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How to Attract Investment to your Mission-Driven Organisation

Are you a young mission-driven organisation looking for finance to grow? Rob Halliday, Lead Fund Manager at Social Investment Scotland, introduces their impact investment arm, SIS Ventures, and shares his five key tips for attracting investment.

Last year at Social Investment Scotland, we launched our impact investment arm, SIS Ventures, which aims to support and grow high impact organisations through access to mission-aligned investment.

We’re looking at opportunities and giving entrepreneurial management teams a chance, through investment and support, to achieve their growth and impact aspirations. Having invested in our first two mission-led businesses and having met many entrepreneurs looking for investment to take their business to the next phase of growth, we’ve been reflecting on what makes a compelling young company investment opportunity.

From what we’ve learnt and the common threads we’ve seen between compelling investment opportunities and less compelling ones, we’d like to share five key reflections which we hope are of value to management teams of young companies getting out the gates and hoping to seek investment in the future.

  • Build a Network of Advisors and Advocates

Grow your network of advisors and advocates and be sure to listen to what they have to say. As you’re out and about networking, pitching and selling, you’ll meet professional advisers, people from the industry and experienced entrepreneurs that have taken a business from idea to success.

The best teams that we’ve come across have built and leveraged a sound network – people are, by and large, generous with their time and like to help where possible. The less successful teams are those in a bubble or with an on-paper network which they don’t or can’t utilise – what use is a former blue-chip company CEO as your Chair if they can’t spare a couple of hours a month to impart their advice?

Having a sound network allows you to learn from others’ experience, demonstrate to investors that you have experienced people around you that see something in your business and gives you much greater reach for opening doors that you wouldn’t have known existed.

It’s natural that your network will change over time, but remember, some of your early advisers may well become investors or board members in the future.

  • Engage with Prospective Customers Sooner rather than Later

An initial customer win is the best validation a young company can have. Be clear on your value proposition, what the problem is and how you have the solution.

As an investor, we’re interested in game-changing solutions, not incremental improvements to a product or service that already exists. This isn’t the same for all investors, so understand what they’re looking for and use prospective customer validation to back up your proposition.

  • Don’t Approach your Top Three Investors First

It’s important to have a coherent strategy for fund raising. After your initial approaches, you might well want to incorporate feedback into your business plan/investor desks to reposition aspects of your business (for example, key risks).

Take the time to look at each angel syndicate’s and VC’s investment criteria and whether you’re a good potential fit. Approach the investors that you would most like to work with or think are the best fit later in the process. This will allow you to better position your business to the investors that you would most like to work with.

  • Take ‘No’s’ in your Stride but Listen to Feedback

Having spent last Summer raising capital for SIS Ventures, we know what it feels like to fund raise – not everyone you speak with will like your idea or think that it’s a good fit for them. Investing is inherently subjective. Different investors have different priorities and experience, so you won’t be right for all, or perhaps even the majority, of them!

Stick at it, be sure to listen to feedback and take it on board. This will allow you to be on the front foot with common questions and concerns.

  • Make Use of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Scotland is right up there with the best places in the world to start a company. Competitions and pitching events like Converge , Scottish Edge and EIE are fantastic for raising profile and non-dilutive funding. These are opportunities to speak to a wide audience and for early investment gained to move your business to the next stage.

Business Gateway and Scottish Enterprise have superb programmes of support and interventions to help support early stage business work streams and operating costs.

Engage early, build good relationships and know what’s available to you.

If you’re a young company with high growth potential and ambitions to make the world a better place, we’d love to hear from you. For more information on what we look for as an investor, please refer to the ‘Seeking Investment?’ tab on our website.