Your Personal Brand Fosters Venture Capital Relationships

Building your personal brand can significantly increase your network of Venture Capitalists.  You need to make yourself accessible and create intrinsic value.  Plan to capture investors’ attention by reaching out to them through unconventional methods.  Spamming an investor with emails only poisons the relationship you are trying to construct.  Investors get hundreds of messages every day and, as a result, young entrepreneurs need to be creative with their approach and deliver with precision.  Before approaching a venture capitalist, make yourself valuable.

Reach out to investors by thinking about ways to expand your brand.   Start by making a professional website that details your past experiences and future aspirations. Make sure to purchase (www.yourname.com) and orchestrate a clear message to your audience.   By creating your own website, you can start to control search engine results for your brand.  Unfortunately, showing the world who you are through your website is simply not enough.  You need to blog.  Investors enjoy reading blog posts that highlight trends in their industry.  Blogging is a way of creating value while getting connected to the entrepreneurial community.   Make sure to leave intellectually stimulating comments on other blogs, particularly ones written by venture capitalists.  Building rapport and generating conversation is invaluable.

Social media platforms are becoming increasingly more popular and must be utilized to properly engineer your brand.  Venture capitalists tend to embrace Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  If you want to grab their attention, become actively involved and approach them through these websites.  Try to connect with venture capitalists via LinkedIn and let them know that you want to talk venture capital.  Before they accept your connection, they will likely view your profile and visit your website.  If you establish yourself professionally, you will find that most investors are willing to network with you.   Make your brand memorable and be aggressive and intelligent when forging relationships.

Once you have started to establish connections and build your brand, you need to know how to properly maintain those relationships.  Do not feel the need to reach out to investors every week and update them.  Investors despise receiving the weekly update.  Instead, think of another reason for grabbing their attention and then reach out to them.  Find ways to grow the relationship slowly and continue to generate brand value.  As you become well networked and more valuable, investors will display interest.