Category Archives: Business

How to find early stage investors using LinkedIn

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LinkedIn_investors

Click the image to go to LinkedIn’s Advanced Search feature, displaying results for keywords “angel investors” & for location “London, United Kingdom”

LinkedIn’s Advance Search is an effective way to find potential investors. Simply put the keywords “angel investor” or “seed investor” with UK as the location. Because of my network the search results in 509 entries for “seed investor” and over 1.4K for the keywords “angel investor”. These included 1st degree connections I can contact directly, 2nd degree connections which share a connection with me, and 3rd/Group connections.

The method that I have been trained in by Mike Clark at a recent Entrepreneurs in London meetup (click link for post-meetup discussion) says you then contact your ‘shared connection’ for 2nd degree connections (the link text appears in green below the entry) and ask them to email the target with the details you want them to receive. It works much better than LinkedIn’s ‘Get Introduced’ feature!

Next, wondering about what to send investor, in the way of a deck and intro text? See below for expert advice from Chance Barnett, CEO of crowdfunding.com:

When you ask for intros, give the person making the introduction a very short email ‘blurb’ of suggested language for them to use. Make sure that blurb includes a single link / call to action. By using a single link to your online profile on a site, you can allow people to pass along your pitch and all your core company info with a single URL. The moment that any potential investor clicks on that link, they experience the pitch and message you’ve crafted for them online, in a more dynamic and powerful environment than just a PPT attachment.

In my case, when I was fundraising for Crowdfunder in the past and people made intros to investors, that message and link went something like this:

“Hey,

I wanted you to meet Chance, the CEO of Crowdfunder.

He’s doing some interesting stuff with equity crowdfunding and the company has some great growth as a leader in the space. Thought you two might want to chat.

His deck and info on the company are here:

http://crowdfunder.com/crowdfunder

Hope you two connect,”

 

How ROI can make your CV stand out

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Here’s some great advice I found from Lazlo Bock, a Google HR guy, on why showing the ROI of your efforts on your CV really helps it stand out from the other candidates:

How do you make your accomplishments stand out? There’s a simple formula. Every one of your accomplishments should be presented as:

Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]

In other words, start with an active verb, numerically measure what you accomplished, provide a baseline for comparison, and detail what you did to achieve your goal. Consider the following two descriptions of the same work, and ask yourself which would look better on a resume:

  1. Studied financial performance of companies and made investment recommendations
  2. Improved portfolio performance by 12% ($1.2M) over one year by refining cost of capital calculations for information-poor markets and re-weighting portfolio based on resulting valuations

The addition of the “12% improvement” makes the statement more powerful. Adding “($1.2M)” anticipates the reviewer’s question about whether 12% is a big deal or not. If you improved investment results by 12%, but that meant going from $100 to $112, that’s not too impressive. But adding $1.2M to the starting portfolio value of $10 million is huge. Explaining how you did it adds credibility and gives insight into your strengths.