Mark Suster: How to Access Investors

The best way to get access is other entrepreneurs. It's pretty easy in a social networking world to figure out how to get access to me. And if you can't, that probably is a defining way of figuring out whether or not you're a real entrepreneur. It's pretty easy in this era. So how do you get our money? The first thing you need is an anchor investor. Most investors, no secret, no prizes for guessing this, are not willing to take a risk and put their name on a deal and say, I want to do this. At least early stage investors, they're looking for other people. So you need to get an anchor investor. There's two strategies for doing this. Number one, invite them to be an advisor. Get to know them, work with them as an advisor. If they get excited about you, sometimes they'll get out their checkbook. Number two, people don't like to talk about this, but I always say no. No matter how rich you are, you want a deal. So if you could say to someone, I'm planning to raise at a two and a half pre, I'd like to invite you in at a one pre to work with me first. Getting that first person on board really matters and everybody else sort of follows. I mean, the industry, unfortunately, the way it works is there's a lot of sheep.