I have a few thoughts...

Hi,

Welcome to Bankrolling Tomorrow - your no‑BS guide to raise capital.

As you know I went for an amazing skiing trip - and being in the mountains for the past few days has got me thinking about how business finance will actually change over the next decade. 

Currently, founders and operators raise money reactively when cash is tight, not when the timing is right. They can't know how the capital markets will respond to their profile. It's a feature of the system by the way, not a bug. And instead, the industry leaders talk about speed, but speed isn’t the real problem. It’s timing.

Now, public markets solved this years ago - kind of accidentally. For instance, you (investor) don’t phone up Apple and ask if you can buy shares, you look at the NASDAQ and decide when to transact. There’s an intermediary layer that creates signals. That's kind of the whole point of those markets.

Very interestingly, you can see that private business finance doesn’t have that yet. It’s fragmented & everyone’s blind.

Thus “access to funding” became the obsession. But I’m telling you that the next leap isn’t speed, it’s sight.

That’s why the future of finance for founders will be built around continuous underwriting on an intermediary layer. Companies will be able to scan the market and choose the right moment to raise, across both debt and equity.

Timing > access

Speaking of timing - let's move onto the main agenda of this newsletter. This week I broke down the capital raise of easyjet and their masterclass in crisis funding. 

Back in 2020 (the horrendous COVID period), while airlines were cutting routes and laying off staff, easyJet raised £1B and went shopping. They used the chaos to grab airport slots, hire talent, and plan expansion. When demand returned, they were ready to fly.

What made this interesting wasn't just the timing - it was the structure. First, they secured £600M in government-backed debt to keep the lights on. Then, while everyone else was still in panic mode, they raised another £419M in equity. That second raise wasn't survival money - it was positioning capital.

So while competitors were grounded and bleeding cash, easyJet was quietly lining up deals for the recovery. When travel bounced back, they launched 200+ new routes and opened bases across Europe. They turned a crisis into market expansion.

What can you take from this today?

1/ Downturns don't kill opportunities - they discount them
When markets crash, companies assume growth is off the table. Wrong lens. Crashes reprice opportunity, they don't eliminate it. Hiring gets cheaper, competitors retreat, suppliers get flexible. The question isn't "can we still grow?" - it's "what's the cost of growth now versus before?"

2/ Raise before you look desperate, not after
easyJet didn't wait until they were burning through reserves. They raised while the balance sheet still looked solid. That timing gave them dry powder - capital they could actually deploy, not just cling to. Wait too long and you're negotiating from weakness with expensive terms.

3/ Don't panic-pivot your core strategy
When COVID hit, most CEOs scrambled to find the next shiny thing. easyJet had the discipline to realise their original plan was still sound - demand had paused, not disappeared. Sometimes a downturn just shifts your timeline, it doesn't invalidate your strategy.

4/ Numbers first, story second
Investors want proof in sequence: technical validation (it works), economic validation (it's profitable), then story validation (why it matters). You can't pitch the vision until you've proven survival. Be a safe bet before you try to be a big winner.

5/ Turn crisis funding into competitive advantage
Most companies use emergency capital defensively. easyJet used theirs strategically - debt to stabilise, equity to position. While competitors were frozen, they were preparing. When the market reopened, they were ready to move.

This is an excellent thing to talk about today, because easyjet proves exactly what I was talking about in the beginning. Timing beats access. They didn't just raise money, they raised it at exactly the right moment. That's the difference between survival capital and strategic capital. 

Thanks for allowing me into your inbox every week.

If you have any questions, or want to discuss any of my rants on these topics in depth, reply to this email, and I will get back to you ASAP.

Talk soon,

James