How to raise money before you raise money

It’s true that if you’re not ready to fundraise, you shouldn’t fundraise.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t talk to investors.

When thinking about a fundraise, it’s important to keep in mind that investors’ entire careers are built around early signal. They want to know things before other people do.

So if you’re at the pre-seed stage and don’t have enough traction to confidently go into a fundraise, you can still start connecting with investors.

Not with the goal of getting them to invest, but with the goal of keeping them updated.

What to say

Tactically, the best form of this looks like Linkedin connections. If they accept the connection, you can follow up with a short message to say something along the lines of:

“Hey (name), given your investments I thought you might want to stay updated on (your company) as we prepare to launch our next round of funding. We’re a (tiny description of your company). Here’s the link to get email updates: (link). I hope you have a great week!”

This way, instead of sounding like a desperate founder asking for money, you sound like someone offering an opportunity to know things about your company most other investors won’t know.

It sounds confident, and it starts creating that sense of FOMO early.

How important is this?

Now with all of this being said, there’s a very important caveat here: don’t spend all your time on this.

It’s a great thing to do and could have a big impact on your funding round, but not as big as getting actual traction. Focus on the business and let this be something slowly happening behind the scenes.

In my opinion, the best way to do that is with an automated Linkedin outreach tool. I personally use Kakiyo.

Feel free to reply with any thoughts or questions and watch out for next week’s email!

Best,

Nathan