How to find investors for a startup when you have no network

Sunny Ray · Oct 4, 2026 · 7 min read

To find investors for a startup, start with the size of the check you need, not a list of famous names. Work out your round, figure out which kind of investor writes checks that size at your stage (angels, high-net-worth individuals, strategic partners, seed funds or Series A funds), build a list of only those people, and reach them with something they want to say yes to. With no network, the most reliable yes I know is an invitation to be interviewed, not a request to look at your deck.

The lists are the easy part. Everyone has access to roughly the same databases. What separates the founders who get replies from the founders who get silence is targeting by check size and asking for a conversation instead of money. The rest of this post is how we do both on our own campaigns, including a round we re-targeted mid-flight because we were emailing the wrong investors.

Start with check size, not names

On August 24 I was on a call with a software founder who had years of revenue behind him and a fundraising ask in the millions. The problem was that his growth was flat, and a big ask next to flat growth reads badly to every investor who opens the deck. The advice on the call was to cut the ask hard, to a quarter-million growth round, prove the new distribution model could move revenue in three or four months, and then come back for a proper seed with momentum.

He agreed. And the moment the number changed, the list had to change with it.

A $250K round is incompatible with seed and Series A funds writing $1M+ checks. Those funds can't do anything with a quarter million. Even if they love you, the check doesn't fit their model. So we pointed the new campaign at angels, high-net-worth individuals and strategic partners, and kept it separate from the existing VC outreach. The VCs weren't dropped. They were saved for the seed, when the round would actually fit them.

For a sense of scale, PitchBook-NVCA data compiled by Waveup puts the US median seed deal at $3.0M in the first half of 2026. If your round is a fraction of that, the typical seed fund is the wrong first call, and every cold email you send them burns a relationship you will want later.

So before you open a single database, write down three numbers: how much you are raising, the smallest check you'd take, and the largest single check you'd want. Those three numbers decide who goes on the list.

Where investor lists come from

There's no secret source. Investor lists come from paid databases, fund websites and portfolio pages, accelerator and demo-day networks, angel groups, LinkedIn, and the founders already on cap tables in your space. Our team works from a database of about 250,000 investor email addresses, and it's still not the list that matters. It's the filter.

The filter we use goes in this order. Stage first: do they invest at pre-seed, seed or later? Then check size, using the three numbers above. Then sector or thesis: have they backed anything near what you do? Then geography, if it matters for your company. Only after all four do we look at names.

Two practical rules from our own campaigns. First, take the warm-intro targets off the cold list. One founder we work with sent us an exclusion file of the funds he was contacting directly, so nobody got emailed from two sides. Second, start cold outreach on the funds that are a decent fit, not your dream fund. You want your pitch reps on a few hundred colder funds before you meet the partner you most want.

Angels, HNWIs, strategics, VCs: who writes what

Each kind of investor answers a different question, and the question tells you when to go to them.

Angels

Angels invest their own money. They decide fast, often after one or two conversations, and many of them invest because they know the problem from their own careers. Operator angels who've built in your market are the best early guests you can get, because they bring opinions as well as checks.

High-net-worth individuals

Wealthy individuals who aren't professional investors care less about your TAM slide and more about whether they trust you. They are the right fit for a small, early round where the story is the founder and the first customers.

Strategic partners

A strategic is a company that benefits if you win: a distributor, a platform you sit on, a big customer. Their money comes with a reason to help. In the August round above, strategics were on the list because a partner who invests also tends to sell.

Seed and Series A funds

Funds invest other people's money on a model. They need the round to be big enough to matter and the company to have a shot at a large outcome. Go to them when your round and your traction fit their model, not before.

Interview them before you pitch them

On August 4 I talked with a technical founder building software for global shipping. He wanted investors who are also operators in his space, people who'd been inside the industry. My suggestion was the one I make to most founders now: start a show and invite those investors on as guests.

It flips the dynamic. In a pitch, you're the one being judged. On your show, you're the host asking an investor about their thesis, what they've learned, where they think the market goes. You interview them, and you qualify them for your cap table. You find out who thinks like you, who's lazy, and who would be useful in a board meeting, before anyone has asked for a check.

It also solves the no-network problem directly. An investor who would never answer a stranger's request for money will often say yes to thirty minutes about their own views. Being interviewed is flattering, it's content they can share, and it costs them nothing.

Getting the first reply

Whatever you send, a few mechanics decide whether it gets read.

• Send from a separate, warmed domain, never your main company domain. If something goes wrong, your real inbox stays clean.
• Keep links out of the first email. We send invitations with no URLs, because links in a cold first touch are a spam signal.
• Don't attach the deck. The first email asks for a conversation, not a review.
• Make it about them: their thesis, a company they backed, a view they've posted.
• Verify every address before it goes out. Bounces hurt the mailbox you send from.

Then accept that the first email is one of several touches. On a call in September, the plan we laid out for a founder's investor outreach was relationship first: two to three touchpoints before any pitch.

Turning a guest into a check

The interview isn't the raise. It's the start of a relationship that has room for the raise later. The path we use looks like this.

1. A short pre-interview, where you learn their focus and check size. That's your qualification, done politely.
2. The recorded conversation, about them and the market.
3. A debrief to share clips. This is the natural place to say what you're building and when you plan to raise.
4. Updates when you hit milestones, so they watch you execute.

By the time you ask for the deck meeting, you've had three conversations and made something together. The ask for a pitch comes naturally, and it lands with someone who already knows you.

If you want the outreach, the guest list and the booking handled for you, that's what we built. Invite investors onto your show and start meeting the people who write checks at your stage.

Frequently asked questions