Getting your first investor: Advice from Sam Altman, Paul Graham and other top investors

Finding your first investor is usually the biggest challenge and bottleneck on your raise (friends and family don't count!).

We gathered advice on how to nail it from some of the world's most successful investors and founders.

Here goes:

1. Build relationships long before you raise: "Meet your potential investors early. Tell them you’re not raising money yet but that you will be in the next 6 months or so. Tell them you really like them so you want them to have an early view (which is what all investor’s want)." Mark Suster, Upfront Ventures (source: ​Medium​ )
2. Pitch investors only when you've convinced yourself: "The time to raise money is not when you need it, or when you reach some artificial deadline like a Demo Day. It's when you can convince investors, and not before. And unless you're a good con artist, you'll never convince investors if you're not convinced yourself. They're far better at detecting bullshit than you are at producing it, even if you're producing it unknowingly. If you try to convince investors before you've convinced yourself, you'll be wasting both your time." Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator (source: ​his blog​).
3. Never tire from telling your story: "I’ve done an enormous amount of pitching and fundraising over the years. When we raised our first Foundry Group fund in 2007, I did 90 meetings in three months before we got our first investor commitment... I definitely had pitch fatigue. But every time I told it, I brought the same level of intensity, emotion, optimism, and belief that I did the first time I told it... And I never get tired of telling our story." Brad Feld, Co-founder of Techstars and Foundry, among others (source: ​his blog​).
4. Start by asking investors to commit (not to lead): "Instead, you should ask them to commit. Commitments build momentum. Momentum leads to oversubscription. Oversubscription leads to competitive terms. Many rounds close with no clear lead investor, especially at seed stage. Asking everyone to be a lead investor before they commit just creates unnecessary friction." David Cohen, founder and CEO of Techstars (source: ​his blog​)
5. Be generous to your first investor: "The hard part is getting the first offer. Once you have this, you have the leverage... So sometimes you have the hack the process a little bit to get this first offer. The best way is to find someone who loves what you’re doing and is willing to act. ...you should be nice to anyone willing to act first by prioritizing their offer, finding a way to get them into the round even if someone else leads it, etc." Sam Altman, former CEO of Y Combinator, co-founder of OpenAI (source: ​his blog​)

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