LinkedIn is the best place to look for investors since 73% of them use LinkedIn to research their financial decisions.
So there’s no better place to raise funds for a startup than starting from LinkedIn.
But many startup owners are either unaware of that or do it without any strategy or plan, leading them to waste such valuable chances.
Fortunately, we have good news.
If you’re looking for the most efficient ways and strategies to raise funds for your startup from a LinkedIn network, then you are in the right place.
In this article, we’ll go through a step-by-step process on how to use LinkedIn to reach the right people to invest in you and help your business grow.
So, let’s dive in!
What Are the Benefits of Fundraising on LinkedIn?
Some of the best deals and investors are found on LinkedIn through simple connections, introductions, and business development.
There are many reasons why you should consider raising funds for your startup on LinkedIn. Here are some of them:
1. It’s a good place to meet investors – As we already mentioned, it’s a place where investors are mostly spending time researching potential investments, so you can be the one to find them.
2. It’s free – LinkedIn is a free network where you can connect and network with almost anyone in the business world, so there’s no risk in trying it out.
3. Enables you to grow – Connecting with active investors on LinkedIn can help you increase your brand awareness and expand your business and personal connections.
4. It takes nothing to try – You just need a LinkedIn account and access to the internet.
Now that we’ve shown you why you should give it a try on LinkedIn, let’s show you a step-by-step process on how to do that effectively.
5 Steps to Successfully Raise Funds for a Startup
1. Look for Investors by Defining Your Audience
The first step to raising funds is defining and finding the right investors and partners to help you grow.
Don’t look for someone who just wants to invest money and has no clue about business or industry and has no useful contacts that can help you.
Investors aren’t there just to give you money but to share their experience and contacts to help you grow fast.
To ensure you will find the right investor, here are some tips on looking for and connecting with LinkedIn investors:
1. Find out who’s already investing in startups like yours and who’s in the same industry
2. Connect with people who are already interested in your industry or market or the companies that have already raised funds.
So when you define what industries are okay and what type of investors are needed, you can start searching for them.
There are two ways to search for investors on LinkedIn:
- Use LinkedIn’s basic search
- Use LinkedIn Boolean search
Let’s explain both.
1. Search for LinkedIn Investors Using LinkedIn Search
LinkedIn has an extensive search engine that allows you to find relevant connections based on keywords, location, and industry. Or you can search for LinkedIn investors based on their roles.
Since many investors mentioned it within their LinkedIn headlines, it’s easy to find those who are relevant to your business or have invested in similar ventures.
You can use it the same way you would with Google or another search engine, and also use search filters to narrow down your results.
For example, if you want to find investors in the United States that specialize in fintech, just type “investor fintech” into the search box and choose “United States” as the location.
Let’s see what comes up.
Once you’ve found someone who might be interested in investing, send them an invitation with a message so they connect with you directly.
2. Search for LinkedIn Investors Using LinkedIn Boolean Search
On the other hand, LinkedIn allows you to search for people based on specific criteria. Learn more about Boolean Search.
This feature is especially useful when you’re trying to find investors who have invested in companies similar to yours or who have worked at companies where there is a potential fit for your product or service.
Let’s say you’re looking for an investor that is also part of Google and lives in the United States.
You can type “investor AND Google” into the search bar and hit enter.
The more specific you are about what kind of investor you want to find, the easier it will be to connect with them.
Now that you have a list of people who could potentially be interested in investing in your company, the next step is connecting with them and introducing yourself and your company.
2. Connect With LinkedIn Investors
How do you approach investors on LinkedIn when you’ve found prospective matches?
Creating a solid network might aid in learning how to interact with investors.
But before you start pitching, there are a few things you should do first:
1. Prepare the pitch deck
2. Research investors and partners
3. Ask for introductions from people in your network
In case you don’t have any mutual connection, it’s not the end of the world.
You can send an introduction message when you connect with an investor on LinkedIn, even without having an introduction.
Here’s an example of how it can look like:
Hi {{FirstName}},
My name is {{YourName}} and I’m the founder of a {{CompanyName}}, {{ProductCategory}} that {{PurposeOfYourProduct/Service}}.
{{TargetAudience}} struggles with {{AudiencePainPoint}}, and {{YourProduct}} helps solve this problem by {{HowItSolvesProblem}}.
We’re {{YourGoal}}, and I’d like to {{YourNextSteps}}.
We’d love to work with you because {{HowYouFitWithThem}}.
I’ve attached a copy of our pitch deck if you need more details.
Thanks in advance for your time,
{{YourName}}
The message should be brief but include details about what you’re looking for and why they should talk to you.
Note: You should also mention that if they’re not interested in investing but know other people who might be, they should also feel free to forward their email addresses to you.
If you need inspiration, you can take ideas from “50 Proven LinkedIn Messages” before writing your final message.
3. Don’t Forget To Follow Up
Investors are busy professionals and may not respond immediately when they receive your message — so don’t give up easily!
Send them another one in a few weeks’ time, and keep it short but friendly.
If they still don’t respond, follow up again after another month or so has passed.
If they still don’t respond, then it’s probably safe to assume that they’re not interested in hearing from you further down the line.
Or their LinkedIn is simply full of LinkedIn messages, so they don’t have time to respond.
Pro tip: To double up your chances of getting a response, make sure to contact them through email and see what happens there. Maybe the response comes faster there.
Fortunately, LeadDelta allows you to export emails of potential investors from LinkedIn within just a few steps.
How can you do that?
First, find potential investors in your network using LeadDelta filters.
Filter your network by their headline including the keyword “Invest”. You can use other filters to get more specific.
Once you filter your network for potential investors, start adding Tags to them to sort them more easily.
Step 1. To do that, just select all the investors, and hit “Apply Tag”. Then you can choose one of the existing tags, or create a new one by simply typing the name of the tag and clicking “Create Tag.”
Step 2. Navigate to the Filters in the upper-right corner, and then filter your connections by choosing the tag “Investors” or however you named it.
It will show you the connections with this tag only.
To export those connections emails, just select them all and then hit the “Export” button.
Include tags and notes within your document if needed, and hit the button to export it.
You can use those lists later to contact the investors over email and try getting their attention there too.
4. Schedule a Meeting
One of your first goals is to get your potential investors on board with the idea of funding your startup.
When you find someone who might be interested in investing, it’s time to schedule a meeting with them.
You want this meeting to happen as soon as possible because once they’re interested in investing, you’ll want to meet them better, see if you’re a fit, and get an idea of how to move forward from that point on.
After getting a positive response, prepare everything they might ask for so you give them direct answers at the meeting.
5. Organize The Process Within Your CRM
If you don’t organize the whole process before contacting tons of investors, you’ll get lost and miss some potential opportunities.
Not only can you miss potential investment due to being unresponsive, but you’ll also be seen as unprofessional, which can harm your reputation.
LeadDelta can help you set up your process and keep you updated on their current status.
The idea here is to track the whole process of raising funds effectively, so you can know at every moment what’s happening with each potential investor, where you’re at with them, and what’s left to be done.
First, create these different tags that will be used to track each investor’s status:
1. Lead
2. Interested
3. Meeting
3. Secured
So, at the start, apply the tag “Lead” to each investor you’re planning to contact and that you’ve realized can be a good fit for you.
To do that, just hit the options button next to the specific investor’s name, hit “Apply Tag” and choose the tag “Lead.”
After you’re getting them through the funnel, at the moment you realize some of them are interested, you just switch the tag “Interested” instead of the previous one.
Once you start chatting with them, you pin the most important conversations to the top of your LeadDelta inbox.
Just select the conversations you want to pin within the Inbox section, and hit “Pin.”
Also, you can connect Google Tasks with LeadDelta using Zapier integrations, so whenever you tag someone within LeadDelta, you’ll get a specific task.
Using this for your follow-up messages tasks can help you save a lot of time and effort and stay organized and always up to date.
Just create the tag “Followup in 5 days,” and whenever you tag someone with that tag, you’ll get a notification in 5 days to send them a follow-up message.
Conclusion
We hope you’ll use those options to meet possible investors and potentially raise funds for your startup to your benefit.
With LeadDelta, you’ll be more productive by viewing and organizing your network of investors and all the phases you’re getting them through.
On the other hand, LeadDelta’s CRM view is fully customizable and allows you to easily tag your connections, apply filters, and sort them to find the contacts you need.
Download the LeadDelta extension and improve your LinkedIn connections game.
