Confidence is key to fundraising

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Confidence is key to fundraising
Read time 1.9 minutes

I was reading some psychology and sociology studies last week and came across a very interesting academic study around serial dating success. The study looked at hundreds of people who were serial daters; they would go out on dates organized through singles-nights and blind dates (not internet dating), and the study looked at the qualities of the people who were most successful.

The theory was that physical attractiveness would be the primary factor. Shockingly, the study, however, revealed that when judging overall attractiveness, there was a stronger correlation between the rating for confidence and overall attractiveness than the rating for physical attractiveness and overall attractiveness. In short confidence mattered more than attractivness.

After reading this I went back and looked at the last 17 fundraises I’ve worked on and my notes about my impression of the founder, their pitch, mistakes they made while raising, etc.

I found that my own subjective evidence mirrored that of the finding. The founders that I felt were most confident in their approach and their pitch were able to make more mistakes in the fundraising process with less impact on their funding outcome.

The conclusion: You don’t need a perfect pitch, you don’t need a perfect strategy for following up (all the helps, and you should still aim for it). What you need, above all else, is confidence. That confidence can come from your belief in your team/product. It can come from working with an expert. But somehow, you need to reach a level of confidence in your offering that is above and beyond the average founder if you want to increase your chances of raising significantly.

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