Module 3 — Preparing the Raise · Lesson 3.4
Building and Ranking the Investor List
Thesis, stage, cheque size and warmth — scored before the first email
What you'll learn
- Describe the investor populations available in 2026 and how each fits a round
- Record the facts about each investor that determine fit
- Rank investors by fit and access, and explain each ranking
- Work the list in tranches so that effort goes to the best fits first
A founder's first investor list is usually a spreadsheet of famous names. A placement agent's is a database of firms with mandates, cheque ranges and relationship histories. The second is the one that closes rounds. Building it takes a few days before the raise, and it changes every conversation that follows: you approach fewer investors, the ones you approach are the right ones, and you can explain to each why you came to them.
Know the populations
Different investors fit different rounds, and the 2026 market has reshaped who is where.
Angels write the earliest cheques. The SEC's small-business staff report published in January 2026 counts 17.9 billion dollars of angel investment in 2024, 3.1 percent lower than 2023, with 78 percent of angel deals going to first-time CEOs and 56 percent of angel deals in seed rounds. For a pre-seed founder, angels are often the most likely first yes.
Small and specialised seed funds are the other early population. The Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor shows the median US venture fund closed in 2026 at about 10 million dollars, and first-time funds raising only 4.9 billion dollars across 81 funds — so many seed managers are small, new, and selective about their few cheques.
Large multistage funds hold most of the capital. The same report describes capital concentrating in established managers, with mid-sized funds of 100 to 500 million dollars falling to about 10 percent of funds closed. These firms can lead any round but select very hard, and their interest at seed is often an option on the later rounds.
For placement agents raising for issuers, the populations are wider — family offices, strategic investors, private equity, other broker-dealers' networks — but the logic is the same: know which population a mandate belongs to before you ask any of them.
Record what determines fit
For each investor, five facts determine whether they could say yes.
Thesis: what they say they invest in, in their own words. Sector: the markets they cover. Stage: the rounds they lead or join. Geography: where they invest. Capacity: the range of cheque sizes they write and whether they have capital to deploy now. To these add one fact about you: how warm your access is — whether you, your investors or your network know someone there.
The deal-flow evidence explains why access belongs in the score. In the 2016 survey by Gompers and co-authors, over 30 percent of venture deals came through investors' professional networks, 20 percent through referrals from other investors and 8 percent from portfolio companies, while only about 10 percent arrived inbound from company management. A fit you cannot reach warmly is worth less than an equal fit you can.
Two disqualifiers are worth applying hard. If your entire round is smaller than an investor's minimum cheque, they cannot participate however well you fit. And if an investor has no stated thesis or sector you can match against, you cannot judge fit at all — research them or leave them off.
Rank, then work in tranches
With the facts recorded, ranking is arithmetic. Score each investor on how much of their thesis overlaps your themes, whether sector, stage and geography match, whether your raise fits their cheque range, and how warm your access is; sort; and read the reasons beside each score so the ranking can be argued with.
Then do not email the list. Release it in tranches. Take the top slice, find the right person at each firm, and work that slice until every firm in it has been approached or ruled out. Only then release the next. Tranches do three things. They put your best effort on your best fits while your story is freshest. They create a natural checkpoint: if the first tranche produces no meetings, the problem is the story or the list, and you have learned it without burning the rest. And they keep the process measurable, because each tranche is a cohort whose conversion you can compare.
Remember the funnel from Lesson 1.1: investors themselves consider roughly a hundred opportunities per deal they close. Your list needs to be large enough that a realistic conversion rate still produces a lead, and ordered well enough that the lead is likely to come from the top.
Keep the list honest over time
A ranking is a hypothesis about who will respond. Test it. After each tranche, compare who replied and who took meetings with how they were scored. If warm, mediocre fits are converting and cold, perfect fits are not, your weights are wrong for your situation — usually warmth deserves more weight than you gave it. If nobody in a sector converts, your thesis match may be reading the wrong words.
Two housekeeping rules. A firm that says no, or that should not be contacted about this round, should be marked so and stay marked, even when the list is re-ranked. And a firm with no named contact cannot be approached; it needs research to find the right person before it is useful, not an email to a generic address.
Rank investors against the round in the Deal Room
- 1
On /clients, the Network tab holds investors, issuers and broker-dealers. For each investor firm, record thesis, sectors, stages, geographies and cheque range. Firms with no thesis and no sectors are excluded from ranking, with the reason shown.
- 2
Give the round an investment profile
The ranking matches against the deal's investment profile — themes in your own words, sectors, stages, geographies and size. Analyze data room on the deal can extract it from your documents, or the agent can store one you write with set_deal_investment_profile.
- 3
Ask the agent to rank investors for the deal. rank_investors_for_deal scores every firm deterministically — by default thesis 30, sector 20, stage 15, geography 10, capacity 15, warmth 10 — rejects firms whose minimum cheque exceeds the whole raise, and returns each score with its reasons. list_investor_matches shows the stored ranking and how many named contacts you hold at each firm.
- 4
Release a tranche and dismiss the misfits
release_next_investor_batch puts the next tranche into the working set; update_investor_match_status marks a firm dismissed for this deal, and a dismissal survives re-ranking. After a few tranches, get_investor_match_calibration shows reply and meeting rates by score band and can propose a bounded weight change — nothing changes until an admin applies it.
Is the list any good?
- Ranked firms with a named contact
- Share of firms in the current tranche with at least one contact who has an email address.
- Healthy signal: Kavanah's suggestion: above 80% before release. A firm with no contact is a research task, not a prospect.
- Meeting rate by score band
- First meetings divided by firms approached, for the top, middle and bottom thirds of the ranking.
- Healthy signal: Higher at the top than the bottom. If not, the ranking is not predicting — revisit the weights.
- Tranche exhaustion time
- Days from releasing a tranche to every firm in it being approached or dismissed.
- Healthy signal: Short and steady. A tranche that never empties usually holds firms nobody can reach.
Key takeaways
- ·Know which investor population fits your round: angels, small seed funds or large multistage firms.
- ·Record thesis, sector, stage, geography, cheque range — and your warmth of access — for every investor.
- ·Rank by fit and access, read the reasons, and work the list in tranches from the top.
- ·Test the ranking against who actually responds, and keep dismissals durable.
Preparation ends where outreach begins. Module 4 runs the process: the introductions and messages that open conversations, the meetings that follow, the term sheet and the close.
Sources
- 1.How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?
Paul Gompers, William Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan, Ilya A. Strebulaev · NBER Working Paper 22587 · 2016
Deal-flow sources: 30%+ professional networks, 20% other investors, 8% portfolio companies, about 10% inbound from management; about 100 opportunities considered per deal closed.
- 2.Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor
PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association · PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, data as of September 30, 2026 · 2026
Median fund size of $10M, 81 first-time funds raising $4.9B, capital concentrating in established managers, mid-sized funds down to about 10% of funds closed.
- 3.Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation — Fiscal Year 2025 Staff Report
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · SEC staff report (January 8, 2026) · 2026
$17.9B of angel investment in 2024 (down 3.1% from 2023); 78% of angel deals to first-time CEOs; 56% of angel deals in seed rounds.