More Needles Less Haystack
Deal flow = A PITA
Anyone who’s been in Venture Capital for more than 6 hours knows just how quickly ones deal flow can become saturated with irrelevant (to you) deals. Regardless of the reasons it can be a massive time suck.
As an investor you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for in potential new investments. Sure, you have next to zero chance of knowing what the exact idea will be, or who will come walking through your door, but you know the bookends of what the type of deal will be. Early stage or growth, this vertical or that, close to me or globally, doesn’t matter where in the investment stack we fit, we all have a general strategy.
Filtering deal flow
If you know what you want, then why is it so common to be inundated with untouchable deals? The problem is that no one knows the criteria of your personal investment focus, and even if they do they probably don’t care enough to remember it. Founders can be so desperate to get in front of investors that they often ignore the clearly defined criteria they find on an investors website and submit their deal regardless. Cold email deal flow tends to take far too much time to sift through the content to discover whether or not the proposed opportunity is even investable based on fund criteria. Even investor peers can barely remember what you invest in which means deals flood in from your contacts who’ve forgotten for the 12th time that you don’t do Series B SaaS deals in Europe.
And your Airtable form that sits on your homepage, yeah it has absolutely zero ability to pre-screen deals that are submitted there. So once again you end up with a stream of deals you’re going to have to spend time sorting through. You know that 85% of those deals are nothing but noise, which is the reason you stop looking at the email account the form points to and ignore it like a toddler hiding under the sheets of her bed when she hears a tick or creak in her closet.
“I haven’t checked our webform email in months (if not years), and I’m scared to open it for fear of what I may have missed” is a common statement I hear when speaking with investors.
As we look around at the other avenues of deal sourcing we find it gets even worse. Social media? sure just what I need another Linkedin DM that either has a Tolstoy amount of content to sift through, or one sentence that says absolutely nothing about the company. And there’s the always appreciated passive aggressive overly presumptive tone that we should exchange phone numbers or grab coffee just so you can hear about what they’re working on. The “Let’s hop on a call, I’m around next week just let me know what works” Hans Bubby, style outreach is something that always warms the heart.
Warm Introductions
This leads us to the end of our deal flow journey. The warm, soft underbelly of most GP’s deal flow. The close investor network. Your buddies and pals in this oh so friendly industry we operate in. It’s great isn’t it. A group of friends who share deals with you. Deals you know will almost assuredly fit your criteria or thematic focus. Sure, your network by nature isn’t that large which means limited deals, and you’re still only going to invest in the one that comes across every now and then that really sparks your interest, but damn’t if it isn’t 10x easier than sifting through the 30 feet of muck that is cold deal flow.
But ask yourself, how big is my network actually? It can be common for investors to convince themselves that the investor world is their oyster and that they have access to every A+ deal under the sun. But do you really believe that? I doubt that every killer deal that fits your thesis somehow makes it’s way through the filter of your network and winds up on your lap. Leaving you with only having to draft up the term sheet..
We all know that at the end of the day, the best deals are in some way shape and form mined from the ether by someone. Scouts, networks, webforms, angel groups, etc, it doesn’t matter at some point some investor has to recognize a deal as being valuable. This primary investor starts a chain of events wherein introductions are made, notes shared, and conversations had. And while it would be nice to be able to sit back and let the network do all of the work for you, the vast majority of investors are still out in the bush hunting and farming new deals. This is a conundrum.
But what if that toddler I mentioned earlier knew that that creak in the closet was actually a magical fairy that only creaked and ticked when she had a great present to offer up? Well, that’s what we built Connect Links for.
Deal flow funneling with Connect Links
Connect Links aren’t just another webform. Connect Links are packed with features that allow our users to pre-screen and filter out deals based on their investment focus, fund criteria, or preference. We remove ALL of the inbound noise, only showing you the deals that fit your criteria. No more needing to dig through email after email. No more needing to respond to founders that failed to even read your website “About us” page wherein you clearly describe your fund’s focus. Nope. Outpost handles that.
Connect Links act as your universal deal funnel. Share it on social media, embed it on your website, include it in your email sigs or linkedin profile. Founders click the link and are sent to your branded submission page. We’ve even had investors print their Connect Link as a QR code on the sleeves of their hoodies so that they can just flash it to founders while at meetups.
It takes them less than 90 seconds to finish the process and then presto bingo, their deal is analyzed based on the criteria they submitted. If the deal fits your criteria it will show up in your Deals swimlane. If it doesn’t we notify you and send it to your graveyard where every deal you’ve ever passed on is housed.
That’s it. No more needing to be afraid of deal flow. Open the pipeline of clean relevant deals and shut off the “anything goes” deal flow sewer of old.
Stop fighting the Wackamole game that is deal flow management and let Outpost do the work for you.
Outpost equals more needles and less haystack.