How to Setup the Perfect Fundraising CRM
In order to run an effective fundraising process, you need to have a solid CRM. Having a system that can track 100 or more potential investors in your pipeline in a lightweight yet effective manner can make the difference between an oversubscribed round and struggling to make sense of the tea leaves.
Here’s how to setup the perfect CRM for your next fundraising round:
The Software
Fundraising CRMs don’t need to be overly-complicated. In fact, simplicity is a feature when it comes to this.
While many founders implement a full-fledged CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive, the majority actually use a simple spreadsheet, like Google Sheets or Airtable.
A fundraising CRM has only three requirements:
It can store structured data (every spreadsheet or CRM does this)
It’s easy to use
It allows for collaboration (this is essential for leveraging your network)
My personal recommendation: Google Sheets.
What Do You need to Track?
Here are the fields that you need in your fundraising CRM:
🌐 Name, Website
Let’s start with the basics: who is the firm? Be sure to include a link to their website because you’ll click on it. A lot.
🌎 Location
Why does location matter in a world of Zoom?
Because investors in different geographies behave differently. Canadian investors will often focus on different aspects of your business than American investors will. New York VCs ask different questions than Silicon Valley VCs do. Tracking this will provide an important lens through which to interpret feedback, questions and objections.
🎯 Target Partner
It’s not sufficient to simply identify the firms that you want to raise from. You need to do the homework to identify who your ideal partner is at each firm is. This is important when asking for introductions.
👋 Similar Investments
What investments has the firm made that are similar to your company? Identifying related portfolio companies will be helpful for writing personalized outreach emails and preparing talking points for meetings.
❌ Competitive Investments
You should never, ever, ever, ever, ever pitch a VC that has a competitive investment (unless that company has already exited). I won’t go into all of the reasons why. Suffice to say, you should put any competitive portfolio companies into your spreadsheet and use that as justification to not pitch that investor (no matter how much you may like them).
📚 Investment Stage
What stage(s) does the firm invest in?
A firm that invests in Pre-Seed and Seed has different motivations and provides different value-add at the Seed stage than one who invests in Seed, A and B. Understanding where they’re coming from will help you interpret the questions and objections you receive and give you food-for-thought when comparing term sheets down the road.
💵 Typical Check Size
This column will usually get filled in after your initial meeting (when you ask the question 😉). What is the range or typical investment amount that the firm does at your stage? As your process progresses, this will help you think through the different combinations of investors that could fill your round.
💰 Assets Under Management (AUM) / Fund Size
How large is the fund from which the firm invests? Fund size and total AUM (the total of all of the firm’s funds) influence a firm’s behaviour – both in terms of the initial investment and their ability to make subsequent investments in your company.
🤔 Tier / Preference
How badly do you want this investor? Typically, this is a simple scale (e.g. 1, 2 or 3) that varies for different founders. Some people want big brands, some people want technical VCs who understand their space. There’s no right or wrong answer.
Tiering the investors beforehand is important as you plan your outreach strategy.
👋 Prior Relationship
Have you had any prior dealings with anyone at the firm? Briefly describe any interactions so that everyone knows what you’re starting with.
🤝 Who Can Make the Intro?
Does anyone in your network have a relationship with the firm (ideally the target partner)? Start by going through LinkedIn to see if anyone you know has a connection and list them here. Later, you’ll ask your trusted network to fill in their names where they can help.
☎️ Who Will Make the Intro?
Once you’ve identified everyone who can help with an introduction, you’ll need to decide on the one person who should do it.
✅ Pipeline Stage
Where are you currently with this investor? There are lots of different ways you can think about the stages of a fundraising process. A typical list might include:
Competitive Investment (Do Not Pitch)
New
Introduction Sent (or Cold Outreach Sent, in cases where you couldn’t find an introduction)
Introduction Made
First Call Scheduled
Second Call Scheduled
… and so on
📋 Notes
The catch all for everything else. If you’re using a proper CRM, there’s likely a structured way for you to track detailed notes. But this can also be a simple freeform column in a spreadsheet.
Get the Template
To help you get started, download/copy the Google Sheets template described above.