How to Find Investors for a Startup: a Complete Guide to Start Seizing Investment Opportunities

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An interesting and even original business concept is good. But it isn’t enough, in most cases, to successfully launch a business that would bring reasonable profits. You need investments and, mostly, regular ones rather than the occasional. That’s where you need to start eagerly getting investors for a startup. We hope we’ll be able to help you out with this here article, the main goal of which is to thoroughly answer a common question – ‘where can I find investors for a startup?’. 

Investment Requirements

Getting investors for a startup, you should initially evaluate your project from the perspective of various factors that influence its investment attractiveness. A knowledgeable investor that is able to put good resources into the implementation of your idea will need an all-around overview of your thing. 

But how to find investors for a startup when your project isn’t on its profit-bringing stage yet – explain to potential investors how soon and how much their input will be paid off and what risks they may face by words?

In part, yes. On top of that, however, surely, every other investor will want to see some predictions and forecasts. And even a well-worked-out business plan isn’t a single universal requirement here. In order to successfully find investors for startup business, it’s crucial that the project and the team working on it meet the following demands:

• Relevant expertise, understanding of the market tendencies, of the niche, product, & TA peculiarities, etc. All in all, a person investing their own money in your project should be able to see that you and your team, as main decision-makers in the matter, clearly understand how, on what, and with what priority to spend this money in the most efficient way possible.
• A defined project (or company) concept/philosophy/global goal that goes beyond the profit-making boundaries. Such a concept should meet both the global trends in the niche (in order to be demanded) and the personal investor’s vision. It also becomes clearer how to find investors for your startup initially as you know by which topic and in which direction to look for them. 
• Company/project leading charisma. Before trusting you him or herself, an investor should first see that many other people could trust you. You can most efficiently find investors for startup business if you possess charisma – both personal and ‘corporate’ (i.e., your team is able to keep up with the atmosphere of professional enthusiasm that convinces any third party in the potential success of all team decisions).

Thinking about how to find investors for a startup, remember that potential investors always have their individual principles and even the most investment attractive concept may not be of interest to them due to personal reasons. Thus, you should look and find private investors for your small startup business among the people with principles (aesthetic, economic, and others) are similar to yours. 

How to Find Investors for Your Tech Startup?

Once you define how to generally position your project/company/team as well as what exactly you can offer investors, you may start going through common methods of how to find investors for a startup. 

1. Ask referrals

You can get a decent and efficient help to find private investors for a small startup business among your existing clients. They can pass on the information about your activities to other people comprising a ‘professional network’ of your clients – other clients, partners, suppliers, even competitors. Among that wide and diverse set of entities (both private and legal), you can find eager partners ready to invest in your project. 

But in order for the referral system to work, people should want to recommend you – sincerely and without excessive propaganda at the same time. That’s why it is important to support constant communication and establish trustful relationships with clients. From then on out, just ask them – do they know someone who might be interested in what you’re doing, could they recommend you to them and describe your product to some extent? 

A personal recommendation is still the best way to find investors for a startup or seize any other professional opportunity whatsoever. 

2. Create a clear marketing strategy (the way you are going to promote your project)

A thoroughly thought-out client attraction strategy is crucial in understanding how to find investors for a startup business. In particular, you should figure out with which target audience you are to work, what message you should provide (choosing the most fitting style of communication), which communication channels you are about to use, etc. The main goal of your strategy should be to get as many clients as possible with minimum expenses per each client.

A good marketing strategy should cover all project lifecycle stages and aspects – notify about the company/product, describe advantages, and remind the TA about a product/service. Thus, how you find investors in for a startup, depends heavily on how you are planning to sell the product (not how you will manufacture it). 

3. Create your startup upgrading plan 

It’s not enough to get a grasp of how to find investors for your startup during its initial stages of existence. In order to keep up the continued partnership, you should provide investors with further project development and enhancement plans. For that purpose:

• Look for & recruit only the top specialists in your team;
• Track the marketing efforts’ efficiency & optimize the efforts according to the situation at hand; employ additional ad options;
• Implement innovations & various creative solutions;
• Try to optimize the costs of attracting clients without sacrificing the volume of sales. 

The best way to find investors for a startup is to demonstrate that you do something unique and demanded – i.e., your project can easily be sufficiently competitive in the market. 

4. Put your plan into motion – then track, measure, & iterate

The established strategy should be corrected and optimized as it’s implemented in practice. Such corrections and optimizations should be based on the results of tracking certain strategy-driven actions. 

How to find investors for a startup in the US without going too far? Show that your business is ready to react and adapt to the external market fluctuations, innovations, etc. Successful decisions and solutions should be captured and repeated, while insufficient efforts should be eliminated.