Investable Entrepreneur by James Church

The startup book that helps founders raise investment

Most startup books tell you how to build a product. This one tells you how to convince investors to back you.

Investable Entrepreneur is an Amazon best-seller and finalist at the business book awards. It’s the only startup book written specifically to help founders communicate their business in a way that makes investors confident. It introduces the Six Principles of the Perfect Pitch – a proven methodology developed from years of working with founders across every stage of funding.

Founders who have used this approach have raised over £200m in early-stage investment. And you can get a copy for free.

£200m+

Raised by founders using this methodology

40x

Higher success rate for founders who apply it

#1

Amazon’s best-selling startup book

100,000

Founders targeted to support with this book

What the book covers

Investable Entrepreneur is built around one central idea: most founders don’t fail to raise investment because their business is weak. They fail because they cannot communicate it in a way that makes investors confident.

The book breaks down exactly why investors say no, what they are really looking for when they assess a pitch, and how to build a case for your business that is clear, concise, and credible. It is practical, direct, and written for founders who are serious about raising capital, not those looking for inspiration.

The Six Principles of the Perfect Pitch covered in the book are the same framework that the author, James Church, uses with every founder he works with one-to-one. They are the foundation of every pitch deck, investment memo, and investor conversation he has ever helped build.

What readers say

Rated 4.7 stars on Amazon with 85% five-star feedback, Investable Entrepreneur by James Church has become a cornerstone of founder education since its release.

A great starting point for anyone looking at building their first business. It's extremely easy to read and packed with useful advice for each milestone. I would definitely recommend it!

Auriane Cirasuolo

Great book to read if you are planning for your 1st fundraising exercise. James has covered lots of contexts. Easy to understand. Fundraising could have been much smoother and faster had I read this book before.

Prasanna Perera

This book is essential reading just like The Lean Startup (Eric Ries). I have learned so much from Investable Entrepreneur. I would willingly have paid twice the asking price.

Mostafa Karim

Investable Entrepreneur is an excellent well-written book to help any entrepreneur understand the process on how to convince investors. It's a so easy to understand guide, with great insights into the mind of an investor. A huge thumbs up from me.

Tricia McNeilly

I've found it invaluable for our current raise, and wish I had it when I was raising our seed round, we would likely have got far better terms and raised more money. So, NOT having this book during our seed raise has cost me tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds!

T. Congdon

I felt myself constantly going, "Wow, I learned that the hard way - wish I would have just read this earlier" more than once while reading this book. A very direct, step-by-step explanation of what it takes to cross from bootstrapping into investment readiness mindset.

Katherine Gunderson

Why I wrote Investable Entrepreneur

I wrote Investable Entrepreneur because I kept seeing the same thing happen again and again. Brilliant founders with genuinely strong businesses were walking into investor meetings and failing to raise – not because their idea was weak, but because they could not communicate it in a way that made investors feel confident.

The feedback from the investors was always the same. Your business model is too vague. Your product is too complicated. You don’t have enough evidence.

Investors couldn’t see the opportunity clearly enough to commit, and they didn’t believe the founder had what it took to succeed. As a result, founders were left frustrated, confused, and running out of time.

I realised the problem was not with the businesses, the founder or the idea. It was in the communication. So I built a methodology to fix it, tested it with hundreds of founders and investors, and eventually wrote it all down so that any founder could access it, regardless of whether they could afford to work with me one-to-one.

That book is Investable Entrepreneur. And it has now helped founders raise over £200m.

Latest fundraising insights from James Church

how to raise money for a business without a loan

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How to Raise Money for a Business Without a Loan

Most founders assume that raising money for a business means borrowing it. But debt is rarely the right tool for early-stage startups – and increasingly, it is not the only one available.

If you are exploring how to raise money for a business without a loan, this guide will walk you through the most effective routes available to UK founders today, starting with the one that consistently produces the best results: equity investment.

James Church June 5, 2026

Three fundraising mistakes in 2026

Investment Advice

Three huge fundraising mistakes founders are making in 2026

Yet again this week, another founder with years of commercial experience tells me they’ve been fundraising for months with nothing to show for it. They’ve spent weeks on their business case, they’re on v.12 of their deck, and when they reach out to investors, they get tumble weeds. In the same week, a client of mine closed £600k for their pre-seed round.

The long, painful and failed attempts at fundraising are not caused by bad timing or difficult investors. They’re caused by founders following a playbook that doesn’t work.

James Church May 15, 2026

Best Startup Books for Founders

Blog

Best Startup Books for Founders: My Personal List

There are a lot of books about building startups. Most of them focus on product, culture, or mindset. Very few focus on the thing that determines whether a startup survives its early years: convincing investors to back it.

This is my personal list of the best startup books for founders – the ones I actually think are worth your time, and more importantly, the ones that will have a direct impact on your ability to build and fund a business.

James Church May 13, 2026

Why I give Investable Entrepreneur away for free

Investable Entrepreneur is part of a bigger mission. I want to help 100,000 founders raise the investment they need to build their businesses.

But I’m only one person. I have limited capacity to work with founders one-to-one, and I can only go into so much depth in a 60-minute workshop.

I wanted to find a way to support any founder with a strong idea and bundles of ambition to communicate their investment case properly to investors, regardless of their background and ability to engage in my one-to-one support. The book is how I can spread my methods and tactics to as many founders as possible.

If reading it leads some of those founders to work with me directly, that is great. But the book stands entirely on its own. You do not need anything else to start applying what is in it.

Get your free book

To get a free copy of Investable Entrepreneur, take the two-minute investor readiness test. It is free, takes less than two minutes, and gives you an instant score showing how investor-ready your business is right now.

At the end of the test, you will get your free copy of the book, along with a personalised summary of where your business currently stands and what to focus on before you approach investors.

Take the free 90-second investor readiness test

Get your score. Get the book. Start raising with confidence.

Already read It? Work with me directly

If you’ve read the book and want to go further, I work directly with founders to build the pitch that gets them funded.

From pitch deck creation and financial projections through to one-to-one consulting and investor outreach, every service is built around the same methodologies and tactics that the book introduces.

The founders I work with are 40 times more likely to raise successfully. Every engagement starts with a conversation.