
How to Find Investors and Get Email Intros - meredithah
https://www.atrium.co/blog/how-to-find-meet-investors/
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rdlecler1
I have no problems with cold emails. But if you’re going to cold email a VC
establish your credibility in the first 2-3 sentences. Crazy traction trumps
everything (but don’t oversell ornuse hyperbole) so lead with numbers if you
have it. Absent that focus on your team’s history of high achievement or other
qualifying filters. If you’re doing a fintech startup it’s not sufficient to
say I have 25 years of finance experience. You could have worked as a bank
teller for all I know. Much better would be I worked at X-brand name and led a
team of Y people and grew the business $millions. Name drop brand name
companies like Google, McKinsey, or rank the company if it’s less known (the
second largest X.

The worst emails are cold emails from people saying they have some
revolutionary technology but zero professional credibility no history of
achievement or an ability to Marshall resources and the email is riddled with
spelling mistakes. Next are emails from entrepreneurs with products so clearly
out of your space that it’s clear they were just mining linked in.

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amasad
Great advice! However, from my experience, I've found that networking events
to be a complete waste of time -- I could be especially bad at it -- but I've
found that the better and more long term way to build a network is to work
with people. Be it joining a startup, going to work at a large tech company,
collaborating on open-source, or even volunteering somewhere.

If you work at an early-stage startup you typically get to meet/interact with
investors. And I did exactly that, the investors that I met at the first
startup that I worked at when I emigrated to the U.S ended up investing in my
company 4 years later.

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greglindahl
If you talk to other founders, you'll probably find that all of them recommend
both working with people (stronger friendships with a few people) and
networking events (weaker friendships with a lot of people.)

~~~
amasad
I should say, I think that highly contextualized events, like say, "YC
founders", or "Xoogler Founders", etc are useful. I think because a) there's a
shared context and more probably shared interests b) there's frankly more
signal-to-noise ratio, i.e. more likely than not people are worth knowing
there.

But the paradox here is that you already need to have the relevant background
to join such groups.

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jkarneges
Some years ago I attended a talk series about fundraising, and there were a
lot of interesting topics covered, like financing types, valuations, how to
handle meetings, how to negotiate, etc. When it came time for questions, I
asked what probably sounded like an absolutely stupid question: "this has all
been great advice, but how do I actually meet an investor in the first place?"
The answer? "Use your network".

Coming from an engineering background, I really had no idea that fundraising
required networking. I naively thought fundraising would be more like working
with a bank. Like you walk into a clearly marked building and set an
appointment, to get your arbitrary company funded. In reality, there are all
these different VC types that fund different company types and stages, finding
who VCs are is tricky (Crunchbase is your friend), and VC websites often don't
have contact info (of course it would be useless anyway; you have to use your
network). It's like a whole secret society nobody knows about.

After some years, I have a larger network, and can get meetings with most VCs.
But holy moly that was not intuitive _at all_.

~~~
Swizec
My biggest breakthrough, that I haven’t used yet in practice, was when I
realized that anyone with disposable income can be an angel investor. Got a
friend who’s loaded? Angel. Family member with more savings than they need?
Angel. Friend just sold stock? Angel. Cousin got huge bonus? Angel.

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justin
Hello HN! Justin (the author) here. We launched our new Atrium blog as a
resource to the startup community. Happy to answer any questions about VC
intros here.

~~~
kodable
Curious if you can expand on the associates bit for when you _dont_ have an in
with an associate.

Its always seemed that (generally speaking) most VCs with associates say you
should talk to associates, and those seen as more “founder friendly” (i.e YC
partners) or with no associates themselves say don’t waste your time.

Also, if you get an intro to a partner and get pushed to an associate how do
you handle it? Should you still take the meeting? Seems like that’s a pretty
strong negative initial signal but you don’t want to burn bridges either.

~~~
justin
Generally meeting with an associate means an extra gatekeeper to convince so
that’s why people suggest talking only with partners.

If you get pushed to an associate from a partner though it’s hard to go back
and demand the meeting with the partner. If you have limited options, you
should take the associate meeting.

FWIW our first round for Justin.tv started with an associate conversation.

~~~
Alex3917
> meeting with an associate means an extra gatekeeper to convince

The associate is the one talking with all the other companies in your space
and the related spaces, so if you cultivate good relationships with them then
they're your eyes and ears on the industry.

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hoi
It's an extroverts world. What are the best channels for introverts? How many
potential start ups have never been funded because the founder(s) didn't have
the networking skills that are natural to extroverts?

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ggg9990
Introverts aren’t as successful as extroverts in a CEO position that requires
raising external capital and networking for customers. However introverts are
often more successful in other roles (such as CTO), other types of companies
(such as bootstrapped, low touch products), and other career types (eg
mathematician).

~~~
mathattack
Introverts can make good large company CEOs. Built to Last describes how the
CEOs of companies who outperform the market over longer terms are more steady
(hedgehogs) than flashy (foxes).

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elefanten
Yeah. Some people seem to assume "being an introvert" means being sentenced to
social ineptitude. Most people can learn to overcome discomfort with certain
experiences or activities. And with some effort, it's possible to even become
good at such activities. Certainly, YMMV and not every introvert wants to,
needs to or necessarily can pull it off.

If you're going to be CEO, either of a startup or a large co, you're probably
broadly competent or hyper-competent in a handful of areas. Seems reasonable
that at that level your ex/introvert tendencies are far from determinant.

~~~
CamTin
"If you're going to be CEO, either of a startup or a large co, you're probably
broadly competent or hyper-competent in a handful of areas."

Any particular reasoning behind this? Why would this particular specialty
(abstract people management and capital allocation) be more likely to attract
competent people than any other job specialty?

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aerosmile
Those are great tips! One thing I would love to see added is what the sweet
spots are for each fund/investor. We all know who the social, saas or
marketplace investors are. But within those groups, there are additional
segmentations (eg: price-sensitive investors, those looking for a certain min
ARR, those focused only on +$20B TAMs, etc). I realize that not every investor
would like to be labeled to such a level of granularity, but many have very
narrow windows of opportunity, and it's surprising that there's not more
public info about their sweet spots.

~~~
justin
This is a great idea for a crowd sourced database!

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mwseibel
I think the one thing that begs repeating is how much YC is helpful in this
process. It changes the fundraising dynamic for founders by allowing you to
focus on product and growth and then creating an environment where investors
come to you. It also provides you with an instant community of many founders
who are happy to provide you with investor intros. Among other more
significant benefits - YC is probably the best startup fundraising hack in the
US (both for first time founders and repeat founders). I think this article is
amazing advice but I really wish there would come a day when all early stage
founders could just focus on making something their customers want and didn’t
need advice on how to break into the startup investment scene. I think this
barrier prevents many great founders from getting started and many important
problems from being solved.

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wicha
Double opt-in should be always the etiquette for introductions! We built
[https://intrologic.com](https://intrologic.com), connect your email metadata
and linkedin connections file, invite your friends and connectors and we
provide you a searchable interface to request for intros to potential
investors or qualified leads. Sign up:
[https://intrologic.com/start](https://intrologic.com/start). Founder here.

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nsmog767
the email template is $$$

