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You just had a great meeting with a VC or angel, and you're waiting to book another meeting or get to a final 'Yes' or 'No.' You’re not sure why the VC isn't responding to your previous emails and soon you're going to send a check-in saying something.
How do you follow up to maximize the chance they decide to invest?
Founder-turned-investor Ash Rust shares the following sample follow-up emails on his blog:
Immediately after the first call:
Hi Nicky,
Pleasure meeting you today. I appreciated your questions around engagement and went through our data to get an answer on daily active users — we currently have 5,233 up from 789 six months ago. I’ve also attached our monthly cohort analysis, and our deck from the meeting.
I’d love to schedule another chat to review your questions. Would Oct 4 at 10am work for you?
Ongoing follow-ups:
Hi Ajay,
Quick update here — we now have $700k spoken for out of the $1M target for this round with Sterling Road and Pear VC committing this week. We also just launched the MVP of our most requested feature: the iPhone app.
I would love to continue our conversation before the round closes, would 2pm Oct 7 work for you?
Your ongoing follow-ups should be sent every 3–5 days and include:
1. Mention the round is filling up.
2. New investors in the round, who have signed and wired funds.
3. Product and Sales launches wins (traction, launches & new customers)
When you’re closing (or after 2 weeks):
Hi Jess,
Thanks again for meeting with me on Sept 13. We’re now moving into the final stages of the round, so I’d love to know if you’d like to be involved? If I haven’t heard from you by Friday at 5pm, I’ll assume we should move forward without you.
As a reminder, here’s some quick company highlights:
1. $100k ARR growing 15%/month.
2. We are Oxford graduates with a decade of experience in this sector.
3. Pear VC is leading the $1M round.
Your final follow-up should include:
1. A reminder of the original meeting.
2. Top company highlights (traction, team, investors).
3. Decision deadline.
Mark Suster (partner at Upfront) has a whole blog post about this, including common ways of getting VC attention with emails and actionable suggestions for phrases you can use. Here are a sample of the tactics he lists:
Show a sense of momentum — After a week or two has passed…[] A polite follow up email saying, “just wanted to follow up with a quick summary of some exciting news.” [] I suggest in your email you say, “I know you’re really busy so I’ll make sure to check back in a week or so.”
A reason to reengage — By now if you’re in a normal VC or angel process 4–6 weeks might have passed. [] But your next step is to find a reason that the VC needs to see you again. This could be a major new release of the product that you’d “love to show the VC because he’ll find it interesting” and you promise to only stay 20–30 minutes. Or maybe you had a major customer win that you’d like to walk them through. Or a major shift in strategy. Whatever. You need to push the next meeting.
Multiple endorsements / touch points — The same strategy that works to get intro’s to people works to get momentum from people. They need to hear about you from multiple touch points. It needs to be masterfully orchestrated by you but very subtle. You need to find out who influences the partner. Who knows them well or at least somebody that they see on a regular basis. It needs to be somebody you know and trust.
In a perfect world you say, “I met a few weeks ago with Joe Partner at Big VC Co. He seemed to be interested. If you happen to see him I’d really be grateful if you would mention how much you like our product / believe in our company / that you knew me well when we worked at Yahoo! (or whatever is appropriate). I want to be subtle about it so if you talk with the VC please don’t over play it.” The more people who mention you the better.
A sense of urgency – So how do you create urgency? First, you do need to create multiple interested parties. You can’t fake it. Then see point 5 above. You need to find a way to get a whisper campaign going that somebody else is thinking about asking you to the prom. If all else fails you give the VC a call with a very subtle and polite message, “Just wanted to keep you updated on our situation. We’re getting some strong interest from a couple of firms. We don’t have a term sheet yet but seem close. We really liked your firm and just wanted to get a sense on what else you need from me to help your process.”
In a fundraising playbook posted to Lenny Rachitsky’s blog, angel investor Marc McCabe explains why adding additional info besides a simple “checkin” works well:
Having lots of content you can share helps. No one likes sending (or receiving) the “just checking in” email. Compose some interesting emails with relevant content that will help build understanding about what you’re doing and why. Always finish these emails with actions and next steps that can move things forward. It’s important to maintain dialogue and stay top-of-mind with the partner you’re speaking to.”
Mark Suster (yes, again - his blog is really great) has another useful blog post on why following up well is important. He explains that investors are inundated with pitches and constantly distracted by other business demands. As a result, they genuinely forget why they loved you, and you have to remind them why you rock. Here’s a great excerpt from his post:
When you pitched me I really did love you.
…[Abbrev.] But it’s only Tuesday. Sigh. Wednesday I have 4 companies coming in to talk about their companies. Rinse and repeat for 10 days…
...[Abbrev.] 18 days later we hop on a call. Weren’t you the one who went to … oh, no. That wasn’t you. You went to Wash U. I remember. But your co-founder had been senior at one of the big enterprise software companies and if I remember correctly American Express had run a big pilot with you. I think??? Right?
I know this sounds exaggerated but this is the life of an investor.
Mark recommends reminding the investor why they loved you by getting in front of them in person again. However, IMO, the principle also applies to the awesome email templates above. Sharing business updates, sharing exciting content, etc. are ways of genuinely reminding the investor how awesome they thought you were in the first place.
“Generate FOMO” is one of the most common pieces of raising advice, and you can see Ash building FOMO in the emails above. That said, fake FOMO attempts can backfire – it’s often recognizable and will turn off investors. Canadian investor Chris Nuemann from Panache Ventures has a candid blog post on common types of fake FOMO and how they’re perceived by investors, to help you avoid rookie mistakes. Highly recommend checking it out!
Looking for more context on the process of fundraising from VCs overall? Here are some of my favorite guides:
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