You just raised millions of dollars, now what?
The best case scenario happened to you. Now how do you play your cards right with all this cash in the bank? With Adil Syed, Rippling's GM of Startups.
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You’re one of the lucky ones. You’ve raised millions. It feels like things are finally falling into place.
But I remember how weird the day after feels. It’s easy to treat the round like the finish line when really it’s just permission to keep building.
After our Series A at Clarify, I let spending get loose. We wasted cash on things we didn’t need. It takes an enormous amount of discipline to stay focused with all that new cash in the bank, and this is only magnified in the AI era.
I talked with Adil Syed (Rippling’s GM of Startups and Head of Investor Relations - former CFO) about how this AI shift is creating strange new timelines.
Adil has been an investor and startup operator in frothy markets before, but tells me the one we are living through is unprecedented. He says it’s a technology transformation hitting consumers and enterprises at once.
Adil points to Rippling customers like Cursor, who reached $100 million in ARR in as short as 12 months. In the early innings of 2026, we’ve seen companies hit similar milestones at record speed.
That pace makes it feel like you should chase everything all at once. This is actually when you slow down and choose your next steps carefully.
The current state of AI funding
So how did we get to a place where a team of three can reach extreme PMF with an MVP?
Adil offers two explanations:
Customers are hungrier. “Customers are chomping at the bit for AI solutions that can deliver on the promise of AI. (Higher productivity, greater efficiency technology that differentiates either their business or products.) Everyone wants to be ahead of the curve.”
Ease of access to APIs. “A lot of these products are built with very simple interfaces where you can log in and start building immediately. It’s much easier to build off an established tool than trying to figure it out on your own or working directly with foundational model companies.”
This rocketship growth can seem like a dream come true. But it comes with countless trapdoors that can lead to your position in the market evaporating before you could enjoy it. In the following sections, Adil and I break down a few ways to tread carefully with your next steps.
Don’t confuse traction with differentiation
Hot markets make any traction look strong. Early wins feel like validation, but they’re not the same as a lasting edge.
Adil made the point that companies shouldn’t rely solely on go-to-market traction for long-term differentiation. He believes the market will ultimately favor the best product and the best teams, and companies should avoid becoming one of the “two or three dozen companies that all look the same.” (i.e. AI for sales, marketing, legal, accounting, dev and design.)
Ask the plain questions now: What part of your product is hard to copy? Where do you have an advantage in data depth, enterprise/user context, workflows, or insights that keeps getting better with usage?
Point the team at those answers and keep the pace steady.
Put guardrails up where you can
Just because you have capital doesn’t mean you should immediately deploy it. Wait until you have conviction around a clear plan for its use.
What helped us: internal release gates. We wrote clear milestones and tied dollars to each one. Hit the milestone, open the budget for headcount. Miss it, budget stays put.
Simple rules made choices easier and kept the team aligned.
Adil: “At Rippling, one thing that helped after our Series A raise was devising a Cash-on-Cash Payback plan for our sales team. Essentially, we started tracking what we were spending on sales headcount vs how much revenue our sales team was bringing in. If the ratio was one or better, the incremental sales hires were paying for themselves each month. As we started to scale, this exercise proved to be invaluable.”
Hire to gain back your time
One of the best uses of that new budget: buying back your time.
Open a doc. Write everything you did last week. Rank each item by value to the company. Circle the parts only you can do. Everything else becomes a role.
After our Series A, one of our first moves was hiring a Head of Operations. Back office work moved off the founders. We could spend more time on building product, hiring, and talking to customers.
If you’re venture-backed with early signs of product-market fit, your first wave of hires should focus on improving your product foundation, polishing and validating it, and scaling internal operations and go-to-market efforts.
A short plan for the next two weeks
If you just raised, here’s where to start:
Set release gates — Write the next three milestones. Tie a budget unlock to each one and share it with your leads.
Make a time list — Look at last week’s calendar and notes. Write every task you did, and mark the ones only you can do. Turn the rest into roles or processes.
Back one strong bet — Pick the bet backed by customer need. Fund it properly. Pause two weaker ideas to free up time and money.
Do a product checkup — Determine what’s most difficult to copy in your product. List the top three fixes. Assign owners and dates.
Take care of the people doing the work, including you
This era asks a lot. Adil told me many AI founders in the Rippling community are working 12-hour days, six days a week—a pace that takes a psychological and physical toll.
Tell your support system what the next stretch will look like. If you’re heading into the “Batcave,” say so. It’s easier when the people around you know what’s coming.
You didn’t raise to relax. You raised to give your product and customers a fair shot. Prioritize your and your team’s well-being; burnout benefits no one.
Keep your eyes on the work that compounds. Be honest about what’s actually working. Spend in service of clear steps forward.
See you next week,
Patrick (with a huge thanks to Adil)
Additional reads
Land your first 10 hires: barrel and ammo framework
What to do after you close the fundraising round - Ryan Caldbeck
Adil Syed is Rippling’s GM of Startups and former CFO. He’s been a trusted executive partner to unicorn founders, including Evan Spiegel at Snap and Parker Conrad at Rippling. He’s seen firsthand how challenging the journey from Series A to Series D and beyond can be—especially for first-time founders navigating uncharted territory.
Adil continues to work closely with dozens of founders going through their own scaling journeys. He regularly publishes fundraising insights and answers core questions around capital management in Rippling's startups newsletter: First Principles