Lead investors take a big chunk of the round, recruit other investors, and close the deal. Followers have less risk appetite or expertise and rely on leads to vet opportunities, often using platforms like AngelList to find deals already vetted by someone with a track record.
The lead investor is not this. These are followers. They are also important because you're going to have to fill the round usually, particularly at seed stage, the investor won't take 100% of the round for various reasons, but the lead investor usually knows who are your followers. And will not only bring followers but is also capable of managing the followers and guiding you through how you close those followers. In early stages, you can probably find— if you have a good lead, you can find a lot of followers on AngelList or other crowdfunding platforms because of the track record this investor, this lead investor has. He's being followed by a lot of people on these crowdfunding platforms. Now remember, Followers are also investors. They're also greedy. They're also looking for very good opportunities, but they don't have one of the many things that we just looked through to be a lead. They don't have the same— either the same risk appetite or the capability to do things that a lead investor does, and therefore they stay on the sidelines. Sometimes, sometimes investors who have been leading other deals will not be leads in your deal. They'll tell you, "We like it, but find a lead." And that could be because they don't understand the space as much, they don't understand something, they don't like something about this deal which is exciting enough to be that.
