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The hardest part of fundraising for most founders is actually getting a meeting with a VC. The reality is that most VCs are bombarded with outreach from founders but only 0.05% will actually receive funding.
That is 1 in 2000. This is why so many of you feel like raising capital is an impossible task; the odds are stacked against you!
That being said there are strategies that you can use to improve your changes of raising so let’s go through a few of these so that you can start to implement them immediately.
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Fix your cold outreach - Cold outreach is still the #1 way to reach VCs, no matter what anyone says. There is no way (aside from a 1 in a million viral tweet or getting into YC) you can get in front of 1000 investors. For all its faults, cold outreach gets you volume, and raising venture capital is fundamentally a game of volume. The problem with most cold outreach is that it sucks. You need to get good at highlighting the key points that will get investors to click. The best option here is traction; if you have traction, you should highlight that in the opening of your cold email. If not, then look for something unique you have, like your team, that can draw in investors.
Look for second connections - You may not know investors, but you likely know people who do. Look for those people and ask them to make introductions. The key here is to look for people who are incentivized to make those connections, often I find founders focus on the easier targets who aren’t incentivized. A simple example is that I get approached frequently asking for connections, but I am not incentivized to make those connections for you. Investors would stop listening to my suggestions if I made connections for all subscribers. So I’m not an ideal person to ask, yes, I have connections, and yes, if I love the company, I can connect you, but I’m more hesitant than most to make those connections because my reputation depends on my NOT making connections often. Conversely, if you found fellow alumni from your university and asked for a connection, they are highly incentivized to make it. They want people from their alma mater to succeed; they want to increase the school’s reputation, which benefits them and the people they care about. If necessary, they will take the social capital hit to do something that could benefit you both and look good to their social circle. So you need to find these second connections and focus on the ones that have aligned interests.
Use Advisors - If you find the right advisors with the right connections and offer the right incentives, you can easily find yourself meeting with top VCs. Someone like me, again, given my line of work, might not be the best fit if your goal is VC introductions, but a former early employee at a startup who doesn’t do much consulting or advisory work will have plenty of startup connections and the incentive to make connections. So again, you need to consider incentives, but finding the right advisors can help.
Social media - Having a social presence and allowing investors to find you can lead to significant traction, especially if you can get a viral tweet or video.
Conferences - I’m not a huge fan because of the significant time investment involved but this does work and is a strategy you can choose to use.
Have you used any of these strategies? |
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Onwards and Upwards,
