Resources
Signal
Search | Sales Navigator
Crunchbase: Discover innovative companies and the people behind them
Venture Capital, Private Equity and M&A Database | PitchBook
VC – Twitter Search / Twitter
Email finder with Linkedin profile URL, prospect names, position, company. Get emails in seconds – GetProspect
YouTube Video
Automated Transcription
All right hello, hello Tyler Bryden here I’m going to talk about something very important that I’ve had to do a lot that I’ve been asked a lot and is important as you are building a business. Depending on the model that you’re building the business and that is finding investors. So question I get is Tyler. How do I find investors? And So what I’ve done today sort of looked at 6 different ways that you can find those investors starting with first one which is signal incredible site that has sort of built a social network. It allows you to connect with different investors. What I’m really interested in about is the automatic sort of categorization of investors based on what stage they invest in, precede seed Series A and then the actual verticals or sort of business models that they invest in. So if you are a seed company and you’re interested in a RV R, you can click on this and you can find the investors that are then investing in this kind of vertical.
In this business, in this model and then there are actual sweet spot range. Now if you are connected in you’re logged in, there is actually the ability to see an intro strength so you can see if you have any common connections between you that would that would allow for an introduction to happen and just generally it’s a. Note that I’ll jump into a second point, but a warm introduction to an investor is the best introduction you can get, so a couple ways that I’m showing here today are ways that you can find. Investors who fit the criteria that you’re looking for, and maybe ways to even get their e-mail. But just because you have their e-mail and you have the ability to do code outreach, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s gonna be the most successful way to outreach to them. But one of these great platforms is signal. One that I recommend that has grown and you can do a lot. There’s also ways to export some of these lists and then use it to, you know, use another platform to enrich that data to get even more details of these people, so I will then jump into.
LinkedIn, which is another really valuable way to do it, and I’m going to pull a couple pieces together here. One of them is that. First of all, I’m using LinkedIn sales navigator. I do pay for this, but it allows you to have a different level of filtering a different level of sort of saving and refining searches and a lot of a lot of power within this platform, and what you can see here is I’m quite quickly able to do a role investor private investor. Even the seniority levels so that you’re not talking to maybe junior.
Associates at these firms that you’re interested in, and then I’ve even done a connection level here so a second degree connection and then primarily in the United States and Canada with profile language English that gives me 11,000 results. So lots of people in here. I’m sort of casually, systematically going through viewing these people at different times in my life and what’s really fascinating. First of all, you can save it, but then if you have a tool like get prospect, you can see that just on this page. Alan, there’s 25 new leads found. I can click this and it’s going to have the emails of these investors included in it in a list and a great little great little software platform where I can export it and then I can get the e-mail, LinkedIn, Twitter, the company, the firm, it’s details on it. A lot of information starts to populate very quickly once you win, bridge that data so that is get prospect. Definitely worthwhile checking out something that I’m using in my day to day and.
Have really enjoyed so opened up a lot of opportunities not just for investors but for sales there as well too. So other piece that you can do so I’ll move on to #3 which is crunch base Crunch base has a great sort of structure and organization of companies and then you can see great, but I can also click on investors now. I don’t have a premium version of this many people do, but you can see some of the investors who then invested in Meadow. So if there’s a company in your space. Maybe not a direct competitor, but it shares the vertical with you. You can identify them. You can look into. See the investors in it and then you can find again. Ideally a warm intro to that investor, but this can help you very quickly identify that. See even if there’s people who are leading around and then what the funding round was. And even in this case you could see a structure here of the convertible note. So number valuable way not just to get find investors, but find how they’re investing round.
Different kind of companies and then again some contact details and information on how who is the best? How is the best way to contact them? And if you do contact them. What are some you know some small insights or some personalization you can do on that outreach so that if you are trying to fight through the noise of all these companies pitching them that that you can maybe differentiate a little bit there. There is another one here which is Pitchbook. Now I have. Let’s see, I don’t want to request a free trial. I wanted to actually see one SEC let me pull this down and I’ll show you what I’m looking at here.
Basically, you can see our company, so here is a company that I’ve followed interesting in in the space you can see so simple a great company, sort of conversational intelligence in some more focused on developer tools, but really fascinating company, great people and then you can also see the board members so board members then helps you identify who is most likely an investor in the company. So flying Fish Partners made an investment in symbol and then they’ve become a board member and then you can see even further. Now again, I don’t have the. Full paid version but a couple insights like this can get you a little bit of an advantage as you’re on your search here anyways, and you can see a couple different investor names. The type the holding and then if you have the paid version you’re going to get even more details. You can see an entire well organized full list of the 23 investors who have invested in symbols, so really powerful way to do that and lots of ways to learn about the company on even more detailed basis if you’re interested in that so.
Hop into what I’ll say is a little bit less organized, a little bit more chaos, but literally just like VC VC Twitter. I don’t know if VCs is going to take me all to it that we go. They said unfold people systematically, so that’s probably not the best search that I’ve just made, but. You can basically do a VC filter venture capital filter exactly and start to navigate through again a little bit more unstructured. You’re going to have to spend some time finding these people, but lots of ways to use Twitter profiles to then enrich that data to get the contact information. Or if you’re rolling a little DM directly through Twitter, can be a way to do this as well too, so you can. You know if you have a connection like, I’m nice, I actually see a couple people who.
Follow me. Who are VC’s I could send him a message say hey, you know love what you’re doing you know you know here’s what we do X traction blah blah would be great to connect a little bit more do you want to take this off Twitter account? So another good way to do that so I will pull off my screen sharing here and I think I’ve what have I done. I’ve done signal LinkedIn Crunch base pitch book and then Twitter, so that’s five. Ideally go with number 6 here which is. Using your own network and the idea of what your own network is changes a little bit in the world that we’re in today because we have sort of even less degrees of separation between people. But ideally if you are in startups, you’re in software. You’re in this space, you have some connections that people who have maybe raised money who are on their own startup journey. Maybe you even have investors who are in the space.
Over and over again, the recommendation that I’ve heard is if you’re finding investors who fit the sort of the category that you’re looking for, making sure that the right the right stage, they’re interested. There’s no just straight up competitor in their portfolio that would stop them from investing in you is to use that network and try to get a personal introduction. And even better if that personal introduction is a founder who is doing well with their company that has an investment from several investors, and if they are then vetting. You and making making intros to them. There’s a huge signal right there already that you are worthwhile. You’re going to filter through the noise you’re going to filter through all the all the people who are just doing cold outreach to you and and at that chance you at least most likely to get a time because it is their job to investors, job to find good quality companies, and if they have good investment, good companies and founders that they’ve invested and they really do take those intros.
You know not. They don’t take them lightly. These could be great opportunity for deal flow and to find the next people that they want to invest in. And so I do recommend that. And then there’s a whole other set of series of OK, great. Now that you’ve got the contact information, now you’ve got the intro. There’s a lot more work to do in this regard, but I want to start a sort of the top of the funnel today, which is, you know, how do you even find out who these investors are and showed you a couple examples? A couple ways that you could do it?
Quick last thing that I just sort of popped up in my mind, but as you’re sort of following the news and you’re saying press releases on funding announcements a lot of times it does sort of say hey, the round was led by X and then fall with investments from blah blah blah blah blah. Sometimes those are angels, sometimes those are, sometimes those are actual firms. You can even use those press releases to find there. So I added a #7 that’s a bonus to do it and I hope if you are on your journey to find investors. By between some of the service I’ve said and then stacking it with something like get prospect which is which enriches information and finds emails, find more contact info that you can be successful on your hunt to find some investors and with that hopefully getting an investment that makes sense and allowing you to grow your company and bring your vision to life. So this has been Tyler Braden. Hope you enjoyed this. Thank you so much. Bye bye.
