We’ll be using AI to refine our fundraising, take over outreach and speed up pitching so we both have a higher chance of getting funding and can talk to more funders.

This process will be applicable whether you are raising cash for your side hustle, property investment, startup or even charity.

The basic steps will be the same - we’ll just be tweaking the details so as to fit your particular fundraising needs.

The plan for the week is

Part 1: Nailing our funding requirements

Part 2: Writing a one pager

Part 3: Building a funding list

Part 4: Reaching out to funders

Part 5: Killer pitch decks

Prefer to watch?

Let’s get started:

Nailing our funding requirements

How much cash and what you need it for determines how we raise it.

Different funding sources play in different investment ranges.

Very broadly we have

• Friends and family (<$50k)

• Angels ($25k-50k)

• Accelerators / Incubators ($10k-100k)

• Crowdfunding ($10k-100k)

• VCs ($500k+, median deal in the millions)

• Banks (varies)

• Corporate Investors (varies, but high)

• Government / charity grants and loans (varies)

These are massive generalisations and will depend on both your niche and your geography. What’s important is that you know there are different levels of funding available and its important you aim at the right level.

If you approach a VC asking for just $10k you’ll be laughed out of the building. Or more likely ignored!

Let’s use a prompt to work out what sort of funding requirements we have.

If you run a charity adjust this accordingly - switch “business” to “charity” and any other relevant adjustments.

Act as a fundraising strategist for my business.

Ask me a series of question and then provide recommendations. Ask each question one at a time, collect my answer and move to the next question. 

1. What is your business and what's the primary business model?
2. What country do you primarily operate in? 
3. What's your business' annual revenue?
4. What do you need to raise funds for? What's the primary usage? 
5. How much do you think you need to raise and why?

Use the information provided to 
i) suggest what funding sources should be considered. Keep in mind the amount required and use this to exclude certain sources of funding that I fall outside of.
ii) challenge and provide suggestions for the amount requested - both the amount and usage. Ask user to clarify requirements based on suggestions

This prompt will guide you through a quick process and spit out some potetial funding sources like so:

In this particular example I asked for just $15,000 funding.

As such you’ll notice options like VCs have been excluded and instead smaller funding sources like micro-loans, small business grants and bootstrapping are suggested instead.

The prompt will also provide some pushback and ask for clarifications based on the information provided:

Use these pushbacks to refine your potential funding sources. For example here the pushback is actually suggesting not raising cash! That’s a perfectly valid option if you are already generating revenue and can bootstrap.

For now the main outcome you want is a list of potential funding sources - we’ll use this in the next Part to start researching potential funders.

Premium Prompt - Ranking Up

Rank each of the funding options on Speed, Ease, Risk, Retention of Business Control. 

Then use the rankings to order the funding methods from most to least attractive.

Return results in tabular format. 

Pulling it together

Next up we’re going to convert our funding requirements into a one pager before moving onto researching the people we need to be talking to to raise some cash.

A reminder of what we’ll be covering this week

Part 1: Nailing our funding requirements

Part 2: Writing a one pager

Part 3: Building a funding list

Part 4: Reaching out to funders

Part 5: Killer pitch decks

Until then, keep PROMPTING!

Kyle