Investor outreach without a pitch deck: lead with an invite

Sunny Ray · Sep 7, 2026 · 7 min read

You can reach investors cold without sending a pitch deck. The approach that works best for us is to invite them onto your show as a guest. They talk about their thesis and what they have learned, you learn what they actually invest in, and the pitch comes later, after a real conversation, when they are curious about what you are building.

When a founder asks me whether to send the deck or the invite, my answer is: run both, and let the first 24 hours tell you. But lead with the invite. Here is why, and how we set it up on a real call this September.

The question on the call

On September 7 Charles and I were on a call with a crypto founder getting ready to raise. He was looking for $2M right away, scaling to $5M. His target list was clear: crypto VCs, token funds, large holders, angels and family offices. His instinct, like most founders, was to send the deck.

Charles proposed two campaigns in parallel. The first was direct investor outreach: a short email with the deck and a booking link. The second was a podcast invite: warm and relationship-first, with the pitch on the back end. I pushed to reverse the order the founder had in mind and lead with the podcast. Then A/B test both in the first 24 hours, see where the signal is, and double down on the winner.

Why decks get skimmed

Investors see thousands of decks a year. We say it plainly on our raise-capital page: a forwarded deck gets about three minutes. Three minutes is not enough for anyone to understand a company. It is enough to find a reason to pass.

A deck in a cold email also asks for something on the first touch. It says: please evaluate me. The investor has to do work, on your timeline, before they have any reason to care. Most of them will not.

An invite asks for something too, but it is something they want to give. Thirty minutes to talk about their own view of the market. It is the one ask that does not feel like an ask.

Two campaigns, 24 hours

The reason to run both is that you do not have to guess. Same list, split in two. One half gets the deck and the link. The other half gets the invite. Within a day you know which one people respond to, and you stop arguing about it.

I lead with the invite for all the reasons above. But every audience is different, and the test settles it for your list, not for mine.

The important part is what happens after. Once one side shows signal, you double down on it. You do not keep running a split forever.

You do not need an audience

The most common objection I hear is: I do not have a podcast audience, why would an investor come on my show? We addressed this directly on the call. B2B guests want the spotlight, not the reach. An investor coming on your show is not trying to grow their following. They want to tell their story, explain their thesis, and get a recording they can use. A small, focused show is enough.

For this founder the plan was to invite investors onto a show about his industry, with him as host interviewing them. They sell themselves, and the business conversation happens naturally at the end, when they ask what he is building.

Start private, to avoid empty-platform optics

One worry founders have is that a brand-new show looks thin. An investor clicks through and finds two episodes. On the September 7 call we talked about a simple way around that: start with a private, exclusive conversation instead of a public episode. It avoids the empty-platform optics in the first weeks, and it still gives you the same thing, half an hour with the investor talking about how they think.

The other thing we asked of this founder before any campaign went out was to update his onboarding document. A lot had changed since he first filled it in, and that document feeds all the campaign copy and targeting. Stale inputs make stale invites. Ten minutes refreshing what you are building, who you want to meet and what a win looks like saves a campaign that misses.

The rest of the offer was set to firm up over the following two weeks. That is normal. You do not need every detail of the round final to start inviting investors to talk. You need a clear show, a clear guest profile and a clean list.

The proof point: 30+ investor conversations in a week

On the same call we shared what another campaign was doing. A Bitcoin financial services client had a campaign live at the time, and in the week before the call it had produced 30+ conversations. About 25% of its outreach list was crypto investors, with hedge funds and family offices in the mix.

That is not a promise of what your list will do. It is what one live campaign did in one week, with a list that was partly investors. The point is that the invite format reaches investors at all, at volume, which is what most founders doubt.

Qualifying investors before the call

Volume only helps if you can sort it. When an investor books a pre-interview, the booking page asks a few short questions first. For this founder we set up intake questions about their background and what they are building, what a win looks like, a checkbox for whether they are after investors or customers, which tells you which funnel they belong in, and a budget signal: how much they spent on growth last quarter, with 100K+ as a high-priority flag.

The point is to see the quality of the lead before the call, not after. It also means you can hand lower-priority pre-interviews to someone on your team and keep your own time for the highest-value guests and the closing conversations.

What the investor email looks like

The invite to an investor follows the same rules as any guest invite. One line on the show, one specific reason you picked them, the time it takes, what they get, and a yes or no question. No deck. No mention of your round. No calendar link in the first email.

If they say yes, they get a booking link with the intake questions. If they come on, you spend half an hour learning how they think. If they later ask about your company, you send the deck then, to someone who already knows you.

A note on the rules

How you are allowed to approach investors depends on where you are raising and how your offering is structured. This post is about outreach tactics, not securities law, and it is not legal advice. Talk to your lawyer about what you can say, to whom, and when, before you start any investor campaign.

The short version

Decks get skimmed. Invites get answered. Run both on the same list for a day, lead with the invite, and double down on whichever earns the replies. Qualify on the booking page so your calendar fills with the right people. And send the deck to people who have already met you.

Frequently asked questions