Our team at Hustle Fund aims to make your fundraising journey easier by demystifying the process. But no matter how well-versed you are in how it all works, that won’t change the fact that fundraising is hard work.  

It requires a good idea, team, and product. It requires continuous outreach to potential investors (aka networking). It requires follow-up (aka more networking).

It requires good timing.

So while we hope to make the work a little more efficient by helping you improve your thinking, your emails, and your slide deck, we can’t make the hard work go away.

If you are reading this, thinking, yes, it is so, so hard, take heart!

The Hustle Fund way

Eric Bahn, one of Hustle Fund’s co-founders, said in a chat with the Founders Institute that in his experience, the companies that had the hardest time raising early capital wound up being some of the best performers in the portfolio.  

Let me say that again: The companies that had the hardest time raising early capital wound up being some of the best performers in the portfolio.  

Eric knows firsthand how challenging it can be because Hustle Fund itself had to do the hard work of fundraising capital.

It all comes down to networking—and putting into play Eric’s favorite networking hack.

Ask for just one intro

Often when fundraising you want to cast a wide net, and then hope that net will get wider. So you might email everyone you know with your pitch deck and blurb and say “Please forward to anyone who might be interested.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is actually asking a lot of your friends.

They need to run through a list of all the people they know, think about if that person might be interested, make a call one way or another, and then forward on the email.

Chances are they’ll freeze up and not forward your blurb to anyone.

What Hustle Fund did instead was reach out to the people in their community—their investor and founder friends—with a request to be forwarded on to the one person who would be the best fit.

Why this is better

There are a couple of reasons this works:

• It’s easier for your friend: Coming up with one name is easier than coming up with 10.
• The new lead feels singled out in a good way: They aren’t getting a mass email that can easily be ignored. They are getting an opportunity.

Most of all, the leads can provide a path to unexpected funding sources.

In Hustle Fund’s case, they wound up being forwarded to people who worked for family offices interested in investing in startups. That wasn’t something they would have had access to otherwise.

Don’t misunderstand, even with this slightly more targeted approach, there was still work to be done: Hustle Fund followed up on over 700 leads over the course of nine months to raise $11.5m.

The work was hard, but it was also fruitful.

Happy networking!

Carolyn

(pinch-hitting for Kera while she’s on maternity leave)

This article was written by Carolyn Abram, a freelance writer with a passion for technology. She also writes fiction and teaches writing classes in her home of Seattle. You can learn more about her at her website or on LinkedIn.