It’s fairly obvious but worth stating: the more interest in your company, the less time you have to spend fundraising.

Some companies close rounds in weeks, some don’t even make a pitch deck. The companies that do this are almost always ones that understand investor psychology.

There are a few levers you can pull to do this.

For example, FOMO or fear of missing out, is a powerful one that you can use. Some investors lose sleep on the thought of missing the next unicorn. This makes them susceptible to the fallacy of herd mentality — when people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviours on a largely emotional basis.

For VC’s this happens when all other VC’s seem to be interested in a start-up. It is often easier to rely on the crowd than form a view based off first principles.

How can you leverage this ethically?

Get other investors to make introductions for you. Try and get prominent angel investors on your cap table and finally be confident. Investors have a 6th sense for when a founder is despondent because there is not much investor interest.

Create FOMO.