Where Investors Come From: Stop Confusing a Target List With Access

Founders rarely close international investment by sending the most pitches. They close by finding investors whose mandate fits, then giving those investors a credible reason to believe, through trusted introductions, visible customer demand or firsthand operating knowledge.

In late 2010, Sequoia recruited David Vélez, a Colombian founder then at Stanford, to investigate opening an office in Brazil. The office plan was abandoned. But Sequoia had watched Vélez work.

Three years later, he showed the firm a short deck for a new Brazilian bank. Sequoia backed the seed round that became Nubank.

That is a more useful fundraising story than it first appears. Vélez did not begin with a giant spreadsheet of investors. He had something rarer: an investor who had already seen how he thought, worked and handled uncertainty. For a contrarian idea in a market an outsider might misunderstand, that prior exposure was a form of evidence.

Nubank shows how an investor's firsthand knowledge of a founder can open a cross-border seed round. Photo: Nubank / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

The obvious question follows. If you are not David Vélez, and no major investor has already worked beside you, where do investors actually come from?

The list is not the door

Most founders are taught a simple formula: build the biggest possible investor list, send more pitches, attend more events and wait for the arithmetic to work. It sounds sensible. It is also incomplete.

A database can tell you which fund has invested in companies like yours. It can reveal sector, geography, stage and likely cheque size. That is discovery. It is necessary work.

It is not access.

The 2020 survey by Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev offers a bracing view of how venture deals actually arrived. Professional networks generated 31% of completed investments. Other investors generated 20%, and portfolio companies 8%. Only 10% came inbound from company management. Investors themselves proactively generated 28%; quantitative sourcing accounted for 2%.

What surprised us was not that relationships matter. Everyone says that. It was the scale of the filtering behind the phrase. The typical firm considered 101 opportunities for every investment it completed, met management in 28, examined 4.8 closely and issued 1.7 term sheets, meaning proposed investment agreements. Its average review took 118 hours across 83 days and included ten reference calls.

An investor is not merely deciding whether your deck is interesting. They are deciding whether they can defend spending the next 118 hours on you.

That changes the task. The aim is not maximum visibility. It is credible progression from a name on a list to someone inside the firm saying: I know why we should take this meeting.

The proof that travelled

Paystack, the Nigerian payments company founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi, took a route familiar to founders far from the usual venture capitals. It applied to Y Combinator and became the accelerator's first Nigerian company in 2016, while retaining its Lagos operations.

It later raised $1.3 million from investors including Tencent, Comcast Ventures and Ventures Platform. In August 2018, it raised an $8 million Series A led by Stripe, with Visa and existing investors participating. IFC's 2020 account said Y Combinator helped Paystack raise quickly.

Paystack used Y Combinator's screening and referral network to make Lagos operations legible to global investors. Photo: Nigeria Logos / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The lazy version of this story is that Demo Day did the work. It did not. Y Combinator was a screening system, a referral network and a familiar signal to investors who might otherwise have had little basis for assessing a Nigerian company. It made Paystack easier to investigate.

Freshworks, founded in India and later serving customers internationally, shows the other route: make the evidence visible before asking for capital. A Hacker News post created beta demand and investor interest. The company had 500 beta sign-ups when fundraising began, signed its first customer in Australia in June 2011 and reached 100 customers in 103 days. Accel invested $1 million in December 2011.

Freshworks' own account describes Naval Ravikant encouraging an AngelList listing and introductions. Yet AngelList did not make Freshworks investable. Customer behaviour did. The listing helped people find the company; the early demand gave them a reason to care.

Put Nubank, Paystack and Freshworks side by side and a pattern appears that none of the individual stories says outright: access does not always mean knowing the right person. It means supplying a form of proof that an investor can carry into an internal discussion. At Nubank, it was prior professional observation. At Paystack, it was a recognised international screening network. At Freshworks, it was customer demand in plain sight.

When one believer matters

UiPath began in Bucharest and bootstrapped for years before raising a $1.6 million seed round in 2015. Then came a decision that was far more important than a search result.

In 2016, seed investor Dan Lupu insisted on introducing UiPath founder Daniel Dines to Luciana Lixandru at Accel. The following year, Accel led UiPath's $30 million Series A, according to Sequoia's account of the company.

UiPath's Series A illustrates how a seed investor's personal conviction can travel across borders. Photo: Stefan S / Pexels, Pexels licence (free commercial use).

This is where most people stop looking. They see an international investor and assume the company was discovered because a market became fashionable. The real bridge was Lupu's willingness to transfer his conviction. He could explain the founder, the business and the Romanian context in a way a cold email could not.

Swvl offers a related lesson from a different region. Mostafa Kandil had launched markets for Careem before founding Swvl, the Egypt-founded transport company, in April 2017. Careem monitored the new business and invested $500,000 within months. Careem co-founder Magnus Olsson joined Swvl's board. Swvl later raised a $42 million Series B involving BECO Capital and Endeavor Catalyst.

Swvl shows why a strategic investor can provide local operating validation as well as early capital. Photo: Swvl Inc. / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

The point is not simply that Kandil had a famous former employer. Careem had firsthand evidence of his execution. That mattered in a region where, as Careem's founders told McKinsey, expansion could require separate entities, local partners, payment gateways and compliance across fragmented markets. A strategic investor can bring operating and regulatory knowledge alongside money.

For founders, this expands the definition of a useful introducer. It may be an existing investor, certainly. It may also be a customer, a former employer, a strategic partner, an accelerator, or an operator who has watched you solve the exact problem your company now claims to solve.

Warm is better. It is not the only way.

There is an uncomfortable complication. Networks can reinforce insider access. If every investor asks for a warm introduction, founders without elite employers, repeat founders in their circle or well-connected advisers can be locked outside the room.

The evidence does not support giving up and blasting generic emails. But it does support a more balanced approach.

Use warm routes where the introducer adds real information. Ask an existing investor to introduce you when they have watched your progress. Ask a customer to speak when they can verify demand. Ask a former employer or operator when they can credibly judge execution.

Do not use a weak introduction merely because it is warm. A vague note from someone who barely knows you may be worse than a direct message that shows careful research and objective proof.

Direct outreach is the corrective. It works best when it is narrow, specific and easy to verify: why this investor fits, what has changed, what evidence exists and why the conversation matters now. Freshworks is the reminder that public traction can turn a nominally cold route into credible inbound.

IFC's 2018 survey of 131 emerging-market fund managers captures this mixed reality. Ninety-four per cent identified professional networks as a main sourcing channel, 56% named portfolio-company referrals and 47% named cold research. Respondents could choose more than one channel. Research finds the door. Networks often help assess who should enter. Cold research remains part of the machinery.

For businesses with little access to established networks, the practical goal is to manufacture legitimate proof rather than imitate insider behaviour. A customer reference, a public product signal, a recognised accelerator application or a sharp direct note can create the first credible connection.

Different markets have different gates

Stage matters. Early-stage investors in the VC survey sourced 9% of deals through portfolio-company referrals, compared with 4% for later-stage investors. Founder inbound was also more important early on: 12% versus 7%. That makes accelerators, angels, customers and former colleagues disproportionately useful when there is little operating history.

Later-stage investors generated 42% of their own opportunities, compared with 23% at early stage. Growth companies therefore need to be discoverable through commercial evidence, strategic relationships and visible market activity. The investor may already be looking.

Geography changes the test too. For U.S.-oriented venture rounds, Y Combinator describes the Delaware C corporation as the standard structure expected by institutional investors. Its guidance also notes that Rule 506(c), a U.S. fundraising exemption, permits broad solicitation only where purchasers are accredited and their status is reasonably verified.

The UK applies a different filter. Overseas issuers seeking EIS-compatible capital need their own UK permanent establishment; simply employing someone in Britain is not enough. From April 2026, planned EIS and VCT limits increased to £120 million in gross assets and 500 employees.

In Belgium, meanwhile, networks accounted for 28.3% of deal-flow leads in 2023, but events accounted for 24.5%, incoming emails 18.9%, incubators 17.9% and databases 6.6%. Events can matter in a compact ecosystem. The lesson is not that conferences are magic. It is that repeated contact can become context.

GI Network's view: A fundraising process works when each target investor has both a reason to care and a credible route to believe. A long list without either is administration, not strategy.

What founders should do on Monday

Start with a one-page capital brief: the amount sought, what it funds, your stage, geography, customer or project evidence, legal structure and the decision you need an investor to make.

Then build a short list of investors whose stated focus genuinely fits. A famous fund is not automatically a relevant fund. For every priority target, write down the best available route: a reference, customer, accelerator, adviser, strategic partner or direct approach.

For project sponsors, the same discipline applies. Before outreach, identify the risks a capital provider must accept and the proof required to accept them. That is why raising capital for a solar project starts with fixing risk, not polishing a pitch.

Do not wait for a perfect network. Use direct outreach to test whether your targeting and evidence are strong enough. Use events to build relationships over time. And do not mistake an attractive term sheet for cash in the bank: do not raise on empty.

Investors should make the same distinction in reverse. A warm introduction is useful if it adds information. It should not become a shortcut that excludes credible outsiders. Direct inbound with strong traction and a precise mandate fit deserves attention, especially where networks are thin.

GI Network would start by testing whether the business or project can be underwritten on its evidence, then map the investor mandates, jurisdictional filters and credible validators that fit it. We would identify the weak links before outreach, align the materials with likely investor objections and decide which conversations need a trusted introduction and which are strong enough for direct, evidence-led contact.

The Channel-Fit Framework

Before contacting any investor, run the opportunity through four questions:

1. 1.Fit: Has this investor backed your stage, sector and geography before?
2. 2.Proof: What can they verify quickly, such as customers, operating performance, references or regulatory readiness?
3. 3.Route: Does a warm introducer add genuine information, or is targeted direct outreach stronger and fairer?
4. 4.Gate: What legal, tax, structural or local operating condition could stop the round even if the investor likes the business?

If one answer is weak, fix it before adding another hundred names. That is the Channel-Fit Framework: not a hunt for the largest audience, but a decision model for finding the few doors you can credibly open.