"Visible gave us the infrastructure to run a disciplined, data-driven fundraise without it consuming the entire company. It turned what used to be a scattered, reactive process into something more structured and intentional, and I believe it made a meaningful difference in the speed and outcome of our round."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
From NASA to the Fundraising Trenches
Helix Earth is a NASA spin-out commercializing the Helix MICRA™ filter, a novel liquid-gas process originally developed for life support systems in space, now retrofitting commercial HVAC systems to remove humidity more efficiently. The technology delivers better humidity control, lower energy costs, and more comfortable spaces without requiring building owners to replace existing equipment.
With $200M+ in signed LOIs and a $12M oversubscribed Seed 2 round now closed, the commercial validation was already there. What made this round more seamless than the ones before it wasn't the technology. It was the process.
The Raise That Taught Them Everything
The fundraising process at Helix Earth didn't start disciplined. In earlier rounds, the team was, by Rawand's own admission, winging it.
Investor outreach happened through scattered emails and warm introductions with no central tracking. The deck was a file emailed around. The data room was a DocSend link. Investor relationships were managed in Google Sheets. There was no defined process, no shared timeline, and multiple team members were devoting time to the raise simultaneously without clear ownership or coordination.
"The biggest mistakes were having no process, not getting investors on the same timeline, and giving too much time to funds that were never going to invest."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
Those lessons became the blueprint for Seed 2.
Building a Fundraising Playbook From Scratch
Going into Seed 2, Rawand built a structured five-stage fundraising playbook centered on one principle: fundraising is a massive distraction from building the company, so the goal was to speed to completion.
Stage 1: Prep. Data room and investor list built at least six months before officially kicking off the raise. No scrambling mid-process.
Stage 2: Screen. Initial calls focused on qualifying investors quickly and assessing mutual fit early, before significant time was invested on either side.
Stage 3: Diligence. A well-organized data room and a pre-built FAQ document streamlined the process for interested investors, reducing back-and-forth and keeping conversations focused.
Stage 4: Urgency. Competitive dynamics were used deliberately to create timeline pressure and push toward term sheets.
Stage 5: Close.
One person owned the raise throughout. Agree to terms, wires received, and the round is official. Time to get back to building!
"Multiple people managing investor fundraising will end up wasting a ton of time. One person should own the raise."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
Why Visible: One System to Run It All
When Rawand started preparing for Seed 2, the pain of the old approach was fresh. Managing dozens of investor conversations at different stages while sharing decks, maintaining a data room, and trying to figure out who was actually serious had made the previous raises harder than they needed to be.
What he needed wasn't a more complex CRM. It was a purpose-built tool that could handle pipeline tracking, material sharing, and engagement analytics in one place, without the overhead.
"Spreadsheets and email threads do not scale once you are in an active raise. We needed something purpose-built for fundraising. Visible was that tool for us."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
The data room interface was simple and intuitive. The CRM was up and running within minutes. The deck and data room were uploaded and live within the first day. It became part of the daily workflow immediately because the value was immediate.
Treating Investors Like a Sales Pipeline
Once inside Visible, Rawand ran the investor pipeline the same way a sales team would run a deal pipeline. Every investor had a stage, notes from the last conversation, and defined next steps. Nothing lived in someone's head or in a separate email thread.
The pipeline view replaced spreadsheets and gave instant clarity on who was advancing and who was stalling, so time could be reallocated accordingly.
"Before Visible, we used spreadsheets to keep track of our investor pipeline, which took a ton of time and was not a good visualization. With the pipeline view on Visible, we could see at a glance who was advancing and who was stalling."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
The result: an estimated 2-3 hours saved per week, a single person managing the entire process, and not a single investor lost track of across the full raise.
The Signals That Changed the Game
One of the most impactful changes in Seed 2 was an emphasis on the process and the information sharing throughout.
Visible's deck view and data room analytics gave Rawand real-time visibility into exactly who was engaging with materials and how. They could track which investors spent time on the deck, who came back for a second or third look, and who never opened it at all.
"Those signals are gold. If someone revisited the deck after a week of silence, that was our cue to re-engage with a targeted follow-up. On the flip side, it helped us stop wasting time on investors who just never opened the deck or only looked at it once."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
That insight transformed how follow-ups were timed and prioritized. Instead of following a generic cadence, every re-engagement was triggered by a real signal, making outreach more targeted, more timely, and more likely to land.
The Investor Who Almost Got Away
Midway through the raise, Rawand lost touch with one investor. Weeks turned into months and the conversation had quietly gone cold.
Then he spotted them in the Visible pipeline.
He followed up. The investor rejoined the conversation. They ended up joining the round.
"I forgot about a specific investor, whom I lost touch with over the course of 2-3 months. I saw them in our pipeline and followed up with them, and they ended up joining the round."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
It's a small moment. But it illustrates something important: in a raise where attention is stretched thin and conversations are happening in parallel across dozens of investors, pipeline discipline isn't just an operational nicety. It's money on the table.
What Investors Noticed Too
The data room wasn't just useful internally. Investors noticed.
"I had multiple investors tell me it was really easy to sift through and that it was very logical. Most of that is because Visible makes it easy to set up an intuitive folder structure that is, surprisingly, not available on other platforms the way it is on Visible."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
A well-organized data room signals preparedness. It reduces friction during diligence. And it reflects well on the founding team's operational maturity, which matters to investors evaluating whether to back a company for the long term.
Three Things Every Founder Should Know Before Their Next Raise
Rawand's advice is direct and hard-won:
Treat it like sales. Qualify your targets early, get investors on the same timeline, and create competitive tension where you can. A raise without a pipeline is just a series of conversations with no clear end.
Define ownership. Multiple people managing investor relationships simultaneously creates confusion, duplication, and wasted time. Define ownership and centralize the tools.
Build your infrastructure first. Get your data room, deck, pipeline tracker, and FAQ document in order before your first meeting. Founders who scramble to organize materials mid-raise lose momentum, and the best investors notice.
"Visible gave us the infrastructure to run a disciplined, data-driven fundraise without it consuming the entire company."
— Rawand, Co-founder, Helix Earth
Thousands of founders have used Visible to run more organized, data-driven fundraises. Ready to build yours? Get started for free below:
