The unique approach to pitching startup investors in the US, highlighting cultural differences and the larger capital available.
The unique approach to pitching startup investors in the US, highlighting cultural differences and the larger capital available from US-based institutional investors, especially for later-stage funding rounds like Series B and beyond.
hello everyone this is alejandro crematis and today we're going to be talking about how to pitch startup investors in the us 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 so investors in the us are like the holy grail i mean it's it's the best investors the most amount of money you name it and obviously it's a different culture than perhaps the way that you were approached and invested in in europe or in latin america or in asia it's a whole different mindset so that's why in today's video we're going to be breaking it down for you with a step-by-step on how to be able to approach these investors and to really close the deal so without further ado let's get into it so racing from investors in the us i mean at the end of the day is bigger money but bigger money what i mean with this
is that the funds are bigger especially if you go for institutional investors like private equity firms or venture capital firms to put you an example in spain where i'm originally from where i was born and raised you got to understand that the largest fund is like 100 million or even 150 million dollars so that means that once let's say if i was to be a founder there once i'm passed like like a serious b financing round then no funds there can continue to support my my growth so essentially i would have to go to the us to raise money from the bigger funds that can continue to support that growth and that perhaps have a billion plus under management in assets so that's why you want bigger money and and the longer that you wait it's going to be tougher because typically outside of the u.s investors are not so sophisticated when it comes to startups so for that reason you want to come to
the us as fast as you can so that you have those sophisticated investors helping you in pushing things as you proceed and perhaps even presenting you to more investors down the line now the beautiful thing about having bigger money as part of your business as as investors in your business is that as you continue to grow they may be in a position to actually lead and cover whatever more funding that is needed for your business so that's why having us investors is a great thing and the longer that you wait the tougher that it will be to really get those investors involved us investors are also connected money and what i mean with this is that when you think about raising money you never should think about the money itself because there's not such thing as shortage of capital in the world and for this reason you always want to turn it around and think more than the money itself more as the
network or the people that are behind the money that is being given to you so essentially that investor you got to take a look at their network and see who do they know that can connect you to perhaps other investors to access to talent to m a opportunities meaning other companies that may be acquiring your own business or perhaps to other future rounds of financing so so that's why it's not about the money it's about the networks behind the money and how you can really leverage those networks in order to achieve your milestones that you have on your 18 to 24 month roadmap faster and more effectively than your competitors so again you need to think about this as a bus and you need to have the right people seated on the right seats of the bus whether it's your own employees or whether it's investors and for that reason you want people that are highly sophisticated and extremely well
connected to help you in taking things to the next level because as the saying goes you can go faster when you go alone but you can go farther when you go together so in terms of some of the different ways that you can use to actually tap into those u.s investors a good way is to perhaps attend a graduate school in the u.s maybe you come here to the us and you do a master's degree in whatever domain that you're doing whether it's business whether it's engineering but it's a good way to perhaps find a co-founder for your business or to have to find talent for your business but at the same time to gain access to those investors because many of those schools they have networks they have they have former students they have competitions that they put together and they they try to really create that community environment within those universities so it's a great way to perhaps tap into those
investors to attend school in the u.s startup accelerators are a great way to also tap into those usb investors definitely my top ones are y combinator and also techstars those are amazing programs that have fantastic networks and also what they do at the end of those startup accelerator programs is the demo day so the demo day is that after two or three months really working actively on your company under the umbrella of the accelerator they put together those days where they bring like a thousand investors to take a look at those companies that are presenting from that batch of the startup accelerator so it's a great opportunity for you to have an audience of investors and to essentially pitch your business and have access to those u.s investors now be very careful with startup accelerators because the tier one are great but the dr2 and the tr3 they promise you the moon and when you go
to the demo they is full of service providers that are just pitching you to buy their business so again be very careful with how you are giving equity away of your business startup competitions are also another way to get in front of investors now you should find those competitions online see what people are saying see what reviews see perhaps a companies that have graduated out of those competitions some competitions that come to mind could be techcrunch disrupt you know which is the competition that they actually do for the media outlet uh and there's been great companies that have come out of this startup competition such as get around which not which now is worth almost two billion dollars and other startups that actually really made it count like even for example betterment which is worth billions too they actually launched at startup uh they disrupt for for techcrunch so again take
a look at some of those competitions because there's going to be a lot of investors there that you can tap into as well you can also use local office of venture capital funds so for example if you are in europe in london or even spain or other areas you're going to find some of the top u.s funds they have actually branches there for example in asia the same thing or if you go to places like india you're going to see some of the top venture capital firms that they have opened an office there so it's a good opportunity for you to build the relationships with them locally and maybe that would be your segue into the money in the us of those investors that you want to tap into so again perhaps those local branches are a good opportunity for you to really start establishing and developing those relationships platforms online could be a great tool as well to find those investors that could be
crowdfunding platforms that could be platforms where it's more like the community environment like angel list where you can see the signaling and you can see who is investing in what and again those platforms online can really develop or give you the opportunity to develop those relationships that in the end could result in a potential investment you can also use social media as well as a blogs and things of that nature so for example on blogs you can leave a comment on whatever entry that they are putting in there most of the super sophisticated and top investors in the us they have their own blog where they talk about trends interesting markets things like that so maybe you want to leave a comment on some of their entries and start to engage that way another way is to use apps like clubhouse where you can go into one of the events that is going on where one of those investors is
actually speaking you can go there ask questions engage with them and really be noticed because that's ultimately what you want and then another thing that you could do is to leverage advisors you know whether it's advisors consultants like for example what we do at panthera advisors where we help from a to c companies in seed states and series a's or any other individual that perhaps may have a good network in the us that can help you with what you're looking to achieve so hopefully you like this video hit a like leave a comment and let me know what you're up to and what country you are in and then also don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on all the videos that were rolling out every week and if you're raising money don't forget send me an email at alejandro pantheraadvisors.com i would love to help out thank you so much for watching