How to Find Investors for Your Startup: A Complete Guide

Raising a round in Spain or Latin America in 2026 is more accessible than five years ago, but also more competitive. There are more funds, more angels and more public programs, but most founders still lose months contacting the wrong investors. This guide walks through how to find investors for your startup step by step: where to look, how to qualify them and how to run the process to close in a reasonable timeframe.

1. Define the right investor before you search

Before you open any database, write a one-page investor brief. It is the document you will use to filter every name you consider. It should answer:

• Stage: pre-seed, seed or Series A. A fund investing in another stage will not lead.
• Ticket: the check size you need from a single investor.
• Sector and thesis: what the fund actually invests in, not what you wish they invested in.
• Geography: many funds have LP-imposed geographic restrictions.
• Recent activity: if they have not invested in the last 6 months, they probably cannot deploy capital right now.
• Portfolio conflicts: if they already back a direct competitor, drop them.

2. Build your list from the right sources

Crunchbase and LinkedIn are the usual starting points and neither is designed for founders raising capital. Crunchbase is built for analysts and journalists: broad coverage, shallow data on thesis and ticket. LinkedIn is fine for intros but not for filtering by investment criteria.

A founder-focused investor database solves three things at once: it tells you who is investing now, what they actually back and how to reach the right partner. We compare the options in our guide to the best investor databases for startups.

3. Qualify before reaching out

A list of 800 investors you will not contact is worth nothing. A list of 120 highly qualified investors you will contact in two weeks is. For each survivor add three data points:

1. Their two most recent investments at your stage.
2. Something they have publicly said about your sector in the last 12 months.
3. The shortest path to them. An intro from a portfolio founder is ideal.

4. Cold outreach vs. warm intros

The myth that 'cold email to investors does not work' is false but nuanced. At seed, a well-crafted cold to the right partner converts 5 to 10%. Warm intros work two to three times better but take more time. Run everything in parallel.

5. Run the round on a CRM, not a spreadsheet

Spreadsheets break past 30 simultaneous conversations. A fundraising-specific CRM gives you stage tracking, reminders, partner mapping per fund and visibility of who is hot, who needs a nudge and who has stopped responding.

6. Use AI matching to discover non-obvious funds

The best investor for your round is almost never the most famous one. AI matching, trained on real round data, ranks investors by real fit, not by visibility.

7. Move fast, then move slow

A good round has two phases: a fast one where you contact 80% of your list in 10 to 14 days to create competitive tension, and a slow one where you go deep with the 5 to 10 funds that lean in.

Start with Verabro

Verabro is the fundraising ecosystem for European founders: 15,000+ verified investors, a CRM, AI matching and expert guidance. Explore the platform or check the pricing starting at €99/mo, no success fees.