fhunded’s Post

Reaching out to investors through their website or pitch deck portal is destroying your chances of fundraising. Like really, if this is what you are doing you might as well not be fundraising at all. VCs are a wash with deal flow and their website is almost always the worst quality as a cohort. Therefore, even if you're the best company in the world, going through their website is putting you into a bucket where the VC knows the quality is usually minimal and therefore isn't worth much of their time. They'll skim that deck in even less time than the 150 seconds the average pitch deck gets reviewed in. So, what's the best way to make that first contact with a VC? Either: 1️⃣ A warm introduction; or 2️⃣ None generic direct outreach on LinkedIn. Queue the uprising on VC is an elitist circle, it's all done on warm intros. That's actually not the case, a warm introduction is way way easier than most people think, it just requires a little bit of patience and some hard work. As a founder, the easiest people to network with are other founders. A lot of other founders will have angels and VCs on their cap table that you want on your cap table. They are the best source of introduction as their views carry weight with investors (a founder likely knows what another good founder looks like) and they're relatively easy to do, with that little bit of work and patience. If you absolutely cannot get an intro to the person you want then direct outreach on LinkedIn is the next best way to go, imo. Again though, it can't be a copy and paste where you forget to change the investors name. There has to be something tangible that's personal to that investor (previous deals they've done, content they've posted, etc.). Back to that term patience again, it's also a lot easier if you spend a bit of time interacting with your preferred investor(s) before hitting them with a pitch deck and InMail. Comment on their posts, build relationships and be someone they'll recognise before you land in their inbox. It's hard but the VC funnel is so brutal, funds typically invest into 1% of the deals they see. As a founder you can either complain about the way the industry works or use it to your advantage to stand out from the crowd. _____________________________________ 💭 Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments. 🔔 Want to see more? Follow: Kiran Mehta. ♻ Useful for your network too? Hit that repost button!