Is This Why VCs Aren't Responding to You?

One founder shared his 49-page pitch deck with me and asked,

What’s wrong? Why aren’t VCs responding to me?

Well, there’s a lot wrong. We’re going to cover the main points today & get into detail later, but when it comes to cold investor outreach:

If you fail on your first impression with an investor, 99.99% of the time you’ll never turn a No into a Yes.

So here’s what to do if you don’t want to raise $:

1. Spam a list of 2,500 investors
2. Stalk VCs on all their socials & ignoring submission protocols
3. Approach investors cold, instead of trying to work your way through networks
4. Only talk to investors when you want $ from them
5. Don’t vet or do your research - because money’s all the same, right?

None of those work, but there’s a method to getting investors to respond.

Before you start shooting off emails or picking up the phone, here’s what you’ve gotta do first:

Step 1: Do your homework

In this first sentence, tell the reader why it's so important.

Don’t just reach out to everyone. Filter them by fit:

• Geography
• Industry / Thesis

(here’s more detail on how to establishing investor fit)

Take it a step further, though. You’ll be personalizing every single outreach:

1. Identify the partner who handles your industry. You’ll get clues on this from which boards they sit on (LinkedIn + VC fund website)
2. Reviewing past deals they’ve invested in, and potentially referencing one or two
3. Telling them why you think you’d be a great fit to work together

Step 2: Prioritize your ‘Investors to Approach’ list

I personally recommend that you build out an investor CRM so you can:

• Centralize the research you did in Step 1 (e.g. Nancy invested in 3x B2B SaaS Seed rounds in last 18 months)
• Track your conversations
• Not let things slip through the cracks
• Always know where you left things
• Rank your investors by priority of approach

Once you’ve built it, you can also consult other founders & your existing investors on who they think shouldn’t be on the list, and who you should add.

Then rank them in order of when you’ll approach them. I personally rank priority by: [Training Wheels pitches, if needed], Most Likely to Commit → Least Likely to Commit → Potential Leads

It’s part of a bigger strategy to snowball your non-lead equity commitments so it’s EASY to get a lead interested when you start getting to that part of the list.

Step 3: Be sincere in your approach

Not everyone wants you to reach out via email.

If an investor has a specific deal funnel, follow their steps. It keeps them organized, and keeps you off their list of “Founders Who Can’t Follow Directions.”

If they don’t have a deal funnel, I personally recommend video pitching since it gets founders 3-5x more meetings and 2-5x more commitments

But if you must email, then here’s a few basic rules:

• Bullets, not blocks of text. No one wants to read an epic monologue
• Traction is critical
• Focus on fit (remember your research into past deals they’ve done?)

A well-structured investor approach email can do so much heavy lifting.

Step 4: Follow up consistently

Some VCs get hundreds of submissions every week, so be respectful.

If they say “Don’t follow up - we’ll get back to you” then don’t follow up.

Otherwise, rules of thumb to not be annoying:

1. Three follow ups total.
2. Follow up A: T+5-7 business days
3. Follow up B: T+10-15 business days
4. Follow up C: T+3 months

Don’t be the one who got lost in the inbox. Don’t pester people either though.

Summary

Assume your investors are getting spammed with ridiculous offers - so instead, be the founder that actually brought value to them.

Just doing your homework can put you in the top 15% of founders who reached out.

Follow directions when cold approaching, and you’ll be rewarded.

But, wherever possible, always look for warm intros.

We’ll be going over all of this in a more detail over the next few weeks, so if you enjoyed this then show some love in the LinkedIn comments!

‍

P.S. - This is a direct response to a founder who asked me a question. If you have one too, drop me your question here