How to Build an Investor Funnel in 90 Days

The capital markets for early-growth stage companies are being disrupted due to the ways of securing financing changing with technology.

You no-longer need JP Morgan or another legacy bank to go out and raise your round and find extremely qualified investment groups that are a fit for your company.

Given the nature of our firm it is not in my best interest to say this, but raising is 100% something that you can do yourself if you so choose.

If I was a founder and I was looking to compress my fundraising timeline into 100 days, here are the exact steps I would follow to achieve it:

Day 0-20 - Preparation

This time period would spent on activities like getting my pitch deck ready, having a clean, updated data room. Having a very clear investor profile of who I actually want as a partner in my company.

Once that was taken care of, I would setup a distribution channel and begin finding data on investment groups I was interested in.

Day 20-50 - Data Gathering

Once I officially went live on my raise, my focus for day 20-50 would simply be on having as many conversations with qualified investment groups as I can and hearing their feedback.

When a founder pitches for the first few times, they have blindspots in their company they don’t see yet.

Questions about TAM, weak traction story, uncertain growth trajectory, competition issues, etc. The problem with this, is that most founders don’t figure this out until it is too late. You should be treating your first 5-10 investor conversations as a strict data feedback loop.

Present → receive feedback → clarify feedback → make changes → present

Day 50-80 - Pipeline Building / Follow-up

Most groups are not going to take the time to make sure they’re staying in touch with you after your conversation. That is solely your job.

Use a CRM for tracking, monitor conversations, push the deal along, and try and move into formal DD.

A great goal by the end of this is to have multiple investment groups formally in due diligence with you as you approach day 100.

Day 80-100 - Closing

This part is largely out of your control, but there are a few things you can do to make the process smoother for investors:

• Keep a CLEAN data room

  • I can not iterate how important having a tidy data room is. If someone asks for something, if you can help them locate it and give it to them in < a few hours, it goes further than you think

• Being available / timely with response

  • It is very natural for questions, clarification, and whatever else to come up in the late stages of DD. Making sure that you or someone on your team can answer these inquiries promptly will make sure you keep this process as short as possible. Speed = key

The process I have just outlined is the majority of our process for how we do things over here at Breakout.

We have a hard focus on distribution to relevant groups and building a solid top-of-funnel, taking that initial interest and conveying it into feedback using modern sales assets, and pushing qualified interest down the funnel into conversion.

If you have any questions about us, our process, or how you can apply this process into your own raise, shoot me a reply and I’d be happy to help.

Thanks for reading,
Ryan Bryden
Breakout Capital Group