Royston G. King explains how COVID-19 moved fundraising to Zoom, making investors like Scottie Pippen more reachable by phone. Founders now need multiple touchpoints and consistent video outreach to build trust without in-person meetings.
What else is different now? Relationships are getting started and deepened on Zoom. So I know I'm spending more time on Zoom now than I ever have before, and I was already a heavy Zoom user. People are raising money on Zoom. And so what does this mean? One thing it means is that people are more accessible. So people are at home, their calendars and their engagements or social engagements have been canceled or changed. So people are more accessible, and in our program we had somebody target Scottie Pippen, the basketball player, the Hall of Fame basketball player, as a potential investor and get him on the phone because he was at home like just chilling. So people are more accessible. Founders have to travel less. There's more time for relating and less time getting on planes, in airports, more time on Zoom, on video, on calls, texting. So you have more relating time. And then probably the most important for founders raising money is that rapport and trust need to be built remotely now. And a few tips on that. Somebody once told me investors invest in lines and not dots, which means if an investor has a number of touchpoints with you and those are all positive and leading towards something that's more exciting, they're much more likely to invest. Than in one Zoom call. So my advice there is really invest in having lots of touchpoints. People invest in people they know, like, and trust, and trust is consistency over time. So it probably is the case that you're gonna need to do 4 Zoom calls where before you might be able to do one face-to-face and a handshake, that may take 4 Zoom calls now. So my advice is reach out frequently, use different mediums that are available to us, and use video a lot and build that trust. Consistency over time. Build that rapport.
