Get practical steps for engaging investors—networking, warm intros, updates, and first meetings done right.
1. How to Engage Investors- A Step by Step Process
Startup fundraising is a structured process - not a game of luck. The founders who succeed follow steps, build relationships early, and iterate fast. Use this checklist to manage your time, strengthen your strategy, and raise with focus.
Step 1: Build Your Fundraising Foundation Through Networking
Why it matters: Fundraising starts long before you send a pitch deck. The strongest fundraising outcomes are built on warm relationships, strategic visibility, and repeated exposure to the right investors.
What to do:
Step 2: Send Monthly Investor Updates That Build Trust
Why it matters: Most investors won’t fund you after one meeting. Consistent, well-crafted updates demonstrate traction, build familiarity, and increase the odds they reach out when the timing is right.
What to do:
Step 3: Secure Warm Introductions to Investors
Why it matters: A warm intro significantly improves the likelihood of your pitch getting read and taken seriously. Cold outreach is rarely effective at early stages.
What to do:
Step 4: Schedule Investor Meetings Professionally
Why it matters: Poor scheduling habits — like sending vague times or rescheduling often — create friction and signal lack of professionalism. How you schedule is part of your first impression.
What to do:
Step 5: Nail the First Investor Meeting
Why it matters: You only get one shot at a first impression. The goal is to earn a second meeting — not to close on the first call.
What to do:
Step 6: Maintain Your Fundraising Mindset
Why it matters:
Fundraising is filled with rejection. Success depends on your ability to stay strategic, not emotional.
What to do:
2. The Best Intro Framework
Venture capital fundraising is primarily driven by warm introductions, with startups referred by trusted contacts being 13× more likely to get funded than those reaching out cold. When engaging with investors, there are set of guidelines that every founder should know.
The framework below was created to help founders craft structured, compelling intros that match investor expectations and screening criteria.
Outcome: Founders using the framework can significantly increase their chances of securing meetings, speed up fundraising, and boost conversion rates
Best Intro Framework
Section | Prompt | Example (BrightPath Health) |
Industry Overview | What industry or category are you in? Keep it short and recognizable. | Operating in the $10B youth mental health sector |
Problem | What’s the specific pain point or friction you're solving? | Public and private mental health services have 6–12 week waitlists for adolescents, leaving families without timely or affordable care during periods of acute need |
Solution | How do you solve the problem, and what are your top differentiators? | BrightPath delivers clinically vetted therapy within 72 hours via digital triage, addressing urgent access gaps for youth. – Direct partnerships with school systems – Proprietary triage engine based on acuity, not queue order – 94% first-match therapist satisfaction |
Market Opportunity | What is your TAM and wedge, and how do you compare to existing players? | Targeting a $3.4B wedge in youth telehealth, with expansion into adult care and education-based delivery. Most incumbents focus on adult B2C or employer-driven plans; BrightPath is the only vertically integrated model for youth-first, school-linked care. |
Product Overview | What does your product do, and why is it fit for this customer? | Mobile-first platform with 24-hour matching, progress tracking, and school compliance reporting — optimized for institutional deployment |
Key Metrics & Traction | Revenue, growth, customers, usage, retention, or pilots — what proves demand? | $700K ARR, 6× YoY growth, 88% retention; pilots with three education networks covering 40K+ students |
Future Pipeline | What near-term growth milestones are credible and in motion? | Signed MOU with NZ’s largest public school provider; expanding therapist network; launching analytics module Q4 |
Fundraising Details | How much are you raising, and what’s the use of funds? | Raising $1.5M seed to scale sales ops, onboard new districts, and expand clinical coverage in Tier 2 regions |
Founding Team | Who are you, and why are you credible to win in this space? | Maya Chen – ex-Google ML lead, second-time founder (prior edtech exit); team includes former heads of clinical services and K–12 GTM. [LinkedIn link goes here] |
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3. The Risks of Raising Venture Capital
New Zealand has a relatively small ecosystem of early-stage investors, with lots of overlap between the membership of various Angel groups. On the plus side, you have a small, tight-knit group of investors to engage with, who are very close to the early-stage startup world. Conversely, this also means that often your funding options are limited, and you’re at the mercy of a handful of investors and how they like to operate. Word travels fast in the New Zealand funding ecosystem, and if you piss someone off, try and pull a fast one or generally behave outside the norm, everyone knows about it.
Key Risks to Consider
Risk | Mitigation |
Raising capital may result in you losing control and autonomy over your business decisions | Make sure to get comfortable that the VCs you’re choosing share your vision for the business. If you’re all broadly aligned, it’s less likely that they’ll encourage the business into a different direction. Always conduct your own detailed due diligence into VCs. |
There’ll be inevitable pressure to scale rapidly, and to continuously raise further capital as you scale | Get comfortable that raising capital is a long-term choice for your business. It would be extremely rare to just raise a single round and never need to raise again. Also, don’t over-inflate your growth forecasts in order to gain investment - it’ll only come back to bite you later where the VCs expectations are not met in reality |
VCs will have high expectations for return on their investment (10–20x within 5–7 years) | Taking VC money is a long-term commitment for you and your business. Whilst you could see their expectations as being pressure on you, don’t forget that you’ll also benefit if the business grows 10-20x within 5-7 years. It’s not all a one-way street. |
Most VCs will take a board seat, and you’ll therefore be accountable to other Board Members and the investors they represent | Whilst it might seem foreign for you to be held accountable in your own business, if you pick the right VC and you’re aligned with them on the overall vision, then being held accountable is actually just a good way of maintaining focus on the things that are truly important. If your VC feels like they’re part of the team, (rather than someone on the outside throwing rocks in) then you’ll get a lot more value out of the relationship |
There are limited funding options locally due to NZ’s tight-knit investor network | NZ has some great VC options, but you may want to cast your net wider than just locally - if only just to get more competition into the process. More and more often, VCs from the US, Australia and the UK are looking to the New Zealand market as a source of good startups. Be aware though, that you still need to find a VC that has similar cultural norms and behaviours as you do so that there isn’t a culture mismatch! |
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