Fundraising is a B2B sales funnel
Founders need to qualify leads, get them into the funnel, and work to move investors either down the funnel or out of it.
Ultimately, you only need one ‘yes,’ and momentum matters to get it. Building and sustaining momentum means executing like a machine: Terminator mode on—no lead goes untapped, no conversation left hanging.
Easier said than done. That’s why we built an Investor Tracker and added some cheeky hacks to help you execute your round like a Terminator.
All the relevant fields
Think of it as your first fundraising CRM — simple and execution-focused.
Here’s what it captures:
- Investor profile: name, HQ, tier, ticket size, lead vs. follower, role of who you are speaking to
- Funnel stage: from first outreach to DD and Term sheet
- Next steps: follow-ups, intros, and deadlines
- Context: how the connection happened and who helped
…and some hacks
- Lead vs. Follower (column F): focus on leads, and only on followers who can bring you more leads. Followers follow — you need a lead first.
🍪Truth note to founders: investors don’t necessarily see it as a positive signal if you’re raising $2M, already have $1.5M in follower capital, but still no lead. - Contact’s role (column K): the decision-making position of your contact matters to qualify the stage of the process. Associates are key, but they won’t make an investment decision. If you are talking to GPs, they do.
- Intros (column Q): even if you’ve got one intro, ask others to put a good word. It builds momentum. Especially if the recommendations/ping to an investor comes from founders. Watch out for recommendations/intros of investors who are passing, it will get other investors suspicious (why are they not investing?). This is not the case if the investor making further intros is passing because i) not within investment thesis or ii) conflict.
Other execution notes
- This funnel is for you, feel free to download, change things and make it yours.
- Use AI to complete research fields.
- We use Notion rather than Google Sheets, as it allows us to link relevant tasks, summarize meeting notes, and more. If you like Notion, we highly recommend replicating the template there.