Introducing Autopilot: The Capital Back Office for Fundraising
Late-stage founders don't run their raise alone — they build a back office. Analysts on the pipeline. A team with low context chasing intros and managing investor relations by hand. It's the standard playbook, and it's slow: headcount, ramp time, and a process that's only as fast as the people running it.
Autopilot replaces it — a capital back office equipped with proprietary intelligence. It surfaces the right investors, at the right time, through the right paths — so you're not landing a call with someone who isn't actually leading rounds, chasing a mutual connection who barely knows the investor, or discovering mid-call that their focus stage doesn't match yours.
In this session, Usman Gul (Founder & CEO) and Meeran Sheikh (Autopilot Lead) will walk founders through how Autopilot works, how founders can use it to create higher leverage in their rounds, and explore early customer wins — including how founders are using Autopilot to secure multiple term sheets and successfully close rounds.
We will cover:
The intelligence behind it — how Autopilot's proprietary intelligence surfaces the right investors and paths in, and avoids the dead ends that eat weeks
Autopilot, live — Research Desk, Round Collateral, and how it runs Round Preparation, Round Operations, and Strategy Iterations end-to-end
Who it's for — the founder profile Autopilot serves, and what the engagement looks like week to week
Speakers:
Usman Gul — Founder & CEO of Metal. Gul raised $120M for his first startup (including from First Round Capital). He then built Metal as the platform he wished had existed when he was raising VC himself.
Meeran Sheikh: Leads the Autopilot team at Metal and has led the strategy, idea and execution behind Autopilot.
About Us: Backed by a16z and Y Combinator, Metal is an AI-native operating system for founders raising venture rounds.