Is Early Stage Fundraising Really a "Numbers Game"?

Is getting in touch with the right investors and raising your round really a numbers game?

From a broad sense, no. But in the case of engineering luck, it can be.

Let me share my perspective:

I had a conversation with a founder and his partner a few weeks ago from an AI consumer app looking to raise their seed round.

Traction was pretty good, company was growing nicely, and the idea was definitely there.

In the discovery process, the partner said to me:

“…. we know that this is mainly a numbers game, and we’ve heard it likely takes about 300-400 meetings to find the right investor.”

I said right away that I don’t believe this is the correct mindset to have.

Because how many of those 300 meetings are purely bloat? Time wasters? Could you get the same result in 200 meetings? How about 50?

Going into your raise thinking “I simply need to get as many investor meetings on the calendar as possible” is not the best approach to take.

You’re going to end up burning yourself out and dreading the process of repeating your pitch over and over again.

I think that it is highly unlikely that you genuinely have 300 high-yield investor calls.

This is why at Breakout, we try and take the approach of making sure the calls we do set for you are as closely aligned on founder x fund fit as possible.

If we can get the same result in 20 calls, that someone else needed 100 calls to get, why would we take the latter?

Here is the counter argument to this:

The more calls you do take with investment groups, the higher your surface for luck is going to be.

This seems obvious, but if you take more calls, your chances are much higher for:

• Your deal being sent to friends / connections of the investor

• Warm intros being made for your company

• Finding the right investor at the exact right time

• Building future connections with aligned investors down the road

This is definitely valuable, it is just not the primary approach to take if you value your own time, speed of your round getting closed, or trying to keep your raise as efficient as possible.

Let me know if this helps you think about how to be approaching your raise.

Have a great Monday.

Ryan
Founder @ Breakout

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