We have over 50 angel investors that have signed up on our launch page. Does that mean that they are really interested in the company? Is this something angel investors do on a regular basis or are the investors seriously interested in the company? Should I contact each investor asking for a meeting or simply treat them like users? We are not necessarily ready to fundraise yet as we want to wait until we build some tangible traction first.- But if we get a good offer for our seed round, we will take it.
I try to give you an answer as angel investor.
1) "Does that mean that they are really interested in the company?"
It only means that type of your company is relevant to field of interests of particular angel investor.
2) "Is this something angel investors do on a regular basis or are the investors seriously interested in the company? "
People invest money to get more money. If you want to make money, you need to study asset which you plan to invest in.
Usually amount of VC money on market is greater than amount of good projects. So you need to study hundreds and thousands to find something really valuable.
3) "Should I contact each investor asking for a meeting or simply treat them like users?"
Usually investor wants to understand how your company/service works. What kind of user experience you can provide with.
SO, yes. You should treat them as general users.
And one more advice.
Think about customers, product and your business. Not about VC. Customers build your company and pay you money. Not VC.
Yes, I'd contact them one by one. The best time to raise money is when you don't need it. And most investor relationships take awhile to ripen, so to speak, so if you start nurturing those relationships now, then you'll be in a good place with the investors when fundraising becomes a priority.
It can't hurt to reach out along these lines: "Thanks so much for your interest! Were you just checking everything out? What do you think? Let's schedule a time for me to walk you through the current iteration of the product. How about next Tuesday at 9am EST?"
I guess what I'm saying is that why these investors signed up really doesn't matter. You need to build your investor pipeline regardless. And they're making it easy for you!
Hope this helps,
Austin
It's increasingly difficult to email these investors and make it clear that it's actually you and not some automated lifecycle email platform sending every new signup a welcome email from the CEO. So if you're going to email them, make it really personalised. See if you can find some info on Quora or Angel.co that suggests why they might be interested in your startup and ask if that's the reason, for instance.
If you get a response, add them to a separate CRM pipeline for qualifying and converting investors and to that list send a monthly or bi-monthly "Future Investors Update" including some concrete metrics on your performance over time, since most investors want to observe your performance as a team and also as a business over time before they invest. Make it really clear that they can unsubscribe at any time or request fewer, less frequent updates. If they unsubscribe ask if you could do anything different to keep them on your mailing list.
At the end of the day 95% of these sign ups will be just curious investors interested in your product, not investing in your business. We invest in tech startups because we're tech startup junkies as much as anything - shiny new tools are very attractive even if we never end up using them.
But just in case, start trying to qualify and convert them. The way to raise capital is to learn by doing, well in advance of when you actually need the investment.
