Setup: Startup Fundraising
This tutorial covers how to set up LeadLoft for startup fundraising.
In this tutorial we’ll be covering how to set up LeadLoft for startup fundraising.
This is a one time setup. You’ll be ready to begin investor outreach as soon as we’ve completed this tutorial.
How long should this take?
You should be up and running in the next 30 minutes.
What will we be covering?
- Lead Stages & Deal Stages
- Importing Investors
- Prospecting & Segmentation
- Outreach & Playbooks
- Your Fundraising Workflow
- Tips & Best Practices
Let’s dive in!
Bookmark this page.
It’s important to bookmark this page so whenever you have any questions, you can quickly refer back to it. This will not only make your life easier but it will also accelerate how quickly you learn this set up.
1) Lead Stages & Deal Stages
You might be wondering “What’s the difference between Lead stages and Deal Stages?” and you’d be asking a great question.
Lead Stages: Handles the early stages of a conversation with an investor (e.g. New, Potential Investor, Meeting Booked, Investor, etc.).
Deal Stages: Deals are created once an investor expresses interest in your company. (e.g. Meeting Booked, Term Sheet Received, Won). Deals attach a value to a potential investment, measure interest, and this all helps to prioritize your most valuable conversations.
Recommended Lead Stages
You can edit them here.
For this setup, we recommend the below Lead Stages.
- New
- Warm Intro
- Engaging
- Potential
- Meeting Booked (Create Deal)
- Keep Updated
- Investor
- Future Investor
- No Response
- Bad Fit / Not Interested
Recommended Deal Stages
You can edit them here.
For this setup, we recommend the below Deal Stages.
- Interested
- Term Sheet Received
- Won
- Lost
2) Importing Investors
Importing investors is extremely important. It usually is a list of your most valuable connections. So we made a video specifically for it. Watch it below.
Click here to download a .csv file of the import template.
3) Prospecting & Segmentation
We all know the value of warm intros but very few founders have enough VC contacts to get funded. You’ll want to reach out cold if you don’t have a connection to a specific firm.
To get started, we recommend tagging investors with the below tags. In this example, we are assuming that you are raising a Seed round.
Recommended Tags
You can edit them here.
- Seed - Lead
- Seed - Follow On
4) Outreach & Playbooks
Next, we’ll be covering how to automate outreach. In this set up, we recommend having 2 Playbooks built out to start. If you need help writing the copy, we recommend downloading our templates here.
You can create and edit your Playbooks here.
Playbook #1: Outreach
Use: Used to engage website form submissions and other lead form submissions from digital ads and popups.
- Automated Email: Book a Meeting
- After 3 days - Automated Email: Book a Meeting
- After 3 days - Automated Email: Send Pitch Deck
Playbook #2: Follow Up
Use: Used to add companies who need to be followed up with.
- Automated Email: Check In
- After 7 days - Automated Email: Check In
- After 14 days - Automated Email: Check In - Share a New Feature or Case Study
- After 30 days - Automated Email: Check In
Playbook #3: Monthly Update
Use: Used to add companies who need to be followed up with.
- Automated Email: Send Update
Your Fundraising Workflow
Building your team’s sales workflow within LeadLoft is super easy. You simply outline the stages at which you want to engage leads and simply follow the steps.
This is the workflow we recommend:
Workflow Step 1: New
Overview: This step shows you all of your leads who are marked “New”. In most cases, this is any investor who has not been contacted.
Workflow Step 2: New - Request Intro
Overview: This step shows you all of the investor leads who are marked “Warm Intro”.
Workflow Step 3: Go Follow Up
Overview: This step shows you all of the investor leads that you need to follow up with. In most cases, this is any investor who expressed interest or has been sent a pitch deck but you have not yet booked a meeting with them.
Workflow Step 4: Deal Follow Up
Overview: This step does not display leads, instead, it displays deals. It is your most valuable step in the entire fundraising process and needs the most attention. By default, it shows you all investors that you have met and need to follow up with.
Important Note: Make sure the deal stage is saved as “All Active Deals”.
Workflow Step 5: Keep Updated
Overview: Whenever an investor says to keep them updated it’s really a “Lost” deal. In this case, I recommend you mark any deals with them as “Lost” and update the lead stage to “Keep Updated”. Whenever you have new revenue, product, or fundraising updates, you can blast this list of investors with your new update or use them to follow on once you receive a term sheet.
Workflow Step 6: Investors
Overview: This shows you all leads where 1 or more investments have been made into your company.
5) Tips & Best Practices
More coming on this soon!
Wrapping Up
This is our recommended fundraising process. If you want to run a tight fundraising process, this is as close as you can get.
We understand that this can be daunting if you’ve never run sales but jump in and give it a go. Within a week, we guarantee you’ll be an expert and better yet, you’ll know how to run an effective sales process when it’s time to scale revenue. If you’d like our help setting this process up, simply sign up for LeadLoft here, and our team will be in touch within 24 hours to help you out.