Undock members leverage our super calendar to take more control of their time. And entrepreneurs are one member cohort for whom time management is very important, in particular when it comes to fundraising. Our team has invested in that community since our inception, hosting events including a pitch practice workshop with our investors and a recent collaboration with IFundWomen on “Mastering the Cold Call.”

Global venture capital funding totaled $312bn in 2020 and hit an all-time monthly high in January with a total of $39.9bn. Despite these frothy figures, however, less than 1 percent of all startups benefit and a larger proportion of dollars is going to late stage venture capital. That means early stage founders should be especially adept at running a thoughtful and professional process.

Some fundraising best practices that we’ve shared include

1. Develop your personal brand and know your story, your market and your numbers
2. Identify a platform to organize your research and track outreach, i.e. Airtable, Notion
3. Find investors in your space via Angelist, Crunchbase, Signal.nfx.com and Fundboard.co
4. Ask your personal network for introductions and continue to build community
5. Respect people’s time by drafting a concise, data-driven cold intro or forwardable
   

As the above tips suggest, effective networking is integral to a successful fundraise. Whether it entails building relationships to garner a warm intro or conducting cold investor outreach, Undock has you covered. And we can speak from experience, as we raised our seed by using Undock exclusively to manage meetings with investors.

How we used Undock to streamline our fundraise

1. Created a team booking page for investors at our accelerator (ERA) demo day. Investors could access an Undock link that showed common availability across our co-founders’ calendars
2. Established weekly preferences for investor calls and never thought about the schedule thereafter. Were able to trust the meeting recommendations provided and didn’t overload our calendars
3. Avoided double-booking any of our 100+ investor meetings because Undock pulls proposed times out of availability
4. Bypassed scheduling confusion that can typically occur when coordinating with people in different time zones
5. Optimized cold outreach with a succinct pitch message and proposed meeting times that recipient could confirm directly in the body of the email

Naturally, these benefits extend beyond the fundraise and into other operational areas of your business, having use cases in everything from product management to partnerships communications. So, whether you are pursuing outside capital or building organically, the Undock calendar should be among your business applications. Don’t believe us? Try our beta for free and start shaving hours off of your work week.