Once we have our broad categorization of investors, it’s time to dig into each prospect and determine how they might fit our specific deal.

We’re looking for a handful of key criteria matches:

• Similar Investments. Have they invested in our industry?
• Relevant Experience. Have they worked in our industry?
• Connections. Who do we know in common?

We’ll go beyond that and look for common interests and even recent activity on social networks that may indicate it’s a good time to make the connection.

Our research is the difference between getting quality connections and just carpet bombing emails with zero results.