The documents you write to support your funding bid are essential to helping your company springboard to success, and may be among the most important pieces of writing you’ll ever produce.
They’ll need to encapsulate everything an investor needs to know about the opportunity, your business model, financial forecast and more. Here are all the key documents you’ll need to engage investors at every stage of the fundraising process:
Financial forecast
A brief summary of your financials in the form of some easy-to-interpret charts and graphs, showing when the investor should expect to make a return. This will also be included in other documents.
Emails
Create a mailing list of all your contacts and break them down into categories (e.g. business partners, clients) so that you can create custom messages for each group at various stages of your campaign, asking them to support – and share – your fundraising bid.
Social media plan
Use all social media channels you have a decent following on to promote your raise. The businesses-focused LinkedIn is usually the most important – it allows you to find and contact potential investors based on their industries.
The Angel Investment Network (AIN) is another ideal platform to find investors via advanced searches, and lead them to your own page where they’ll be able to download key documents.
Decks
Depending on their interest and knowledge of your offering, investors need different levels of briefing. This is why you’ll need at least three different decks to engage investors:
● Exec Summary – a concise taster document that summarises your proposal and allows investors to decide whether to spend time delving into your proposal.
● Presentation Deck – an image-only version of your deck designed to accompany a presentation given in-person or via a video meeting.
● Investor Deck – a comprehensive deck you’ll leave with already interested investors to mull over.
Pitch video
A video of no more than 5 minutes lets you give the essence of your product or service, focus on the investment opportunity, and include testimonials from clients, existing investors or other supporters.
It’s worth using a video production specialist, although you don’t need to break the bank on a flashy piece. It just needs to be a visually appealing package, underpinned by an engaging script.
PR
Getting two or three well-placed articles published in key industry titles can help to raise the profile of you as an individual, your company, and by proxy, your campaign. It can also help to reinvigorate a stalled campaign.
However, this is a tough feat to pull off on your own and it usually makes sense to seek the help of a PR agency. This is rarely a cheap exercise, so it’ll only be an option for companies with slightly larger budgets.
Remember that in all documents, the information you present needs to be written in a concise and compelling way to ensure you’re able to catch – and keep – an investor’s attention.
Often bombarded by funding proposals, few investors have the time or patience to wade through lengthy, hard-to-read pitch documents just to find whether it merits further consideration. Instead, all the key information should jump out at them.
So choose your words wisely and take on board any feedback from investors, which may prompt you to make some edits for future versions.
But if you produce everything on this list and stick to these rules, you’ll have everything you need to support your fundraising bid.
Good luck - and don't forget; we're here to help!
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