How to Tap the Investor for Capital, Advice and More

Even entrepreneurs who know how to raise capital may still not be taking full advantage of the relationships they’ve built with investors. Particularly with angel investors and venture capitalists, there’s an expectation, if not an obligation, to make use of their expert advice to help drive your business to success. Your backers may have crucial expertise as valuable as the financial investment they make in your enterprise.

Types of Angel Investor Expertise

Here are some examples:

Mentoring

Entrepreneurs or CEOs can gain much by asking experienced investors to act as mentors. They can provide great insights into finance, among other things. In early-stage companies, some lead investors or VC firms might provide the assistance of entrepreneur-in-residence, an experienced person who acts as a mentor.

Hiring

As we briefly mentioned above, experienced investors have wide-ranging industry contacts and are better than any executive search agency, not to mention much faster. You can be fairly confident that they can help you with hiring for almost all senior positions, either in engineering or management.

Strategic Alliances

Experienced investors can offer great ideas with regard to forging strategic alliances in the market and also provide you access to the right people in case you do not have your own network of contacts. They can help in providing sales leads, too.

Suitors

You can be assured that experienced investors have considered potential acquisition, or merger, partners before you have. Chances are they even have analyzed the prospective companies for the “best fit” with your company’s offerings. You should seek their assistance in forming a liquidity event strategy as this, in many cases, has been how your investors have made their money. They will also be interested in supporting you as they are interested in getting their money out one day when the time is ripe.

Entrepreneurs have to be on the lookout for a range of accelerators for their business, not just capital although raising capital is critical. Mentors, strategic alliances and other opportunities can come up at any stage and should be leveraged. Make sure you’ve got a strategy in place to take advantage of them.

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