Top 5 Startup Friendly Platforms to Find Investors
Where to find investors? – This is the first and most important question that arises as soon as all the formalities for establishing the startup company are settled. It is easier for some companies to raise capital, while for others, it is more difficult. This is especially true for hardware startups.
Some founders believe that the only way to attract investors is to draw the winning ticket, or rather if you are lucky enough to be drawn into the startup list by an accelerator or incubator. But this is not entirely true; any startup can find and select investors.
Below are the best places where you can get the opportunity to find investments and successfully develop your startup further.
05. Wefunder
Wefunder – a crowdfunder with more than 700,000 investors and great transparency.
Numbers say that they have helped hardware startups raise over $9 million in total. They offer to raise from $20,000 to $5 million with this platform, asking for no upfront payment, and they charge a fee of 7.5% of the total fundraiser only if funded. The specialty of the company – they will adjust the price for the campaign if you show that you have found a better option on another founding platform.
At Wefunder, they accept only for-profit, US-based corporations or LLC.
Give it a try and check out their detailed results page to start considering them for your hardware startup.
04. Paperstreet
Probably the youngest of all the platforms presented. In the modern world, you cannot find a person who has not heard of cryptocurrency, and Paperstreet has not only heard of it, they work with it. It will not be an exaggeration to say that it is the most popular fundraising platform in the cryptocurrency and gaming industry at the moment. Having passed the investor accreditation and KYC/AML verification once (after two days, or maybe less – this is how much time is declared for verification by an accredited investor), you get full access to all the investment opportunities of the platform: Token private sales, Public crowdsales, Equity private placements, Debt/bond offerings, Free airdrops, Security token offerings (STOs).
The platform accepts fiat currencies, as well as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether, Stellar Lumens (XLM), EOS, and NEO.
They are unique in their segment and are growing very quickly; there are no specific numbers but based on their report for 2020 versus 2019:
Companies onboarded + 560%
Portfolios onboarded + 350%
Users signed up + 309%
No matter how fast their competitors grow, as long as there is crypto, there will be crypto portfolios and people coming to Paperstreet.vc.
03. AngelList
If you have ever googled for funding platforms, you could not miss the most popular one – the one that everybody is talking about – the AngelList. The platform offers a huge amount of opportunities for startups. You can check it for the source of your seed funding and get angel investors.
Another feature includes a job board for specialists in the search for a job in a startup environment. Thus, if you are looking for a new team or a few pros, just post a job offer. You can build a whole network within the AngelList as well as raise your startup funds.
Go check it out; it is totally free to sign up. Improve your chances for funding and growth with the AngelList platform.
02. Signal
The Signal is an ambitious and highly successful project and is part of the NFX Guild eco-system. The platform is completely free and primarily aimed at founders, but it can be very useful not only for them.
The logic of the work is simple: you connect a Gmail account and start building a network (something like LinkedIn – connecting to the network, you get the opportunity to use its resources, but you yourself help it to expand through your own contacts.)
The platform does not have any special functionality, but if AngelList is one of the largest databases of investors, then Signal is one of the best ACTUAL databases of active investors. They did not set themselves grandiose goals – they just created a place where you can find exactly who you need at this moment, see the entire history of the investor, his current interests, projects in which he participated and how exactly, and without any problems contact him through social networks, kindly connected by this investor, and there are usually more of them.
01. Foundersuite
The Foundersuite platform has already helped startups to fund their businesses by more than $2.2 billion.
By signing up, you will have the opportunity to access a database of over 141,000 global VC funds, angels, family offices, corporate VC, and alternative investors. Both venture and seed funding work here.
It's free to register and start your search here, and more options and investors become available for monthly subscribers.
The platform offers both startups and investors various convenient tools for communication, analysis, and management of investment projects like Investor CRM to manage your investor funnel, Investor Update tool to send newsletters to investors, Pitch Deck hosting tool with view tracking, Bulk Email tool for sending follow up emails, and a collection of 80+ startup docs and templates (pitch decks, models, term sheets, etc.) that the platform creators are most proud of. Also, be sure to check out their unbelievably motivating series of podcasts ‘How I Raised It’ – you’ll definitely love it! If you want to start with the best ones, here is the collection.
Finding investors is never an easy and quick task, and it is very important to know where to start and in which direction to move at the very beginning of the journey. When the first decision is made, you can safely pursue the investment campaign.
We hope that our tips will help you to increase the chances that your search for capital investors will bring results and you will realize all your ambitions for a startup.
Be sure to let us know if you have any comments or questions regarding this article and if you know any other great platforms that helped you raise funds.
