The Mighty Nine model
Investment banking is broken.
It’s built for transactions.
Fundraising is a preparation.
Traditional banks get paid when a deal closes. That incentive makes them optimize for speed, not for fit — and it’s why founders hear “great story, not for us” three months into a roadshow that should never have started.
Mighty Nine is built the opposite way. We work on retainer, like a lawyer. No commission. No transaction mandate. Every incentive to tell you the truth — even when the truth is don’t raise.
Calibration
We teach the VC Game. Then we recalibrate your ambition around it. Most founders skip this step. Most founders fail this step.
Unique Insight
VCs don’t fund pitches — they fund secrets. We extract the contrarian thesis buried inside you, sharpen it against reality, and turn your equity story into an evergreen asset.
Lobbying Tier-1 VCs
We teach you how to build influence inside a tight-knit community of 200 people, 12 to 18 months before you ever “go out”. By the time you pitch, the decision is already halfway made.
The outcome: you save months of formal raising — and you raise better.
The Venture Capital Paradox
Of startups fail to raise Series A.
Most entrepreneurs waste 12 to 24 months chasing funding they’ll never get. The problem isn’t effort. It’s that nobody told them the actual rules of the game.
The illusion in the startup ecosystem
Everyone is pitching.
Almost nobody is raising.
The disconnect
40,000+
startups try to raise Series A funding annually in Europe.
The reality
350 Series A rounds per year
A 0.8% success rate. The rest go home.
The problem
Nobody teaches the game
Most founders don’t understand the actual rules VCs are playing by.
The founder behind Mighty Nine
Julien Petit created Mighty Nine in 2016.
Mighty Nine was born from a simple observation: most founders put 99% of their storytelling energy into a fragile, last-minute equity story — and it shows. It breaks their focus, causes undue stress, and conveys the wrong message to investors.
I started advising early-stage startups in 2011, working alongside founders in the UK and France. Over time, I realised the single best predictor of a successful Series A wasn’t the product, the deck, or the traction curve. It was whether the founders had built influence with Tier-1 VCs long before they ever needed to pitch them.
That’s what Mighty Nine does. We’re not a finder. We’re not on a transaction mandate. We work with founders the way a lawyer works on retainer — patiently, on the equity story first, then on the lobbying campaign with the VC community and their trusted influencers. Months before the roadshow.
Alongside the practice, I publish The VC Insider, a Substack for founders who want to understand how the European venture market actually works — not how it’s pitched on LinkedIn.
Track record
A decade spent decoding
how this actually works.
200+
Founders guided through live fundraising processes with real-time advisory.
500+
Investor meetings supported with strategic preparation and debrief.
1,000+
Conversations with founders since 2016 — €250M+ in fundraising witnessed.
Category-defining research
Author of groundbreaking research on Series A funding and €1B+ exits in Europe. Pioneer in data-driven analysis of the French and European VC ecosystem.
If you want to be successful in a roadshow, you must create a strong initial impact. To do this, you need to craft an engaging narrative. And don’t forget to get in touch with the VC community months before the roadshow.
Nicolas Debock – Investement director at Eurazeo
