How do I find the perfect investor to start my company? [closed]

So, you did a lot of useless stuff and obviously don't have a company but a website. How is the business site? How is the marketing plan?

Seems out of 3000 investors no one saw value in what you do. Now you are fed up with people not delivering you money on a silver plate?

Here comes an idea: develop the business side. You will find that the business side of emailing systems pretty much is hardly existing - so the idea does not really have a lot of value, unless you manage to get the marketing / busienss side correct.

Computer security changes daily, so something that is secure today, might not be secure tomorrow. The fact that you seem completely naive of this fact is terrifying. It sounds like you wasted a lot of time and have nothing to show for it. If 3,000 investors don't want to invest, I'd say that as a sure sign that you lost focus on what's important in terms of how to provide value to your users.

The majority of startups don't need any outside investment to get started, especially if you are a technical person yourself or have one on your team, which it (kind of) sounds like you are. If your business doesn't have traction, or a highly regarded team, you're unlikely to find an investor.

Spend some time working on your communication skills. I don't want to judge your post too much, but my bullsh*t radar is going off like crazy right now and the investors probably felt the same way.

It's really not clear what you actually do. Are you planning on doing website security services or techniques to secure existing websites or are you just saying, "I have a site and it is very secure" ??

I assume the later is the case, I suspect you overestimate the value of security that users place on a website if there is no value or reason to go to the website itself?

The other possibility I saw was just some more secure email service. If this is the case, you're just another "Me Too" operation with security. You'll need to find a way to distinguish yourself from the competition... a way to make your service more appealing than the competition and I doubt "more secure" will do it.

Last point: Investors are usually looking for a business, not a cool idea. Something that can be a business. Maybe working more on that angle would do you the world of good.

There are a couple potential reasons that you had such an initially poor experience trying to secure angle investment to your business:

1. Your idea did not resonate with any of the investors that you contacted.
2. Your business proposition did not resonate with any of the investor that you contacted.
3. Your presentation of the idea did not cause it to stand out from the hundreds/thousands of ideas and businesses which angel investors receive every week.
4. Your "turf wore" your proposal by sending it to too many people who talk to each other and did not find it reasonable.
5. You didn't get to the right person.

I am sure that there are many others, but let's look at these five and see what we can learn:

If your idea did not resonate this may be because:

• You didn't tell the story well.
• You didn't make the case -- they didn't believe you
• You didn't target the pitch to an investor with interst in the subject

If your business proposition did not resonate this may be because:

• You didn't demonstrate sufficiently how the business would make money
• You didn't demonstrate sufficiently the market size
• You didn't adequately address how you would gain access to the market
• You didn't answer an obvious question (Usually one like -- why buy this when will do?)

If your presentation did not stand out this may be because:

• You did not send your presentation from from someone the reader knew
• You initiated contact through a generic form generated auto-submitted from a website
• You didn't make the case with a visual/pictures
• Your team did not include names the person recognized

If you "turf-wore" your proposal this may be because:

• You sent it out to too many people over too short of a period of time.

If you didn't get it to the right person this may be because:

• You didn't selectively choose potential investors who had the skill to understand your proposal
• You didn't selectively choose potential investors who had an interest in your business category
• You didn't get through the "check" by a "industry expert" which the investor uses to filter proposals

These may be the reasons, they may not -- but in all likelihood it was a combination of some of the above.

Responsibility

Notice in all of the above I made the subject -- you. Not because it is always about you. But in the end if you don't take responsibility for the outcome, there will be no one to blame but you. Blaming investors either directly or indirectly for the outcomes is like blaming a kid for not buying a specific chocolate bar. Kids like chocolate bars. If they didn't choose yours there is something wrong with it. Even if there IS nothing wrong -- it still is your responsibility to do something different and blaming the investor (or the kid -- they are shockingly similar sometimes) solves nothing.

What do you do now?

So, rather than blamming the angel investor market-- what can you do? Here are 4 ideas:

1. Start small. Contact one local person. Get feedback. And improve the presentation.
2. Go to business support networks. Connect with an investor through netowrkring. Make a presentation of the material. Get feedback. Improve the presentation.
3. Stop trying to raise money until you are farther along (see below)
4. Secure professional support. There are people in the business of polishing up your story and then leveraging their own connections and relationships to raise money. Some are good. Some aren't. Some will be good for you. Some wont. If you choose well, this could be the best money you spend.

Put Time on your Side

In the end, raising money takes a lot of time and energy. While you are developing and implementing a good strategy ot raise the money-- you should continue the development of your product in such a way that you will be able to engage real paying customers. The more real market traction you are able to garner the better your prospects for finding funding.

The Cost of Money

The bonus of getting the traction during this critical time is it will decrease the cost of money. When your business is an idea it comes with a termendous amount of risk. An investor putting money into the business will be compensated in accordance with the risk that they take.

I'm far from an expert on mailing systems... that being said, apart from security, I don't see the benefit (or I don't see what you really do) of using your program over another program (For example Sendmail).

While security is an issue it really isn't a selling point. The success rate of delivery rates seem more important for business goals but even with that being said you'd need to answer this: Why would I spend cold hard cash on your program when there are many free alternatives available?

Of the non-free alternatives like Aweber, they seem more like a cross between CRM packages and Sales packages. If this is like yours, what sets you apart from a competitor like Aweber?