Accessing investors is the most frustrating part for many founders.

And everyone (me included) tells you warm intros are the best way in.

But not every founder is hyper-connected, lives in Palo Alto, or has sold three companies for €500M. So "just get a warm intro" often sounds a bit useless.

Today I want to discuss what to do if warm intros are, in fact, scarce.

→ How to run cold outreach properly, when you have to.

One thing first. If you already have investors in your network, start there. Always. Today's newsletter is about what you do once that list runs out.

The basics

You won't get far by contacting 3 funds and waiting for a response. To work, fundraising has to be run as a sales process.

What that means: you need a wide top of the funnel. And wide means at least 100 pre-qualified investors, not 20.

Why? Because finding the perfect match takes time, and in many cases you learn in the process, improving your pitch after every no. Besides, most of your rejections won't even be about you. A pass can come down to a portfolio conflict, fund timing, a parallel deal they like more, or an investor having a bad Tuesday.

(I found this image on Linkedin, full credit to Nicole DeTommaso & Dylan Kaplan)

So, what you CAN control is WHO you contact, and HOW you contact them.

And you really have to stand out if you want cold outreach to work. Let's tackle the process step by step:

Step 1: Decide who you're looking for

Before you open a single database, write down the profile:

→ Stage and ticket size
→ Geography
→ Sector
→ Business model they back
→ What they bring besides money
→ Whether they're investing right now

Adding investors who don't qualify does nothing for your raise except dilute your open rates.

Contact only relevant investors and... You can actually match what they're looking for. And you can trust their feedback when they say no.

Step 2: Build the list

→ Public lists. Plenty around. Most are out of date and most of the names won't fit you, but they're still a decent starting point if you're willing to put in the extra effort.

→ My VC Funds Tracker. I didn't like most of the public lists, so I built my own. It covers every new European fund launched in the past year and a bit. Next week I'm adding the August funds.

→ An aggregator. OpenVC is my favourite. They have a database and a CRM, filterable by stage, sector, geography and cheque size. Most of it is free. For the premium features, my code GERI20 gets you 20% off..

→ Crunchbase, Dealroom and similar for digging into individual funds. Keep in mind they come with a higher price tag.

Once you've got the funds, check each one yourself (or hand it to your favourite LLM). What to check: are they still active, meaning they raised a fund in the past 5 years? Do they have an investment in a similar sector? Who's the best person inside the fund to reach out to?

Target 100 to 300 names in your final list. Inside each fund, find the person closest to your space.

Step 3: Tier the list by priority

Simple A, B, C. With A being the funds you'd want on your cap table the most, C - being potential fit, but you won't regret too much not convincing them.

Step 4: Set up a CRM before you send anything

Raising comes on top of everything else you do as a founder. Without a structured way to track conversations, feedback and follow-ups, you'll lose sight of what's happening and who asked for what.

A CRM does a few things for you:

→ Keeps your follow-ups on schedule
→ Keeps feedback in one place, so you can learn from it and adjust your materials
→ Lets you assign responsibility

→ Let's you keep track of who you contact, when

Per investor, track: fund, person, contact, notes, tier, status (contacted, in DD, follow-up sent), last contact, next follow-up, and the feedback they gave.

Any tool you'll actually use works: Notion, Airtable, Trello, HubSpot, Streak, a spreadsheet. OpenVC has one built in. I use a simple spreadsheet with the companies I work with.

Step 5: Run the outreach

Block 3 to 4 weeks and make it your main job. Send in batches, not one at a time. Parallel conversations build pressure.

Who does it? Always the founder. Investors don't want to hear from your assistant, your advisor or a junior employee. Same goes for the meetings.

Start at the bottom. Send to your lowest priority list first. The goal is to test your messaging, flow and materials while it matters less. In week 2, move to mid and high priority.

Go to investment roles, not partners. Analysts, associates, principals and investment managers reply far more often. Finding new companies is their actual job and they have the time to do it. Partners are swamped and much more likely to ignore a cold email.

Use both channels. Email and LinkedIn. It puts a face next to your name, shows you didn't blast a list of 10,000 investors, and makes them feel more "special".

Personalise every message. Start with something specific about this fund and this person. Why them? Investors get a ton of inbound and skip most of it. Original and specific is the only way through.

Follow up twice, with something new each time. A signed customer, a revenue number, a first commitment in the round. Same thread. After the second one, assume they're not interested and move on.

Reply fast. I can't stress this enough. If an investor answers, you answer immediately. Plenty of them use response time as a signal for whether you're serious.

Stand out! In the age of AI, everything looks the same. Your only chance of getting investors' attention is by being original, interesting, authentic.

The mistakes I see most

→ One email, 1,000 recipients, no real personalisation
→ Writing to investors who back a direct competitor. They'll either ignore you or take the meeting just to learn about your market
→ Outsourcing the outreach
→ Taking too long to reply once someone shows interest
→ Reaching out to investors who were never a fit
→ Lately: sending the same AI-generated deck as everyone else

Cold outreach can absolutely work. But the founders who get results run it as a campaign, not as a random exercise.

I'll get deeper into writing the actual cold email in a next issue, so stay tuned. :)

P.S. The OpenVC link is an affiliate link. If you upgrade through it, you'll get 20% off, and I'll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend it because I use it and like it. It is very user-friendly, and most of the features are free anyways.

Ciao,

Geri