To announce a fundraise on LinkedIn, post it from your own profile with a photo or video, say how much you raised, tell the story behind the round and name your investors. Raise posts get 2.95 times a founder's usual engagement, and among 2,333 raise posts, video lifted a post 1.97x, photos 1.64x, stating the amount 1.39x and telling the story 1.34x, according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups. Then keep posting, because 1 in 5 founders goes quiet for 90 days afterwards.
A raise is the biggest post most founders will write all year. Three questions come up around almost every raise post: whether to name the amount, whether to tag everyone, and whether it should read like the press release or like the founder.
The good news from the data is that a raise post does well almost however you write it. The founders in our study got close to three times their usual engagement on raise news. The difference between a decent raise post and a great one comes down to a handful of choices.
Below is what those choices are worth, how the numbers compare with the usual funding-post advice, an annotated template, and what to do in the 90 days after.
If you want to see where your own account sits before the big day, check your profile against the founder benchmarks. It takes about a minute.
What we found
- Raise posts are the strongest of the 12 post types we tagged. They got 2.95x a founder's usual engagement, 3.88x their usual comments and 1.76x their usual reposts, yet they're only 1.5% of founder posts.
- They also draw the best audience. In a second study, 50% of the people engaging with raise posts were decision makers and 8% were investors, against 41% and 5% on other posts (25 raise posts, directional).
- A few choices lift a raise post further. Against other raise posts, video got 1.97x, photos 1.64x, stating the amount 1.39x and telling the story behind the raise 1.34x.
- Voice doesn't matter on raise posts. Story voice and corporate voice did the same (1.00x), and reading like a press release carried no penalty.
- 1 in 5 founders goes quiet afterwards. Of 1,033 founders who announced a first raise, 1 in 5 posted nothing in the next 90 days, right when people were paying the most attention.
How well do funding announcements do on LinkedIn?
Better than any other post type we tagged. This is how raise posts compare with the same founder's usual post:
| Measure | Raise posts vs the founder's usual |
|---|---|
| Engagement | 2.95x |
| Comments | 3.88x |
| Reposts | 1.76x |
For comparison, the next best post type, company milestones, got 1.55x. Personal stories got 1.52x. The most common founder post, an industry take, got 0.92x.
Raise posts also dominate the breakouts. Among posts that hit 10 times a founder's usual engagement, fundraise posts showed up at 18 times their share of all posts. Nothing else came close (personal stories were next, at 2.0 times).
Yet raises make up only 1.5% of founder posts. You get very few of these, which is why it's worth getting each one right.
One note on the data. Our AI tagger was conservative about what counted as a fundraise post. When we spot-checked, 84.6% of posts tagged as fundraise contained raise language, and some raise news got filed as a milestone instead. So these numbers, if anything, undercount raise posts.
Who sees a startup's funding announcement?
More of the people a founder wants than any other post. In a second study, we collected everyone who reacted to or commented on one post each from 950 founders and classified each person by role from their LinkedIn headline.
| Post | Decision makers among engagers | Investors among engagers |
|---|---|---|
| Fundraise posts | 50% | 8% |
| Everything else | 41% | 5% |
Decision makers here means founders, executives (C-level, VP, Head of, Director) and investors. On a raise post, half the people engaging are in that group.
This rests on 25 raise posts, so read it as directional. My guess is that investors watch raises closely and other founders want to know who backed whom. Investors showed up on raise posts at a higher rate than on any other post type we measured.
What should a funding announcement post include?
A photo or video, the amount, the story behind the round and the names of your investors. Each of these lifted raise posts compared with other raise posts, with everything else held constant:
| What the raise post does | Effect vs other raise posts |
|---|---|
| Has video | 1.97x |
| Has photo(s) | 1.64x |
| States the amount | 1.39x |
| Tells the story behind the raise | 1.34x |
| Includes a link | 1.25x |
| Tags 2+ companies (investors, partners) | 1.25x |
| Shares a feeling or struggle | 1.24x |
| Runs 1,000+ characters | 1.22x |
| Names or thanks the investors | 1.19x |
| Tags 3+ people | 1.16x |
| Reads like a press release | no penalty (1.12x, range includes 1) |
The visual matters most. A raise post with video got nearly twice what a raise post without one got. A team photo is the easy version, and a short clip of the founders saying what the money is for is the stronger one.
Customer numbers help too. Across all founder posts, mentioning a customer count ("400 customers") got 1.47x, and on raise posts it got 1.81x. If you have a real number about the business that you're happy to share, the raise post is the place for it.
Should you say how much you raised?
Yes, if you can. Stating the amount lifted a raise post 1.39x against raise posts that left it out.
This is how raise posts did by size of round, against each founder's usual post:
| Amount raised | Engagement vs the founder's usual |
|---|---|
| Under $3M | 2.62x |
| $3M to $10M | 4.65x |
| $10M to $30M | 5.78x |
| $30M to $100M | 5.30x |
| $100M+ | 4.91x |
Relative to a founder's usual engagement, raise posts peak at $10M to $30M, which is typically a Series A or B. In absolute terms engagement keeps climbing with the amount, from a median of 146 engagements under $3M to 494 at $100M+.
A small round still gets more than 2.5 times a founder's usual engagement. If the number feels small to you, it's still worth stating. People react to the news and the story, and a vague "we raised a round" gives them less to react to.
Should you name or tag your investors?
Yes. Naming or thanking the investors lifted a raise post 1.19x, tagging 2 or more companies (your investors or partners) 1.25x and tagging 3+ people 1.16x.
Who the investors are matters even more, though it's tangled up with round size:
| Raise post | With | Without |
|---|---|---|
| Names a top-tier VC (Sequoia, a16z, Accel and others) | 5.68x | 3.29x |
| Mentions YC | 6.24x | 3.45x |
These figures are against each founder's usual post. Big-name investors and bigger rounds overlap a lot, so we can't fully separate the two effects. Either way, naming the investors costs nothing and gives their networks a reason to see it.
Should a raise post sound like the founder or like a press release?
On a raise post, it doesn't matter much. Raises are the one post type in our data where voice made no difference.
We compared each founder's story-voice posts with their own corporate-voice posts of the same type:
| Post type | Story voice vs corporate voice, same founder |
|---|---|
| Hiring | 2.15x |
| Milestone | 2.06x |
| Product launch | 1.62x |
| Customer win | 1.23x |
| Fundraise | 1.00x (36 founders) |
On almost every kind of news, the version told as a story wins, by about 1.2x to 2x. On raise posts it's a tie. The news carries the post whichever voice it's written in, and reading like a press release carried no penalty (1.12x, with a range that includes no effect).
The story earns its place. Telling the story behind the raise still lifted the post 1.34x, and sharing a feeling or struggle 1.24x. So the strongest version likely has both, the facts a press release would carry and the story behind them.
One small wrinkle on pronouns. Across most post types, "I" and "we" make little difference. On raise posts, posts written mostly in "I" got 0.65x what posts written mostly in "we" got. That's a small sample (66 posts), so treat it as a direction, but it makes sense. A raise is a team result, and credit reads better when it's shared.
You'll also see advice to never open with "Thrilled to announce". Across all founder posts, openings like "Thrilled to announce" (2.23x), "Excited to announce" (2.10x), "Proud to announce" (2.11x) and "Today we..." (2.40x) all did well. The first three landed within 0.1x of each other, so the wording barely mattered next to the news behind it.
How long should a funding announcement be?
Longer than a press blurb. Raise posts of 1,000+ characters got 1.22x what shorter raise posts got. The extra length is where the story goes, covering why you started and what the money is for.
Including a link also went with better results on raise posts (1.25x). It often points at press coverage or a company blog post. We cover the link question in full in LinkedIn rules, tested on 160,540 founder posts.
How do these numbers compare with the usual funding-post advice?
Foundera's founder playbook for 2026 is open about its limits: "no rigorous public dataset isolates how funding-announcement posts perform versus other posts." That's the gap this study fills, at least for founders of funded startups.
Some common advice holds up well. Foundera recommends a short founding story and images of real people, and PostInstantly builds the body of the post around the origin story or one proof point. Our data backs both. Foundera's suggested structure (a hook about why, a short founding story, the round facts, the people, what's next) fits our feature table closely.
Other advice doesn't match what we found, including three recommendations from PostInstantly's guide:
- Limit tags to three people total. Across all founder posts, tagging 4 to 9 people got 1.25x and 10+ got 1.47x with everything else held constant. On raise posts, 3+ people got 1.16x. We found no sign that more tags hurt.
- Put the link in the first comment. Their reason is that LinkedIn has historically reduced distribution for posts with links. On raise posts we found a link in the post went with 1.25x. We measure engagement, though, so we can't speak to impressions.
- Post Tuesday to Thursday, 7 to 9am. Across all founder posts, every day of the week performed about the same. Early morning did best, by about 6%.
On length, their 200 to 400 words sits close to our finding that raise posts of 1,000+ characters did better (1.22x). We didn't test their claim that engagement drops after 300 words.
Both guides also warn against opening with "We're thrilled to announce". Our numbers say the opener matters far less than having real news behind it, and a raise is real news.
Does it matter if you've been quiet before the raise?
Not much. A raise draws people in either way. We counted how often each founder had posted in the 90 days before their raise post, then compared founders with similar follower counts:
| Followers | Quiet before (0 to 2 posts) | Occasional (3 to 12) | Weekly+ (13+) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smaller third | 165 | 122 | 46 |
| Middle third | 283 | 222 | 166 |
| Larger third | 539 | 468 | 508 |
These are median engagements on the raise post itself. Founders who'd been quiet did at least as well on the day.
So don't hold the announcement back because you haven't been posting. Where the quiet founder loses out is in the weeks between announcements, when the audience grows. We covered that in how often founders should post on LinkedIn.
What should you post after announcing a raise?
Keep posting. For 1,033 first raise announcements with 90 days of data on both sides:
| After announcing a raise | Share of founders |
|---|---|
| Posted more than before | 49% |
| Posted less than before | 32% |
| Posted nothing for 90 days | 1 in 5 |
Posts in the 90 days after a raise got 1.07x the founder's usual engagement, against 1.00x in the 90 days before. The raise brings a small lift to what follows, and 1 in 5 founders doesn't post anything to collect it.
There's also short-term momentum. The next post within two weeks of a post that hit 5 times a founder's usual engagement got 1.39x, mostly because related news tends to follow a raise. That's the window for the follow-up posts you already have:
- Hiring. A raise usually means open roles. Hiring posts with photos got 1.72x against other hiring posts.
- What the money is for. The product you're building, told as a story.
- Your first milestone since the raise. Milestone posts got 1.55x a founder's usual engagement.
An example structure for a founder raise post
This is an illustrative template, written for this article. The clinic-billing company is made up, and nothing in it describes a real raise or real results. Swap every bracket for your own facts. The notes in brackets show which finding each part draws on.
Four years ago, I left my job to fix how small clinics handle billing. Today, [Company] has raised $[amount] to keep going. [Real news up front, in the founder's words. "N years ago..." openings got 1.80x across founder posts. Stating the amount: 1.39x.]
The round was led by [Lead Investor], with [Investor 2] and [Investor 3] joining. Thank you for backing us. [Names and thanks the investors: 1.19x. Tag their company pages: 2+ companies tagged got 1.25x.]
When we started, our first clinic was doing billing on paper. [Two or three lines on what happened between then and now, including the hard part.] [The story behind the raise: 1.34x. A feeling or struggle: 1.24x.]
We now work with [real customer count] clinics. [A customer count on a raise post: 1.81x. Only use a real number.]
This round goes into [specific use of funds]. We're hiring [roles], link below. [A useful link: 1.25x on raise posts.]
None of this happens without [tag 3+ teammates or co-founders]. [Tags 3+ people: 1.16x. "We" over "I" on raise news.]
[Attach a team photo or a short video of the founders: video 1.97x, photos 1.64x. Aim for 1,000+ characters: 1.22x.]
Keep the order loose and the voice yours. The template is there to make sure the features that lifted raise posts in our data are all in the post.
What I'd do for a raise announcement
- Post it from your own profile. At startups under 50 people, the founder has more followers than the company page 80% of the time. Let the company page reshare it.
- Shoot a short video or take a real team photo. Video lifted raise posts 1.97x and photos 1.64x. It's the biggest single choice in the post.
- State the amount and name the investors. 1.39x and 1.19x. Tag their company pages and the teammates who made it happen.
- Tell the story behind the round. What was hard and what the money is for. Story added 1.34x even on a post type where voice didn't matter.
- Write past 1,000 characters. Raise posts that long got 1.22x.
- Line up the next three posts before you publish. The roles you're hiring for, what you're building, the next milestone. 1 in 5 founders goes silent for 90 days after a raise, and you'll have the most attention you've had all year.
See where you stand
Paste your LinkedIn URL into the founder LinkedIn benchmark and you'll get your percentile for posting rhythm, followers, typical post engagement and engagement per 1,000 followers, against founders at your company size, plus the three changes worth making first.
For every table in the study, download the full report. It runs 15 pages on rhythm, formats, post types, stories, openings and tagging. For where founders stand overall, see the founder LinkedIn benchmarks.
How we did this
We identified 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups from the portfolios of venture firms and accelerators, and collected up to their last 50 LinkedIn posts (180,011 posts), their follower count and their company size on October 6, 2026.
- Engagement is reactions plus comments plus reposts, on English-language posts at least 14 days old, from the 3,932 founders with at least 10 such posts (160,540 posts). LinkedIn doesn't publish impressions for other people's posts, so this study doesn't measure reach.
- "Engagement vs the founder's usual" compares each post with the same founder's median post. The raise-post feature table instead compares raise posts with other raise posts (2,333 in all), with the other features held constant.
- The after-the-raise figures cover 1,033 first raise announcements with 90 days of posts on both sides.
- Post types were tagged by AI and spot-checked against keywords. The fundraise category is conservative.
- The audience figures come from a second study of every reactor and commenter on one random post each from 950 founders, classified by role from their LinkedIn headline. Decision makers are founders, executives (C-level, VP, Head of, Director) and investors. Raise posts were 25 of those 950, so their audience figures are directional.
- These are associations. Comparing each founder with themselves and checking every finding in two random halves of the founders removes the obvious distortions, but not all of them.
To cite this study: "according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups."