The Seven-Week Window

The Seven-Week Window: Ken McArthur, Raise Smarter fundraising signal

Every year, founders discover the same thing in December: the fundraising year ended earlier than they thought. This year the calendar is tighter than usual, with an election and a very large IPO landing right in the middle of it. Here’s what’s on the calendar, what two recent raises show about timing, and how founders and fund managers can use the weeks that are left.

How Long Is the Window, Really?

Pre-Seed to Succeed’s October 12 newsletter, “Raise Before the Freeze,” sets out the common rule of thumb: “After November 30, venture slows to a crawl until mid-January… That leaves about seven weeks.”

That’s a practitioner’s estimate, not measured data. I haven’t found hard 2026 numbers on deal volume week by week in Q4, and I’d be careful with anyone who claims precise figures. But the shape is familiar. Thanksgiving is November 26, and both Christmas and New Year’s Day fall on Fridays this year. Partners travel, LP meetings stack up, and decisions slide into January.

What’s Inside the Window

November 3: the US midterms

KPMG’s Venture Pulse Q3 2026, published October 14, says: “Exit activity may continue at a solid pace, although the US elections in November could prompt some VC investors and IPO-ready companies to pause as they assess potential market uncertainty.”

Read the hedges. “Could.” “Some.” “Pause.” This is a forecast about uncertainty, not evidence of a slowdown, and it has nothing to do with who wins. The practical point is simple: some investors may wait a few days to see how markets react.

Mid-November: Anthropic’s expected IPO

Reuters reported on October 19, citing unnamed sources, that OpenAI is seeking a round of about $30B before Anthropic’s expected debut in mid-November. Reuters also reported: “A number of companies preparing to go public have decided to wait until after Anthropic’s planned IPO… Some late-stage companies are also timing private fundraising rounds to avoid coinciding with Anthropic’s expected debut.”

IPO timing can slip, and this is unnamed-source reporting. But it’s a reminder that big market events pull attention, and attention is what a founder needs most in a raise.

The backdrop

KPMG counts $170.9B of global VC investment across 8,341 deals in Q3. The money is there, but it’s selective. Chris Neumann of Panache Ventures (October 7) expects “strong-but-not-hypergrowth” companies to “test the fundraising waters in Q4 and quickly hit pause” if the reaction is weak, and he notes “a drop in bridge rounds.”

Why Short Windows Favor Existing Relationships

A reader comment on the Pre-Seed to Succeed issue (Jeff Snider, October 13) put the strategy in one line: “Seven weeks isn’t enough to build a pipeline from zero, so work the investors you already have a thread with.”

Think about the math. A cold outreach campaign that starts in late October might produce first meetings in mid-November, right as attention splits between the election and the IPO. Second meetings land near Thanksgiving. Diligence runs into December. A warm introduction from someone the investor already trusts can compress that, because the trust is borrowed.

One small data point points the same way. Fundable Notes tracked verified US rounds of $5M to $100M for the week of September 28 to October 4. Seven of the 15 had a returning investor, and those seven took 68.6% of the capital, averaging $47.5M against $19.0M for the rest. It’s one week, fifteen rounds and one newsletter’s curated sample, so don’t read it as a market trend. But it fits.

Two Raises That Planned Around the Calendar

Link Cell Therapies (September 28). The South San Francisco CAR-T company announced dosing had begun in a Phase 1 study of LNK001 at MD Anderson, and on the same day said its Series A was “upsized from $60 million to $90 million.” The original round was led by J&J Innovation (JJDC), with founding investors Samsara BioCapital and Sheatree Capital, plus Wing, BMS, Kyowa Kirin and others. The release doesn’t say who provided the extra $30M or at what price. What it shows is timing: Link reopened a round its syndicate already knew, on the day it had news.

OpenAI (reported October 19). Reuters reports OpenAI is racing to line up commitments before Anthropic’s IPO, with existing backers SoftBank and MGX reportedly in talks to join, “to lock in capital from funds that might otherwise devote more of their resources to Anthropic’s IPO.” OpenAI declined to comment. This is a mega-scale example based on unnamed sources, but the logic scales down: plan around the calendar, and start with the people who already know you.

What Founders Can Do Now

  1. Make the call this week: year-end or January. A simple check: will you have a committed lead, agreed terms and diligence underway by Thanksgiving week? If not, plan for a January close and spend these weeks building relationships, not sending cold decks.
  2. Start with your existing threads. Get a clear yes or no from current investors first. Then ask each one for two warm introductions.
  3. Schedule around November 3 and mid-November. Get first meetings in before then. Save your strongest update, a customer win or a milestone, for right after.
  4. Model, test, adjust. Run your first conversations, learn what investors push on, and tighten the story before the window closes.

What GPs Can Do Now

  1. Treat year-end as re-up season. Carta data, as reported by TipRanks, says the median time from Fund I to Fund II for US VC firms has risen to about four years. Separately, The Capital Ledger, citing Carta, says the median fund of $100M to $250M closed with 44 LPs in H1 2026, down from 59 in 2025. Every current LP matters. Send your update before Thanksgiving, not in January.
  2. Be in founders’ threads. In a short window, founders call people they already trust. Make sure your co-investors, operators and portfolio founders would name you.
  3. Help portfolio companies decide early. Close now or plan for Q1? Helping a founder make that call honestly builds the trust that brings you back next time.

Seven Weeks Can’t Build a Pipeline. It Can Activate One.

The calendar is fixed. What you do with it isn’t. The founders and fund managers who come through the holiday freeze in good shape won’t be the ones who sent the most emails in November. They’ll be the ones who turned relationships they already had into timely, warm conversations.

ConnectLab.live maps those warm paths alongside your own contacts, so you can see who in your network sits one introduction from the investors who fit your raise.

Connection is the currency of the 21st Century.

If the window closed on November 30, which relationship would you most regret not activating?

If you’d like help with that, here’s an open invitation:

Sources

About Ken McArthur

Ken McArthur is the founder of ConnectLab.live, an AI relationship-intelligence and warm-intro platform that helps founders who are raising find the funds that fit and the people who can introduce them, and helps fund managers connect with the founders they back. He was recently accepted into Harvard Business School Foundry. He also writes Raise Smarter, a daily newsletter on what's really moving in early-stage fundraising. Ken challenges us to realize we ALL have an impact, whether we want to or not, on thousands of people we touch in our day-to-day lives, and he shows that simple things make a HUGE difference. ConnectLab.live grew out of that belief. Connection is the currency of the 21st Century, and the right introduction can change a company's future. Long before ConnectLab, Ken was the popular host of live events that brought together top-level marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporations and non-profit organizations to build multi-million dollar joint venture relationships. He has managed product launches ranked in the top 400 sites on the Internet and is regularly asked to speak at leading marketing events. He created AffiliateShowcase.com, a pioneering affiliate program search engine and directory. He also founded the MBS Internet Research Center, which conducted the world's largest survey ever attempted on creating and launching successful information products. Ken was the official mentor for Sterling Valentine as he took his launch from zero to over $100,000 in less than 8 days, a proof of concept documented in Info Product Blueprint. Today he puts that same skill for connecting people and launching ideas to work for founders and the investors who back them.

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