How to use LinkedIn as a tool to find and connect with potential startup. Watch the full video — free, no account needed.
How to use LinkedIn as a tool to find and connect with potential startup investors. It emphasizes using keywords and filters to identify relevant individuals and leverage your network to gain access to them.
Hello, everyone. This is Alejandro Cremades, and today we’re going to be talking about how to find startup investors via LinkedIn. Before we get started, make sure that you hit that Subscribe button, and this way, you will never miss out on any of the videos that we roll out every week. Finding startup investors is essential. For any company that is looking to grow and to build meaningful, you’re going to need great people. It’s not about the money; it’s about the people that can give you access to their networks, their skill set, and expertise to take things to the next level. In a sense, you want to have a well-researched target list of people that you’re going to go after, and LinkedIn, without a doubt, is a great tool that you can use to get access to the best people and get in front of them so that you can get access to that money that you need in order to grow. In today’s video,
we’re going to be breaking it down for you, giving you the step-by-step on how to use LinkedIn and take it to the next level. So without further ado, let’s get into it. So how do you find LinkedIn, or what is LinkedIn all about? Ultimately, LinkedIn, as we all know, is a great professional network. Every single professional that you can think of, most likely, they have a profile on LinkedIn. So, ultimately, you could use LinkedIn and use different keywords to come across the specific person that you want to go after. LinkedIn, again, is the tool where every single person that is active right now in making investments in companies is going to have a profile there. It’s all about knowing how to use LinkedIn, how to use keywords, and how to use certain types of filters to get access to the person that you want to go after. It’s very important to mention here that you’re going to have
different types of access or exposure depending on the scope or the size of your own network. Obviously, the smaller the network, the less access to people that you’re going to have, but you can always get the Premium account on LinkedIn, which is going to give you greater access to the people that you want to get in front of. The first thing that you want is to have a great profile. On the profile, what you want is to make sure that you’re putting a bio about yourself, that you’re putting in every single company that you’ve worked for, all the skill sets, any diplomas, any certificates, the universities that you attended. Think of this as your CV. Also, you want to put the bio at the top, as I mentioned, so they don’t have to go through all of your profile because when you’re messaging an investor, or you’re trying to get exposure to them, the first thing that they’re going to do is go
to your profile. The last thing that you want is to showcase a profile that is not professional, that is not serious because if you’re not serious about yourself, they’re not going to be serious about placing an investment in your business. Another thing that you should do is definitely build your network, so you want to have as big of a network as possible on LinkedIn because the bigger that your network is, the more exposure you’re going to have. All your connections are going to allow you to have exposure to their connections. Typically, on LinkedIn, you have a good degree of exposure and visibility when we’re talking about first-degree connections, which are the people you’re connected with, second-degree connections, which are the connections that you have in between yourself and your own network. Then the third-degree connections are probably the ones where you have less
visibility. And, obviously, the fourth-degree connections don’t even exist. Again, the more contacts that you have in your own network on LinkedIn, the greater the exposure and greater visibility that you’re going to have. Then you want to do your research. You want to make sure that some of the credentials that people are putting out there, too, that you can actually validate those, and you can verify those because there are a lot of scammers and con artists out there. Whoever is putting whatever, and you’re thinking about doing a deal with them or thinking about reaching out, make sure that is true. You have no idea how many poachers I’ve actually encountered in the journey of building and scaling companies, so with that being said, make sure that you’re verifying some of those claims. Especially if they’re making big statements, that’s something where you can do a public search on
Google or whatever that is, to make sure that whatever is being said is actually true. On LinkedIn, one thing that you can do is become part of groups. You can go into groups of angel investors, groups of venture capital firms, groups of private equity firms, or groups that are specifically oriented to your own segment or your industry because there, you’re going to have a ton of investors that you can tap into and that are going to have a specific interest in what you’re doing. You could either comment on some of their posts. You can put posts that are relevant to them about the industry and about your company so that they can see that you have a great thought leadership approach on whatever you are doing. You want to be top-of-mind with people. You don’t want to spam. You want to add value, and that’s why you would be using some of those groups. Then you want to create a story, and,
obviously, the story is on your own profile. But, again, the way that you’re using certain keywords on your own profile is going to allow investors to find you when they want to find founders that are in your specific sector or your company. Here, you’re going to be using certain targeted keywords to your own profile, to your own expertise and skill set, and then also to whatever your company is doing. If your company is all about – just to put an example, your company is about agriculture and agriculture technology, you will be using those keywords left and right because the more that you use them in a way that is not spamming, by the way, the more that the algorithm of LinkedIn is going to push you up to the top when people are conducting searches on the search bar of LinkedIn. Then you want to go for risk-takers. The risk-takers are typically not the ones that are doing the 9:00 to
5:00 type of job. They’re not the ones that are calling themselves angel investors on LinkedIn because those are going to give you absolutely nothing. They’re going to be the ones that are going to be a pain in the neck and a ton of due diligence for a very little amount of money that they’re going to be giving you. Typically, the risk-takers are the ones that are the CEOs that have built a business, that have a fund, as well, to invest in companies like yours. So, people that are not doing the 9:00 to 5:00, but basically, people that are working on their own terms that are great leaders and people that you could learn from and that you also respect and admire. When you’re creating your network, and you’re on LinkedIn, you always want to be top of mind. Obviously, what you want to be doing is posting on your own account: articles that have to do with your company, blog posts that you’ve
created, you can use articles on LinkedIn itself that you can create to distribute amongst your network. Again, what you’re doing is being top of mind by having a lot of content being pushed there – not a lot of content. Maybe you can create one post a day, one post a week; whatever that is, you are essentially getting it in front of your network. If your network clicks a Like, or puts a comment, or shares it on their own account, then that means that you’re now getting access to their own second and third-degree connections, and that is giving you even more exposure. Again, being able to post is going to give you great access to others. Also, remember that the algorithm of LinkedIn is going to track your level of popularity, so if you’re posting stuff and nobody cares, nobody is liking it, commenting, or sharing, that could affect you negatively. So, whatever you’re doing, always do it
not from a spamming-type approach, but always from an approach of adding value, being top of mind, and coming across as someone that has done their homework and has that great level of thought leadership. Another thing that you could do is to capitalize on references. You can use the references. People can write testimonials on your own profile. They can talk about their experience when they worked with you at a previous company or when they were in school with you. That’s going to be social proof for other people that are actually going into your profile. Then other people can endorse you for certain skills. So you should absolutely use your network to give you that type of social proof, those references, those testimonials, and those endorsements that are going to be pushing you to the top and increasing your credibility toward others that are going to be landing on your profile for
the very first time. Next,…