How to Find and Message Investors on LinkedIn

This article explains how to look for investors on LinkedIn, and what should be in the first email to get interested in your project. In general, LinkedIn has a good conversion rate - both large funds and top investors respond to emails. And although it does not bring instant investment, it gives a lot of motivation and desire to continue, which are so important at the initial stage. We divide the whole process of communicating with investors on LinkedIn into three stages: Search; Acquaintance; Communication support. Looking for: TechCrunch and CrunchBase Create an account on LinkedIn. Fill in your profile: name, photo, company name, field of activity, and tell about yourself and previous experience. Investors care about the background of the person, because they often do not invest in an idea, but in a team, in the success of which they believe. Therefore, take your profile seriously - sometimes it is this profile that will decide whether or not to respond to your messages. Some people prefer to use LinkedIn email finder. However, once you've created your profile, you can look for investors directly on LinkedIn. To do this, enter a keyword into the search bar, such as "investor" and select the "people" category. You can narrow your search by geography, company, and other parameters. The social network will show a list of contacts and how you are connected to them: directly, through mutual acquaintances, or not connected at all. It's better to have mutual friends, because LinkedIn puts restrictions on sending messages to people with whom you don't have a shared history. Getting to know each other: introductions and highlights Once you've made your list of investors, look on LinkedIn to see if you have any mutual acquaintances. Of course there is nothing stopping you from writing to people directly, but it is better to find someone who can make an introduction - formally introduce you to an investor. It is great if it is a founder with whom the investor is already working and whose opinion he trusts. Then such an introduction will raise the profile. You can build a whole strategy on this - first establish positive contacts with the startup's mentees, and then ask them to introduce you to the investor. However, this is a long story, and if you need to be quicker, write directly, especially to large funds. They have a high open rate - they respond to almost all messages. Before the first contact, prepare information about the project - revenue, its growth by month, costs, growth of users, and so on. Investors do not spend time studying multipage documents, they need a summary of the main points. Keep your letter as short as possible - literally three sentences: • What's the company's name and what it does; • Key indicators and highlights; • Why did you choose this particular direction? At the end add a phrase along the lines of "I see that you are investing in projects in our field. Can you give a feedback on my startup? I would be grateful to you could find 15 minutes for a call this month. If the investor likes your project, he or she will offer to meet to discuss it. You also need to show that this is a personal message, not a mass mailing. To do this, get to know more about the investor-what he does, who else he invests in, what's going on with him. This will help make the letter personalized. For example, you can congratulate the investor on a just completed deal. If you are writing to a founder, evaluate his product - tell him that you liked the latest feature, but found a few bugs. This way, people will understand that you are following their activities and addressing them. Pay attention to literacy - be sure to check for errors and use expressions accepted in business etiquette. You can have texts automatically checked in Grammarly, an extension of your Chrome browser. Be sure to reply to emails and messages the same day you receive them. If you delay responding for more than a day, investors may decide to stop contacting you further because they won't think you're particularly interested. Looking ahead, it is important to say that you should also confirm appointments quickly, agree to early breakfasts, and arrive in advance. If an investor is interested, they usually ask for more information about the company. And when the investor is ready, say so directly. Keep in touch: greetings and updates Even if the cooperation didn't work out right away, that's no reason to stop communicating. Investors usually "leave the door open" and are ready to resume negotiations if the project shows serious growth. The main thing here is not to lose contact, so keep all the information. You can use a CRM to do this, but you can simply enter the data into an Excel spreadsheet. It has four columns: the investor and his contacts, the person who can present, the date of the last communication and the date of the next meeting. It is also necessary to periodically remind yourself. Birthday and holiday greetings are good for this, as well as update mailings with news and updates on the project. We advise you to send them no more than once a quarter, so that you don't get bored with emails. In an update, report on the startup's achievements, provide new indicators, and talk about the challenges you have encountered and how you are overcoming them. All the information you provide should fit into 4-5 sentences. Conclusion LinkedIn is a professional social network with more than 600 million members worldwide. It is the easiest way to quickly find the right people and connect with them. However, it's only the first step - it's almost impossible to get invested without face-to-face communication.