Setup: Startup Fundraising (Simple Version)
A simple setup designed to make it easy to track your startup's fundraise.
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 15 minutes.
What will we be covering?
- Set Up Lead Stages
- Set Up Your Fundraising Workflow
- Import Investors
- Prospecting Tags
- Build Outreach Playbooks
- 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) Set Up Lead Stages
You can edit them here.
For this setup, we recommend the below Lead Stages.
- New
- Warm Intro
- Engaging
- Potential
- Interested
- Keep Updated
- Investor
- Future Investor
- No Response
- Bad Fit / Not Interested
2) Set Up 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: Potential
Overview: This step shows you all of the investor leads that have responded to a Playbook but haven't been met 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 3: Interested
Overview: By default, it shows you all investors that you have marked "Interested" and need to follow up with.
Important Note: Make sure the deal stage is saved as “All Active Deals”.
Workflow Step 4: Keep Updated
Overview: Whenever an investor says to keep them updated - just mark them as "Keep Updated" and they're appear in this step. Whenever you have new revenue, product, or fundraising updates, you can blast this list of investors with your new update or use it as a list of potential follow on investors.
Workflow Step 5: Investors
Overview: This shows you all of your investors.
3) Import 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.
4) Prospecting Tags
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
5) Build 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 7 days - Automated Email: Book a Meeting
- After 7 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
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.