But one of the most challenging aspects founders face is the lack of transparency around securing investment. Whether that’s finding investors, securing meetings, to knowing how to best contact them and what information they want to see. The other challenge founders face is a constantly changing landscape for investors. New funds are being raised but some funds are reaching the end of their lives and are much less active. Technology can drastically improve this process by providing a more transparent and efficient process. Here’s how.

The investment process in private markets tends to be hard as it is a fragmented market with little transparency

Investment funds are run in many different ways, some respond to cold emails, others may prioritise people they know with a warm personal intro when it comes to striking up conversations. The same is true with angel investors. Some may prioritise opportunities to pitch from people they know personally, whilst others are more open to being approached on LinkedIn or over email by founders they’ve never met. The bottom line is that because many investors operate in different ways, it can be difficult to know who to approach and the best way to approach them, and many founders still remain unsure as to how they can reach out to investors. 

Many different types of investors will be open to cold pitching but will require a specific approach with certain information revealed in the initial message you send, such as a teaser document to show top line information about your business, what you do, investment raised so far, investment goal, your burn rate etc. But this requires experience to put together and the process isn’t always efficient for founders or startup/scaleup teams. Tech can solve this issue by providing a step-by-step template and room for videos and other key documents.

The data available for investors tends to be pricey, and there is no one single database that has all the information so it usually requires a big effort to identify the right investors.

Technology for this problem is under-developed in these markets and could solve pain points

When it comes to finding, pitching and building strong communications with investors, it takes time and resources from the team to do this and do it well. Additionally, founders may not know the key stats that investors want to see, sending them lengthy, long pitch documents that will only be skimmed through. However, technology and automation can speed up this process, giving businesses access to a range of investor information, and allowing them to filter contact by those most relevant to them.

Technology can also use ‘template pitching’ to guide founders on what information is necessary and what’s not so they can create clear, succinct, persuasive pitch emails. This is exactly what is offered at ReachX.

By providing a database where founders can clearly access all the information they need, without having to sift through and find the right investors manually, we can save founders and teams precious time. We help founders to pitch in a more effective and persuasive way, and allow investors to find businesses that they otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to through the more traditional methods of investment.

With the right process, it allows companies to get immediate, helpful feedback

Investors' responsiveness is also a criteria ReachX tracks. At both end of the spectrum,  some investors are very responsive and will come back with a yes/no answer rapidly and some feedback (that we track as well systematically), some investors will not respond at all or don’t want to be contacted outside of their network. In general, most people eventually respond, but it takes a multi-channel approach and systematic follow up, which is what we offer. 

Finally, with a more standardised, automated process, investors can easily give feedback through a questionnaire style response, instead of having to give feedback through lengthy commentary and notes. This obviously saves investors time but it also allows founders to see investor feedback clearly, without having to wade through lengthy feedback emails and documents.

This doesn’t only increase efficiency, it helps level the playing field

As well as increasing transparency, efficiency and making the investment process less time consuming, this standardised way of reaching investors also allows founders without connections to gain the chance of getting funding, helping to level the playing field for under-represented founders. It also allows those without investor know-how to get all the correct information they need without having to rely on friends or family who may work in the industry or have knowledge of that information.