How I Raised $250,000 From Angel Investors I Had Never Met Before (Free Guide)

In 2014, I quit my nine-to-five job to work on a startup with no funding lined up and next to no savings. I needed money fast. In just three weeks, I was able to raise $250,000 from angel investors that I'd never even met before. In this video, I'll show you exactly how I did it then, how you can do it today, plus new tools that are available that make it 10 times easier than ever to raise money from angel investors. So first thing you need to do is open up a Google spreadsheet, Google Sheets, and you're going to create two tabs. tab one is going to be your network i'll talk about tab two later but first let's focus on tab one so the first tab in the spreadsheet is going to be your network and i want you to list down literally every single person you know that might be able to write a minimum five thousand dollar check or ideally twenty five thousand dollar check or anyone who might know someone who would be able to write that check and i want you to spend a lot of time here going through your network anyone you worked with anyone you met at the coffee shop anyone that you met at that conference anyone that you might even know multiple degrees of separation but you bumped into them once it can be i will rate this connection strength later but like a one out of ten is you bumped into them at a coffee shop you were both working on something in in tech You exchange contact info and haven't talked to them in two years ten would be like they've always said if you ever leave your job I want to be the first investor So don't worry about how strong the connections are right now Just list down in the first column the name of every single person that you might know that might be able to either write a check for $5,000 or more or knows someone who might be able to do that That's it. Make that list column two on this spreadsheet You were going to write down are they an investor a connector or are they both and investors are usually both so i would really challenge you if you know someone that's an investor they're probably also a connector that can connect you to someone that you might be able to write a check so go down your spreadsheet next to every name and write investor connector or both the third column on this spreadsheet i want you to write who else they might know that might be able to write a check for five thousand dollars or more and this you can find this on linkedin you can find this on their social media people they interact with you can just know this from your own personal experience with them but you want to make a comprehensive list and actually expand your network beyond the people that you know to people that your network knows and so you can exponentially expand the amount of angel investors that you might be able to connect with and i wouldn't just think of traditional angel investors like startup investors that are well known anyone who has a reasonably successful job probably has thought about how do they invest their money Maybe they're into tech until they like angel investing or have always wanted to do it. You could be their first angel check. When we base $250,000, a lot of the checks we got were our people's first check ever into a company. So I really want you to rack your brain and list everyone that they might know. And then column D, the last column on this tab is going to be your connection strength. And it's one to 10. One being I bumped into this person at a conference two years ago. We exchanged contact info. I haven't talked to them since. 10 being I worked for this person for five years and they always told me, if i ever leave and start a startup they want to be the first check yet just list everyone that you might know this is a critical step you really need to expand your thinking and and come up with the absolute maximum universe on people that you might be able to talk to to raise money for your startup so that's step one step two the second tab of your spreadsheet this is going to be angel investors that actually invest in your space or in your category and there's a few different ways to think about this so let's say you're building a social network well obviously you want to find investors that invest in social networks so you can go on the tools that i'll mention in a second and you can find investors that have invested in other social network companies or just generally in the space there are investors that will just invest in you because you're in the same city as them so like if you're in new york city you might look at new york city angels they like to invest in new york city startups if you are from a certain college there are angels that like to invest in alumni of that college so don't just limit yourself to your category i would think first and foremost your category and then sort of like your geography your alumni association any sort of things that you might belong to that people like to sort of associate with and might invest with those are good categories now the three places that i go to find angel investors one signal.nfx.com this is an amazing resource they have thousands of angel investors categorized by geography by industry by category of software like you name it They have everything. And so you can literally just click into a category, see the angel investor, see where they invested and see their connections and things like that. Two, Crunchbase. Crunchbase is amazing. You can look up competitors to you, companies that are in a similar space, and you can see all of their investors listed out. So that's another way to get it. And the third is AngelList. AngelList has thousands of angels that are backing either funds, syndicates, or companies just like yours. So you can go in there and build a list. And what I want you to do is, again, make a spreadsheet. It's tab two. and you're going to list every single angel that you can find that might be potentially interested in investing in you either your space your geography all the things i mentioned earlier it's going to list them all out that that's the first column now column b second column on your spreadsheet is going to be potential connectors and this is where the magic really happens for every single angel on your list you are going to go find do i know anyone who might know them and so you can obviously reference your first tab because you made a list of everyone you already know hopefully and so you can see oh do any of these people know them and again i'm checking linkedin i'm checking social media i'm trying to see if there's any sort of connection ideally the best scenario is this person has worked with them before they raised capital from them but i will take at this stage and if you're just getting started out kind of like any loose connection just to get you in front of the angel investor now hopefully on this list you will find some angels that it turns out bob who was vp of engineering at your last company knows this person they went to college together worked on a project together and so you can actually reach up to bob and say hey can you introduce me to so and so but there will be a number of angels to which you do not know anyone that knows them they are just outside of your network and so the question is how do you get in touch with them you have two options first hold email this angel investor and say hey i'm so and so i'm working on x would you be interested in a meeting we're looking for angel investors i actually never take that approach and i'll tell you why angel investors there's a certain amount of trust that needs to be built into the introduction because they're usually writing a $25,000 check after meeting with an entrepreneur for an hour or two. So obviously someone would be crazy to do that unless they're sort of pre-vetted from their network. So I try to avoid cold emailing investors. What I find way more powerful and what I recommend you do is find someone who knows this angel investor well and cold email them. So what I mean is rather than cold emailing the investor, i would much much rather cold email a ceo that has raised from this angel investor there's an automatic connection because you're both founders you both sort of have this inherent love for the company building that the grind and so you'll have a connection there you'll have a bond and they'll be more likely to meet with you email the founder and say hey i'm building a company xyz we're putting together an angel round and i saw that you raised from so and so um we're thinking of adding them to our round would you be open to a five minute chat so i can learn about your experience with them super easy you're not asking for an introduction you just want to get a reference check when you talk to this founder your number one goal on the meeting is to impress the founder by what you're doing and i don't mean brag but get them excited about what you're doing. And by excited, I mean, they believe that what you're building will be successful. They think it's interesting. They think that you have a real shot of doing this. You have a strong team or a strong idea. If you do not get there in the meeting and you can sense that this founder or the CEO is kind of leaning out saying, I don't know, like, have you thought about XYZ? It sounds like this might be really hard, things like that. Do not ask for the intro. The worst thing you can do is ask for an intro from someone who thinks they're doing you a favor by putting you in front of a potential investor. What you want is someone so excited about your business that they think they're doing the investor a favor by introducing you because you're going to be the next big thing that makes them a ton of money. If they're not like... hell yeah, your idea is awesome. Your business is awesome. I would love to introduce you to so-and-so. Do not ask for the intro. It's the easiest way to kill a connection. I'd rather say, hey, thanks so much for your time. This has been great. I'll keep this in mind when I'm talking with so-and-so. And then I'll go try to find a different route into that investor. But assuming they're excited, assuming they like what you're doing, your next step is actually say, hey, this has been great. Would you be open to connecting me with so-and-so? And I always try to make it super easy for them. So I'll say, I'll send you a affordable blurb. All you need to do is forward it to the investor and then I'll take it from there. And so assuming they say, yes, you say, great. Also, while I'm at it, is there anyone else that you think I should be raising from? Like any other investors that you think would be interested in what we're doing? I can also send you a blurb for them. And hopefully if you've impressed them, they'll say, actually, yeah, you know, we had these other two investors in our company that I think would be a good fit. Let me make that introduction as well. So you can actually go from trying to get one angel introduction to maybe a couple. I find this to be way, way more powerful than cold emailing investors because now you have someone that. they've invested in that they trust making a warm intro and so you've solved this sort of cold intro cold email problem with investors you're actually hacking a cold email into a warm intro and so you can actually get in front of that investor anyways once you've built your list of everyone that you know every angel that might be interested in investing in you and a way to get in front of that angel whether it's a direct connection a connection of a connection or a cold email you're going to start working your list and the way i want you to think about this is when you're going out to fundraise and so as you look over your schedule for the next two weeks you want to ask the question do i have enough meetings and the goal is 10 to 20 meetings per week i don't like less than 10 but more than 20 you start to get sort of overwhelmed and burnt out and you need to be like showing up at your best for every meeting so i try to keep it around 10 to 20 and i find this sweet spot is really like two to maximum four meetings per day when i'm fundraising so every two weeks you're going to look at and say do i have 10 to 20 meetings lined up per week for the next two weeks so that's 20 to 40 meetings if i do great i'm going to be heads down grinding i'm going to be meeting with these investors i'm going to be incorporating their feedback into my pitch getting better and hopefully getting some checks in the account if i don't have 10 to 20 meetings lined up per week i'm going to go back to this list and start hustling there. I'm going to start hustling for connections that know investors and so on. So you're either working your list and getting more and more introductions and more and more meetings set up, or you're actually taking those meetings. And it's just a simple process. Every week, I just look two weeks out, do I have enough meetings? And you literally just run this process. And if you do this well, within five, six weeks, you can have 50 to 100 meetings with angel investors. And it's a volume game when you're raising from angel investors. But if you get this list built first, before you go out to actually raise you're going to massively accelerate your fundraising process and drastically increase your chances of actually getting cash in the bank because that's your goal you need to get some checks to get your business going and that's it that's the exact same process i used to raise 250 000 in three weeks for my last startup and ultimately $21 million. It's the same process whether I'm raising a seed round, series A, series B, it doesn't matter. This is how every fundraise starts for me. So hopefully that's super clear and it gives you an idea of how to actually build a network of angel investors that will invest in your company even if you have no network today. Trust me, I had no network when I started this process. I had just moved from South Carolina to San Francisco and believe me, there was like no tech scene in South Carolina. So I didn't know anyone. but I was able to work my network, expand my network through cold emails into other founders and ultimately raise a successful angel round. Now, if you want to know what to do once you actually get in the meeting with an angel investor and how to not just meet with angel investors, but turn that into actual cash in the bank, check some angel investors, watch this other video I just did on how to actually pitch angel investors and get checks from them. Thanks so much. And I'll see you in the next one.

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