WhatsApp: The Ultimate Fundraising Tool
Before starting a fundraising process, founders need to prepare. They need to create their pitch deck, setup a fundraising CRM and fill their investor funnel. But there’s a secret tool that the best founders use to supercharge their success. And it’s something everyone has on their phone: WhatsApp.
What do you mean Sequoia passed?
Anyone who’s ever tried to raise funding will tell you that it’s a manic process. If you’re doing high-velocity fundraising, you’re taking dozens of investor calls every week. It’s a non-stop roller coaster of pitches, questions, objections, and homework. Before long, the names and faces of the investors blur together and you’re mistaking Taylor from Sequoia with Sequoia Taylor.
When you barely have enough time to pee between pitches, how can you possibly keep track of everything?
WhatsApp 🤯
This WhatsApp thread ended with a $7.5M Seed round
One of the most important resources a founder has during fundraising is their support system. A small group of trusted investors, advisors and fellow founders committed to supporting them and helping them navigate the fundraising process. Their “pit crew.”
Pit crews aren’t just for race car drivers
During fundraising, most founders communicate with their support system infrequently. End-of-day or end-of-week emails, sporadic text messages and so on. But WhatsApp is an ideal platform to supercharge communications and maximize the leverage from your pit crew.
It’s simple:
Step 1: Create a WhatsApp group for your pit crew (make sure to have an awesome group profile photo)
Step 2: After every investor meeting, dictate a 1-2 min voice memo to the group that includes the following:
High level summary of the meeting
What questions were asked
What parts of the pitch did the investor seem excited about
What concerns / objections were raised
What are the next steps (including both homework/action items for you and expectations of next steps from them)
Step 3: Profit!
Dictating a voice memo after every single meeting improves fundraising effectiveness in at least three ways:
It ensures you retain more details from each meeting, including critical follow-up actions
Most founders try to write notes in-between meetings, but often don’t have enough time (particularly if a meeting runs late). As a result, notes get taken at the end of the day and details blur together or are lost.
Your pit crew can hear your reaction and emotions immediately after each meeting
This provides an opportunity for your pit crew to cheer you up if a meeting goes poorly or warn you if you might be misinterpreting feedback before you head into the next call. It also helps them sense if you’re being overly optimistic or pessimistic as you move through your process.
You have more time between meetings to stretch and reset
Instead of scrambling after each meeting to write down all of the take-aways, you can dictate a 1-2 minute voice memo while getting a drink, taking a bio break and getting set for the next one.
At the end of each day, you can transcribe the key details from each voice memo into your fundraising CRM. Doing so for all meetings in one sitting is not only more efficient, but it makes it more likely that you’ll surface patterns in the feedback as you reflect on multiple meetings and listen to your interpretations across the entire day.
This WhatsApp thread ended with 5 term sheets and an oversubscribed Seed round
Using WhatsApp to dictate voice memos to your pit crew is a simple yet powerful way to leverage your support system for maximum effect, while ensuring that key details don’t get lost in the blur of meetings.