Say you’re raising $500k. You find a VC who invests in your sector, and a friend offers to introduce you. Then you look at the fund’s website. Their smallest check is $5M.
I’d save that intro for later.
When building an investor list, I focus on 4 filters:
1. GEOGRAPHY. Does the fund invest in companies based in your country? Some funds even specialize by region (e.g. Midwest) but I’d say country is a good enough filter.
2. SECTORS/VERTICALS. What do they actually fund? Say you sell software to clinics. A fund that invests in healthcare might spend all its money on drug development. That’s a different business.
3. STAGE. You can use rounds for Series A, Series B, etc. But at pre-seed and seed, it’s very blurry. Instead, I prefer “Idea stage”, “MVP/Early users” and “Early revenue”.
4. CHCK SIZE. How much do they usually put in on the first check? If their minimum is bigger than your whole round, cross them off.
But also: don’t over-filter.
Some founders spend too much time filtering VCs by AUM, “dry powder”, or who the LPs are. That data is often incomplete or just wrong, so you end up with a worse list AND you waste time doing it.
The 4 filters are good enough.
Once an investor clears them, add them to your shortlist and keep moving.
