How to Find Angel Investors (15 Ways)
Are you looking for angel investors but need help figuring out where to start?
In this post, we’ll share the best places to find the perfect angel investor for your company.
Ways to Find Angel Investors
1. Your Network
Your network is the best place to start when looking for angel investors — these people already know you and may invest in your company. Typically, angel investors are wealthy individuals from the business world — successful entrepreneurs, C-level company executives, and former professional investors.
Send an email to your friends, family, and former colleagues.
2. Secondary Connections
Another great place to start your search for angel investors is secondary connections. Scour LinkedIn to find avenues to angel investors connected with people in your immediate network. Ask your network for an introduction to them, ideally after you get them to invest themselves – it’s a stronger signal if the person making the introduction is also an investor in your company.
Send an email to your friends, family, and former colleagues.
3. Boring Business Nerd
Boring Business Nerd is a media website that shares interviews with experts, tools, and resources for startups and small businesses. We have a free Angel Investor Database to help you find the right investors based on skillset, industry, and location.
Find a warm introduction or send an email.
4. AngelList
AngelList builds infrastructure that powers the startup economy — providing investors and innovators with the tools to grow. This includes AngelList Syndicates and AngelList Rolling Funds, where you can find individual angel investors.
Find a warm introduction or send an email to the leads.
5. Signal by NFX
Signal by NFX is a free tool to help founders find the right investors – and the strongest intro in your network to those inventors. They have 31,000 investors in their database, and founders can filter by stage and industry.
Find a warm introduction or send an email.
6. Angel Investor Groups
There are over 250 registered angel investor groups in the United States. The Angel Investor Association provides a database you can use, and I’ve ranked the best ones to reach out to.
Find a warm introduction or email a member of the angel investor group.
7. Angel Investor Communities
Several angel investor communities have been formed to allow investors the same benefits of angel investor groups – deal flow, learning, community, etc. – while also allowing them to invest as individuals. Some notable angel investor communities include First Round Angel Track, The Council, Hustle Fund Angel Squad, and the VITALIZE Angels. You can read more about the various angel investor communities.
Find a warm introduction or email a member of the angel investor community.
8. Mercury Raise
Mercury Raise is a data-powered platform that helps startups get in front of active investors. All geographies, sectors, and business models are welcome to submit information. Since 2020, they have facilitated 3,000 introductions between 1,000 startups and 800 investors.
Submit your pitch and get a response within the month.
9. Mercury Investor Database
Mercury’s Investor Database helps raise-ready founders find the best investor for their startup from the top angels, VCs, and firms.
Find a warm introduction or send an email.
10. Seed Checks
Seed Checks is a group of investors who invest individually and write checks between $100K and $3 million. Seed Checks is industry agnostic, but the investors typically focus on Deep Tech, Marketplaces, SaaS, Fintech, and AI. They prefer valuations of $15 million and below.
Submit your deck and get a response within 2 weeks.
11. Focal
Focal runs bi-annual demo days attended by thousands of leading VCs and angel investors. They help founders generate inbound interest for your funding round. Finalists from Focal have raised > 110 million euros in funding.
Submit your application.
12. FundersClub
FundersClub is focused on discovering, funding, and supporting the world’s most promising startups. They accept less than 2% of the startups that apply. Startups who make it past their filtering process are showcased in front of 35,000 members on the platform.
Submit your application and get a response within the month.
13. Twitter
People love to share their investments publicly, usually alongside a larger announcement from the company when they close a funding round or press. Use Twitter Advanced Search to search for keywords like “proud to be an investor,” which indicates they are actively investing. Do more research on the investor, their background, and the types of investments they make before reaching out.
Find a warm introduction or send a Twitter DM.
14. Startup Accelerator
Join a startup accelerator to get access to their angel investors. This is one of the main value propositions of a startup accelerator. They usually facilitate these introductions personally at the end of the program or coordinate them through an event known as a Demo Day.
Submit your application.
15. Investment Crowdfunding
Investment crowdfunding platforms like Wefunder, Republic, and StartEngine all have hundreds of thousands of investors you can get in front of if you submit an application and the necessary legal paperwork to solicit investments from the general public on their platforms.
Submit your application.
Outreach Templates
A. Cold Outreach
Format
- 1-2 sentence: why them
- 1 sentence: your intent
- 1-2 sentences: why you
- Last sentence: let’s chat
Template
Subject: Chat with a fellow Stanford Alumni about 3D-printed Space Rockets
Hi Joyce,
Like you, I’m a recent Stanford graduate and was impressed with your work on Falcon 9 at SpaceX. The engineering and manufacturing challenges with that launch drove us to want to start XTencent – we’re building 3D-printed space rockets.
We have the prototype built – happy to fly you out to Los Angeles if you want to see it in person – and are raising money to build out V1.
My co-founders and I worked on propulsion systems at Blue Origin, and the rest of the team includes leaders from SpaceX, Relativity Space, and Virgin Orbit. Confidentially, we are in active discussions with three commercial partners who want to use our rockets.
My schedule is flexible, and I would love to buy you coffee (SF/Menlo Park) or chat over Zoom if you want to hear more. Please let me know, and thanks for your time!
Best,
Kieran
B. Warm Introduction
Format
- 1 sentence: thank them for offering to intro
- 1-2 sentence: why them
- 1 sentence: your intent
- 1-2 sentences: why you
- Last sentence: let’s chat
Template
Subject: intro to (person) at (company)
Hi Jake,
Thanks for offering to see if Rachel is open to connecting about what we’re building at XTencent. We have ambitions to build out our GTM motion in Europe in Q1 and think speaking with Rachel about how she did it at Notion would be valuable.
We’re building 3D-printed space rockets. We have the prototype built – happy to fly you out to Los Angeles if you want to see it in person – and are raising money to build out V1.
My co-founders and I worked on propulsion systems at Blue Origin, and the rest of the team includes leaders from SpaceX, Relativity Space, and Virgin Orbit. Confidentially, we are in active discussions with three commercial partners who want to use our rockets.
My schedule is flexible, and I would love to buy you coffee (SF/Menlo Park) or chat over Zoom if you want to hear more. Please let me know, and thanks for your time!
Best,
Kieran
