Getting Started With Gust

Welcome to Gust! This guide will help you get your funding search off the ground. It includes tips on what to include in your startup profile, how to find investors that are appropriate for your venture, and how to manage your relationships throughout the funding process.

Contents:

• Before you begin
• Completing your profile
• Expert tips
• Finding the right investor
• Managing the relationship

 

If you have any questions that aren’t answered here, please visit Gust’s Feedback & Support page. You can also learn more about startup funding by following the Gust blog, which brings together the latest tips from some of the angel world’s most respected experts.

Before you begin:

If you are new to the fundraising process, a good place to start is The Definitive Guide to Raising Money from Angels by Bill Payne, the world’s leading trainer of angel investors. Bill also offers extensive insights in his Gust blog contributions.

We encourage you to utilize both resources to further your understanding of the types of things angels and venture capitalists look for when reviewing new investment opportunities. These include a solid management team, a large and growing market, a clear business plan, a potential for significant economic returns, and a viable exit strategy.

It is important to keep in mind that investors do not fund brilliant ideas alone; rather, they look for good ideas backed by solid execution and experience. If your startup is not yet at a point where you can show at least some basic traction — through sales, customers, or other validators — it may be prudent to consider alternative forms of funding first. Other options include business plan competitions, incubators, or accelerators, many of which you can also find on Gust.

Now, let’s get down to business!

Completing your profile:

Completing your startup profile is the first thing you should do upon creating a Gust account. If you have already started, there are several things you can do to make your profile more attractive to investors.

If you have not yet started, make sure to complete your profile now! After, you will have the option to make your public profile visible on a wide range of public places, directories, and search results.

You will also find yourself eligible for a variety of special opportunities. There are now over 1,000 venture funds, angel organizations, business plan competitions, entrepreneurship support programs, media groups, and other carefully vetted participants who regularly use Gust searches to find companies to write about, invite to exclusive programs or proactively reach out to. If your public profile isn’t complete, you will unknowingly be excluded from these opportunities.

Note that your public profile provides a “Request Access” button, which is used by accredited investors to express their interest in your company. You may then decide to share additional information with that investor by authorizing him or her to view your startup profile complete with sensitive information that is not available to the public. This more detailed overview includes all of the standard information that investors need to see in order to move the process forward.

 

While you will want to meet, speak with, and exchange emails with potential investors outside of Gust, keep in mind that it is critical that the first contact with you be both directly through Gust and verified on your dashboard. This will allow you to verify the legitimacy of all incoming requests and ensure that your information remains secure in our system.

Expert Tips:

Once you finish the public profile, you can proceed to make your company stand out. Here are some recommendations gleaned from the sites of companies that went on to successfully find funding :

1. Show your best public face

Instead of using the default background in your public profile, choose a relevant one from the Gust library, or even better, create and upload your own customized image. This does not have to be fancy, but it should be clean, professional, and relevant to your startup.

2. Don’t ignore the details

This includes uploading your company’s logo, which will be used in many places throughout the investment process. Also, don’t forget to enter your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook handles, write concise biographies for each of your team members, and include your summary financials.

It is impossible to over-share on Gust. We include only information that investors require to make decisions, in many cases limiting the text entrepreneurs can provide. These determinations were reached after years of input from Angels and VCs clarifying what they want to see.

3. If you’re unsure of what to enter, ask

Don’t provide a number or answer a question if you are unsure of what it means. It never hurts to check with an advisor. Because many investors use automatic filters for preliminary screening, a simple data entry mistake may result in being inadvertently eliminated from consideration by an investment organization, which would otherwise have been a good match!

4. The presentation is crucial

The presentation is the heart of the pitch. Typically, it is viewed after investors have skimmed over your company essentials. Regardless, they will unquestionably turn to the presentation for more information in an easy-to-digest format. You have three options here:

• You can upload your slide deck (PowerPoint or PDFs), allowing investors to proceed through the slides at their own pace.
• Alternatively, you can upload a video. These are generally 5-15 minute clips of founders going through their pitch in front of a group. Be sure that the video shows both you and the slides clearly, and is correctly exposed and professionally filmed. You do not want to come across as amateur.
• The third possibility is unique to Gust. We allow you to upload your slide deck, then run it alongside a webcam presentation you record. You can use the Gust platform to synchronize the two, while advancing the slides and zooming back and forth between your video and slides — all without leaving the site.

5. Include supporting documents

In the Documents area, you can upload whatever documents you have that provide support for your proposition. Some investors might want to read everything, while others will cherry pick, but this is where you can put your business plan, sales presentations, marketing brochures, detailed financials, references, and more.

6. Proofread, proofread, proofread

Spelling and grammatical errors can cause miscommunication, and at worst, they can turn off an investor from an otherwise sound proposal. Make sure you proofread everything. If possible, have someone else proof it as well.

Finding the right investor:

Once you have completed both your public and private startup profiles, you have two potential outlets to find investors. We suggest you utilize both. First, reach out directly to any angel investor or potential angel you may already know.

This will lead you to your dashboard. On your dashboard under Share and Manage, use the “Share” button to begin the process of reaching out to a potential investor.

 

You will then be prompted to fill in the name and email address of the potential investor, and write a custom cover letter.

The email invitation — along with a standard one-page summary of the material you have entered — will be sent to the investor, who will automatically be granted access to view your full private site.

The other way to interact with investors is by searching for an investment organization using the Investor Search Tool on Gust. Our directory includes professional angel groups, venture funds, business plan competitions, accelerators and entrepreneurship support programs.

 

You can refine your search by name, location, association, industry and type of investor, and then sort them alphabetically or by distance.

Once you find a group or fund that seems like it might be a good match, you can dive in for a deeper look at their investment profile.

 

This includes information about their investment philosophy, the types of companies they are looking to invest in, and a list of their existing portfolio companies. This section will also show, if they choose to reveal it, detailed information on their metrics, including how many applications they’ve received, how long it typically takes them to review your materials, etc.

Also, if you’re logged in to LinkedIn, the group profile will automatically show you the names of all the members to whom you can be introduced by someone you know. This sort of warm introduction is always the best way to start the process, if possible.

The key benefit of your Gust startup profile is that it will serve as a universal application for any organization also on the Gust platform. Your startup profile is accepted by over 1,000 angel groups, accelerators, venture funds, and business plan competitions on Gust. Remember, you are the one who decides which investors see what information.

Once you find one or more groups or funds with whom you’d like to share your materials, you can simply click on the “Share now” button, and the system will check your Gust profile to make sure it includes all of the information this particular investment organization requires. Should you meet these requirements, you will then be prompted to submit an application.

 

In some cases, it will also immediately check the basic criteria that the group or fund has set for new investments. If your venture is not a good match for that particular investor, you will know immediately, and be encouraged to search for a more appropriate funding source.

Managing the relationship:

As soon as you have given a potential funding source access to your materials — whether by inviting an individual investor to view your site, or by sharing your site with an angel group or venture fund — an entry for that investor is automatically placed on your dashboard. This allows you to see at a glance all the investors with whom you are dealing at any point in time.

To stay on top of your progress with each investor or group, Gust provides a detailed view of that specific relationship. This view shows which pages on your site have been viewed, which investors in the group have expressed an interest, and what actions have been taken by the group on your application. Note that sharing this level of detail is optional for the investor, and some groups will elect not to provide you with visibility of private data.

From the moment you engage with an investor, it is important to communicate early and often. Keep them up to date while circling your round, thank them as soon as it closes, and provide all of your investors with at least quarterly reports on how the company is doing.

Lastly, remember to check back often to your Gust dashboard, where you will:

• Find all of your active and paused applications
• See which investors have exhibited interest in your company
• Grant or decline access requests to your confidential information
• Share your materials with additional potential investors

Gust is increasingly becoming the standard platform for both sides of early-stage investment relationships. Over 180,000 startups have used Gust’s tools to connect with investors, in large part because nearly 40,000 accredited angel investors and over 1,000 investment organizations use Gust from the other side as their platform for managing their investment opportunities.

Congratulations again on taking a major step along the path to raising funding from accredited investors. Remember, if you have a question about something… ask!