Find investors who've worked in your industry so they understand your problem fast. Match the fund's stage focus to your round: Andreessen Horowitz backs later stages, Exceed only does seed. Then identify the specific partner at that firm who covers your domain.
—a lot of this. Do your homework. Find people who have either invested in companies in your domain, founded companies in your domain, or were early employees at companies in your domain. These are people who will understand the problem and therefore the solution very quickly. And that, in a lot of cases, could be that convincing point for them because they felt the pain. You go to an investor who's never done anything in retail and try to tell them a POS solution, they just, they're not going to relate to it as much as someone who's coming out of retail or has invested portfolio, has 6 retail companies. They know those pain points. So first, find investors who've invested in those companies. Second, Understand the stage at which they really become leads. John, for example, invested seed and A. There are firms, there are funds that invest only at seed. There are funds that only invest B or later. So if you go to, for example, a firm like Andreessen Horowitz, which does a lot of later rounds, very, very few seed rounds, and they've never worked with you before, chances are you're going to spend some time convincing them that they should get involved versus a fund like Exceed, for example, which only does seed and you're raising the seed, they have the expertise. The other part of finding the right lead is the partner, the specific partner you reach out to at the fund. Most funds have a large number of partners and so you have to pick the partner that you need to reach out to. To have better odds of not just getting the meeting but ultimately getting them interested.
