Hello, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be covering how
to schedule meetings with investors. Meeting with an investor is nerve-racking. It’s
one of the most important parts that a founder, an entrepreneur is going to encounter as they’re
building and scaling their business. Essentially, it’s all a make-it-or-break-it! There are
going to be certain things that you should say, certain things that you shouldn’t say,
and how you behave and how you interact is going to make all the difference. In today’s
video, we’re really going to break it down for you. We’re going to give you all the
insights and give you that clear roadmap and a step-by-step guide as to how to go about
it. So, with that being said, let’s get into it.
The role of investor meetings in startup fundraising are really critical. Whether you’re at an
angel stage or whether you’re at a venture capital stage, which essentially is early-stage
or more like later-stage, it is going to define how you can convince these people, and how
you can get them excited and justify the time that they’re giving you.
Typically, what you’re going to encounter when you’re going out there, and you’re
meeting with investors is that they’re just going to give you a few minutes. Literally,
in the first couple of minutes, they’re going to know if they want to give you another
meeting or not. Again, the way that you need to look at this
as an entrepreneur is to always try to get to the next meeting because, ultimately, what
separates you and the money are the concerns in-between. Really, what you want to do is
always try to secure the next meeting, and on that meeting, more concerns, and then another
meeting with more concerns that you get to address, and that will essentially get you
to where you want to be. You need to do your homework before the meeting,
whether that is stalking a little bit the investor on Twitter or LinkedIn to see what
they are tweeting about, what they’re excited about, what groups they’re following on
LinkedIn. You need to find those points of common interest so that when you arrive in
the meeting, there’s somehow that background-relatedness that is pressing, that is going to get you
nicely in a smooth way into the business talk. When it goes into the business talk, make
sure that you have your pitch deck ready to go. And by the way, below, you can find a
pitch deck template that founders are using all over the world to raise millions, which
you can just grab for free now. Again, always do your homework, know the investment thesis
of that investor, what segment are they investing in, what location they invest in, and then
also what financing cycle is a clear fit and what they’re excited about?
In terms of how to get investor meetings, you can get those via your own network. Maybe
they’re colleagues, friends, family members. Eventually, if you don’t find a clear way
to do that with people in your network, it’s very simple. Just go on websites like Crunchbase
or PitchBook and see who is investing in your own segment, and also in your financing cycle
and geographic location. Then, what you do is you grab and reach out
to entrepreneurs that have received an investment from those investors that you want to target
in the last 6-12 months, and you ultimately connect with that entrepreneur and ask them,
after you’ve connected meaningfully, for an introduction to their own investor. Those
are the best introductions because they come with social proof. It’s like when you go
to an event, and you meet the cousin of a friend or the brother of a friend. That trust
is already present with that. You want that social proof to have that instant background
relatedness, as well, with those investors that you want to target. So, either directly,
via people in your network, or by entrepreneurs that have received an investment with those
investors, those are all great ways to really get that introduction into those investors
that you want to tackle. You should budget for a lot of investor meetings,
whether that is time, because, obviously, there are going to be many more meetings.
Typically, it takes, on average, 100 noes for every yes that you get, so budget for
many of those meetings to happen because the bigger the funnel is that you have, the people
at the top, the more that are going to come at the bottom and make an investment.
So, again, budget for a lot of those meetings to happen in order to get that investment
in. Then, also, budget for money because, really, raising money requires money. That
could be traveling, like for the airline, for the hotel, for food, and lunches, or dinners,
or drinks, but be ready to spend some money on meeting these investors.
Start before the need. Don’t wait until you have just a few months left of money in
the bank because, ultimately, that desperation is going to come across, and those investors
are not investing in desperate people, in losers. They’re investing in winners, in
people that have that confidence coming out. In order to have that, you need that leverage.
That leverage is going to be by having a little bit more oxygen to operate and maneuver just
in case of the possibility of weathering hard times.
Again, don’t wait until the end, until the last minute. Get out there as fast as you
can, and even if you have a ton of money in the bank and a tone of runway to go, which
means more months to execute, at least do it casually because as an entrepreneur, you’re
always fundraising – sometimes, more active; sometimes, less active, but always fundraising
because fundraising is all about building meaningful relationships.
You also want to schedule those meetings on your own terms. What this means is that when
you’re fundraising, you always want to have all the investors scheduled at the same time.
You want to have them at the same place because this is like sales. It’s a different form
of sales. So, you want to have them all at the intro phase, at the first call phase,
at the follow-up phase, at the offering document phase, or even cash being wired and into the
bank phase. But always try to have them all at the same time, so that’s going to give
you that boost of confidence. Now, when you’re scheduling meetings again,
really always don’t rely on the back-and-forth of maybe this day, what about this time, what
about this other day because things are going to fall through the cracks. You should use
software, for example, ScheduleOnce or Calendly, that is connected directly to your calendar
so that when an investor is ready to meet with you, just send them that link and say,
“Okay, great. Thank you so much. Feel free to pick a time that is coming in for you in
this link, which is connected directly to my calendar.” That way, they just click
on the link, they pick a time, and you’re good to go.
Once you’ve scheduled the meeting, that means that you need to be ready for game time.
You need to master the pitch. You need to master the story, and you need to be clear
as to how you tell something that is incredibly powerful that is going to get them super excited
to jump in. You really need to master the Why, the What, and the How. Because the problem
is that when you go into meetings with entrepreneurs going to those meetings, they make the mistake
of just pulling up the pitch deck and walking people through every single feature that they
can think of. First, talk about this as if it was a movie.
You want to talk about that day that you came up with the idea, how you brought it to life,
how you thought about building your team together. It’s like when you’re reading a book,
and it tells you the kind of food they ate that day or perhaps what kind of weather was
happening that day. It really makes you be part of it. So, you want to do that too.
You want to make them be part of it, and you’re shifting it from the Why to the What, and
from the What into the How. The What is what you’re building, that problem that you’re
looking to solve, and what’s the solution. The How is how you’re going about that.
Always really master the story here. It’s all about storytelling. Storytelling is what
captures future possibilities, and that’s what the investor is banking on.
Check your technology. Whether you’re going to be using slides in-person, Zoom, Google,
Hangouts, whatever that is, but make sure that it works because the last thing that
you want is that you jump in, you’re in the meeting, and then all of a sudden, there
are things that are not working out that you could have avoided if you were to have looked
before. I would love to hear on the comment section
below what you’re up to and how you’re thinking about scheduling investor meetings.
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Then also take a look at the fundraising training, which is the program where we help, from A
to Z, with everything related to fundraising. There, you’ll find live Q&As, agreements,
templates, a community of entrepreneurs helping each other all over the world, and I think
that you’ll find tremendous value in it. So thank you so much for watching.