The Best Way to Build an Authentic Relationship
On building strong relationships with potential investors, co-founders, and future hires
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In VC’s Aren’t A Commodity, my top tip was to prioritize vibes when choosing an investor. However, it's challenging to do that in a pure fundraising context.
When pitching to VCs, the process can feel transactional and even combative. The transaction is clear: impress the VC and they give you money. The VC interrogates you about your business and can take an adversarial approach to doing so. Fundraising isn't usually pleasant, and I can empathise with founders who don't enjoy it.
But, it doesn't have to be this way.
Building relationships with an investor shouldn't feel transactional or like a chore. If it does, there's a good chance that post-investment, it'll feel the same way which is definitely something you don't want.
The same goes for potential co-founders and future hires as well. Selecting the right co-founder, or finding the right people to help build and grow your business is so incredibly important, that fostering a strong relationship over time is key.
Even though funding or partnering might be the end goal, it shouldn’t set the tone for the relationship.
What I mean by that is best explained by this anecdote that I read in Mario Gabriele's article about Traba.
Shebat’s (founder of Traba) outreach to Rabois, then at Founders Fund, proved much more productive. It also offers an example of what a good cold outreach strategy looks like. “I went to Keith’s Twitter,” Shebat said. “Top of funnel for any sale is, ‘Who is my customer?’ I saw that he’s really into Barry’s and I’m really into Barry’s too. So I reached out to him on LinkedIn and instead of being like, ‘Let’s get coffee’ – I’m sure he gets reached out to for coffee every day – I was like, ‘Let’s do a Barry’s class.’ And, of course, he would say yes because he goes every single day.”
After sweating through squats and bicep curls, Rabois and Shebat went to a coffee shop to talk. The then-Uber employee played the long game. “I never really mentioned Traba, I just talked broadly like, ‘Hey, what do you do for work?’ Just getting to know him better. I never really pitched Traba until like six months later.”
Over the following months, Shebat built a friendship with Rabois and broadened his venture network, attending industry events in Miami. “I was at the right place at the right time,” he said. “This was early 2021, Miami was open and a lot of venture capitalists and people were in Miami. That’s how I met Katherine Boyle (then an investor at General Catalyst, today a General Partner at a16z). Then I was invited to Peter Thiel’s house for dinner at some point. I got to know these people at a high level without really pitching.”
The best relationships are truly built upon shared experiences. That doesn't always need to look like playing sports or doing some adventurous activity together, but rather if you're able to bond over something else, you'll build a stronger foundation than kicking off a relationship predicated on something transactional.
With a fundraising lens, as a founder, you want to see how the investor reacts to different situations and stimuli. Are they calm and composed under pressure? Do they get frustrated easily when things don't go their way? Are they humble when they succeed? While none of these are directly related to being a good investor, they are some important traits to have as a good human.
The same goes for potential partners and colleagues. Getting people out of a room and somewhere different is always a good way to build a strong foundation for the relationship.
Another example of this, on a larger scale a few months ago, Mukesh Ambani threw a three-day pre-wedding celebration for his son Anant where he hired Rihanna to perform for the guests in attendance. I've written about the widespread and tech-focused nature of Ambani's Reliance Industries so it's no wonder that the guest list for the event included Zuck, Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai and Bob Iger to name a few.
Obviously, this was a very important personal event for the Ambani family, and Mukesh sought to share the experience with current and potential business partners. It serves as a good opportunity for the family and Reliance Industries to build better relationships with these people, but also for the attendees to build better relationships amongst themselves. We might need to wait a few months or even years to see what comes to fruition, but I wouldn't be surprised to see deals being done between Mukesh and any of the guests at his event.
Whilst it’s not necessarily the most scalable thing to throw a wedding every time you want to hire someone or raise a fresh round of capital, you can still apply the principle pretty easily with the following steps:
Actually, do your research on the person you’re looking to connect with and build a relationship with. What do they like or dislike? Who are they friends with? What content do they interact with?
Use the information above to slide into their DMs with a well-crafted cold message. For example, on my LinkedIn, I have a sketch of me playing tennis as my profile picture. I’ve had at least 20+ people comment on it, but only 2-3 have asked me whether I wanted to play tennis. Whilst I haven’t played tennis with everyone who has asked, I have caught up with them over a coffee or in some other form.
Continue fostering the relationship over time through whatever shared experience you have. For example, I met a founder back in 2021 over a Zoom call. Beyond just pitching and asking for advice, we ended up bonding over tennis. Since then we’ve played at least 50+ times and I’d consider him a really close friend now.
It’s one thing to make the first move and try something different, it’s even more important to keep the relationship going over time.
Before I end, I’ll leave you with another anecdote of a founder who sourced her first angel cheque by learning how to Kitesurf!
On a steamy May morning in 2013, Canva CEO Melanie Perkins found herself adrift on a kiteboard in the channel between billionaire Richard Branson’s private Necker and Moskito islands.
Her 30-foot sail floating deflated and useless beside her in the strong eastern Caribbean current, the 26-year-old entrepreneur waited for hours to be rescued. As she treaded water, her left leg scarred by a past collision with a coral reef, she reminded herself that her dangerous new hobby was worth it. After all, it was key to the fundraising strategy for the design-software startup she’d cofounded with her boyfriend six years before.
Canva was based in Australia, thousands of miles from tech’s Silicon Valley power corridor. Getting a meeting—much less funding—was proving tough. Perkins heard “no” from more than 100 investors. So when she met the organizer of a group of kitesurfing venture capitalists at a pitch competition in her native Perth, Perkins got to training. The next time the group met to hear startup pitches and potentially write crucial early-stage funding checks, she’d have a seat at the table—even if it meant having to brave treacherous waters.
“It was like, risk: serious damage; reward: start company,” Perkins says. “If you get your foot in the door just a tiny bit, you have to kind of wedge it all the way in.”
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Abhi