I have finished my S/EIS AA Application
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What to do once you've completed your Advance Assurance

Congratulations! You've received your Advance Assurance, now it's time to raise.

Here are some useful resources to get you started: 

General tips for fundraising:

  1. Pitch is our free product to share information with the investors you reach out to. Here is a step by step guide.
  2. Attend and be active at events. Sign up for our Events newsletter here and find other events such as Paradigm Talks Events
  3. Make sure you understand Agile Fundraising, EIS & SEIS How to Value Your Startup Company and have perfected your pitch deck.
  4. Don't underestimate the power of reaching out on LinkedIn / other socials and asking your network for introductions.
  5. Use the help articles from SeedLegals as well as other resources.

Where to find investors?  Here is another list of resources that several founders have shared:

Top tips:

  1. Do your research: Make sure you reach out to funds / angels who invest in your industry and stage
  2. On first outreach, keep it brief: If you send VCs a wall of text and a 50 page business plan, they're not going to read it. 3-5 key bullet points around growth/revenue to get them excited and a line about why you reached out to them should get more responses. You can always provide more detail after the first response.
  3. Twitter/Medium/Notion: VC tend to be most active on these platforms.

Due Diligence

3 Easy Steps for Founders to do Investor Due Diligence | by Isabel Russ | Speedinvest | Medium

Once you have found an investor, it is always important to understand who they are, and do some research by:

  1. Asking your current investors / network what they know about them
  2. Checking on Landscape - Anonymous Investor Reviews
  3. In depth due diligence - especially important for larger sums or investors you do not know much about - companies like THEMIS can help perform checks on investors. Let me know if you would like a personal intro to them.

Other resources:

There's more detail in the articles linked above, which should be helpful. Also don't be afraid to reach out to your own network - you never know who else is active in this space, under the radar.