Lines, Not Dots — a 🏷️#principle popularized by 📝Mark Suster — asserts that investors will more readily invest in founders, teams, and organizations who have shown trajectory — perceived as lines— than those whom they've just met and have no personal point of reference — the dots.
Suster advises entrepreneurs to develop relationships with investors in advance of proposing any funding commitment. He draws comparisons to personal relationships suggesting founders date before they get married, as Vegas weddings rarely work out.
Meet your potential investors early. Tell them you’re not raising money yet but that you will be soon. Tell them you like them — articulating why without use of 📝superlatives — and that you want them to have an early view; which is what all investors want. Lower the bar by telling them things like, “we haven’t shipped product yet, we still have lots of decisions still to make, but we’d like to show you our prototype." If you’re more advanced show what you have and what your roadmap looks like.
This principle was first shared with me by 📝Max Baumann who developed his launch blueprint for 📝Bear Squeeze around this principle; cultivating relationships that resulted in an oversubscribed Seed round with his ideal partners and a 721% funded crowdfunding campaign.