Investors and advisors: the crowd, the ringside, and your corner

I hear about investors or advisers as either 'helpful' or 'unhelpful'. I think that misses the nuance of the kind of people you need involved.

To get the support you need, it’s important to be deliberate about how you pull together this key group of people; the right individuals can have a significant impact on your outcome of your company.

Here are the categories, as I see them:

1. There's the crowd. These people will invest in your round. Some of them are incredibly accomplished people and it's an honor to have them involved. But, aside from the investor updates, you'll rarely stay in touch. That's completely normal; they might have even said they would be busy before they made the investment. Every financing round has investors that won't be very involved.

2. There's the ringside. These people have been in the game before. They have expertise - whether in user acquisition, product, sales or something else. They are helpful and you can reach out to them on a case by case basis. But, you don't want to ask too much or too often. They are busy people and not completely up to date on the nuance of what you're doing.

3. There are those in your corner. You can call them up a dozen times during your financing rounds. They reply to a Saturday night email in five minutes to talk about a time sensitive deal. They are up to date on where you are as a company; there is no background ramp up when you talk to them. That means they'll know what you've tried, what worked and what hasn't - so they can give up to date advice.

If it's not immediately obvious who's in your corner, it means you don't have someone there. Not every investor or adviser can be in your corner. That’s not even something you’d necessarily want; not everyone would fit.

A few years ago, I remember a late night, debating an investment offer. If we took it, it would close the round, but we had another offer coming in soon. Do we risk losing the first offer and wait for the second offer? I emailed our adviser and got an immediate reply. We talked it over and decided on an approach. We ended up raising twice as much money. That money allowed us to build HelloSign. He was in our corner. 

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Thanks to Arram Sabeti and Abby Walla for reading versions of this.
7 responses
Great post! Curious to hear what approach your advisor recommended in the last story...intriguing!
Thanks Camilo! The first part was just convincing us to raise more. It was available, but we were going to close the round, since we felt like we had raised enough. The other part was just really good advice on approach.... probably a longer post.
Awesome. Look forward to reading the sequel!
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