How to Find Investors for Your Startup (Seed to Series B)

To find investors for your startup, start with fit: stage, sector, check size and geography. Then build a verified list and reach out on LinkedIn and email with a short, personal note. Warm intros help when you have them. Cold outreach works when the list is tight and every contact is checked. We don't promise funding.

That's how to find investors in one paragraph. Below is the detail for founders raising seed to Series B. At Investor Links, we build investor lists and run outreach every week, and this is the process we use.

Step 1: Decide who you're looking for

Start with fit: investors who back your stage, your sector and your check size. Famous funds that don't match waste your outreach. Stage comes first, because it sets who writes checks and how big they are:

These are medians from Carta's Q2 2026 benchmarks. Carta calls them reference points, not targets. Then narrow by four more filters:

• Sector. Look at what the firm has actually backed lately, not only the sectors listed on its website. For one sector example, see who funds fintech startups.
• Check size. Their usual check should fit your round. A fund that writes small checks won't lead a large round.
• Geography. Some investors only back companies in certain countries or regions.
• Recent activity. A firm with no new deals in a long while may not be writing checks.

Step 2: Where to find VCs and angel investors

Look in several places at once, because each one does a different job. No single database or network covers every investor who fits. If you only want VC firms, see our guide on how to find venture capitalists.

• Your own network. Existing investors, advisors, other founders and former colleagues. In a survey of 885 VCs by Gompers and colleagues, over 30% of deals came through professional networks, another 20% were referred by other investors and 8% came from a portfolio company. Only 10% came inbound from company management.
• LinkedIn. Good for finding the right partner and checking their current role. See our guide to LinkedIn investor outreach.
• Investor databases. Faster than searching one firm at a time. Data goes stale, so check each record before you use it.
• Events, accelerators and pitch competitions. In a study of one early-stage US VC by Jang and Kaplan, 58% of the deals it considered with a known source were ones the firm found itself. That includes deals from accelerators, incubators, conferences and startup events.
• AI and search tools. Useful to map a theme fast. Not a safe source of contact details on their own.

Step 3: Build a list worth contacting

A list is only as good as its worst contact. For every investor you want the right partner's name, a checked email, a LinkedIn profile and one line on why they fit.

• Verify every email. Apollo's email status guide says "Sending to unverified addresses can increase your bounce risk."
• Drop the ghosts. People change firms. Apollo marks some saved contacts "Update required," which it says is "typically because the contact changed jobs." Remove anyone you can't confirm.
• Protect your domain. Gmail's sender guidelines tell senders to keep spam rates below 0.3% and to automatically unsubscribe recipients with multiple bounced messages.
• Write down the fit. One line per investor on why they match your round. That line often becomes your first sentence.

If you'd rather have the list built for you, see our investor list building service. If you're starting with ChatGPT, read how to use AI to find investors without a junk list.

Step 4: Warm intro or cold outreach?

Use both. They do different jobs.

A warm intro fits when someone who knows you and the investor will vouch for you. In CherryPitch's Q2 2026 report, covering 1,336 outreaches from 108 founders, a warm intro lifted response from 24% to 38% and meetings from 14% to 24% among founders whose decks stated their facts plainly. The data is self-reported by users of one platform. Our guide on how to get a warm introduction to investors covers how to ask.

Cold outreach fits when you don't have a path in, or you need more investors than your network reaches. In a 2018 field experiment, Gornall and Strebulaev sent 80,000 pitch emails for fictitious startups to more than 28,000 VCs and angels. They got a 6.5% reply rate and a 4.3% interested reply rate. Shared ground helped: the interested reply rate was 8.87% when investor and founder went to the same school, against 4.12% when they didn't.

A real reason to write matters even in a cold note. For more published rates, see our investor outreach benchmarks.

Step 5: What to send

Send a short, personal note that makes the fit obvious in the first line, because investors see far more companies than they back. In the Gompers survey, firms considered about 101 deals for every one they closed. Your first message has to make the fit obvious fast.

• One line on what you do and who it's for.
• One line of traction. Revenue, growth, pilots or signed customers. Whatever is true and strongest.
• Why this investor. The fit line from your list.
• The round. How much you're raising and at what stage.
• A small ask. A short call, or permission to send the deck.

Have the deck ready first. Skip templates that claim to guarantee a raise, and never promise returns. If you're raising a private offering, ask your lawyer how you're allowed to market it. This is not legal advice.

Step 6: When to hire help

Doing it yourself often works when your list is short, you know the space and you have time each week to check contacts and follow up. Hiring help tends to pay off when you need a long list across VCs, angels and family offices, or you'd rather spend your hours on the deck and calls.

Comparing options? Read investor outreach vs DIY tools and how to choose an investor outreach agency. Raising for an AI company? See investor outreach for AI startups and the latest AI startup funding data. Running it yourself? Our investor outreach step by step guide covers the process.

When we run it, we use the same four steps for every raise:

• A call about your raise. We go over your stage, round, timeline and the investors who fit. It starts with a free consultation call.
• A verified list. We build the list in Apollo with decision-maker names, emails and LinkedIn profiles. Each investor is checked for recent activity and fit, and every email is checked before anyone sends.
• LinkedIn and email outreach. LinkedIn runs through HeyReach and email through Instantly. Copy is written around your deal and traction. Our team checks every campaign and handles follow-ups and replies.
• Meetings and weekly numbers. Warm replies are handed to you for the meeting. You get weekly numbers on opens, responses and meetings.

We don't send from your personal LinkedIn profile. We're not a broker-dealer or a placement agent, and we don't take a success fee on the money you raise. Our terms spell this out.

What clients say

Investor Links was founded by Zain Malik, who leads every client engagement and is Top Rated Plus on Upwork. A fundraising outreach client wrote on Upwork: "Working with Zain was great. He got the job done and gave us exactly what is needed." A real estate fund client who hired us for investor outreach wrote: "Zain works hard and well. He wants your business to succeed."

Frequently asked questions