Founder's guide
How to find investorswith the numbers already done.
Where investors actually come from, what they screen on before they take the meeting, what to have ready, and how a listing with the figures attached puts a business in front of approved firms.
Start here
What investors screen on before the meeting
The first filter is not the pitch. It is whether the company fits the fund and whether the numbers hold up.
- Fit. Stage, sector, geography and cheque size. A firm that writes $2M seed cheques in B2B software will not read a $200k pre-seed consumer deck, however good it is.
- Traction for the stage. Revenue, growth and retention where they exist; a credible plan and early signal where they do not.
- Runway and burn. How long the money lasts, and whether the raise buys enough time to reach the next milestone.
- The model. Do the P&L, cash flow and balance sheet agree with each other? Where did the figures come from?
- The cap table and the ask. Who owns what, what instrument, how much, at what valuation, for what.
Where they come from
The routes that actually produce meetings
- Warm introductions. Other founders, your customers' investors, your lawyer or accountant. The highest hit rate by far; the ask is specific: “do you know anyone who backs X at Y stage?”
- Angels and angel groups. Operators in your space and organised groups in your city. Smaller cheques, faster decisions, and they often lead to the seed firms they co-invest with.
- Accelerators. A cohort, a demo day and an alumni network. The programme matters less than the investors who read its deal flow.
- Directories and platforms. Places where firms state what they back (stage, sector, cheque range) so you stop guessing. Replafin's investor directory is one; approved firms list their criteria and businesses browse by fit.
- Cold outreach that reads warm. A short note that names why this firm, the one metric that matters, and a link where the figures are already laid out. It works when the numbers are one click away.
Have it ready
The data room before the data room
Every route above ends in the same request: send me the numbers. Have these before the first message goes out.
- A three-statement model: revenue build, P&L, cash flow forecast and a balance sheet that balances, twelve to thirty-six months out. How the statements link.
- Burn and runway from that forecast, not from a division. The calculator for a quick check.
- A cap table with the option pool, SAFEs and their caps, and what the round does to it.
- The ask: amount, instrument, target pre-money, use of funds, the milestone it reaches.
- Provenance. Which figures come from the bank and the books, which are plan. Investors read this first.
The listing
Publish the company with the figures attached
For a business that runs its finances in Replafin, the marketplace is the last step, not the first.
A business on the Pro plan publishes a private page to approved VC, PE and professional investors: the story, contact details, the figures from its own model with their provenance, a valuation across methods, and what it is asking for. Investors search listings by stage, sector, valuation and ask, read the order book, place indications of interest and talk to the founder here. The deal itself happens outside Replafin.
Templates fit the situation (a startup raising, a growth company, a business for sale, one that wants to borrow) and the investor directory works the other way round: businesses browse approved firms by cheque size, stage, sector and style, with the matches on top.
Questions
Finding investors, answered
How do I find investors for my business?
Start with the people who already know you or your customers: founders in your space, your customers' investors, accelerator networks and angel groups near your market. Then widen to directories and platforms where firms state what they back. Every route works better when the numbers are ready before the first message, because the first question is always about them.
What do investors look for in a startup's financials?
Stage-appropriate evidence: at pre-seed, a credible plan and a cap table that is not broken; at seed, early traction, a burn rate that buys enough time, and a model whose statements agree with each other; from Series A, growth, margins, retention and capital efficiency such as burn multiple. In every case, provenance: figures that come from the bank and the books rather than a slide.
How much should I raise?
Enough to reach the milestone that unlocks the next round with a margin of safety, commonly 18 to 24 months of runway at the burn the plan implies. The raise plan in Replafin sizes it from the model: the burn, the milestone month, the buffer, and the dilution at a target valuation.
Do I need a financial model before talking to investors?
At any stage where money is involved, yes. It does not need to be big; it needs to be consistent. A revenue build, a P&L, a cash flow forecast and a balance sheet that balances, plus a cap table and the use of funds, answer most of the first meeting's questions and make the second one about the business.
What is a Replafin listing?
A private page published to approved VC, PE and professional investors: the story, contact details, the figures from the company's own model with their provenance, and what the company is asking for. Investors search listings, place indications of interest in an order book and message the founder on the platform. The deal itself happens outside Replafin. Publishing a listing is part of the Pro plan, $500 a month.
Numbers first.Then the introductions.
Build the model, size the raise and run the checklist in the workspace, from $200 a month. Publish a listing when you are ready to be found.