232. Bootstrapping Your Investor Network with LinkedIn feat. Tom McGrath, CEO @ iink

Despite not having a network of wealthy people that could invest in his startup, Tom built that network himself leveraging service providers, LinkedIn, and highly customized emails.


iink is the best way for home restorations professionals to get paid after a property claim. They've processed over $250M in property damage insurance claims and helped thousands of property owners navigate this to get their property fixed more efficiently. Learn more at iink.com

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About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.     

Transcript

Rich: 0:01

This is Rich Maloy with SpringTime Ventures, bringing you the VC Minute, quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. Welcome back everybody. We're diving back in having founders share their fundraising advice. As I'm sure by now, you're probably sick of hearing me talk about the startup markets. First up, we've got Tom McGrath from iink Payments. Iink is a SpringTime portfolio company and is it digital payments network that helps restoration professionals manage the insurance claims process, getting paid faster. First up. I want to thank AVL growth partners for supporting the VC Minute. Outsourcing your finance and accounting function is a no brainer for startups. And you need to work with a firm that specializes in high growth companies. Founded in 2009. AVL has fueled the success of over 1200 early stage companies. Specializing in raising capital, M&A, financial modeling, scaling, and bringing financial transparency and a disciplined approach to the companies they work with. Head to AVLgrowth.com and explore how they can be pivotal to your growth. Take it away, Tom.

Tom McGrath: 1:09

Hi, everyone. My name is Tom McGrath. I'm a CEO and co founder of iink. We are a Series A startup. We've done several rounds. Pre-Seed, seed, seed plus now the Series A raise some debt as well. When you start at the beginning, I've often heard that referred to as the FFF round: Family Fools and Friends, people close to you who will invest. If you're like myself, I don't really know a bunch of investors are wealthy or affluent people. And so I found that one of the best channels was actually to leverage accountants and attorneys. A lot of them are working with high net worth individuals who are looking for investment opportunities. And I think that that creates a solid foundation of individuals who are also well-networked. I've started to notice, at least within my fundraising efforts, is that it starts to snowball. These high net worth individuals a lot of them are often LPs in funds. And most people will tell you that the best way to get investment is to get that warm introduction from somebody within their network or an investor. I will tell you from personal experience in the absence of that, I leverage LinkedIn pretty heavily. I would look in particular areas and I would Google, for example, Denver venture capital. And I would find all of the VC firms like SpringTime Ventures and I would see who all the partners were. What were the different investments that they made? And then I would find them on LinkedIn and I paid for the 70 dollar a month sales navigator. I would make sure that I would send a very custom message to them."Hey, I just moved to Denver, Colorado. I saw you invested in these 3 companies. I think that my company has similarities. And there's overlap in terms of your investment thesis." And to that extent, understanding the different thematics of which they invest in. Are they very verticalized? Do they have a broad thesis? And again, just knowing what is the operational expertise and history of the individual investors there? And I think that those will yield high results. As much as you can reference from what says on their LinkedIn and their focuses or thematics on their website is important.