Congratulations! You've received your Advance Assurance, now it's time to raise.
Here are some useful resources to get you started:
- How to find startup investors
- Here are some of the VCs / Funds we work with closely
- Active funds & angels in the space: Startup Funding in the UK
- Database for VCs within our network (password: "nextround")
- And finally, here's the database we have with some of the known angels groups and funds in the UK (password: "showmethemoney") - share your pitch link with them!
General tips for fundraising:
- Pitch is our free product to share information with the investors you reach out to. Here is a step by step guide.
- Attend and be active at events. Sign up for our Events newsletter here and find other events such as Paradigm Talks Events
- Make sure you understand Agile Fundraising, EIS & SEIS, How to Value Your Startup Company and have perfected your pitch deck.
- Don't underestimate the power of reaching out on LinkedIn / other socials and asking your network for introductions.
- 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:
- Directory of active VCs
- The Seed Stage | Demo day without the accelerator
- See the investor directory section on the Seedlegals website.
- Here's RLC's article on active funds & angels in the space: Startup Funding in the UK
- OpenVC provide a cool way to search VCs / Funds by what they invest in
- AngelPath are facilitating investor outreach.
- Sifted have lists of top investors in Europe, including Top female angel investors in Europe
- SEIS fund calling for pitch decks
- Gritt.io - Helping Founders Get Funded
- Active investor list - Google Sheets
- Investor Scout is an investor database of 37,000+ investors
- Gen Z VCs
- Airtable - No-Warm-Intro-Required Investor List
- OpenVC | All VC firms by thesis. Radically free and open.
- List of Venture Capital investors (mountsideventures.com)
- List of Angel networks (mountsideventures.com)
- Wholesale Investor - Venture Capital and Capital Raising Opportunities
- The Investors Panel – theinvestorspanel.com
- Angels Partners - Find business angels for your startup, connecting Entrepreneurs and Investors
Top tips:
- Do your research: Make sure you reach out to funds / angels who invest in your industry and stage
- 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.
- 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:
- Asking your current investors / network what they know about them
- Checking on Landscape - Anonymous Investor Reviews
- 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:
- Accelerators
- Venture Capital Term Sheet Guide
- Up & to the Right (U2R) have put together brilliant resources on raising capital and ensuring your pitch-deck is 100% ready.
- Creating the Pitch deck is easy on SeedLegals
- First 1000 users
- Website Traffic - Check and Analyze Any Website | Similarweb
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.