Remind Investors Why They Love You

This week's tip: how to remind investors that they love you.

Imagine that you are an investor who recently met with a founder who was fundraising. You were impressed by their innovation, business model, intellect, enthusiasm, leadership traits, background — everything. The founder left the meeting probably dreaming about the money they might receive!

However, after the meeting, you had to attend a 3-hour board meeting where two founders were fighting over whether to fire the other. After the board meeting, you participated in a hiring process for a new CFO for another portfolio company.

At night, you attended an event before rushing back to meet your family and put the kids to bed. Then, you spent an hour tackling administrative work, trying to catch up on the 100+ emails that had accumulated throughout the day.

Unfortunately it’s still only Tuesday. Tomorrow you’ve got to:

• Attend an investment comittee for a company
• Attend and prep for another 3-hour board meeting
• Meet 2 companies coming in to pitch to your team

Now, imagine repeating this cycle for the entire week, and you may be wondering when you will have time to investigate the new companies you are interested in.

A couple of weeks have passed, and you have exchanged some emails with that founder, but you haven't had the time to properly delve deeper. You finally jump on a call with them two weeks after the initial meeting and think:

“Who were you again?”

You’ve forgotten why you were so excited by this company. Was it their go-to-market? Their background? Was this the founder who we spoke about fishing together? Or was that another founder I met?

You ask yourself:

“Why am I excited by this company again?”

You then decide you weren't excited enough and reject the company via an email exchange. You didn't quite have that conviction...

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Unfortunately, the scenario described above is very common for investors. The life of an investor is not just about finding new deals all the time; personal and professional obligations can get in the way.

As a founder, you have a singular focus on securing funding for your company. However, this is not the same for your investors. This is why you need to constantly remind them of why they should love your company.

To put it simply, fundraising is a series of engagements where both parties get comfortable with each other. Therefore, your focus should be on finding ways to secure the next meeting every single week of your fundraising efforts.

Where I see a lot of founders fail is in maintaining the interest of potential investors throughout the process. After two or more weeks, investors slowly lose interest and drop off.

Although many would say that Zoom meetings are sufficient, I disagree. You should aim to have as many in-person meetings as possible, as they can be much more powerful than virtual calls.

So, how can you remind investors that they love your company?

Here are a 3 ways to do so:

1. Create new content

After a fundraising meeting, an investor may have 2-3 points they want to research further about your company. These points could include your cohort retention, sales channels, hiring plan, or product development.

To prepare, you need to identify these key points and focus on creating new content that addresses them. By doing so, you can provide solutions and opportunities for improvement.

Once you have prepared this content, you can then create an opportunity to speak with your investor in person and discuss your plans further.

You could say something like:

“In our last meeting you asked me about how we target and measure our sales channels. I worked on a new model and I’d really love to show it to you in person.”

Not only does this get you another conversation, but it also shows your execution ability. When I was an investor, the more time I spent with founders especially discussing my major questions, the more time I had to get excited.

But it wasn't easy to get more meetings with me. The founders who sent me more detailed points in a quick manner? I loved them - and wanted to spend more time with them.

2. Meeting new team members

I always say that your first few meeting should just be the CEO.

This is mainly because you can build a rapport better when you are by yourself.

But it also gives you an opportunity to introduce other members of the team to investors in a meeting.

Especially when you think an investor may be falling off.

E.g., you could say:

“Last time we met I didn’t have my CTO with me. He was one of the lead engineers at Stripe. I think you’d really enjoy meeting him. Would it be alright if I brought her by your offices for a super quick coffee?”

3. Events or helping the investor

Events or giving value to an investor can be extremely powerful ways to show your domain expertise and network.

Examples can include:

• Helping them answer other questions around your industry
• Connecting them with interesting people
• Entrepreneur dinners
• Industry events
• Start-up events

The list can go on, but hopefully you understand the types of ways to make investors carry on speaking to you.

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I always say that fundraising is a sales process and that you are selling equity in your company. But that's not exactly true.

You are actually selling trust.

Trust that:

- You will deliver on your promises
- You will be a pleasure to work with
- You will communicate when needed
- You will carry on in the good and the bad times

That is fundamentally what fundraising comes down to. If you didn’t have chemistry on the first meeting it may not be able to be salvaged; sometimes there just isn’t a fit.

But if you had a cracking meeting and know that they loved you? Don’t take that love for granted. Get back in front of them and remind them why they loved you in the first place. Again and again and again until the cash is in the bank.

That's how you successfully fundraise.