Startup Fundraising Guide #4: How to Find the Right Investors for Your Startup

July 1, 2025

You’ve got your deck, your pitch, and your data room. Now comes the question that trips up many founders: who do you actually send them to? Raising well isn’t about reaching as many investors as possible, it’s about finding the right ones, the funds that back your stage, your sector, and your kind of company. This is how to find investors for your startup without wasting months on the wrong doors.

This is the fourth volume of our Startup Fundraising Guide, focused on building a targeted investor list, getting warm introductions, and putting yourself on investors’ radar before you even raise.

How to Find and Approach Investors for Your Startup

Fundraising often feels like a desperate pitch for money, but smart founders flip the script. Think of it as a sales process where the goal is to make investors feel like they’re chasing you, not the other way around. Instead of anxiously asking for funding, you’re presenting an opportunity they can’t pass up. After all, without startups, tech VCs wouldn’t have a reason to exist.

Just as in sales, success in fundraising is a mix of understanding your audience, pitching your winning plan, and generating a sense of urgency. Your focus should be on showing strong traction, sharing a compelling vision, and making investors feel they might miss out if they don’t act. Sparking FOMO, in other words.

Now, how to take the first steps in approaching investors?

1. Identify Investors Matching Your Startup’s Nature

One good thing about investors is that they don’t like to waste your time (nor theirs!), so they make sure to let everyone know what kind of deals they’re looking for in terms of: industry, stage (pre-seed, seed, scaleup…), business model, geographic focus, funding size, etc.

If you look at the right places, this information is out there, and you can use it to identify investors matching your criteria.

Visit investor and VC websites to review their investment criteria, find them on the press, social media, podcasts… and examine the backgrounds and interests they have.

You’re doing this to build a targeted investor list, but don’t reach out yet; we’ll get into that shortly. Meanwhile, work on your investor CRM whether it is a spreadsheet or using tools like Airtable or Notion.

HustleFund offers a great guide on building your Investor CRM if you need extra help on this.

2. Build Relations Before You’re Raising

Someone once told me that “a startup is always fundraising”. That doesn’t mean founders are constantly asking for money, but it does mean they should always be building relationships with investors. When the time comes to raise, you don’t want to start from scratch or appear desperate. Fundraising works best when it’s a continuation of conversations you’ve already been nurturing.

To do so, attend industry events, join startup meetups, demo days, conferences where investors are present… Many venture firms host open sessions or webinars, try to be at them, ask thoughtful questions, introduce yourself… By showing up early and often, you’ll be remembered as a proactive, curious founder, not just someone looking for a check.

If you need to speed up the conversation… keep reading next steps.

3. Ask for Warm Intros

The best way to get an investor’s attention is through a mutual connection. This could be through a founder from their portfolio, another investor already backing you, a mentor or advisor with credibility… Activate your network.

If you’ve already raised funding, your seed investors might give you an introduction as well.

4. Cold Pitching

It’s the toughest one, but since you’re a committed entrepreneur and determined to succeed, sending emails or trying to get a phone call through is something that doesn’t scare you. Commenting on investors’ social media prior to that is a way to get noticed and make your pitch a little bit less cold.

Driving Attention from Investors to Your Startup

As mentioned, fundraising can sometimes feel like a frantic plea for capital, but savvy founders know how to turn the tables. Your goal is to generate visibility, build credibility, and make investors curious enough to reach out first. Here are some powerful ways to spark investor interest and create real FOMO:

Communicate your vision consistently: Don’t just pitch when you’re raising, share your vision year-round. Post updates on LinkedIn or X, contribute to industry conversations, and comment on relevant trends. Position yourself as a founder with insight, conviction, and a deep understanding of where your sector is going.

Show progress publicly: Traction speaks volumes. Whether it’s user growth, product launches, customer stories, press coverage, or key hires… Share the news. These updates signal momentum, and momentum attracts attention. There’s even a #buildinpublic hashtag for founders doing so.

Educate the market and investors: If your startup is in an emerging or misunderstood space, help others make sense of it. Write content, speak at niche events, or host webinars that explain your market opportunity. This positions you as a category-defining player, not just another founder chasing trends. Especially now in the early days of AI, Agents, Quantum…

Be present in the right communities: Join founder Slack groups, VC-backed community platforms like On Deck, Antler, or Y Combinator’s Startup School, and engage regularly. Visibility and consistency often lead to unexpected connections.

Leverage media and thought leadership: Appear in startup newsletters, niche podcasts, or tech blogs relevant to your sector. This kind of earned media builds third-party credibility and reaches investors passively scanning the ecosystem.

Make it easy for people to follow you: Maintain an updated personal LinkedIn profile, and make sure your startup website has a clear, concise explanation of what you do, who you serve, and what makes you different. Include links to your pitch materials or a “For Investors” section if you’re actively fundraising.

Finding the right investors is part research, part relationships, and part patience. Build your list, nurture the connections early, and approach the funds that genuinely fit, not just the biggest names.

If your startup fits what we look for, digital health for early detection and preventive care, or B2B software in AI and dual-use tech, we’d love to hear from you. You can pitch us here.

And if the answer comes back as a no, don’t take it personally. In the next volume, we look at why investors say no and how to avoid the most common reasons.