Build Pre-Qualified Investor List

Summary

To help build momentum during fundraising, you need to build a list of pre-qualified investors that you want to pitch.

You can’t pitch if you have nobody to pitch to. That is why it is important to build a list of investors.

You would think that is an obvious thing to do and yet I constantly see founders, who start their fundraising process before building a database of relevant and qualified investors. Typically, they have 5-10 conversations with investors they already know or can easily get connected to. Most of the time, that doesn’t result in a term sheet and founders stall out because they can’t build momentum, which is critical for closing early-stage funding rounds.

So please make sure to spend enough time to prepare a qualified investor list. A good rule of thumb is to aim for 100 contacts at the seed stage and 50 at the series A stage. As I explain in Founder POV, a lot of early-stage fundraising is a numbers game in the sense that you are looking to filter rather than convince. There are certainly founders who got a couple of term sheets after five conversations or so. But just in case things don’t come together right away, it pays off to be prepared.

So let’s talk about how to build a pre-qualified investor list.