A few months ago I started working on a next round of funding for our company, Splunk. As an exercise I decided to keep notes on the progress of the fund raising in hopes of looking back and perhaps sharing a thing or two with other entrepreneurs. I’ve raised a lot of venture money (this is my sixth venture backed start-up) and learned to avoid many of the traps most first time entrepreneurs fall into. This time around I had a chance to apply several best practices I’ve seen over the years and invent a few new tricks that really helped things go smoothly. We closed a later stage round of financing on outstanding terms in just sixty days from first conversation to money in the bank.

Whether you’re raising a Series A round or a mezzanine round, you can sail through the process if you are prepared and you avoid the common pitfalls. My hope is to find enough time to tell the story of how we pulled this off and offer tips and insights along the way. Feel free to add your comments or contact me directly with your feedback and questions. I’ll try to post a bit every few days as time permits.