When to Approach Investors—and How to Actually Find Them

My Investor Experience

I am currently raising an institutional and angel investment round with a large portion of the round filled. Fundraising is difficult for almost every early-stage company, but the industry I am building in adds another layer to it. My investors are looking at a company where a potential return may be five to seven years away, development is expensive, and significant regulatory risk exists between where we are today and commercialization.

Because of that, I have had to work especially hard to find the right investors, earn their trust, keep them interested over long periods of time, and continuously demonstrate progress. I cannot simply point to rapidly growing revenue and tell investors to watch the numbers go up. I have had to show them why the problem matters, why our technology can solve it, why our team can execute, and what we are doing to reduce risk one milestone at a time.

One of the biggest things I have learned is that your investor search should start before you are actually asking people for money. For more on what investors look for when investing in student-run companies, check out this interview with the managing director of Not Yet Ventures.

Start Building Investor Relationships Before You Raise

This is where the early relationships you have built with investors, advisors, experienced founders, and other people in your industry start becoming incredibly useful. If you have not started building those relationships yet, refer to my resource on The Best Connections to Make Early as a Founder.

Long before you officially open a round, start asking investors and founders who have raised before what companies like yours typically look like when they successfully raise. One of my favorite questions is:

“What milestones would you typically want to see from a company in my industry and at my stage before you would consider investing?”

Ask this early because their answers become your targets. Depending on your company, investors may want to see:

• A working prototype or MVP

• Customer validation

• Revenue or early users

• Intellectual property

• Regulatory progress

• Technical data

• LOIs or pilots

• A stronger team

• A specific development milestone

• Early interest from other investors

If three investors independently tell you that they would become interested after you accomplish a certain milestone, that is incredibly valuable information. Instead of guessing what makes your company fundable, you now have a clearer idea of what the market is asking you to prove.

Then go make progress and keep those people updated.

How Do You Know When It Is Actually Time to Raise?

Before thinking about investors, the first question is whether your company actually needs outside capital yet. Some businesses can grow through revenue, grants, competitions, consulting, or simply staying lean, and raising money too early can create unnecessary dilution and pressure.

A good signal that it may be time to raise is when you have reached most of the meaningful milestones you can reasonably hit without a larger lump sum of capital. Maybe demand is starting to outpace what you can supply, growth is becoming difficult to maintain with just you or a very small team, product development requires equipment or manufacturing you cannot fund personally, or the next technical, regulatory, or commercial milestone simply costs more than you can realistically bootstrap.

There is no universal milestone where a light turns green and tells you to start fundraising. Different companies require very different levels of development, especially across industries. The simplest indicator is when you have just about hit all the milestones investors have told you they are looking for in a company like yours, and the next meaningful step now requires capital.

What you are really looking for is enough evidence to tell a convincing story about where the company is today, what has already been proven, and what the next round of money unlocks.

That might mean you now have some combination of:

• Meaningful customer validation

• A prototype or MVP

• Early revenue or users

• Intellectual property

• Technical or clinical progress

• Experienced advisors or team members

• Partnerships or LOIs

• Competition wins or non-dilutive funding

• A defined regulatory or commercialization pathway

• Clear milestones the investment will fund
  
  

You do not need all of these. A software company may raise with users and growth but no patents. A regulated healthcare company may raise before revenue but with strong IP, customer validation, technical progress, and an experienced team.

The important question is:

“Have I taken the company about as far as I reasonably can with the resources I have today, and can I clearly explain how new capital gets us to the next major milestone?”

A second useful question is:

“Can I show investors that the company is meaningfully less risky than it was six months ago?"

If the answer to both is yes, it may be time to start having serious fundraising conversations. If you can still make significant progress without giving up equity, though, there is nothing wrong with waiting.

Fundraising Is a Numbers Game—but a Targeted One

You will probably hear people say fundraising is a numbers game. I agree, but I think an important word is usually missing:

Fundraising is a targeted numbers game.

Sending your deck to 500 completely random investors is not the goal. You want to build the largest possible pipeline of investors who could realistically invest in a company like yours.

Before adding someone to your list, understand:

• What industries they invest in

• What stage they invest at

• Their typical check size

• Geographic restrictions

• Whether they lead or follow rounds

• Whether they have invested in similar companies

• Whether your round size makes sense for them

A giant growth-stage fund probably does not care about your small pre-seed round. Likewise, an angel group that exclusively invests in local software businesses probably is not the best place to send a regulated healthcare company from across the country.

Volume matters, but fit matters first.

Start With the Investors You Already Know

Your first outreach should probably be to investors and investment organizations where you already have some kind of relationship.

Your university may have an associated angel network, venture fund, alumni investment group, or investors who regularly participate in its entrepreneurship ecosystem. You may also have met investors through pitch competitions, accelerators, networking events, advisors, or previous conversations.

If you have been keeping these people updated, reach back out when you believe you are approaching the right stage. Ask for a meeting, explain the progress you have made, and ask whether they think it is the right time for you to enter their investment process.

If there is a formal application, submit it. If you already know someone within the organization, ask whether it is appropriate to list them as a referral or mention your previous conversations. A relationship does not guarantee an investment, but entering a process with someone inside who already knows your company gives you a much better starting point than appearing completely out of nowhere.

Find Every Warm Introduction You Can

After your existing investor relationships, I would start looking for warm introductions.

The important part is that you should do the work for the person making the introduction. Do not message someone and say:

“Do you know any investors I should talk to?”

Now you are asking them to research your fundraise for you.

Instead, identify the investors yourself and ask for introductions to specific people.

LinkedIn is incredibly useful for this. Search terms such as:

• Investor

• Angel

• Venture

• Capital

• Life sciences

• Healthcare

• Whatever terminology is relevant to your industry

Then filter for first- and second-degree connections. You can also filter for "connections of" advisors, founders, mentors, alumni, and other people who know you well.

Do this across multiple people in your network and build a spreadsheet containing the investor, organization, why they may be a fit, and who you know that could potentially introduce you. You can use our General Outreach Tracker on the Tools & Templates page to keep track of who you’ve contacted for introductions, who you asked to be connected with, and where each conversation stands.

Go to those connections and make the ask:

“I’m preparing to start our raise and noticed you’re connected with a few investors who seem like strong fits for what we’re building. Would you feel comfortable introducing me to any of the people below?”

List the names and organizations you found, and offer to draft the introduction for them.

They might say yes to all of them. They might say yes to one. They might say no to every one. That is fine. Keep working through your network.

Try to Turn Warm Introductions Into Relationships Before the Raise

Whenever possible, I would start some of this outreach two to three months before you expect to seriously begin fundraising.

Instead of entering every first meeting with, “Will you invest?”, use some conversations to learn what the investor wants to see. Ask the same question you asked your earlier contacts:

“What would you typically need to see from a company like mine before seriously considering an investment?”

Now you have time to understand their process and potentially make progress before coming back with a formal ask. You might have a few conversations, send meaningful updates, reach one of the milestones they specifically mentioned, and eventually enter their investment process as someone they have already been watching.

That is very different from sending them a cold deck the day you desperately need money.

Expand Beyond Your Network

Eventually, you will exhaust a lot of your warm introductions, and there will still be hundreds of potential investors you simply do not have a connection to. That is when targeted applications and cold outreach become important.

For angel groups specifically, one of the best places I have found to start is the Angel Capital Association (ACA) directory:

https://angelcapitalassociation.org/directory/

The ACA itself is not an investment fund, but its directory includes angel groups, accredited platforms, and other member organizations. From there, go to the “Find Angels” page and click through to each group's website to learn about its investment preferences and application process.

I would use it very systematically. Start by selecting the geography you are targeting, then work your way through the groups listed in that region. Do not just submit an application to every group you see. Open each organization's website first and figure out whether your company is actually a fit.

For every group, look at:

• Industry or sector focus

• Investment stage

• Geographic restrictions

• Typical check size

• Portfolio companies

• Whether they have invested in companies similar to yours

• Any stated traction or development requirements

• Whether they are currently accepting applications

• How they want founders to apply

As you work through the directory, I would add every legitimate fit to your investor spreadsheet before applying. That way, you can track the organization, application link, why you think you fit, when you applied, who you eventually speak with, and the outcome. If you discover that someone in your network happens to know a member of one of those groups, even better—try to get the warm introduction before submitting the cold application. You can find an investor reach-out/application tracker template on our Tools & Templates page.

Many of these organizations will direct you to an application hosted through platforms such as Dealum or Gust. You will typically create a company profile, answer questions about the business, upload materials, and submit the application to the investment group.

Take those applications seriously. The investor may be seeing your company for the first time entirely through what you wrote, without you there to clarify anything. Your answers should clearly communicate the problem, solution, validation, traction, team, market opportunity, funding ask, and exactly what the money will accomplish.

For a deeper breakdown of how to make those applications stand out, refer to my How to Make a Good Funding Application resource.

The ACA directory is not going to magically give you investors, but it gives you something extremely valuable when your personal network starts running out: a structured list of real angel organizations that you can research, qualify, and systematically work through instead of randomly searching Google for investors.

For most non-angel investors, you can search online or use AI tools to identify strong targets, find the relevant people on LinkedIn, and reach out through warm introductions or cold outreach—asking for feedback, not money. These groups often do not rely on formal application-based deal flow, so direct outreach is usually the better approach. Those early conversations can help you understand what milestones they want to see, give you targets to work toward, and eventually create a path into their investment pipeline.

Build an Investor Pipeline and Track Everything

Once you begin fundraising seriously, the number of conversations becomes difficult to keep straight very quickly. Treat your fundraise like a pipeline rather than a collection of random emails.

A spreadsheet is completely fine. Track things like:

• Investor or group

• Main contact

• Why they are a fit

• How you found them

• Who made the introduction

• Date contacted

• Current stage

• Last conversation

• Next step

• Follow-up date

• Feedback they gave you

• Potential check size or commitment

I would also keep notes on why investors passed or what they told you they needed to see next. That information becomes incredibly useful because fundraising can take months, and many relationships will go quiet and come back later.

You want to be able to look at an investor six months later and immediately remember: They liked us, but wanted to see X before moving forward.

Luckily for you, we have an Investor Pipeline Tracker on our Tools & Templates page, ready to be used!

A “No” Does Not Always Mean Never

You are going to hear no—a lot. Sometimes the company is not a fit, the timing is wrong, the fund is not actively investing, or you are simply too early. The important part is understanding what kind of no you received.

If an investor gives you a specific reason for passing, pay attention to it. If they say, “Come back when you have X,” write it down and treat it as a milestone. Maybe they want more customer validation, technical data, additional team experience, regulatory progress, or stronger traction. A no because you are too early is very different from a no because they would never invest in the company.

If the investor showed genuine interest, keep the relationship warm as you make progress. You do not need to update them every time something small happens, but meaningful milestones can change how they view the opportunity. The company they evaluated six months ago may look very different after new product progress, stronger validation, grants or competition wins, team additions, partnerships, IP progress, revenue growth, or new investor commitments.

Whenever possible, connect the update back to the concern they originally raised. If they wanted more customer validation, do not just tell them you completed more interviews—show what you learned, what changed, and how it addressed their concern. The same applies to technical, regulatory, team, or fundraising milestones.

This becomes especially powerful as momentum builds. An investor who hesitated when nobody had committed may look at the round differently after credible investors join, a major milestone is reached, or the company becomes meaningfully less risky. For more on what investors look for in student founders, especially when it comes to progress and updates, check out our interview with an investor who has invested thousands of dollars into student-run ventures.

Create Momentum When the Round Starts Moving

Fundraising can become easier once other people begin committing because investors are no longer evaluating the company in isolation. They can see that other investors have gone through their own process and decided the opportunity is worth pursuing.

When commitments start coming in, appropriately let other interested investors know that the round is progressing. You are not trying to manufacture artificial urgency or pressure people into investing. You are simply giving them accurate information about where the round stands.

This is also a good reason to revisit investors who liked the company but were hesitant earlier. If the company has continued hitting milestones and credible investors are now joining the round, the situation they originally evaluated has changed.

Early progress creates validation. Commitments can create momentum. Your job is to keep both moving at the same time.

The Biggest Takeaway

Do not wait until you desperately need money to figure out who your investors are.

Build relationships early. Ask investors what milestones they need to see before you are asking them for a check. Learn from founders who have already raised. Use advisors, alumni, mentors, and your existing network to identify warm introductions, and do the research yourself so making those introductions is easy for the people helping you.

When it is time to actively raise, start with the investors who already know you, work through every strong warm introduction you can find, and then expand into targeted applications and cold outreach. Keep everything organized in a pipeline, listen carefully to feedback, and continue circling back as the company gets stronger.

Fundraising is a numbers game, but it is not about contacting the most investors possible. It is about finding as many of the right investors as possible and giving them enough reasons, over enough time, to believe in what you are building.

Make the connections early. Ask what they need to see. Go achieve it. Then come back and show them.

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