Raising a Seed Round Without a Warm Intro
We had no network. Our first ten investor meetings came from cold emails that led with a number, not a vision.
Cold outbound actually works
We had no network and no famous angels. Our first ten investor meetings came from cold emails that led with a number, not a grand vision.
The template was three sentences: what we do, the one metric that was growing, and a specific ask.
Subject: 3x MoM revenue, raising a seed
We help X do Y. Revenue grew from $4k to $12k MRR in three months.
Raising $1.5M — do you have 20 minutes next week?Build the pipeline like a sales funnel
We treated the raise like a sales quarter. Fifty investors at the top of the funnel, tracked in a simple spreadsheet, moved stage by stage.
- Contacted: 50
- First call: 18
- Partner meeting: 7
- Term sheet: 2Two term sheets from fifty cold contacts is a 4% close rate. That is more than enough to get a round done.
Momentum is the whole game
We ran the process in a tight three-week window so meetings stacked and interest compounded. An investor who hears you already have a term sheet moves ten times faster than one who assumes they have all quarter to decide.
Written by the founder
Notes from the day-to-day of building a company. Replace this bio with your own — a line about what you're building and what you've learned goes a long way with readers.