Start-ups and investors go hand in hand. Funding your entrepreneurial ventures, investors are the most critical factor in making your dreams come true.
However, the search for the right investor is not that easy.
As we share with our members of Impakt Tribe, where we help from A to Z with everything related to fundraising, someone willing to provide his /her hard-earned money to give to your impact tech start-up will not be that easy. Entrepreneurs and business founders find it very challenging and difficult to attract angel investors for their upcoming companies.
In most cases, they do not rely on 1 potential investor. Rather, they build up a significantly sized list of willing investors before they can secure their first round of funds from them.
The size and the number of the list may vary according to your impact tech start-up feasibility, requirements, industry, and lucrativeness.
But even before this list and numbers, finding the target investors is the most difficult part. Who do you contact and how?
Social networking and corporate connections have a strong role to play in this quest for investment. Successful entrepreneurs from around the world also emphasize the need for capitalizing on these professional relationships to channelize the right investment to your projects.
Finding a Digital Resource for Start-Up Funding
Fortunately, in the digital era of today, maintaining and nourishing these professional and corporate relationships have been made easier and faster through social media and the internet.
LinkedIn is one of the largest and most effective online platforms in the world that is aimed at creating and maintaining professional connections of various types.
Many people often overlook LinkedIn as a source for finding investors. But in reality, it is different than entrepreneurs think of.
Providing an opportunity to meet and connect with professionals and experts one to one, LinkedIn offers a great platform where you not only get access to a large pool of skilled and qualified individuals but also get a chance to find potential investors that you can target for your start-up funding needs.
The process is simple and convenient. The online tools help you search, locate and list down potential investors to target according to your priorities.
Many times you may even get more investment prospects from these potential investors.
With hundreds of thousands of investor profiles from all over the world, there are a very huge number of entrepreneurial success stories of people and companies which raised their start-up or seed money from using LinkedIn as an investor resource.
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The question that remains is how to go about it in the first place? How to find start-up investors via LinkedIn?
Here are some effective tips and guidelines that can help you find potentially strong investors and build a progressive corporate relationship with them through LinkedIn.
Tips for Finding impact start-up Investors via LinkedIn
- Create a Great Profile
This is where it all starts. Creation of a strong and attractive LinkedIn profile. It is like your business card that showcases your personal and professional credentials to the public.
It is not uncommon to see investors searching for attractive and profitable start-up ventures using LinkedIn.
Acting as a pitch deck, your LinkedIn public profile is what is available to all the users to view openly. And this is where your potential investor will get a first impression of you.
So, you must create a strong, innovative, and compelling profile that highlights your start-up project and its attractiveness.
It should be professional but not too technical to comprehend. Your profile should be able to provide the basic information and knowledge about you and your project that the investor might be looking for.
It should necessarily include a recent professional photograph, a summary of your start-up venture, and the problem it promises to solve.
There should be basic personal information about you, the entrepreneur, especially the critical qualifications and skills needed to make this potential project a success.
And lastly, do not forget to add your contact information.
MORE TIPS TO CREATE A GREAT LINKEDIN PROFILE?
- Develop A Network
Among all the social media platforms on the internet, LinkedIn is undoubtedly the largest and most effective business and professional social network. With millions of users, the potential for finding a good investor is huge. This is why you would want to understand how to find startup investors via LinkedIn.
All you need to do is search for the keyword “investors” and voila! You can get hundreds of thousands of results in a second or two.
For the entrepreneur, the finding is easy, but making that investor work for you, can be a little tricky. When a potential investor is contacted, he or she is going to reciprocate by looking at your profile.
Finding a friends list that is small and insignificant can create a problem. A profile with little or no affiliate networks can make you look less professional.
Having a large network of people on your LinkedIn profile gives a bit of authenticity and legitimacy to you as an entrepreneur. You need to showcase your corporate and professional connections with other entrepreneurs and industry experts through this platform.
Savvy investors even run through your timelines and complete their due diligence by scanning your 3 levels of connections. Obviously, entrepreneurs with stronger networks have greater chances of being selected.
- Do your own Research
The concept of scamming and fraudulent activities is quite common on social media. The same is true for LinkedIn. Among the millions of options you have, there are fair chances of some of them being fake, illegitimate, or fraudulent.
So, it is essential that once you come with a list of potential investors, do your own due diligence and actively research their personal and professional credentials.
Checking for references and validating their information from authorized and credible sources is essential. An entrepreneur should also gather information about a potential investor’s past projects, investment, and industry successes.
MORE TIPS TO CREATE A GREAT LINKEDIN PROFILE?
- Become Part of Groups
Like many other social media platforms, LinkedIn also offers a feature called groups. This allows you to be part of a group of members who share similar interests, likes, professions, and expertise.
Joining groups helps you in finding potential investors in a given industry. The key is to broaden your options by joining a larger number of groups with diverse backgrounds and categories. And, the best way to do that would be to learn how to find startup investors via LinkedIn.
- Create a Story
There are two ways of getting startup investment through LinkedIn, either you do an active search yourself or let the investor find you.
Either way, once you two get in touch, you as an entrepreneur must have a story to tell.
Your project story should be relatable for the potential investor. It should be unique and should be able to generate significant interest for the listener.
Your messages should be tailored according to the personality of the target. Use the background information and due diligence that you have collected and use it to highlight yourself and your project as a lucrative opportunity for investment.
Be personal, be clear. Avoid creating confusion and using big technical jargon to impress others.
So for your tech-savvy people who are reading this don’t talk about the FEATURES of your product instead talk about the BENEFITS of your product or service.
If an investor is unable to understand what you are talking about, he or she is more likely to move on to another option.
- Go For Risk Takers
With so many popular LinkedIn angel investors making waves in the corporate sector, the number of new entrants is also on the rise. Most start-up founders and entrepreneurs want their projects funded by these popular names.
They may seem to be safe, secure, and mature for the project but they cannot fund all the start-up ventures in the industry.
They also have a lot of money to invest but very little time to listen to your ideas and concepts.
The wiser and innovative option is to go for new people and firms who are working to build their repute and brand in the investment sector and are willing to take bigger risks.
They may lack the experience but they do have the motivation and ambition needed to make a difference in the status quo. If you can display your zeal and craziness to achieve something big, you can make them feel more comfortable and ensure their readiness to invest in your dream project.
Keep them under consideration when figuring out how to find startup investors via LinkedIn.
- Post Wisely
Your LinkedIn timeline is a display of what you feel or what your start-up is all about. Potential investors will go through your posts and evaluate your company based on the information provided.
It is therefore important that you build credibility with your posts by giving out authentic and related information.
When you join groups do not start posting about your venture instantly. Be patient and build informational credibility before jumping on the bandwagon of investment hunting.
Read what others have to say and post. Be wise and meaningful in your responses to other’s posts.
MORE TIPS TO CREATE A GREAT LINKEDIN PROFILE?
- Capitalize on References
Investors in general and especially on LinkedIn are often connected. Finding one investor means that you have tapped onto a cluster.
If for some reason, one investor is unable to meet your funding needs, look out for references that he or she can provide. Potential investors often get you in touch with other investors if they find there are high prospects of profitability in your project.
The key is to be bold and confident and does not hesitate to ask for fruitful references from them.
- Use the Power of Keywords
Like any other thing on the internet, keywords play a vital role in the success of your online investment search.
Incorporating the right relatable keywords and phrases in your LinkedIn bio helps develop the potential investor’s interest in your company.
Appropriate keywords help investors land on your profile and respond effectively to generate a potential lead. For a start-up founder or entrepreneur, you need to come up with a list of innovative and simple keywords that are related to your project and can get you the attention that you are looking for on LinkedIn.
You can take ideas from similar projects and companies and make a list of what people are searching for. Evaluate your options and narrow down your selection to the most reliable and effective ones.
- Keep Updating and Remain Active
Last but not the least, always keep your LinkedIn profile and account updated. An investor will only be interested in your start-up venture if it is up to date with the market and the industry.
An active user on social media is gauged as an equally energetic individual in real life. If your account is inactive for a long period or you are late to respond to investor queries or information requests, then you can say goodbye to your investor search.
Don’t let that happen. Learn how to find startup investors via LinkedIn, and tap into this valuable source of finance.
These were some of the key tips on how to find startup investors via LinkedIn. The aim of any startup founder or entrepreneur should be to remain strategically aware.
MORE TIPS TO CREATE A GREAT LINKEDIN PROFILE?
Instead of randomly adding new connections to your LinkedIn profile, you should remain calculated with your requests. Like any other social media platform, investors on LinkedIn get bundles of requests on a daily basis. Your specific request should have a strong reason for them to accept your request and consider your start-up for funding.
Another very important consideration to remember is always to be respectful to the people you are trying to connect with. Do not be hasty in pitching out funding requests to your new connections. Move wisely and patiently.
Work on building quality networks and strong long-term relationships rather than one-time conversations. These will help you not just in meeting your start-up funding requirements smoothly but also help raise money for growth and future expansion projects.
Please let me know in the comment box below which of these tips you are going to use to find that investor via Linkedin?
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts.
Your biggest fan,
Jeroen van der Heide Co-founder & Ecopreneur
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