How to find investors for a startup: build your target list

A record 354 investors were active in Italian venture capital in 2025, according to Growth Capital and Italian Tech Alliance. Only a few of them will fit your company. Finding those few is a spreadsheet job before it’s an email job.

Here’s how to find investors for a startup without writing to the whole market. You’ll build a target list, see where to look in Italy, learn how to get a warm introduction, work out how many investors to contact and in what order, and set up a simple way to track them. We’ll also say why paying for an introduction is a mistake. If fundraising is new to you, our beginner’s map, from zero to a first round shows where this step sits.

How to find investors for a startup: start with a target list

Four columns do most of the work: stage, ticket size, sector and place. Open a blank spreadsheet, use them as headings, and keep a name only if it passes all four.

Stage and ticket size, the amount one investor puts in, come first. A pre-seed investor (the earliest outside money) and a Series A investor (usually the first large institutional round) are different people with different money. Members of Italian Angels for Growth put in €0.2 to 1.5 million per deal and want a prototype, early traction and a full-time founder. CDP Venture Capital’s accelerator fund quotes €70,000 to €200,000 for a pre-seed ticket. Italian Founders Fund writes first tickets of €250,000 to €3 million.

Need €40,000? Then angel groups are probably the wrong door. Small deals are getting rare: in the IBAN survey, 12% of Italian angel deals in 2025 were under €50,000, against 38% a year earlier. That’s what a friends-and-family round is for.

Sector and place come next. Read each fund’s portfolio for the last two years: a fund that already backs your direct competitor may have a conflict. And don’t stop at the Italian border, because every round above €20 million in 2025 had at least one foreign investor.

Forty to sixty names sounds like a lot. It isn’t, once you do the sum: Italian Angels for Growth examines about 100 proposals every two months and invests in 2% of them.

Where to look: sources for Italian founders

Public information comes first. A fund’s website, its portfolio pages (the companies it has backed) and its press releases show who invested in whom, and when. Crunchbase and Dealroom list investors and deals too. You may end up paying for one of them, but see how far the free sources take you first.

Source	Best for	How to use it
Angel groups: Italian Angels for Growth, Club degli Investitori	Rounds of €200,000 or more, with several angels joining	Both ask you to apply through Dealum. The Club showcases promising companies at monthly Investor Days. Read our guide to business angels in Italy first.
Individual angels and IBAN	Angels and clubs in your region	IBAN is a non-profit association that works with territorial angel networks, investor clubs and individual angels. Look for angels who have announced deals like yours.
CDP Venture Capital and its accelerators	Pre-seed and seed, with public money behind it	The Fondo Acceleratori backs 20 accelerators, with tickets of €70,000 to €200,000. Apply on each accelerator’s own site. How it works: CDP Venture Capital explained.
Italian venture funds: United Ventures, P101, Italian Founders Fund	Early-stage rounds led by a professional fund	Read the portfolio and the latest announcements. Find the partner who led a company like yours and write to that person. More in venture capital in Italy.
Founders in your target’s portfolio	A warm introduction and an honest read on the investor	Pick two founders per target. Ask for 15 minutes on what it’s like to work with the investor, then ask who they would introduce you to.
Equity crowdfunding platforms	Many small investors in one public campaign	Check that the platform is authorised, then compare selection, fees and past campaigns. Start with equity crowdfunding in Italy.
LinkedIn and cold email	Investors you have no path to	Short, specific, with one number. Follow our guide to the cold email to investors.

How do you get a warm introduction to an investor?

A warm introduction is a forward: someone the investor already trusts passes your pitch along with a line of recommendation on top. It matters because few deals start with the company getting in touch. In a survey of almost 900 venture capitalists, the average firm screened 200 companies and made four investments a year, and only 10% of its deals came inbound from company management.

An introduction gets you read. It doesn’t get you funded. And whoever forwards you is spending a bit of their own credibility, so keep the favour small:

• The best connector is a founder the investor has already backed. An acquaintance who ‘knows someone’ isn’t one.
• Do the writing for them. Three to five lines they can forward untouched: your one-liner, a number an investor can check, the reason you picked this investor, and an ask small enough to say yes to (20 minutes).
• Close the loop afterwards. A two-line thank-you with the outcome (a meeting, a pass, silence) makes the next favour easier to ask for.

No path to a name on your list? Don’t wait for one. Write the cold email and move on to the next row.

How many investors should you contact, and in what order?

In waves, not in one mass mailing. This is our rule of thumb, not a published benchmark.

1. Practice (5 to 8 conversations): talk to investors and experienced angels who fit your profile but aren’t your first choice. Write down every question they ask and fix the deck before the next call.
2. Second choices: 15 to 20 names. Write once the pitch has survived the practice round.
3. First choices (10 to 15 names): these wait until you have something to quote (customers, revenue, a signed pilot) and, ideally, one investor who is already interested.

Two or three weeks between waves is about right. You need time to learn something from the replies, but not so long that the round starts to drag. Twenty first conversations and not one second meeting? Stop writing emails and look at the pitch, not at the list.

Look for a lead early. Group deals are the norm: in the IBAN survey, 81% of Italian angel deals in 2025 were syndicated, which means several angels invested together, six per deal on average. Usually one of them takes charge, negotiating the terms and bringing the others along. That’s the lead investor. At the end of a first meeting, ‘Who do you usually invest alongside?’ is a fair question.

How do you track investors in a simple CRM?

A CRM sounds grand, but it’s only a table that remembers for you, and a spreadsheet is enough. One investor, one row. Start the columns with the fund and the partner, then the fit (stage, ticket, sector). Add how you got to them (warm, through whom, or cold) and the dates of your first and last contact. The last columns are the next step with a date, the status, and a notes field for everything else.

Keep the statuses boring. An investor is a target until you write, contacted until you meet, then in a meeting. If they start checking your numbers and papers, that’s diligence. The last two statuses are the answers: passed or in.

A tracker only helps if you keep two habits, and neither needs software. Every row gets a next step and a date, so nothing sits there going cold. And every no gets a reason, written down. After ten of them you’ll see a pattern: wrong stage, wrong ticket, thin traction. Fix it before the next wave. An investor who says ‘come back when you have X’ goes on a separate list, and when X happens you send a short investor update.

Why you should never pay for an introduction

Sooner or later someone will offer you ‘access to a network of investors’ for a retainer or a percentage of what you raise. Say no.

The first reason is legal. EU rules say that persons who provide investment services should be subject to authorisation by their home Member State, to protect investors and the stability of the financial system (MiFID II). Being paid to bring investors to a share offering can drift into those services. Whether a particular arrangement does depends on what the person actually does, and that’s a question for a lawyer, before you sign anything. A legitimate intermediary can show you its authorisation.

The second reason is practical. Investors respond to evidence and to people they trust, and a paid middleman supplies neither. Be wary, too, of anyone who asks for money before an investor has even seen your deck.

Paying a lawyer, an accountant or good software is fine. Later on, some companies hire an authorised adviser to run a round, which is a different thing from buying an introduction. At Adaxit we sit on the preparation side of the table: the deck, the financial model, the data room. Introducing founders to investors isn’t part of the job, and we aren’t a financial intermediary.

Your checklist for a first investor list

1. Open a sheet called ‘Investors’ and head four columns: stage, ticket size, sector, place.
2. Collect 40 to 60 investors from fund websites, portfolio pages and the sources in the table above.
3. Test each name: invested at your stage in the last two years? No direct competitor in the portfolio? A partner you can name?
4. Mark each name A or B, and don’t write to an A until you’ve looked for a warm path.
5. Could your connector forward your message as it is? It needs a one-liner, one number and one ask.
6. Give every row a next step and a date, even if the step is only ‘wait for a reply’.
7. Plan three waves and a review date. And if an intermediary ever puts an agreement in front of you, a lawyer reads it before you sign.

Next on the map: how to raise capital for a startup in Italy puts every source side by side. Before you write to anyone, what investors look for in a first-time founder is worth a read.

This article is general information, not legal or financial advice. Rules on investment services are complex and change: ask a lawyer before you sign an agreement with an intermediary or agree to pay for an introduction.