A founder answers

How many investors do you have to talk to to raise a pre-seed round?

Nate reached out to almost 1000 investors across the whole spectrum just to see who had interest and who was a fit. He came back to Australia after four years in London with a "super thin" network, so it took a long time to find the ideal investor profile — and he dealt with "like 99, 95% no's."

The full answer

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Nate Spiteri · Shopfront
EP 3 · Co-founder, Shopfront
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Nate reached out to almost 1000 investors across the whole spectrum just to see who had interest and who was a fit. He came back to Australia after four years in London with a "super thin" network, so it took a long time to find the ideal investor profile — and he dealt with "like 99, 95% no's."

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Nate explains that because he'd just come from four years in London, his network in Australia was super thin when it came to people who would invest. "It took us a long time to find out ideal, investor profile. And so to get to that point, we had to speak to almost 1000 investors" — or at least reach out to almost 1000 — "just on the whole spectrum of investors, just to kind of see who had interest and who was a fit, which is an incredibly time consuming process." It was necessary, he says, because "you do deal with like 99, 95% no's," and if you're not targeting enough investors, every no can be a big hit to your pipeline.