- Persuade & Raise
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- ♞ Stages of Investor Engagement
What to communicate at each stage?
One of the biggest mistakes that I see founders making is having a single strategy for communicating with investors. The problem with this is that you will often be engaging with investors at three different stages:
Before you start planning your raise.
As you plan your raise before you go to market.
When you are actively fundraising.
These three stages serve different purposes and require different approaches. If you use the same approach at each stage, then you will fail to maximize the potential of the conversations, create confusion about the purpose of the conversations or in the worst case, alienate an investor completely.
So let’s dive into what your focus should be when talking to investors at each of these stages.
Before you start planning your raise - At this stage there should be two primary focuses: (i) vision, (ii) potential. When you are months or years away from raising, you want to be selling investors on the vision of what you are building and its potential. They don’t need to make decisions yet about investing, so they aren’t actively thinking about risk. So at this stage, trying to make sure that they see the biggest and best possible outcome should be your objective.
As you plan your raise before you go to market - At this stage you want to start to get them ready and excited to invest, your focus should be on (i) education, (ii) demonstration. You want them to understand how you are doing what you are doing and to be able to see and experience the results. Again, at this stage, you don’t need to worry about closing the deal, so focus on getting some of the more boring parts of pitching (like education) out of the way so that when you come back to them in 3-6 months, they already understand what you are doing and how.
When you are actively fundraising - Focus on (i) narrative, (ii) traction, (iii) process. At this stage, when you are in the process of raising funds, you want to stick to the script and ensure that you are leveraging calendar density to create a sense of FOMO. That means that all investors are moving through your process at the same rate, and you control both the process and the narrative. If you can nail this, then you’ll be able to put your best foot forward and maximize your chances of raising.
Do you tailor your pitch to the stage of conversation? |
Are you looking to grow your business? Here is how I can help:
📱 Book a Strategy Call to get 1:1 feedback on your pitch, pitch deck and/or fundraising strategy. (If you need general startup advice, then reply to this email, and I’ll let you know if/how I can help.)
Onwards and Upwards,
