How to attract VCs: Inbound fundraising

Sure, you know about cold emails and warm intros.

But have you heard of inbound fundraising? It is the most powerful, yet most underutilized way to access investors.

In this post, we'll cover everything you need to know about inbound fundraising.

Let's dive in.

I. What is inbound fundraising?

Inbound fundraising is when you let investors come to you, rather than you chasing them.

If you're familiar with inbound marketing, it's the same principle. You generate high-quality content, gather a qualified audience, and some of your followers will naturally reach out about your product - in this case, your raise.

Inbound fundraising is great for power dynamics. For once, it's not the founder begging for a meeting, but the investor requesting one. Strong position to start from.

If inbound is great, who do so few people use it? 

Some founders dislike the idea of inbound fundraising. "It's not my job to post on social media, it's the VC job to find me!".

Sure. If that's your opinion, you can close this page.

Otherwise, keep on reading.

II. Setting up your inbound trap for investors

1. List your startup where investors source deals

VCs use tools to scrape the web, detect potential startups, and reach out to the founders directly.

First, startup directories like ProductHunt, Crunchbase, Betalist… are all places where you can easily sign up and get your startup listed for free. It's not super qualitative or distinctive, but it's a one-time effort, so why not.

Second, Open Flow is a list of deals that hundreds of investors browse every week. Also free.

The nice thing with Open Flow is that your startup is anonymous. Investors only see generic data points like your country, industry, revenue growth… Once you receive an investor request, you can accept it (and be connected) or ignore it (and remain anonymous).

That way, you control your image and the power dynamics.

Third, consider the "stealth hack" on Linkedin. VCs increasingly scrape Linkedin to find high-potential founders before other VC firms. They do that by combining two factors: (a) a strong professional or academic background and (b) a keyword like "stealth startup".

Therefore, if someone in your founding team has worked at OpenAI or studied at MIT, have them switch their company to "Stealth startup" and their bio to "Building something new". Then, watch the investors flood their DMs. Watch out for scammers though.

2. Be in "the room where it happens": Linkedin and Twitter

Founders don't realize how powerful social media is.

Twitter and Linkedin gather thousands of investors worth billions of dollars collectively. This is more than you need to fund your startup from pre-seed to IPO.

Think about it - you can make any VC phone vibrate at the push of a notification! That's one hell of a channel if you know how to use it.

Start with joining the right platforms: LinkedIn first, and also Twitter if you're looking for US investors. Those two are non-negotiable.

On top of that, there may be a big platform in your industry: Discord in gaming, Signal in web3… Maybe join it, but it's hard to be active on multiple channels, so don't overdo it. Choose quality over quantity.

Bottom line: if you can't be in Silicon Valley, this is the next best thing you can do.

(NB: I've grown OpenVC to 6,000+ investors from a Starbucks in the Chinese countryside, so I'm speaking out of experience here 😇)

3. Optimize your online presence

Investors will google you. You can be sure of that.

So anticipate it: 

Lastly, optimize the Linkedin profile of the cofounders.

Your Linkedin profile is your landing page for investors. Fill in your bio, upload a nice profile pic, add a link to your website, get to 500 connections...

Definitely worth 30 minutes of your time.

III. A 6-step roadmap to inbound fundraising

The trap is set. Now, let's nudge investors into it.

Inbound fundraising relies on a key premise: Investors LOVE consuming content. It's a need for them. They want to be smart. They want an edge.

You will be that edge and become their content provider and thought leader.

Here's a 6-step roadmap to do just that.

Step 1: Reply to investors' posts like a pro

If you're following our Fundraising strategy playbook, you have already prepared your investor shortlist (if not, do that first)

Follow your target investors on Twitter and Linkedin. Not only that, but also make sure to activate notifications.

Now, you will get a notification every time a target investor posts something on social media.

This is your chance! 

Like + Reply quickly with a smart comment that adds value to the conversation. For example, here's me engaging on a post by Sheel Mohnot.

If you have nothing smart to say, ignore the post. But for the love of God, stay away from auto-generated replies if you have an ounce of dignity in your little finger.

After some time, you'll find yourself engaging with investors (or their ghostwriters) on a regular basis.

You're building goodwill. This will help us for step 2.

Step 2: Unleash your voice on social media

Now that you're an active community member, make your voice heard.

Post at least 1x/day on social media. On Linkedin, you can post up to 2x/day with 12 hours between each post and not hurt your reach. On Twitter, the sky's the limit, post whenever you feel like it. There are many tools to schedule your posts (Hypefury is pretty cool), but for me, nothing beats the UX of the original apps.

The only rule: don't talk about your raise. It's too early for that.

You should talk about your company, though. Prateek has some great suggestions about how to do that.

Post from your personal account. Nobody likes engaging with a company account. It's about building a human-to-human connection here. You, the CEO, are the face of the company.

Last point: whenever relevant, tag some of your target VCs in your posts. Don't do it too often, people get irritated with the notifications. But a tag well used is a nice way to "snipe" an investor's attention.

Step 3: Move your most engaged followers to your newsletter

So far, we've been building an audience on third-party platforms: Twitter and Linkedin.

Time to bring them to your newsletter.

A newsletter is perfect to move the relationship forward: it's low commitment yet personal enough that you bring investors into "your" world. Systematically promote your newsletter on social media to progressively get your followers on board.

What's more, you own the mailing list. You'll never lose your followers even if you get banned from Twitter like I did, and you'll get valuable analytics. You can see who actively reads your newsletter (=hot leads) and who unsubscribes (=cold leads).

Choose quality over quantity. A monthly newsletter is enough, but aim for the absolute best damn thing a VC can read in the industry. Make it so good they will forward it to their colleagues. That's how you will win this.

No need to create new content. Just reuse your best social posts of the month, with a blend of industry insights and company announcements. It's basically an unofficial investor update wrapped in high-quality thought leadership.

As for the tool, I would probably look at Beehive, Substack, Mailerlite, Mailchimp, or Hubspot.

Step 4: Start a blog/podcast and interview investors

You can stop at the newsletter, and you're already doing well.

But let's take it up a notch!

Now, you will create a blog or a podcast i.e. a media platform. If you already have one for your company, just use that.

The goal here is to have an excuse to invite VCs for an interview:

"Hi John, we're doing a series of podcasts on the future of fintech. I've been following you for a while on Twitter. Would love to have you on the pod. Wdyt?"

Use that opportunity to bond over the interview first. Then, give value through the content you will produce about them. Who doesn't like free, quality exposure?

Once again, don't mention your raise. It's not about raising yet, it's about positioning yourself as a key player in the ecosystem.

Step 5: Throw a launch event for your investor white paper

At this point, you have 10+ VC interviews, filled to the brim with exclusive insights. What's the best thing you can do? 

Compile them in a white paper, of course!

You want a good-looking PDF with at least 10 pages of content, 3-5 tweetable punchlines, and some in-depth insights sourced from the multiple investors you interviewed. Outsource that task if you can't do it yourself.

That's the perfect micro-product to bait investors. You can publish it on social media. Don't forget to put up a form to capture emails, and ask the contributing investors to like, share and comment in their circles.

But wait, there's more.

The last and final step of the process is holding a launch event for your white paper, for example during a webinar.

As you know by now, this event is yet another excuse to connect with investors. You position yourself as a thought leader, and let them come to you.

(By the way, I highly recommend Lu.ma to organize your online and IRL events!)

You may also choose to do a real-life event in a physical venue with actual human beings.

In the age of Zoom, real-life events remain the best way to create a connection and be memorable. And it doesn't have to be expensive - every time I've wanted to throw an event, I was able to partner up with friends who have an office in Paris, Berlin, London, and turn it into an even 

Last tip if you do it in-person: try to do that during a big industry event, so you can maximize butts in the seats.

Just keep in mind that throwing a successful event is A LOT OF WORK. You've been warned.

Step 6: Adapt, overcome, improvise… then rinse and repeat!

This roadmap isn't a straight line, it's a circle.

You will frequently go back to the previous steps to fix the process and incorporate new ideas. You will figure out things that work well and others that don't. There's definitely a learning curve.

It's not a race. Don't rush it. Start with step 1, then when you're comfortable, move to step 2. Once you get to step 6, you'll realize that it's just the first time of many. You will launch again and again. It's a never ending process indeed.

For that reason, try to enjoy the ride. I found that I do my best inbound work when I also take the most pleasure in it.

It also pays off handsomely.

IV. Inbound is NOT posting about your raise

In most common law countries (US, UK…), you cannot advertise your raise to the public unless you raise under an exemption e.g. 506c in the US.

That's ok. You don't need that for inbound fundraising.

Don't mention your raise - nobody cares.

Actually, mentioning your raise smells of despair. That's the opposite of what we want to achieve with inbound fundraising.

Understand the investor psychology. To some extent, fundraising is like dating: if you sound desperate, you are less attractive. You want to look like you're in high demand.

Learn to master VC negging.

Conclusion: Inbound is to fundraising what marketing is to sales

If fundraising is sales, then inbound is marketing.

Inbound fundraising is about building your personal brand, creating awareness with investors, so you are top of mind when the time comes to raise.

You may think it's a crazy amount of work.

Instead, look at it this way: 10 months of inbound fundraising can make up for 10 years of networking you haven't done.

Even better: the same work you put in building your brand with investors will also help you source talents and clients.

It is part of the job description of today's CEO.

You just didn't know it yet. 🫰