MODULE 4
Your target list
The investors who can actually write your check: who leads, who follows, who to call first.
FOR FEMALE FOUNDERS · COHORT 1 · STARTS SEPTEMBER 21, 2026 · 8 WEEKS
Fundraising for Female Founders
This eight-week challenge gets your pre-seed or seed raise ready with full awareness of the biases you'll meet in the room, so you can outmaneuver them, or use them to your advantage. Build the investor list, the deck and a model you can defend, get the right meetings, and always know whether to push or pause. The founders who raise easily aren't luckier than you. They've just done this before.
$297 $197 today. $100 off through Monday, September 14, then $297.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
If you're a woman raising right now, you have probably thought at least three of these.
“I've sent 80 cold emails and gotten 4 meetings — something's broken and I don't know what.”
“Everyone says get a warm intro. I don't know a single person who knows a VC.”
“They never tell you why it's a no.”
““Too early, keep in touch” — what am I supposed to do with that?”
“That founder with worse traction than me just raised $2M.”
““We love her, but she seems a little green.” They would never say that about him.”
All of those are normal, and none of them mean you're unfundable. They mean nobody has shown you how the process works: which signals matter, what to do when the answer is no, and which feedback to take seriously and which to throw out.
Some of it isn't feedback at all. In controlled studies, the same founder profile gets called “young and promising” when he's a man and “young, but inexperienced” when she's a woman. That one you throw out.
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
You're not crazy. The odds are stacked, and the research proves it.
It's not your deck, it's not you, it's a pattern. None of this is a reason not to raise. It's the reason every module teaches the typical move, then the equalizer.
1%
Of every venture dollar invested in the US last year, one percent went to teams founded only by women.
So the target list is built around the investors who can actually say yes to you, not the ones with the best-known names.
PitchBook, 2025 US venture capital
6%
Six percent of US venture deals last year went to a team founded only by women.
So the raise runs as a campaign with enough conversations in it to survive the odds, not as six hopeful emails.
PitchBook, 2025 US venture capital
68%
Investors heard the identical pitch read by a man and by a woman. Sixty-eight percent chose to fund the man's voice.
So the deck and the delivery are built to be heard, and week 2 is spent working on real decks on screen.
Brooks, Huang, Kearney & Murray, PNAS 2014 · 521 investors
And one more, which is the one you feel in the room: two-thirds of the questions put to male founders are about upside, and two-thirds of the questions put to female founders are about downside. Module 6 is how you answer a downside question with the upside anyway.
THE PROMISE
What this challenge promises, and what it doesn't.
In eight weeks your raise is ready to run, and you run it as an intentional, organized campaign. Concretely, that means you finish with:
- A researched target list of investors who can actually write your check, not 300 scraped names.
- A pipeline with funnel math that shows whether the problem is your list, your email, or your deck.
- Outreach that gets replies without a warm intro, built from my real emails and reply rates.
- An investor-ready deck, designed well, built with Claude and Claude Design — and the ability to run the meeting rather than survive it.
- A simple financial model: the drivers that actually matter, and a raise amount and runway that actually add up.
- An honest read on what investors are telling you, so every week you know whether to push or pause.
- As a female founder you're more likely to get the downside questions: retention, repeat rate, breakeven. We'll run through how to turn each one into the upside answer. In my own round that's how I ended up raising a million dollars more than I planned, without asking for it.
AND WHAT IT DOESN'T
This challenge will not get your round closed, and I won't tell you otherwise. Markets move, categories fall out of favor, and some companies aren't ready yet. Anyone who promises you a raise is selling the lucky-break myth with a price tag on it.
What I can promise is a real process and an honest verdict. Some founders will finish Module 1 and go heads-down to build for two more quarters. That is a good outcome. Knowing early that the answer is “not yet” beats three months of meetings that were never going to convert.
THE CURRICULUM
Eight modules, one a week. Plus two bonuses.
Each one produces something you use in the next: a verdict, a deck, a model, a list, a pipeline. And each one teaches the typical move, then the equalizer — the version that accounts for the room you're actually walking into. Tap a module to see what's inside.
WHAT YOU WALK AWAY WITH
Four things you can hold up at the end.
Not notes. The actual materials you run a raise with, built on the templates I used for mine.
MODULE 5
Your outreach sequence
Cold emails and follow-ups adapted from the sequences that got me replies without a warm intro.
MODULE 2
Your narrative deck
Investor-ready and designed well, built with Claude and Claude Design, then rewritten live in week 2.
MODULE 3
Your financial model
The simple version: the drivers that matter, and a raise and runway that add up. Built from the template in an afternoon.
INCLUDED — THE LIVE LAYER
Your work, and three sides of the table.
Five live calls. Two are working sessions with me on the cohort's real decks and pipelines. Three are guest investors, all women who write checks, in the order a round actually gets assembled: angel, emerging fund, institutional VC. Group calls, not one-on-one. Questions go in ahead of time, and every call is recorded.
Two working sessions with me
WEEK 2 · 90 min
Week of Sep 28 · date TBD
Decks, worked on live
Volunteers share their decks and I rewrite them on screen — cutting slides, changing the order, saying why. At this point everyone's deck has the same problems, so you learn from every edit.
WEEK 8 · 90 min
Week of Nov 9 · date TBD
Open room
No agenda. Some of you will have terms, some a quiet pipeline, some are deciding whether to keep going. Send questions ahead, anonymously if you'd rather, and I work through them hardest first.
Three guest investor calls
WEEK 5 · ANGEL · 45 MIN
Andy Coravos
Angel investor, almost 100 investments
Week of Oct 19 · date TBD
What an angel writing her own check is looking for, why angels decide faster than funds, and how to find and approach them.
WEEK 6 · EMERGING FUND · 45 MIN
Ann Lai
Skeleton Key · former GP at Bullpen Capital
Week of Oct 26 · date TBD
The small fund where one person can say yes in days. Ann led deals including Havenly and Dia & Co, and knows what a consumer founder has to show.
WEEK 7 · INSTITUTIONAL VC · 45 MIN
Beth Ferreira
Serena Ventures
Week of Nov 2 · date TBD
How a fund decides, what happens in the partner meeting after you leave the room, and what moves a firm from interested to committed.
Guests are subject to scheduling. If one can't make it, I replace them with someone from the same side of the table.
EVERY WEEK
In the course space, in writing
A weekly Q&A thread, answered by me
Post whatever the module raised — the number you can't make work, the email that got no reply — and once a week I answer the group's questions in one sitting. All eight weeks, including the two without a live call.
The eight weeks at a glance
One module every Monday, from Sep 21
- WEEK 1Sep 21Mindset & the Readiness Verdict
- WEEK 2Sep 28Story & Deck
- WEEK 3Oct 5The Financial Model
- WEEK 4Oct 12The Target List & Pipeline System
- WEEK 5Oct 19Meetings Without a Network
- WEEK 6Oct 26The Meeting
- WEEK 7Nov 2Signal Reading — Push or Pause
- WEEK 8Nov 9Terms, the Close, and Operating Through It
Live calls land in weeks 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Weeks 3 and 4 have no call — I'm travelling — but the modules and the Q&A thread run as normal.
FOUNDING-MEMBER STATUS
This is the first cohort. Your feedback shapes what the course becomes, I'll ask you for a testimonial at the end, and you keep the founding price on anything that comes after.
THE RECEIPTS
Built from real raises, not theory.
I raised multiple rounds for Journy and sold the company. Everything here comes out of those raises, including the parts that went badly.
MY ACTUAL DECKS
Including the bad early ones
The deck I sent before I knew what I was doing, next to the one that closed the round, and what changed between them.
REAL OUTREACH NUMBERS
The emails and what they returned
The cold emails I actually sent, and the reply and meeting rates they produced, so you can tell when your funnel isn't working.
THE PIPELINE TRACKER
The one I ran my rounds out of
Not a template made for a course. The tracker I used, with the stages, the notes and the funnel math that told me what to fix.
REDACTED TERM SHEETS
From my own rounds
Real term sheets from my raises, read line by line, so the first one you see isn't the one you're asked to sign.
WHO'S TEACHING IT
I'm Susan Ho. I started Journy as a spreadsheet and a hypothesis, scaled it to seven-figure revenue, raised $4M+ — after 180 investor rejections — and led it to acquisition by Hopper.
I raised as a woman, and I heard everything you're about to hear. My favourite: “we love Susan, but we think she's a little green.” I was 26 and running a team of 120.
The rejections are why this exists. I learned the process the slow way, on my own runway. This is that process, handed over before you pay for it the same way.
JOIN
One challenge. One price. Everything included.
No cut-down version, no upsell. Everyone gets the modules, the templates, the weekly Q&A and all five live calls. Starts Monday, September 21, 2026.
$100 off through Monday, September 14, then $297.
8-WEEK CHALLENGE · FEMALE FOUNDERS
FUNDRAISING FOR FEMALE FOUNDERS
The eight modules, the templates, and all five live calls.
$197$297
$100 off the full price · one payment · starts Monday, September 21, 2026
JOIN FOR $197Secure checkout through Stripe. One payment, no subscription. By enrolling you agree to the course terms: this is education, a process for running a raise, not a guarantee that you'll close one.
ENDED
$147
through Sep 6
NOW
$197
through Sep 14
FULL PRICE
$297
until doors close Sep 20
What's in it, and what each piece would cost on its own
Everything below is included. Questions go in ahead of every call, and all five are recorded.
Module 1 · Mindset & the Readiness Verdict
with the readiness scorecard
$47
Module 2 · Story & Deck
your investor-ready deck, built with Claude and Claude Design
$97
Module 3 · The Financial Model
with the model template
$149
Module 4 · The Target List & Pipeline System
the target-list builder and my pipeline tracker
$97
Module 5 · How to Leverage Your Network to Get the Right Meetings
the cold outreach sequences
$97
Module 6 · The Meeting and Objection Handling
how to frame the upside
$47
Module 7 · Signal Reading — Push, Pause, or Re-engage
$47
Module 8 · Terms, the Close, and Operating Through It
$97
Bonus · Before You Close: the fundamentals
the pre-close checklist
$47
Bonus · The Post-Close Data Room
$47
Working session 1 with me
decks rewritten live, 90 minutes
$900
Working session 2 with me
open room, 90 minutes
$900
Three guest investor calls
Andy Coravos, Ann Lai, Beth Ferreira
Not sold anywhere
Weekly Q&A thread, all eight weeks
Included
Total on its own
$2,572
Your price today
$197
You'll need Claude and Claude Design for the deck. I'll show you exactly how I use both.
JOIN FOR $197Secure checkout through Stripe. One payment, no subscription. By enrolling you agree to the course terms: this is education, a process for running a raise, not a guarantee that you'll close one.
NOT READY TO COMMIT?
The top 3 pitch deck mistakes I see from female founders.
A free live workshop, Thursday, September 17, 3:00 pm Eastern. The three mistakes, then real decks fixed on screen. See how I teach before you pay for it.
NOT A FEMALE FOUNDER?
The same process is becoming a digital guide.
This cohort is built for women. If that's not you, leave your email and I'll tell you when the guide launches. That's the only email you'll get.
QUESTIONS