If you’re looking for investors to fund your company, make sure you have a well-crafted strategy.
Investor outreach won’t go well without an effective plan. You must have an outreach list, contact details, a package of necessary materials, killer investor email templates, and lots of patience.
It may be quite challenging to reach investors. You may face rejections, pitching to many investors might be overwhelming, and you might even lose hope that you can ever find someone to fund your business. However, things go much easier when you know what to do and how to do it right.
This article talks about the essence and importance of investor outreach and gives a step-by-step explanation of what you should do to find your investors, grab their attention, and ultimately get money for your startup.
What is investor outreach, and why is it important?
Put simply, investor outreach is finding and pitching to investors who will fund your business. You need to spot potential investors, craft personalized messages, and showcase your business’s value proposition so these investors get interested in supporting you to move further. Sounds pretty easy, but is it really as easy as it may seem at first sight?
Not quite so.
Many founders don’t know where to search for and how to reach out to investors, which investor outreach channels to use, or they may lack warm introductions and network access.
In fact, there may be a lot of mistakes founders can make, especially if they lack knowledge and experience. Some of the major ones include:
Reaching out to the wrong investors: Not all individuals with the label “investor” are ready to back your business. Maybe their investment thesis doesn’t match your business specifics—perhaps you have the stage they don’t typically invest in, the industry they don’t operate in, or the geographic region they don’t focus on.
Too general messages and campaigns: As investors are always busy, they tend to get straight to the point. When they realize your VC email is just one of the mass messages you’re sending to hundreds of others, they’ll likely skip it. Your investor outreach email must be personalized. Show investors that you’ve done your homework and you understand perfectly well why this particular investor is a good fit for your startup.
Using only one investor outreach channel: Diversification is king, which is true in many realms, be it investment, income, or investor outreach. Don’t limit your campaign only to cold introductions or investor LinkedIn outreach. Diversify your channels, and your chances of hitting the right investors will increase.
Poorly prepared investment materials: Even the best investor outreach strategy won’t work if there are no well-crafted investment documents. Imagine that after scanning your cold email, investors show interest and ask for more information. But you send over a poorly prepared pitch deck with neither clarity nor visual appeal. The likely effect? Doubtfully, a set-up meeting and a term sheet.
No follow-up: Time-strapped investors may overlook or forget your initial message, but timely and polite follow-ups can help you keep the conversation going.
If investor targeting goes without expert investor outreach services, it’s not a surprise that many startup founders hit the above issues.
As seen from the mistakes founders may make, investor outreach is an important part of the fundraising process because it sets the stage for your successful raising capital. You can’t attract money if you don’t know how to attract investors.
An effective investor outreach strategy allows you to land the needed cash, build long-term partnerships with investors, and direct your startup towards sustainable growth.
Now that you know why you need effective investor outreach, it’s time to figure out how to do it right.
Investor outreach for startups: 6 major steps
Investor outreach boils down to three main pillars: targeting, preparing, and following up.
Let’s look closer at how each of these pillars works and which steps you must take to get to your fundraising destination successfully.
1. Research your target market
Investor outreach needs thorough market research just like entering a new market, expanding your product offerings, or actually starting a business.
You must know the fundraising landscape before starting your journey. The market is volatile, and to prepare well for raising funds, you need to know the market sentiment first. Is it bullish or bearish? Who are the top investment players? What are the common terms? Do they depend on the stage, business model, or industry? If yes, how? What are the investment hubs today? Silicon Valley? Or maybe London or New York? What types of investors are now more active? Are these VC firms, accelerators, private equity investors, angels?
Get this information before you start structuring your targeted investor outreach plan.
2. Prepare your outreach list
Think of this step as similar to researching your target customers before bringing your product to the market. You learn about the customers’ demographics, needs, and pain points, study competitors, and analyze buying behavior.
The same is true here. You want to find the perfect candidates interested in backing your startup.
During investor targeting, look at:
Investors investment priorities and criteria;
Past investments;
Preferred stages and industries;
The check size they typically write;
Feedback from previous clients;
Some personal information;
The better you know all the candidates on your outreach list, the more successful your investor outreach will be. Pitching to the right investors is already a great part of the deal.
3. Choose your investor outreach channels
As mentioned before, it’s best to diversify your investor outreach channels. Why? Because relying solely on one channel may not bring you the desired outcomes while taking your precious time. However, when you use several channels, you spread the risks and increase the likelihood that at least one will work well.
Here are methods of how to contact investors or places where to find their contact details:
Email outreach (whether through building cold investor relations or connections via warm introductions);
Professional social media platforms like LinkedIn (you may also use X to complement your investor outreach);
Networking events and startup conferences;
Online funding platforms like AngelList or SeedInvest;
Accelerators and Incubators;
Investor databases like Waveup Copilot;
Providers of expert investor outreach services.
4. Prepare your startup core documents
Investor outreach won’t go without a well-prepared pitch deck. You may also need a one-pager, executive summary, financial model, and cap table. The more documents you prepare, the better. But right from the start, get your pitch deck and investor email template ready.
This is how the process of sharing investment documents works:
You start with sending a sample email to investors;
If investors are interested in your outreach email, they may ask for more information. Here, you send them your pitch deck.
As soon as investors set up a meeting with you, they may require an executive summary and a financial model.
After you negotiate all the terms and finally sign a term sheet, a process of due diligence comes into play. Here, investors may ask for your cap table, legal documents, etc.
In addition, you should prepare marketing materials as they can help you strengthen your investor outreach. Before setting up a meeting, investors research you, your team, and your company. They may look through the LinkedIn profiles, your company’s website, or simply Google you. That’s why having a well-designed website with blog posts, articles, and customer feedback and a strong social media presence will position your company as serious and credible.
Note that a business plan isn’t typically requested for early-stage investments; it’s more relevant at the later stages. However, sometimes VCs may ask for your business plan if they want to get a deeper look into your company’s strategy, market analysis, operations, and revenue model.
5. Pitch to the investors from your outreach list
Everything you’ve done up to this point was a preparation. Now that you’ve built your investor list, picked your investor outreach channels, and crafted a clear and concise investor email, it’s time to start working more actively. There are several ways of how to reach out to investors:
1. If you’re sending a cold email, investors expect it to be straight to the point. As you pitch to someone who doesn’t know you and your company, your email must grab their attention right from the beginning. Start with a snapshot of your problem, your solution, how it stands out, and any traction or notable milestones. Don’t try to be too specific while describing your company; just give the main stuff and end your VC email with a powerful CTA.
2. The situation with warm introductions slightly differs. Here, investor targeting comes through a mutual connection, which typically increases the chances of a positive response. When sending warm introductions, you can be slightly more relaxed. Include some context on how you’ve connected with this investor. Also, you may give more details on your startup, as investors already have a reason to consider your email. As with a cold introduction, you also end with a powerful CTA.
Some more tips on how to craft a killer investor email:
The CEO must send the email.
Don’t include any links or images.
Try to personalize your messages by adding a personal touch.
We suggest not sending your pitch deck straight away, as sending it too early may lead to refusal. Better wait till investors get hooked and ask for additional information.
3. If you’re building your business story in public, using LinkedIn or X for your investor outreach might be a good idea. Not all investors value this type of investor targeting, but many founders have succeeded in making social media a part of their strategy. Take Elon Musk, for instance. His active presence on X drove major interest in Tesla and SpaceX during fundraising.
4. If you don’t know how to put your investor outreach strategy together, you may turn to specialized firms like Waveup. They will help you with:
Building investor outreach lists;
Crafting outreach materials;
Choosing investor outreach channels;
Writing personalized messages to investors;
Scheduling and organizing investor meetings;
Managing follow-ups;
Accessing to warm introductions;
Tracking your outreach results.
Remember to track your progress. You should always keep an eye on how your investor outreach goes to check whether your strategy is effective, whether your outreach messages and taglines work well, or if any changes are needed. Use a CRM or a spreadsheet to record major details, such as the outreach date, responses, follow-up actions, and investor feedback.
Coming in 2025, you can find outreach tracker templates, investor report templates, investor newsletter templates, and fundraising spreadsheet templates on our Waveup Copilot—a platform for startups with insights, VC contacts, and various studying materials.
Don’t forget about the importance of follow-up emails. It doesn’t mean that you must keep sending emails every day to remind investors about you. Follow-ups must be timely and polite. In case of warm introductions, you might consider a call as a follow-up, but of course, you have to make sure investors prefer this approach and are open to calls.
6. Get ready for the meetings
After your outreach, investors may request an initial meeting. Of course, it’s not a 100% guarantee you’ll get funding, yet, it means your pitch stands out from the hundreds or even thousands of other pitches, and investors decide to invest their time into knowing more about you and your company.
Still, there may be a long way from the initial meeting to securing a term sheet and getting funded.
When investors get interested in your company, they may request additional information and follow-up meetings. Once they are convinced of the opportunity, they send you a term sheet with the proposed terms of the investment. As soon as you negotiate and agree on all the terms and conditions, due diligence comes into play, followed by finalizing legal documents and closing the deal. At this point, you can consider your investor outreach successful as it has brought you to the desired outcome—capital raised.
Just remember that before hearing a “yes” from investors, you might hear many “no”, so be mentally ready for it. Even the best entrepreneurs may face rejections, so keep calm and proceed on your outreach list till you find your investors.
Wrapp-up: Make your investor outreach strategy work for you
Investor outreach is a complex process that, if managed right, may bring you money, partnerships, and growth opportunities in the long run.
If you think that investor outreach is only about sending emails, it’s not. When you decide to raise venture capital, you need to know which investors to put into your outreach list, where to find their contacts, how to prepare pitching materials, how to build relationships, and how to tell the story of your company in the way investors would like to write a big check for you.
At Waveup, we know how to make your investor outreach strategy work for you. Our experts have years of experience helping startups secure investments and grow, connections with top-tier VCs, and a database of investors with all the information needed for successful outreach. We also help you manage your pitching documents, craft messages, manage follow-ups, and assist with meetings, negotiations, and deal closure.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for more details on assisted fundraising.