What do you do when an Investor signs up on your launch page?

Short answer: Of course! Many angel groups require you to submit through Gust because it offers a consistency and makes reviewing applications easier. But not all use Gust same as not all use AngelList... I haven't met an angel who frowns upon using multiple platforms. I would encourage you to leverage your twitter and Facebook or Instagram to meet angels and get in their radar (don't hassle or stalk) just try to get exposed a bit to them by being part of the same meetup group, follow the same blog, membership... Subscribe to their own blog.. And when you submit funding request considerations do please send a follow up email or a call or basket of fruits if you have contact them before.

Before I get to your question, let me give you a tip: always aim settle questions of payment before the work happens. It is ten times easier to agree on a price beforehand, and having done that doesn't stop you from changing it by mutual agreement later. The problem with paying cash is pretty obvious: you don't have a lot of it. The problems with paying equity are subtler. The first one is that early-stage equity is extremely hard to value. A second is that equity transactions require a lot of paperwork. Third is that entrepreneurs tend to value their equity much higher than other people would; if not, they wouldn't be starting the company. And fourth, people like designers are rarely expert in valuing businesses or the customs of of startup equity valuation. In the past, I've both given and received equity compensation, and it's a lot more of a pain than I expected. In the future, what I think I'd try is convertible debt. That is, I'd talk with the designer and agree on a fair-market wage. E.g. 100 hours x $100/hr = $10k. The next time we take investment, the $10k turns into stock at whatever price we agree with our investors, plus a discount because he was in before the investors. Note, though, that this will increase your legal costs and your deal complexity, so I'd personally only do this for a pretty significant amount of work. And I'd only do it for somebody I trusted and respected enough to have them around for the life of my business.

An agency is an instant cashflow model business. Ugly to scale due to logistics of a team and the mess of being in a client-service business model. But easy to rapidly monetize. Make a phone call. Close a client. Collect the cash. (Yes, that's a bit over simplified). Your girlfriend shouldn't grab a dime from anyone before locking in her first client. An agency can be entirely self-funded and there's little reason to pursue funding. After she had generated her first $50,000 in clients (for example), she can supplement growth with debt financing. And, in no way, is the idea of your generous, retiring parents investing $70,000 into a first time business owner, when statistically most businesses fail ... a good idea. Fair rate is a flexible concept. If I was lending out $70k, I'd want to see 3x $210k back as a minimum. Irregardless of whether that is "fair"... it would be the minimum (for illustrative purposes) where the process of the due diligence and contracts and parting with $70k liquid in trade for a "maybe" $140k gain would be of interest.

I like to take a rule from the Steve jobs playbook and use simple circles... one larger than the other but no more than 2. your most immediate target (realistic reachable) and one of the "enemy" competitor company. or overall untapped market cap. **for this to be effective you must provide as accurate projections as possible** no bar graphs and as little or no text as possible... remember that a deck is a companion to the speaker... avoid bullet points and use the deck to entertain rather than educate... is not a class is a pitch. :)

What of the following things does your startup have? > Founders who have graduated from prestigious universities / previously exited companies to known acquirers / worked for a known companies (with known being a brand-name company such as Google, Amazon, Facebook etc) > Three or more months of statistically meaningful growth (e.g. for easy sake, double digit growth of a number in the thousands) > At least one investor who is active on AngelList (defined in the ideal state by at least one investment in a company who raised their round through AngelList and ideally whose social graph is connected to "high signal" members of the AngelList network) If you have none of these things, then at least, have advisors and referrers who have a strong AngelList profile. And another option is to seek out the AngelList scouts and pitch them directly. They are more open to this than anyone else and I've seen companies with very little traction and very little social proof get featured because a scout believes in the founder and/or the story. Without any or most of the above, it will be difficult to stand out or build relationships via AngelList, in my opinion. I assume now AngelList operates on a concept similar to the LinkedIn "degrees of connection" model, whereby an entrepreneur can now send unsolicited messages to investors so long as there is a degree of connection between the investor and the company. I get a few unsolicited emails a week from companies whose advisers or investors aren't people I follow but that because of the way they determine "connection strength", these unsolicited emails still gain my attention. I assume this is the case for all investors. So the more that you can build your list of advisers and referrers, the more connections you can solicit. That said, AngelList's inbound email system is almost entirely ineffective for "cold" emails to really high-profile investors. Happy to share with you what I think to be your best options for raising profile for your company.