Intensity is the key for successful fundraising My number 1 m | 🦄 Unicorn Mafia Startup

Intensity is the key for successful fundraising

My number 1 mistake in the past was talking only to a *few* investors and connectors at the time. Unless you've made your previous investors rich or have astronomic traction, this doesn't work. Today, to run a successful funraising campaign, a typical startup should operate with the numbers like these:

Cold contact *200 founders* based on your space, demographics, business model
Convert *100 founders* to become your supporters
Source *200 investor leads and intros* from your supporters
Get *70 investor meetings* from your supporters
Get additional *130 investor meetings* from first wave of investors (both investing and passing)
Convert *30 investors* from 200 investor meetings to invest in your seed round

Do all of the above within 2 months. In other words, you will need to communicate with 500-1000 supporters and investors over 50 workdays, or 10-20 calls and chats each days.

If you are doing 2-3 contacts a day, the numbers will rarely add up. If you hope that one ~magical~ connector or investor will _create critical mass_ for you, in most cases, you will end up disappointed. Seed investing has a lot of randomness, you need to talk to a lot of people to fill the round. At the same time, use every contact to improve the pitch. Learn what resonates and what doesn't. Your conversion rates at the end will be much better than at the start.

For Openland, we talked to 200+ YC founders and 140 investors for our seed round. Only 30 investors ultimately invested, all with small and medium checks, without a clear lead investor.

By Yury Lifshits, Superdao CEO
@lifshits