It is extremely rare that it will take one meeting to raise funding. I’ve pitched hundreds of investors. I’ve raised over $100 million, and I’ve only had this happen once. Once. That’s it.
In my case, I was able to raise money in one meeting from an angel investor who had worked with one of my co-founders. He already understood the business and he was predisposed to invest, so it was a slam dunk.
That’s why your goal when you’re pitching investors is not to raise your funding. Your goal is to get to the next meeting. And getting to the next meeting will eventually get you to your funding.
You need to understand how fundraising works.
Besides that one time, the least number of meetings it took me to raise money was four meetings. The point is there is a process to raising money, and you need to understand the process and the timing. This impacts how you present your company to potential investors.
For example, investors aren’t expecting you to do a deep technical dive in the first meeting. In fact, doing a deep dive, unless you are asked to, will appear out of order, and you’re likely to lose investors.
This leads us to the next point…
