Sarabjeet Singh, CFA
Founder – Funding Ventures | Investment Banker | Deal Strategist | Startup Guardian
CFA Charterholder. 13+ years in fundraising, corporate finance, and high-stakes startup advisory. Founder of Funding Ventures — a boutique investment bank that has helped 1,000+ startups raise ₹250 Cr+ across debt, equity, and everything in between.
Why I wrote this.
I've sat across the table from more than a thousand founders. The brilliant ones, the obsessive ones, the polite ones, the ruthless ones — and what struck me, again and again, was how often the same story repeated.
Not the story of a bad idea. Not the story of a weak market. The story of a clause. A clause they didn't read, or read but didn't understand, or understood but signed anyway because they were tired and the round had to close.
I wrote this book for the version of every founder who hasn't signed it yet. I wrote it as a novel because lists don't move people, but Rishi might. And if at the end of the last chapter you pause, just once, to re-read the clause in front of you — this book has already done its job.
— Sarabjeet Singh, CFA
The mission
“No founder, student, or professional should ever lose their company — because they didn't understand what they signed.”
From CFA charterholder to story-teller.
Sarabjeet Singh is not just an investment banker — he's a battle-tested strategist and a CFA Charterholder with over 13 years of frontline experience in fundraising, corporate finance, and high-stakes startup advisory.
After leading major mandates in top corporates for over six years, he chose the road less travelled. In 2017, he founded Funding Ventures — a mission-driven investment banking firm built to serve the founders who are building tomorrow.
Since then, he has transformed Funding Ventures into a powerhouse — backed by a team of 35+ specialists that has helped 1,000+ startups unlock over ₹250 Cr in funding, spanning equity, debt, and everything in between. From seed-stage hustlers to scaling-stage warriors, his firm has become a trusted name in investment readiness, pitch strategy, financial modelling, and bulletproof deal structuring.
But this book wasn't written in theory. It was born in fire.
After listening to over 1,000 founders — many scarred by toxic term sheets, confusing SHAs, or lost control of their own companies — Sarabjeet realized something vital: ambition isn't what kills startups. Ignorance does. Specifically, ignorance of the clauses they sign, the control they give up, and the rights they never knew they lost.
The Man Who Stayed is his direct response to that epidemic of blind signing.
The book is the prep. FV is the team you call next.
Funding Ventures is a Delhi-based boutique investment banking and startup advisory firm founded with a single mission: to bring the failure rate of startups closer to zero by giving founders the right resources at the right time.
Invite Sarabjeet to speak.
Keynotes, fireside chats, founder workshops, B-school sessions, podcasts. Topics span fundraising, term-sheet negotiation, governance, and the psychology of founder survival.