How Investor Signals found the founders who are actually raising
Pairs founders with experienced investors for high-signal pitch feedback before the real meetings.
What wasn’t working
Investor Signals only converts founders who are actively raising, but cold lists are full of teams who already closed, paused, or aren't a fit. Nine out of ten qualification calls were a dead end.
What they changed
They pointed Saava at the LinkedIn rooms their founders actually live in: VC partners, accelerator alumni and fundraising coaches. Every founder liking, commenting, or sharing that content arrives scored, with verified contact, before a competitor has noticed.
How it played out
Founders raise in a six-week window
If you don't reach a founder while their deck is open in Figma, you're talking to last quarter's pipeline. Cold lists couldn't tell us who was in the window.
Engagement is the rawest intent signal there is
Saava watches the VCs and coaches founders read every morning. The moment a founder comments on a fundraising post, we know, and we reach out the same day with context they didn't expect.
From cold to context in one week
Average time from a founder's first engagement to a signed pitch-review engagement dropped to 11 days, a third of what the cold funnel looked like.
“Cold founder lists were 90% noise. Saava hands us the 10% who are actively raising, and they answer because we already know what they just engaged with.”
The steps, if you want to try this
- 01Treat raising as a behavior you can see, not a field in a database.
- 02Track the VCs, accelerator voices and fundraising coaches founders read every morning.
- 03Reach out the same day a founder engages, with the post they reacted to as context.
- 04Measure time from first engagement to a signed engagement, not just reply rate.
