How To Get Your Team Involved In Startup Fundraising

How to get your team involved in startup fundraising? Asking yourself this question indicates that you understand the value of a great team and culture in this crucial task. A well-rounded founding team is the most robust asset you can leverage to bring in capital.

In the fast-evolving business landscape, fundraising is no longer just handled by the company’s main founder. Instead, they recognize the value of empowering the team to contribute to the capital-raising strategies. Of course, you’ll start off by presenting detailed information about the team members.

The team slide is easily one of the most crucial aspects investors view when assessing the startup for viability. You should leverage this dynamic resource and bring it to the forefront when pitching to potential investors.

A robust pitch deck enables a connection with the people behind the scenes who are the key players running operations. Many founders who have built top-ranking companies and brands often talk about how investors were willing to back them. Even if they had yet to come up with an interesting concept.

An excellent example is Brian O’Kelley, founder of Scope3. Investors like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Ron Conway were utterly impressed by his grit and tenacity. So much so that they were willing to back him even if he wanted to start a lemonade stand.

Ultimately, fundraising comes down to credibility and the visionaries behind the brand. Use your team as allies in the journey to raise capital, but without taking away focus from business operations. You can’t put the business on hold while seeking more money to scale it further. Here’s what you’ll do.

Start by Building an Eye-Catching Team Slide

The first step to understanding how to get your team involved in startup fundraising is to create an eye-catching slide. You’ll list the people involved in building the company from the ground up. The team slide will also touch upon their accomplishments, track records, and success stories.

Keep in mind that investors are likely to value this information more than possibly the product slide. Or the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and demo version. Here’s what you’ll include:

• Academic qualifications: List each member’s academic performance, including their degrees in law, business finance, tech, or other relevant fields. Adding details about merits and distinctions also works if you don’t have much else to convey.
• Experience in leadership roles: Provide details about their performance in managerial positions along with relevant metrics or key performance indicators. Numbers are always more potent than words, so you can talk about growth in sales, profits, revenues, or customer base.
• Knowledge and skill set relevant to the vertical: Talent and skill sets are crucial since they indicate an in-depth understanding of the core product and market.
• This section is crucial once you’ve listed the people and their qualifications and skills. The next step is talking about their stories. A personal story adds depth and character and builds a connection with the person beyond letters and numbers. An interesting story talks about the inspiration behind the concept and the experiences driving the innovation.

To answer your next question. Yes, this does seem like a lot of information to compress into a single slide. At best, you can allocate two slides to the team. Add a maximum of two to three bullet points to each person. And if you want to relay more data, defer it to the appendix. That’s how to get your team involved in startup fundraising.

Why the Team Slide is So Crucial

The information in the team slide convinces investors that the key drivers behind the company and its products are credible. Their qualifications and accomplishments indicate their competence and potential to deliver the assigned roles.

Your Company’s C-Suite

A well-rounded C-Suite team will have all the essential skills to take the company forward. Their successful track records inspire trust in investors and show that the team is well-versed in the industry’s functioning. They know how to navigate the potential challenges to achieving their goals.

• Chief Technology Officer (CTO): Technical skills are essential to transform an idea into a working product that customers can use to solve their problems. The right engineering talent can assess the concept for feasibility and resolve technical snags to streamline deployment.
• Chief Product Officer (CPO): A product is only as good as the market for it. Historically, several products have tried and failed to pierce the market since they were ahead of their time. Or unable to compete with existing options available in the market. The right marketing talent will identify the target customer base, market size, and competitors’ existing products. Finding the ideal product-market fit is crucial; investors need to see that the team has a handle on it.
• Chief Marketing Officer: Regardless of how great a product is, it’s tough to find customers without appropriate advertising, marketing, and sales strategies. Your team slide should have strong marketing skills to acquire and retain customers with the minimum CACs.
• Chief Financial Officer (CFO): The company’s financials and business model are other crucial slides that draw investor focus. Their main criteria is how the company expects to generate revenues and profits to deliver significant returns. Your team should be proficient enough to present projections based on industry trends and competitor performance in similar verticals. If the company is established, financials going back at least three years should feature in the deck.
• Chief Executive Officer (CEO): The manager is the leader who heads the entire team and ensures it meets the company’s goals and mission statement. This individual balances and coordinates operations so the company captures a substantial market share. They are also responsible for building relationships with key stakeholders, including investors.

Keep in mind that storytelling is everything in fundraising. In this regard, for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

How to Get Your Team Involved in Startup Fundraising

Involving the team in the fundraising process is part of the company culture you’ll institute when they are hired. Getting capital for the company should be a shared effort and responsibility, with every person contributing what they can.

Your objective here should be to leverage your team’s collective skills, knowledge base, and networks to identify and impress investors. Check out these key strategies you’ll use.

Communicate and Educate

As part of their orientation, company owners typically talk about the mission, vision, and objectives with new employees. When you’re ready to raise funding, you’ll communicate how securing capital will impact these objectives.

You’ll also discuss how capital deployment can alter employee roles and responsibilities. Make available all the materials needed so they can use them to relay the company’s value proposition within their networks. Most companies choose not to involve the team in financial matters.

But, if you need them to collaborate, consider organizing training sessions and workshops to teach them about how financials work. Educate them about the key metrics investors focus on when evaluating the company for viability. For instance, equity dilution, valuation, revenues, and more.

The financial literacy sessions you provide will also help them understand how option pools work and how to exercise their rights. The company and team become a single unit working toward a common goal and the company’s long-term success.

Consider sharing the investor pitch deck with your team. Welcome inputs and feedback on how to enhance and improve. They can offer valuable tips based on their areas of expertise. For instance, the CTO could provide in-depth information about product features that could stand out in the deck.

Ensure the team knows how funding rounds work and the specific round you’re looking to raise. Also, talk about your target audience and different segments of investors, such as venture capitalists, angels, private equity, and syndicates. Ask for suggestions for other sources to tap.

Empower and Encourage Participation

Encourage your team to get proactive when it comes to attracting capital for the company. Motivate them to attend networking events, conferences, meet-ups, and seminars where they can connect with potential investors. Share a great elevator pitch with them when discussing the company.

Offer incentives to employees to connect with investors and get them to back the company. You could start a referral program so everyone benefits. Just as expert fundraising consultants will advise, social media is a powerful medium to build a market presence.

Investors are also likely to check for the company’s social media visibility and customer reviews when evaluating it. Get your team to use their social media pages to broadcast updates about the company’s achievements and new product releases.

Since ESG principles raise the company’s reputation as a responsible organization, broadcast programs that will impress customers and investors.

The value of the team in a pitch deck cannot be stressed enough. A good start would be understanding what investors look for in a founding team. Not sure what that is? Check out this video in which I have explained in detail how teams can impress investors.

Make the Pitch Deck a Product of Team Effort

All fundraising efforts ultimately come down to the pitch deck and how it impresses investors. You’ll leverage the entire team’s expertise when designing slides relevant to their spheres. For instance:

• Get the CPO to create the product slide on which you talk about the product and its functionality. Get inputs on demonstrating the working prototype and discussing the technical specs in layperson terms.
• Invite the CFO to provide financial projections, revenue models, cash flows, and verified metrics to add to the financials slide. You’ll also need their assistance during the due diligence process when investors five deeper into the company’s financials.
• Get the CMO to create marketing stats that indicate market traction, sales, customer base, and acquisition costs. Adding customer testimonials and case studies can enhance the slide’s impact. Your marketing team can also provide in-depth market and competitor analysis.
• Involve the COO to explain the efficiency in running the company’s operations and how that efficiency translates into scalability. Investors appreciate lean practices for minimizing costs.

Welcome inputs from the entire team when adding the final touches and polishing the deck. Having practice sessions to deliver the presentation and prep for the Q&A can go a long way. Encourage the team to come forward with questions and concerns about the funding strategies.

At the same time, you’ll stress the importance of maintaining complete confidentiality, especially since sensitive information is being discussed.

Infuse Transparency with Regular Updates and Rewards

Be transparent with the team and deliver updates after each pitching session. You’ll share information about investor feedback and the potential areas for improvement. Work with them to incorporate the feedback and improve the deck.

Each time you achieve a milestone, involve the entire team in celebrating its success. This simple exercise is an effective team-building strategy and encourages a sense of ownership. You need the team to have a vested interest in the company’s success that goes beyond option pools.

Celebrations need not be just for landing a major investor. You can celebrate the smaller wins in the long road to capital raising. Completing a successful pitch and connecting with a reputable angel or VC can also be reasons to recognize achievements.

As for rewards, think bonuses, equity shares, or companywide recognition. Every effort needs to be appreciated. Don’t forget to add the milestone to the employee’s performance reviews. The company’s progress should align with their personal goals. That’s how to get your team involved in startup fundraising.

Consider Having Team Members at the Table

Depending on the stage in the fundraising process, consider having the core team at the table when meeting with investors. Founders in the contemporary business ecosystem know they cannot be proficient in every aspect of running the company.

For this reason, they need to bring in qualified people who can take over for them. If so, why not invite the team to answer investor questions according to their area of expertise? For instance, the CTO is more adept at explaining the technical aspects of the product’s working.

Then again, the CFO will be able to handle financial questions better. Not only is the team more adept at presenting the company’s value proposition, but investors also are impressed by their proficiency. They can view firsthand the team spirit, sense of collaboration, and interpersonal alignment.

Factors like these convince investors that their money is in safe hands. Your fundraising efforts will undoubtedly deliver a higher impact.

In Conclusion

Raising funding for your company can be a lonely, stressful road. But it need not be. Understand how to get your team involved in startup fundraising and leverage their expertise and buy-ins to ensure long-term success.

At the same time, you’ll foster a robust culture, teamwork, and a sense of collaboration and camaraderie.

You may find our free library of business templates interesting as well. There, you will find every template you need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.