Do a start-up should search for angel financing between seed and round A even if it's burn rate is low and have a budget to operate till round A?

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.

Team is more important than the startup itself. Investors prefer invest in the Jockey over the Horse. There may be n number of reasons for not getting through the funding rounds. If your startup is able to provide 10x return I can invest straight away. However, I will look at the team first and foremost and then I will look at the management skills and then I will come to other metrics like traction and scalability.

Angel Investors will understand that you have a need to draw a salary... but the idea of taking their cash and putting it to personal use would be a "no-go". If you were on your Series C of Venture Capital, raising $100M and you wanted to sell $3M of shares to buy yourself a nice house, for instance, that might be okay. But if you're raising $500k and you want to pocket $50k of that to clear your credit card debt (for instance), that would be a deal-killer. Two reasons: (1) it shows the investors you're not great at managing your own funds, and (2) it's hard enough for a company to survive and grow with the investment that Angels provide — they definitely expect every penny to go into the company's growth. That said, if your profits are strong and the reason for the equity sale doesn't set off 'red flags' (i.e. family medical expense?), maybe you can get away with it. But remember: investors get pitched by hundreds, even thousands of candidate companies. That's your competition. Some of those companies look just like yours, and *don't* have a founder who's looking to use some of their cash for an early exit. So, it would be a significant strike against.

A good deck doesn't sell a terrible story, but a bad deck can ruin a great story. Your primary goal should be to distill your story down to 10 slides max, with as *few words as possible* on each slide. Images, product shots and graphs are all more impactful than words. A good outline is as follows: 1) Vision 2) Problem 3) Market Opportunity 4) Team 5 & 6) Product Details 7) Traction / Evidence 8) Competitive Differentiation 9) Plan of attack / use of proceeds 10) Contact info / closing point. Happy to review your deck over a call. I've helped hundreds of Clarity founders with framing their investor presentations.

Just because two people are connected to each other on LinkedIn, doesn't mean that these two people have a strong connection to one another. So first, ask your Mentor directly whether (s)he knows this person well enough to make an introduction. Also, I'd suggest that instead of asking that the introduction be made via LinkedIn, that the introduction be made directly via email. The way this best happens is to email your mentor with a two paragraph email explaining why it is that you want an introduction to this person and explaining why you think this person would want to meet with you. Then your mentor can forward this email directly to this person with a request for an introduction. If the person replies to your mentor, your mentor will then connect you two directly. If the investor is interested enough to accept an intro, then you'll likely get a 30 minute to 1 hour in-person meeting or call scheduled. In terms of what that investor will be looking for, I've written a lot of answers to questions around seed-stage financing that I encourage you to review. I'm happy to schedule a quick call to give you some specific feedback on where you're at and how investors might perceive your progress to date. Best of luck with this connection!