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You’ve decided to raise money for your startup, and you’re thinking of raising from venture capitalists. How do you go about finding and meeting these VCs?
Founders often start by building a large (100+ investors) list of potential investors, on the assumption that you’ll need to pitch a bunch of Vs to find a lead investor. Most founders keep this in a Google Sheet or CRM software, with columns for investor name, notes, and next step.
Here’s a picture of the investor list Ari & Nick used to raise seed funding:
The left/blue side of the spreadsheet tracks VCs, including whether they lead rounds, priority, whether it’s a VC or angel, notes, and more. The right/orange side tracks warm intros; headers are the names of introers, and the cells to track the status of the intro: Assigned, Introed, etc. Some founders will split these functions into two documents, having a large investor list and a separate intro & meeting tracker kanban board (see Kirk from Merit’s meeting tracker).
Check out these investor list templates to start from:
Before adding an investor to your list, check that they want to invest in companies like yours (aka “their investment thesis” is a good fit for your company). Check three things:
More info about investor research in this blog post by Alex Iskold from 2048 VC.
Search Similar Startups: Figure out who has invested in similar companies to yours. You’re looking for companies with the stage, sector, and geography as yours, who ideally aren’t direct competitors. Search those companies on Crunchbase, and click into their investors tab. Here’s a walkthrough. Add those names to your investor list. Asking friends in your industry is another great way to do this.
Search Stage, Sector, and Geography: Figure out who invests in your stage, sector, and geography. You can do this by Googling “EdTech pre-seed VCs” and looking for lists or individual companies. You can also use VC database platforms like Signal NFX or Open VC.
Search for Investor Lists: Find investor lists, then individually research every investor to find those that might fit your company. Here’s a great link to a bunch of investor lists from Saba at Techstars.
Some VCs and founders suggest priority ranking your VCs by order of how awesome it would be to have them (rank them 1, 2, 3). Then reach out in waves going in reverse order. Save the 1s, the VCs you really want to chat with, until last, so you have time to practice and improve your pitch.
Once you have investors for your list, find “warm introductions” – people who can introduce you and put in a good word. People who know you deeply and who the VC respects make the best introers, but mediocre intros sometimes still lead to meetings.
Founders in a VC’s current portfolio tend to make compelling introers.
LinkedIn is a great way to find potential introers. Go to LinkedIn and search the VC you want to meet. Then, click mutual connections and figure out who can introduce you. Tools like Signal NFX and Bridge can also help you find warm intros.
If you can’t find an intro, it’s also okay to reach out cold. Here’s an example cold email that Sam from Happypillar used to book 38 investor calls and some cold email tips from YC’s Michael Seibel.
Ask your connection for an introduction. If they say yes, you can send them a forwardable intro email that introduces your company and includes a reason you’d like to chat with the VC. You may want to include a link to your pitch deck.
Your connection will then forward this to the VC.
Here’s an example forwardable email from Roy Bahat's blog:
From: Alyssa Ravasio
Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 9:35 AM
Subject: Intro to Hunter Walk
To: Roy Bahat
Hi Roy,
I think Hunter Walk / Homebrew would be an amazing investor for Hipcamp. I love their emphasis on the bottom up economy. This resonates deeply with our mission and personal goals as well, since parks are engines of local economies.
Here’s a bit more about our company:
Hipcamp helps people discover and book campsites and cabins, a $3B market that has remained stagnant and fragmented since the 90’s. They are bringing the world’s public campgrounds online, unlocking access to private lands for camping, and ultimately, getting more people outside.
Dave Morin’s Slow Ventures is leading our seed round, we’re oversubscribed but can make room by reducing the allocation on Angel List. I’d love to connect with Hunter soon to explore if this is a good fit.
Thanks Roy!!
Alyssa
Here are more great links on forwardable emails:
If a VC wants to meet, they’ll let your connection know. Your connection will then send an introduction email to both you and the VC. You’ll respond to the email to schedule a meeting. Here are tips from Elad Gil on how to work social proof and urgency into your reply email (though don’t stress yourself out!).
* * *
Hurray! You’ve now got meetings on the books.
Here are my favorite start-to-finish walkthroughs on this process. These were super helpful for me, and I hope they’ll help you too:
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