How to attract your ideal investors

*TEXT*

ClearlySo's new chief financial officer, Claire Braithwaite, says social entrepreneurs should bank on self-belief

Pitching for investment can be both daunting and exciting for a social entrepreneur. You have invested passion, sweat and tears into building a business that you are proud of. But can you now convince others to invest their cash into it?

Having just joined ClearlySo, I'm now in an organisation that supports social entrepreneurs to find that injection of investment – and, as a social entrepreneur myself, I know how hard it can be.

There are all sorts of things I have learnt about pitching for investment, from ensuring you have a strong financial proposition to being clear about your elevator pitch. You should use all the resources you can in the lead up to a pitch, whether that's the Guardian's tips, your network of contacts, or even free social enterprise events. However, the biggest issues at play are here are selling your own belief in your social business, and choosing the right investors.

I started LoveLula.com with my own savings; investors like that. It shows that you believe in what you are doing enough to put your own money behind it, that you are willing to take a very personal risk. I bootstrapped for years before I was ready to look outside for money to grow. That won't be the right approach for every business, but knowing when not to pitch is just as important as knowing when to go for it.

It was not just about being investment-ready as a business, but also about pinning down the values and mission of my company so that I knew what kind of investor would be aligned with my vision. My experience of involving investors showed just how important it is that they are the right investors for you. You might convince someone to invest in your company with your brilliant pitch, but that doesn't mean they are the right person to do it.

For social entrepreneurs particularly, you need to choose your investors as much as they need to choose you. You don't want someone who will lead your business away from its key mission, from the social as well as business impact you want to have. This is a chance to ask questions, to find out about their motivations, values and principles – and see how they can help.

Good investors expect a conversation – if you aren't using the pitch as a chance to get to know your potential investors, you're doing it wrong. Both parties need to want this to work, which means you must sell your social mission.

This is a chance for you to establish a relationship with investors, ensuring they understand your vision and the reason behind what you are doing. They are investing in you personally as much as they are in your product – and if you are giving up equity in your business, you need to know it's in safe hands.

Social entrepreneur Claire Braithwaite founded LoveLula.com and has recently been appointed chief financial officer of ClearlySo.

***End OF TEXT***

Personal Reflection:

I think this is a particularly interesting article on how social entrepreneurs should attract the right kind of investors to their social enterprise.

We have learned in our speech communication modules on coming up with an effective elevator speech, business proposal and how to attract investors. The main thing I have learned from these modules is to sell our ideas and get investors to invest in our project or business. But, I did not realize the importance of getting the "right" investors to invest in our projects or businesses. The main point is that we often are to keen to get the money we needed to start our business but we ended up neglecting whether the objectives of the investors is in line with the purpose of starting our social enterprise or business.

This article gives us a good inside on how we should attract the ideal investors. The author also mentioned how we should not be blinded by the fact of getting investors to invest in our social enterprises or businesses but instead should focus on finding the investors that have the same principles, or objectives as us so that it is more likely that the business or social enterprise will succeed and will stick to its mission.

However I would also like to take note of the fact that the author mentioned "ideal" investors because in real life, the chances of even attracting investors let alone an investor with the same vision as us is near zero. I think it is up to us or social entrepreneurs who are pitching to investors to let them know about their vision and objectives and also stay true to its mission and not be blinded by money.

Braithwaite, C. (2014). How to attract your ideal investors. Retrieved January 29, 2014 from http://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2014/jan/29/how-to-pitch-for-social-investment