Getting Started: Create an Investor Tracker Dashboard
Angel Fundraising -- like Institutional fundraising -- is a process, and it is best to structure it so you can place faith in the process and not in any one individual investor. In our experience,
founders who succeed in Angel Fundraising are able to drive urgency (to get angel investors to actually close), and run a structured process.
To that end, we *strongly* recommend creating a dashboard to inventory a long list of your investor prospects -- both individuals and institutions. And continually drive the process. We recommend using one of the templates created by Alumnus MightyHive. Copy one of these templates and create your own dashboard.
Angels Prioritization:
Research & Inventory Angel Investors & Wealthy Advisors Who Know Your Space or Know Your Team using this form.
It is a time suck to just pitch anyone who has money. Prioritize your angel meetings initially to those who know you or your space. These meetings fast-track the decision-making process -- and if they don’t lead to an investment -- they often can lead to an intro to an investor, customer, or a commitment to join as an advisor.
Angels that Know You / Your Team and Want to Invest in You / Your Team (Family, Friends, Forwmer Co-Workers, Advisors, Other Affiliations, Etc.)
Advisor Prospects Who Have Money
These are people you would want to meet for advice regardless if they invest or not. Even if they don’t come in with money -- having them come in as advisors will make it easier to raise from the other sources of capital.
These are key upfront meetings to have in your process.
Take a moment and be deliberatpe about listing out all of the ideal business advisors you would want to have for your business. Put the names in your Investor Tracker Dashboard, even if you don’t know the people, or know how to reach them.
Ask others to add names of successful individuals related to your field – create an exhaustive list (you can use this to when looking for advisor types). Then prioritize the wealthy ones.
Especially target people who have made money in your business, with your business model, or in the industry, you are disrupting.
People who UNDERSTAND your space
This is critical. Angels can be a time suck. You should know how you will qualify an angel before you meet. Determine your criteria for qualification/disqualification to meet. Only meet with people who understand your space/signal they could be relevant. Determine how you will know/gauge that.
Again, this is critical -- Know what your qualifying criteria is. If you don’t do this, time -- and lots of unfruitful meetings -- will make this clear. As an example, there was a dog fitness metric company that did an astounding $3m plus angel raise. Their criteria were they would only meet with investors who were dog owners of at least two dogs. If you did not have two dogs, they would not meet. Know what your qualifying criteria are to take a meeting.
Alchemist can search public databases as a complement to your own efforts to make sure you are inventorying investors who know your space if you fill out this WuFoo Form: Link to Request Alchemist to Research Public Databases for Investors in Your Space
Finding Angels from Angellist and Other Angel Online Portals
Alchemist has a script that will scrape Angellist to find high fidelity but often overlooked angels related to your script. The Script is thanks to Alchemist Alum, Joseph Turian from UPSHOT. You can access it here.
You can get emails from investors you don’t know by using an email lead gen service. LeadIQ is an Alchemist company and gives 150 free emails to Alchemist founders.
Gust.com is another angel portal that allows you to look up investors and could be a good source to find Angels.
You can find the tool to "segment" and download relevant angels here: https://www.crunchbase.com/app/search/people
Angel Groups
In general, we have found that angel groups can be of very poor quality and very inconsistent. Try angel funds that you have an affiliation with.
You should never have to pay money to pitch an angel group -- or to demo to a larger press group. That is a RED FLAG!
There are lots of angel groups – it’s often hit or miss. Here are ones that come recommended from people we trust:
TiE Angels: https://sv.tie.org/initiative/tie-angels
Harvard Angels
Harvard Business School Angels
Sand Hill Angels: http://www.sandhillangels.com/
Georgetown Angels: www.georgetown-angels.com/apply
Accelerator Angels
You can see our list of Angels and suggestions on how to engage them through the link.