Hey!
Happy Wednesday! Hope your 2026 is off to an amazing start.
It's Jose here, founder of Space Funding. Today, I want to share something personal that completely changed how I think about capital raising.
Last year, I had the privilege of working alongside Nick Myers, CEO and Co-Founder of Phoenix Tailings, as they raised $76 million in their Series B round.
What I learned during that process will change how you approach your next raise. Let me break it down.
🚀 The Story Behind $76M: Phoenix Tailings
Phoenix Tailings expanded its initial $43 million Series B round, led by Envisioning Partners, to $76 million on a second close.
The second close was anchored by Escape Velocity, a venture vehicle founded by former Goldman Sachs executives, along with investments from Builders Vision, Yamaha Motor Ventures, M Power, and Presidio, the venture arm of Sumitomo Corporation.
This wasn't luck. This was the result of a system built months before the raise even launched.
Here's what made Phoenix Tailings' raise different—and what every founder needs to understand about raising institutional capital at scale.
💡 Lesson #1: Start Building Your Investor Newsletter Early
Here's the biggest mistake I see founders make:
They wait until they're ready to raise to start building relationships with investors.
By then, it's too late.
Nick and I understood something critical: your investor pipeline is like your sales pipeline. You need to nurture it months before you need it.
Long before we closed $76 million, they were building relationships through consistent communication. Updates on technology milestones. Progress on the Exeter, New Hampshire, facility. Context on why rare earth metals matter for national security.
The new facility will have a total capacity of 500 tons per year of rare earth metal output, equivalent to the entire annual demand of the U.S. defense industrial base.
Investors weren't hearing about Phoenix Tailings for the first time during the pitch. They'd been following the story for months.
When the Series B launched, those investors were warm, educated, and ready to move fast.
The takeaway: Start your investor newsletter today. Not when you're fundraising. Today.
Weekly or bi-weekly updates that share progress, traction, market insights, and vision. By the time you launch your raise, you'll have a list of investors who already believe in what you're building.
🎯 Lesson #2: Qualify Your Leads Before They Hit Your Calendar
Here's something that surprised me during the Phoenix raise:
Nick wasn't taking calls with every investor who expressed interest. We had built a qualification system that filtered leads before they ever reached the CEO.
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Why does this matter?
As Nick Myers said: "We have the resources, the talent, and now, the momentum to build a secure rare earth supply chain right here in the United States."
Nick's time was spent on growing the business, not qualifying tire-kickers.
At Space Funding, we build lead qualification systems that pre-vet investors on:
✅ Investment Amount - Are they writing checks that match your round size?
✅ Investment Timeline - Are they ready to move now, or just exploring?
✅ Strategic Value - Do they bring expertise, connections, or market access?
✅ Accreditation Status - Do they meet the legal requirements for your offering?
By the time an investor got on Nick's calendar, they were pre-qualified, educated on the business, and ready to talk terms—not basics.
The takeaway: Your time as a CEO is your most valuable asset. Build systems that qualify investors before they reach you, so you can spend your time growing KPIs, not explaining what your company does.
📊 Lesson #3: Build a CRM and Automate Everything
This is where most founders completely drop the ball.
They meet investors at conferences, get business cards, send one follow-up email, and then... nothing. No system. No tracking. No automation.
During the Phoenix raise, every investor interaction was tracked in a CRM. Every follow-up was automated. Every touchpoint was intentional.
Here's what that looked like in practice:
Phase 1: Investor expresses interest → Automatically added to CRM → Receives welcome email with company overview and data room access
Phase 2: Investor opens materials → Automatically tagged as "engaged" → Receives automated follow-up with key milestones and timeline
Phase 3: Investor requests meeting → Gets pre-qualified through automated questions → Only qualified leads reach the CEO's calendar
Phase 4: Post-meeting → Automated follow-up sequence with additional materials, case studies, and investor updates
This system meant Nick wasn't manually managing hundreds of investor relationships. The technology did it for him.
And when it came time to close, they knew exactly which investors were hot, warm, or cold—and could prioritize accordingly.
The takeaway: Invest in a proper investor CRM. Use automation to nurture relationships at scale. Free up your time to focus on what actually grows your business: product development, customer acquisition, and revenue growth.
🔥 Why This Matters for Your Raise
Phoenix Tailings didn't just raise $76 million because they have groundbreaking technology (though they do).
They're building the first standalone rare earth refining operation in the United States capable of accepting feedstocks from mines, recycled products, coal fly ash, and other byproducts, processing them into finished metals.
They raised $76 million because they treated fundraising like a sophisticated marketing and sales operation.
They built their investor pipeline early. They qualified leads systematically. They automated relationship management. And they freed up their CEO to focus on building the business, not chasing investors.
This is the future of capital raising.
Founders who win in 2026 won't be the ones with the best pitch decks. They'll be the ones with the best systems for attracting, qualifying, and converting investors at scale.
🚀 Ready to Build Your Investor Pipeline?
At Space Funding, this is exactly what we help founders do.
We build high-converting investor funnels. We create automated nurture sequences. We implement CRM systems that track every investor interaction. We pre-qualify leads so only serious investors reach your calendar.
And we help you launch investor newsletters that build relationships months before you need them.
Whether you're raising Reg CF, Reg A+, Reg D, or institutional rounds, the principles are the same. Build systems that scale. Automate what can be automated. Free up your time to grow your business.
We've helped companies raise over $210 million using this exact approach. And now, with our expansion into Reg D and accredited investor raises, we can help you access the full capital stack.
Ready to raise capital like Phoenix Tailings?
Book a strategy call with our team. We'll walk you through the exact systems we built for Phoenix Tailings and show you how to implement them for your raise.
Whether you're targeting $500K or $50M, whether you're raising from retail or accredited investors or both—we have the infrastructure, the experience, and the track record to make it happen.
Now we're ready to bring that same execution to your raise.
Book a strategy call with our team. We'll walk you through exactly how this works, show you case studies from companies like yours, and build a custom plan that fits your goals.
Have an amazing rest of your week. And if this changed how you think about investor relations, share it with a founder friend who needs to hear it.
See you next Wednesday,
Jose
Founder, Space Funding
Building systems that turn capital raising into a repeatable process.
www.spacefunding.us
P.S. — Nick Myers said it best: "The future of rare earths can and should be American-led." The same is true for capital raising. The future belongs to founders who build systems that scale. Let's build yours.
