- Today, we're gonna look at
how to find angel investors for your business. I will give you five specific
strategies to find an angel for your startup. - [Narrator] This is Raw Startup. - I'm the founder of Vivino. We are the world's largest
wine app and wine community with 50 million users around the world. I've raised tens of millions of dollars, and a lot of them from angel investors. I've raised money from
people like NBA all star, Carmelo Anthony. We also have Janus Friis,
co-founder of Skype as an investor in Vivino. Janus actually joined Vivino
at a very early stage, where there wasn't much product, just like any other angel investor. I'll also tell you exactly how
to contact an angel investor in 2021 and what to put in
that crucial first message. I've done research with
the angel investors, to find out exactly what they prefer, what kind of message
and how to be contacted. First, angel investors
sometimes referred to as business angels, are in
almost every city in the world. The trick is to find them. Generally, the best way to get in touch with an angel investor is
through an introduction, but you might not have
that network just yet. So, I will show you how
to find the people around the angel investors, people
that might not invest, but they might introduce you
to the people that do invest. Okay, before we start,
here are a couple of tips. First, use as many of these
strategies as you can. They may not all apply,
but several of them will. Another tip, with angel
investors, go local, only in rare cases go global. It means finding someone
locally in your country, in your state, preferably, in your city. There are some rare cases
where you wanna go global. Maybe there is a global
special niche so that there are a few angel investors around the world that do these types of
investments, but that is rare. So, in most cases, go local. Another key thing to understand here, is that angels don't fly alone,
they work with each other. They invest together. They learn from each other and introduce other potential investments to each other. So, the key here, break
in through that wall of angel investors and you'll have access to a lot of investors. Now, let's take a look at the strategies. Number one, use online platforms. I'm sorry to have to disappoint you here, these platforms are not as
good as you would think. I will show you a few,
they're not amazing, but worth trying. There are two main features here. One of them is to look
for angel investors, the other one is for angel
investors to find you. There's one platform where
angel investors can find you, and they have another two platforms where you can search
for an angel investor. Okay, let's start with the grandmother of all angel databases, AngelList. 10 years ago, there were
an amazing platform, now, they've changed focus, I'd say it's still worth
getting listed there. They're so focused on investors
and people looking for jobs, that's actually hard to get listed there. To find out how to get listed,
please look at this page. It will take you through step-by-step. The link is in the description. Cool, now you're listed,
let's hope someone reaches out and wants to invest, fingers crossed. Now, let's have a look
at the angel databases. I found two that I found useful and free. First, Investor Hunt. 40,000 investors, which is okay. There's a decent chance you'll
find someone you can use. Everything is structured in tax and I find it a little bit hard to search, but try it out, I think it's worth it. The other one is Twine's
mega list of investors. There's a link in the description. It's quite a big list, you have to register with your email, but I think it's worth checking out. Finally, on these lists and databases, please let me know if you
know any useful and free ones. I really had a hard time
finding any amazing database and list. So, if you know any that
I haven't heard about, put them into comments, please. Number two, find local groups of angels. Basically, every single
country and most bigger cities have angel groups. You just gotta find them. These groups really shouldn't
be that hard to find. Just Google angel investor
and your city name, or business angel and your city name. For instance, in Denmark,
there's a group called Danish Business Angel and
there is a Nordic group called Nordic Makers. There are likely hundreds,
maybe even thousands of these groups around the world. They're also all over in the US and US certainly has hundreds of them. Sometimes they're
connected to a university. As an example, there's Indiana
University Angel Network. These angel investors
learned from each other, pass deals to each other
and also pool money together to be able to make bigger deals. If you can't find in local angel groups, just ask any angel investor, they will know the local angel groups. So, find them, get in touch with them, they like getting inbounds, they sometimes have pitch nights where you come on a Thursday
night and pitch them all. It can be a lot of fun. These pitch nights can
be really good practice before you go on and pitch
to venture capitalists. Number three, go to local
startup events and meetups. Most cities have some
sort of startup community that do events and meetups. These events can be a great
way to meet an angel investors, they very often hang out at these events. This is all about meeting
as many people as possible and telling them that you're
looking for an angel investor. Personally, this is not
something I've used a lot, some people like it, some people don't, we all have different preferences. So, ask around and see
what events are out there. Also, try and search on Meetup to see if they have any
startup events near you. A quick look up on Meetup
and you can see they have 10,000 startup groups. One of them must be near you. So, go to the event, tell your story, tell them what you're trying to build, and it can be any kind of startup event. It's all about getting the word out there. Number four, tell everyone,
here's an important point. There are quite a lot of angels out there that only do a few investments a year and they're listed nowhere. They can not be found,
but they can find you. These angel investors
are often professionals, you know, doctors and lawyers, they made a bit of extra money and wanna have some fun with it. The only way they will find
you, is if you tell everyone. Use whatever social
media presence you have, tell everyone there and
use any other location to tell your story. You may think you don't know
anybody that would invest, and you might be right, but you don't know who
the people you know know. If you go on one more level, you suddenly know a lot of people. Somebody always knows somebody. So, make sure you have an incredible story and tell everyone. When you tell everyone, make sure you have a
fantastic elevator pitch. You have to tell a story
that everyone understands, otherwise, they can't repeat it. So, keep it simple keep it understandable, it's really hard to repeat a
story you don't understand. And finally, what I consider the best way to find an angel investor. Number five, search on LinkedIn. Yes, there are a lot of
angel investors on LinkedIn. I went three levels out and
found 106,000 angel investors. There's just a lot of
them out there, thank God. That's even the people that
put it in their LinkedIn. There's a lot of people that
don't put angel investor on their profile because they
just get too much inbound. With LinkedIn you can find angel investors almost everywhere. Let me show you. Des Moines, Iowa, has 20 angel investors. Louisville, Kentucky, I
found 46 angel investors. Tucson, Arizona, I found
60 angel investors. Bismarck, North Dakota, (Heini clicking) sorry, Bismarck, zero. Yes, the angel investors
are almost everywhere. And if there's a university in the city, it's even more likely. Yes, LinkedIn probably is the best way to find an angel investor. But be very careful and
selective on who you contact. You can never, ever spam
these guys, no spam, ever. If you find someone very irrelevant, the best way is always
to get an introduction. But if you can't get that, you have to contact them directly. So, when you send them a
message, be short and relevant. Tell them exactly why they are the right angel investor for you and
what you're trying to build. No mass mails, no spam,
ever, they will not work. We'll get right back to what
you need to put in the message in a second. Okay, make sure you use as
many of these strategies as possible, and you'll
probably find an angel investor. Okay, now we have the strategies in place on how to find them. Let's have a look at how we contact them and what we put into that
first, crucial, crucial message. I've spoken to angel
investors that get 10, maybe even 20 messages a day. Now, that's a lot of messages
from hopeful founders. In those cases, it can be
really, really, difficult to get the attention
from the angel investors. It is crucial that we
send the right message and use the right channel
to send that message. The best way, the most certain way to get totally disqualified,
is by sending a long message. It will not be read, it will be ignored. So, be short, be precise and be relevant. I actually went out there and
asked the angel investors, how they want this to happen. Let's dig into that research. So, I put them into three groups. The best way, the okay way, and finally, the worst way to contact
an angel investor. Let's start at the bottom. What's the worst way to
contact an angel investor? Well, it's a Facebook
message, it's a text message and the phone call. Do not use these methods unless it's absolutely the only way you can do it. Most angels find this method
a little bit too private, a little bit too intrusive, especially, the Facebook message was a no-go. The angels very agree on
that, 80% of them said, no, thank you to a Facebook message. Okay, the second group
is the okay way to do it. Use this, but in a
careful and selective way. In this group, we have
emails and LinkedIn messages. Most angels are okay
with people reaching out on those channels. Okay, so, what are the best ways to contact an angel investor? Well, no real surprises there. It's to bump into somebody
at a conference or event. My impression is that
the angels like this, because it takes a little bit of courage to walk up to somebody and
do a quick elevator pitch at a conference. As always, the other one in the best way, is an introduction. There's no doubt that is
the best way to do it, but it can be hard to get an introduction. So, start at the top of the
list and work your way down and try and avoid the worst ones, unless there's no other option. Also, don't use more than two ways to get in touch with
the same angel investor. They can get really, really annoyed, if they get five messages
on five different platforms. Now, we know how to contact them. Let's see what we put
in that first message to really grab their attention. The signals from the angel investors, are not as clear as before,
they disagree a little bit on what is most important. So, I will just rank them
from what's least important to what's most important in the message. Let's start at the bottom of the list. Traction, not because it's not important, but rather because you
don't have much traction. If you had a mass amount of traction, you might not need an
angel investor at all. So, traction is less
important in the early stages, because probably so small, anyway. The market, usually a box,
it just needs to be checked. You need to know enough about the market, but it really isn't an attention grabber in the first message, as there's plenty of great markets out there, but breaking into them is the hard part. Then we have the idea,
keep this part short and something that could lead into what really matters and
that's what comes in the first and second position here. The product, the product is key here. Tell the angel investors
what the product is, what the problem is and how you solve it. Keep it short and precise. Finally, there is the team, and tell the angel why
this particular team, is uniquely positioned to
solve exactly this problem. At this stage, there is little product, there's not much traction, it
all comes down to the team. So, the team is key to this pitch. My overall recommendation
here is to spend most time on the product. What's the problem, how do
you solve it on the team? How is the team uniquely positioned to solve this particular problem? When you get a little bit further and ready to build a full pitch, make sure you check my video, How to Build an Investor Pitch. Finally, I got some tips
from the angel investors and here are some of them, be
sure, be precise, be relevant. Try and find an angel that would invest in the area you're in. And they keep repeating,
try and get an introduction. Find someone in their network
and get the introduction. It will increase the odds radically. Also, try and build your network without thinking about investment. Network with people
around the angel community and you'll get there, you'll
get that introduction. Building those relationships
really pays off in the long-term. If you want more content just like this, please consider pressing
like and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you very much for watching. (upbeat music)
