Some years ago I attended a talk series about fundraising, and there were a lot of interesting topics covered, like financing types, valuations, how to handle m

Some years ago I attended a talk series about fundraising, and there were a lot of interesting topics covered, like financing types, valuations, how to handle meetings, how to negotiate, etc. When it came time for questions, I asked what probably sounded like an absolutely stupid question: "this has all been great advice, but how do I actually meet an investor in the first place?" The answer? "Use your network". Coming from an engineering background, I really had no idea that fundraising required networking. I naively thought fundraising would be more like working with a bank. Like you walk into a clearly marked building and set an appointment, to get your arbitrary company funded. In reality, there are all these different VC types that fund different company types and stages, finding who VCs are is tricky (Crunchbase is your friend), and VC websites often don't have contact info (of course it would be useless anyway; you have to use your network). It's like a whole secret society nobody knows about. After some years, I have a larger network, and can get meetings with most VCs. But holy moly that was not intuitive at all.