Pre-Seed to Series A: How Many Investors Founders Really Contact

One of the first questions founders ask us is how many investors to contact. They usually want one number. The honest answer is that there’s one good public number for pre-seed, some useful data on how investors filter deals, and very little reliable data on seed and Series A outreach.

At Investor Links, we build investor lists and run outreach for founders, so we think about this question every week. Below is what the research actually shows, what it doesn’t, and how we’d plan a list without guessing.

How many investors to contact: what does the public data say?

The best public figure comes from DocSend, which tracks how founders share pitch decks. In its 2023 pre-seed report, which covered over 200 pre-seed startups, founders contacted an average of 71 investors and secured an average of 46 meetings.

DocSend’s earlier 2021 to 2022 pre-seed report, based on 300 pre-seed startups, found founders contacted 69 investors and set 39 meetings in 2021, and contacted 60 investors and set 52 meetings in 2022.

So for pre-seed, the public data points to dozens of investors, not hundreds. Three things to keep in mind:

• These are averages. Some founders raise from a handful of contacts, others need far more.
• They’re pre-seed only, and from DocSend users who share decks through its platform.
• “Contacted” includes every channel, warm intros as well as cold outreach. The meetings-to-contacts ratio isn’t a cold email meeting rate.

How long does a pre-seed raise take?

Longer than most founders plan for. In the 2023 DocSend report, close to a third of successful pre-seed deals took 13 to 18 weeks, and unsuccessful companies kept trying for five months on average. In the 2021 to 2022 report, average fundraising time rose to 15 weeks in 2022.

Plan your list and your runway around a few months of steady outreach, not a few weeks.

What does the investor’s side of the funnel look like?

It helps to see how investors filter, because it explains why you need a pipeline and not a short wish list. In a 2016 survey of 885 venture capitalists by Gompers and colleagues, for every deal a VC firm closed, it considered about 101 opportunities. It met management on 28, took 10 to a partners meeting, did due diligence on about 5 and offered about 1.7 term sheets.

In other words, roughly one in four companies in the Gompers data got a meeting, and only about one in a hundred got funded by that firm. The average firm screened 200 companies a year and made about four investments. Deals took 83 days on average to close.

This is the VC’s funnel, not yours. It doesn’t tell you how many VCs you need to contact. It does show why a single meeting, or even a great one, is far from a term sheet.

Why does the number change from pre-seed to seed to Series A?

We didn’t find a reliable public figure for how many investors founders contact at seed or Series A. What the data does show is that the step from seed to Series A has become harder, and that rounds are more concentrated.

Carta’s data, presented by its head of insights Peter Walker at a Sierra Ventures summit and drawn from nearly 500,000 SAFEs and notes, shows:

• About 14% to 17% of seed companies reach Series A within 24 months, compared with about 30% in the boom years.
• The median time from seed to Series A fell to about 1.9 years in the second half of 2025.
• The typical lead investor now takes a median 60% of a seed round, up from about 50%.

Carta’s State of Private Markets Q1 2026 shows fewer, larger rounds. In Q1 2026, $2.7 billion went into 381 seed rounds, against $2.2 billion across 481 in Q1 2025. At Series A, it was $7.0 billion across 369 rounds, against $6.2 billion across 444.

What this means in practice: as rounds get larger and leads take more of each round, finding a lead becomes the main job. A lead is a narrow group of investors for any given company.

Where does the public data stop?

We want to be plain about this. We didn’t find solid public data on:

• How many investors founders contact at seed or Series A.
• How many investors are in a typical Series A pipeline.
• What share of contacted investors end up offering a term sheet, by stage.

You’ll see numbers for all of these online. We couldn’t trace them to a named study with a clear method, so we don’t repeat them. If a number doesn’t come with a source, treat it as an opinion.

How should you size your own investor list?

Work backward from your round, not forward from a target number. Here’s the method we use, in words:

1. Start with fit. Count only investors who invest at your stage, in your sector and geography, and at your check size, and who have done a similar deal recently. This is your real list.
2. Find your lead candidates. Split out the investors who can lead. At seed and Series A, they’re usually a smaller group, and they decide whether the round happens.
3. Estimate your own conversion. Track what share of contacts reply, what share of replies become meetings, and what share of meetings move to a second step. Use your first few weeks of outreach to get real numbers.
4. Work back to the list size. Divide the number of serious conversations you need by your own conversion rates, and you’ll know how many matched investors you need.
5. Go in waves. Contact your list in batches, learn from each batch, and fix your message or targeting before the next one.

If your matched list is short, the answer is usually better research, not a bigger list of poor fits. In the Gornall and Strebulaev field experiment, many investor rejections came from poor matching on geography or industry. If you want help, you can build a verified investor list with us for your round.

For what investors weigh when they decide, see our report on what investors look for.

How does Investor Links help build your investor list?

We research and check investors for every client, matching each one on stage, sector, check size and past deals, and we find the person who makes decisions. Then we run the outreach on LinkedIn and email through HeyReach and Instantly, book interested investors into meetings with you, and send you weekly numbers on opens, responses and meetings, so you’re working from your own data. We don’t promise funding. Book a free call to talk about your round.

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