Founders don't treat raising capital as a sales process (which they should). When doing sales, you almost immediately think, "We need to be organized, let's use a CRM." But when raising capital, founders don't always think about structuring the process enough.

Founders need to keep track of what's going on during the process. They don't often realize they'll need to connect with 50-100+ investors, and tracking all of that is a challenge if you don't have something for it. Technically you could use a CRM for this, but that might be overkill (and/or cost money you don't have.)

Keeping the tracker up to date is "hard" because it requires discipline. I find most founders start well, but then fade away a bit as time marches on. A lot of founders I've worked with also simplify the tracker--it may be a bit too complex. I think it's best suited for earlier stage startups, but I've seen Series A startups use similar templates.

Warm intros are still the best way to reach investors, but cold outreach is growing in popularity.

The opportunities to learn are really around figuring out what investors want to see, where they have common concerns/rebuttals, etc. You can also learn by realizing how many investors you probably have to reach out to and how to do so (either through warm intro, cold, etc.)

Ben Yoskovitz

I created this for companies I built and invest in to keep track of investor calls during fundraising rounds.

Founders don't treat raising capital as a sales process

Investor Tracker / CRM from Highline Beta

Intro

Investor Tracker / CRM

Investor List

Sign up to see more