How To Onboard The Right Investor For Your Startup

Most startups begin with the founders investing a startup capital to get their business up and running.  As a startup slowly refines its business model in order to complement their sales model and start generating revenue, the founders would then be focused on expanding and growing the startup.  It is at this point having an investor on board would be a huge help for the health of the startup. An investor would provide the much needed capital to expand a startup and scale up the business model, in order to amplify demand and increase supply to match it.  But finding an investor is not always an easy task but, there are some simple steps which can be used to maximise probability of finding the right investor.

Have A Product or Demo Ready

Investors need to know where they are investing their money and therefore they will always request a demonstration (demo) of the product before investing.  Therefore, it is important to have a working demo along with the sales pitch in order for the investor to make a calculated decision.

Research on investor portfolio

It is important to research prospective investors as in what kind of portfolios they have invested their money.  Learning about an investor portfolio gives an insight into the health of an investment company. If an investor has experience with handling similar startups to yours in the past, they would be able to provide guidance and mentorship.  However, the most important reason for research is to see if the investors have a similar kind of startup in their portfolio, which would mean the investor would be reluctant to invest because the startup in question would be a direct competitor to your startup.

Finding a mentor and a core team

A mentor in this case is someone who has prior experience navigating the choppy waters of the startup industry.  FInding a mentor will be invaluable in the long run as a mentor brings their experience to the forefront and would be able to guide the founders by nudging them in the right direction.  A good mentor will also be able to attract investors through their network as well. A core team should consist of skills not just from the technical side but also from the business and revenue perspective.  A good example here would be Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle and Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce. Ellison mentored Benioff during the initial days of Salesforce by providing valuable technical and business inputs and even investing in Salesforce, which paid off in multiples later on in the future.  Benioff founded Salesforce while he was still working at Oracle and Larry Ellison was supportive of the endeavour so much that he let Benioff split work so that he can work on Salesforce in the mornings and at Oracle in the afternoons.

Proven Business Model

Investors are more likely to invest in a startup which would be able to show a proven business model complemented with numbers.  The business model need not be elaborate and can instead focus on a small demographic which would provide a lot of valuable data useful for scalability like revenue forecasting, sales and marketing demographics, overheads, burnout rates, processes which can be automated and troubleshooting, but more importantly it offers investors a glimpse into the revenue model.  

Prepare for due diligence and have documentation ready

Startups need to be ready for a due diligence check by an investor and therefore ensure they have all the documentation ready and up to date.  There would be due diligence checks on various fronts. If a startup is building a software, investors will be running various scripts to check compliance and software licensing requirements.   Important documentation includes product roadmap (from demo to live,) timelines, cash burnout rate and financial projections for the future among others.

A startup should have a clear goal and define specific outcomes with their investors in order to achieve the maximum output from the partnership.  Onboarding investors is the first major hurdle any startup should clear and then focus on scaling up, in order to increase a startup valuation which in turn will attract more investors.  Following these steps will help finetune the search to identify a potential investor which would go a long way in scaling up a startup.