructuring — these are not administrative details. They are evidence about how a founder behaves when money is scarce and nobody is watching.

This is the ground on which we decline most often, and the one founders least expect. It is also the most fixable: almost everything can be corrected before a round if it is disclosed.

Most investors decline by going quiet. It is efficient for them and corrosive for the founder, who spends weeks wondering whether to follow up.

We write back to everyone, with the reason, within 21 days. Sometimes the reason is useful — a structural problem, a licensing gap, something that will come up again with the next investor. Sometimes it is simply that we do not understand the category well enough to be helpful, which is our limitation and not yours.

Either way, a founder who knows where they stand can go and spend their time somewhere better.

We do not ask founders to present. The deck has already been read, and watching someone perform it tells us very little.

Instead: what broke last quarter, and what did you do about it? Who left, and why? Which customer would you lose first if your price went up 20%? What would you build if the round did not close? What would you do with ten times what you are raising?

The answers reveal whether a founder is actually inside the details of their own business. Rehearsed answers are audible, and so are held ones.

A large share of our portfolio builds in India and sells outside it. Done well this is an enormous structural advantage; done carelessly it creates tax exposure that surfaces three years later.

The recurring mistakes: invoicing from the wrong entity, no documented transfer pricing between related parties, IP sitting in the entity that did not fund its development, and foreign directors who never actually direct. Each is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to unwind.

If you are early and selling abroad, model the structure before the second customer, not after the twentieth.