Finding investors
How to find angel investors: where they are and how to reach them
Where to find angel investors, how to approach them, and how to keep 30 conversations straight. A step-by-step guide for founders raising a first round.
What is an angel investor?
An angel investor is an individual who invests their own money in an early-stage company, usually in exchange for equity or a convertible instrument, and usually before any fund would.
The word that matters is own. A venture fund invests other people's money under a mandate. An angel writes a personal cheque, decides alone, and can say yes on a Tuesday because they liked you on the Monday. That single fact explains almost everything about how you find them and how they behave once they are in.
The cheques are small by fund standards. Across 2026 benchmarks, most individual angels invest between $25,000 and $50,000 per company, with a wider range of $10,000 to $100,000. So-called super angels and angel syndicates go higher, typically $100,000 to $1,000,000, while a member joining through a syndicate can come in for as little as $5,000. In Europe the same shape holds in euros and pounds, with the median a little lower outside London.
In the United States an angel must normally qualify as an accredited investor: a net worth above $1 million excluding their home, or income above $200,000 a year ($300,000 with a spouse). That rule is why US angel platforms ask for proof of accreditation. The UK and most EU countries have no equivalent income test for private company shares, which widens the pool considerably and is one reason European angel networks matter more than European angel directories.
Angels are the natural first outside money for a company at the pre-seed stage, and often the only money at all before there is revenue. The angel investor entry in our startup dictionary has the short version if you need it for a deck.
Angel investors vs VCs, and which one you need first
If you are pre-revenue, or pre-product, you almost certainly need angels first. Seed funds have moved later over the past decade and most now want a working product and early customers. Angels fill the gap they left.
| Question | An angel | A seed fund |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cheque | $10,000 to $100,000, most often $25,000 to $50,000 | $500,000 to several million |
| Whose money | Their own | Limited partners, with a mandate to answer to |
| Who decides | One person, often in one meeting | A partnership, usually over several weeks |
| What convinces them | You, the problem, and whether they would enjoy helping | Market size, traction and a path to a fund-returning outcome |
| How many you need | Ten to forty for a round | One lead, perhaps one or two more |
| After the wire | Introductions, advice, and usually a follow-on if things go well | Board seat or observer, reporting, reserves for later rounds |
The two are not rivals. A well-run angel round is what gets you to the traction a fund wants to see, and the angels who back you now are the people who introduce you to that fund later. Our guide to angel investors vs VCs goes deeper on when each one fits. The rest of this article assumes you have decided on angels and want to know where they are.
How many angels does your round actually need?
Do this arithmetic before you send a single email, because it decides how the whole raise is organised.
Say you want EUR 500,000. At an average cheque of EUR 25,000 that is 20 committed angels. Some will write EUR 50,000 and one might write EUR 100,000, but others will come in at EUR 10,000, so 20 is a fair planning number. Now work backwards. If one in five serious conversations turns into a cheque, and that is a good ratio, you need 100 conversations. At a normal reply rate to a well-targeted approach, that is 200 to 300 names on the list before you start.
Two consequences follow. The first is that a list of 30 angels is not a list, it is a warm-up. Build it properly using the method in our guide to building your investor list. The second is that an angel round is a volume job. Three VC conversations fit in your head. A hundred angel conversations, each at a different stage with a different amount and a different next step, do not. That is the problem the second half of this article is about.
One more number to settle early: who leads. Angels rarely price a round themselves. Most will commit once someone credible has set the terms, so your first job is often to find one lead investor, whether that is a super angel, a small fund, or a syndicate, and let the other 19 follow.
Where to find angel investors: nine routes that work
These are ordered by how often they produce a cheque, not by how easy they are. The easy ones are at the bottom, and they work best once the hard ones have given you a story to tell.
1. Warm introductions from people who already trust you
Still the route with the highest hit rate, by a distance. Your lawyer, your accountant, your first customers, former bosses, university contacts, and any founder you know who has raised. Ask each one a specific question: do you know anyone who has invested personally in a company at my stage? The word personally filters out the fund contacts you do not need yet. Our guide to warm introductions to investors covers how to ask so that the introducer actually sends the email.
2. Operator angels who used to have your job
The most underused source. Senior people at the companies your product serves, or at companies that solved your problem five years ago, are often angels and are almost always reachable. They understand the problem without a deck, they invest partly to stay close to it, and they bring the customer introductions that make the next angel say yes. Search for the role rather than the person: former heads of the function you sell into, at companies that have exited.
3. Founders in your sector who have already raised
Founders who closed a round in the last two years know exactly which angels write cheques in your sector, which ones are pleasant to have on the cap table, and which ones take four meetings to say no. Most will tell you if you ask, because someone did it for them. Their angels are also the ones most likely to invest in you, since they have already backed the thesis once.
4. Angel networks and syndicates
An angel network is a membership organisation that pools individual angels behind one screening process, so founders pitch once to many investors who then decide individually.
An angel syndicate is a group of angels who invest together under one lead, usually through a single vehicle, so the company gets one line on the cap table instead of twenty.
Networks are the closest thing to a front door. Most run a monthly screening, a pitch event, and a due diligence group, and a company that gets through typically raises from several members at once. In Europe the umbrella body is EBAN in Brussels, whose members include the national associations such as UKBAA in the UK, BAND in Germany, BANN in the Netherlands, France Angels and DanBAN in Denmark. In the US, the Angel Capital Association plays the same role. Syndicates, whether on AngelList in the US or run privately by a well-known angel, let smaller cheques ride behind one lead, which solves the cap table problem before it starts. If you are a network yourself, Pitchroom's page for business angel networks describes the syndicate side of the platform.
5. Investor databases and platforms
Databases do not replace the routes above, but they are how a list of 30 names becomes 300. AngelList, OpenVC, Angel Investment Network, Angel Match and Crunchbase all list angels, with different depth and different pricing. The useful filter is not sector, it is evidence of recent activity: an angel who made three investments last year is worth ten who list themselves as open to opportunities.
Pitchroom's investor database holds more than 20,000 VCs, business angels, family offices and corporate investors, filterable by stage, sector, geography and check size, with portfolio history and thesis on each profile. Smart Match scores the whole database against your company profile and returns up to 15 ranked matches, each with a fit score from 0 to 100, one reason it fits, and one thing to check before you reach out. We build it, so weigh that accordingly, and compare it with the others on the same activity test.
6. Accelerators and demo days
An accelerator gives you two things angels value: a filter someone else applied, and a date. Demo day puts you in front of a room that has come specifically to write cheques, and the programme's own angel network usually invests in a share of each cohort. The trade is equity, so read the terms as carefully as you would read any other investor's.
7. Pitch competitions and sector events
Competitions rarely fund a round, but the judges are often angels and the audience always includes some. Go for the sector-specific ones, where the people in the room understand your problem, rather than the general startup events where they do not. One sector conference a quarter, worked properly, beats ten meetups.
8. LinkedIn and X, used properly
Cold messages to angels on LinkedIn work about as well as cold messages anywhere, which is to say rarely. What works is the reverse: post about the problem you are solving, in specific and useful terms, for three months, and let the angels who care about that problem find you. Many active angels say they have no website and no inbox for founders; the ones who invest in you will have been reading you first.
9. Equity crowdfunding as an angel magnet
Platforms like Seedrs and Crowdcube in the UK, or Republic in the US, are usually thought of as a way to raise from the crowd. In practice a live campaign with early traction is also one of the better ways to be found by angels, who watch these platforms for exactly that signal and then invest directly, often on better terms for you. Treat the campaign as visibility with a cheque attached, not as the whole round.
Key facts
- Most angel cheques are $25,000 to $50,000. Super angels and syndicates write $100,000 to $1,000,000, and syndicate members often join from $5,000.
- A EUR 500,000 round at an average cheque of EUR 25,000 needs around 20 committed angels, which usually means 80 to 120 conversations.
- Warm introductions, operator angels, and founders who have already raised in your sector convert far better than any directory.
- Angel networks pool individual angels behind one screening process. EBAN, the European umbrella, counts around 100 member organisations across 50 countries.
- In the US an angel must usually be an accredited investor: $1 million net worth outside the primary home, or $200,000 annual income. The UK and most of the EU have no equivalent gate.
- UK angels get 50 percent income tax relief under SEIS and 30 percent under EIS, which is why UK founders arrange advance assurance before they start pitching.
- Pitchroom holds more than 20,000 VCs, business angels, family offices and corporate investors, filterable by stage, sector, geography and check size.
How to get angel investors to say yes
Knowing how to get angel investors to commit is mostly knowing what they are actually deciding. A fund is deciding whether you can return the fund. An angel is deciding whether they want to spend the next five years occasionally helping you, and whether they believe you will still be standing in two. The evidence for that is you, far more than your market slide.
Angels weigh four things a fund often does not:
- Whether they like and trust the founder. Angels back people they would enjoy a call with. Warm introductions work because the introducer has already answered this question.
- Whether they understand the problem from their own life. This is why operator angels convert. If you have to explain the problem, you are at the wrong angel.
- Whether the cheque is one they can decide alone. Ask for an amount inside their normal range. An angel who writes EUR 25,000 cheques does not need to be asked for EUR 100,000.
- Whether other credible people are in. Social proof is the whole mechanism of an angel round. Your first two names are the hardest and the next eighteen are easier than you fear.
The approach itself is simple and most founders get it wrong by making it complicated. One short email, personalised with the actual reason you chose them, a two-line description of the company, one number that proves it is real, and a specific ask: a 20-minute call this week or next. The full structure is in our guides to the pitch email and to cold outreach to investors, and understanding what investors look for covers the evaluation side.
Send the deck as a tracked link rather than an attachment. When you share through Pitchroom deck sharing you see who opened it, how long they spent on each slide, and whether they came back, which tells you which of your 100 conversations to spend Thursday on. We wrote a separate guide to pitch deck analytics on what each of those signals is worth.
The ask has to be specific
Angels say no to vague. Tell them the round size, the instrument, the lead if you have one, how much is already committed, and what you want from them. A founder who says they are raising EUR 500,000 on a SAFE, EUR 180,000 committed, and would like EUR 25,000 from this angel, gets a decision. A founder who says they are exploring options gets a coffee.
Check the angel before they check you
An angel on your cap table is there for the life of the company. A bad one costs more than their cheque was worth. Before you accept money, ask about four things.
- Proof they have done it before. Ask which companies they have invested in and speak to one or two of those founders. An angel with no portfolio is not necessarily a problem, but an angel who will not name any is.
- How they behave after the wire. The founders you call will tell you whether the angel makes introductions or makes demands.
- Whether they follow on. Some angels write one cheque and stop. Others reserve for the next round. Knowing which you have changes your planning.
- Whether the money is actually there. Angels occasionally commit money they intend to have. A simple question about timing usually surfaces this.
For an investor with a public track record, Pitchroom's Reverse Due Diligence produces a sourced report with a verdict of worth applying, conditional or poor fit and a fit score across stage, geography, sector, ticket size and thesis. Where a number is not in the research, the report says it is unknown rather than inventing one. The same discipline applies the other way when they reach due diligence on you.
How to keep track of 30 angel conversations
This is the half of the job that the guides to finding angels leave out, and it is where most angel rounds quietly fall apart. Thirty cheques of EUR 15,000 involve more people, more follow-ups and more loose ends than three cheques of EUR 150,000, and the founder is doing all of it while also running the company. The record-keeping is not an admin task next to the raise. In an angel round, it is the raise.
Here is how that job works on Pitchroom, in the order you will meet it.
Step 1: One record per angel, with everything you know about them
Each investor has a record that holds per-investor notes, tasks with due dates, the full contact history and follow-up scheduling, so nothing falls through the cracks months into a round. Tag them the way you actually think about them, with labels like Tier 1, Strategic or Warm Intro, and mark who on your team is leading the relationship so two of you do not chase the same angel. Investors who view your deck are added to your contacts automatically, which matters more than it sounds when a deck gets forwarded.
Step 2: Where each one stands
Every angel sits at one of six stages on a drag-and-drop board: Identified, Contacted, Meeting, Diligence, Committed and Passed. With 30 people in play, the board is the only honest answer to the question of how the round is going. Our guide to running an investor CRM without a spreadsheet explains each stage and why the sixth one is kept rather than deleted.
Step 3: Rating them, with three numbers kept apart
The first is the probability you set on each card, your own read after the last conversation. The second is Funding Chance, an engagement-weighted probability the platform derives from deck views, time per slide and return visits, which updates as engagement changes without you touching it. The third is the Smart Match fit score from 0 to 100 that ranked them before you ever wrote. Keep all three visible. An angel who read the deck three times this week outranks an angel who said nice things at a dinner a month ago, and only the second number knows that.
Step 4: The round itself
Set the terms once: instrument, whether a SAFE, a convertible note or priced equity, plus target, currency, stage, hard cap, lead investor, close dates and use of funds. Mark your lead so the most important relationship stays visible. Then let the amounts on each card roll up into the live funding header: progress, remaining, indicated and a probability-weighted percentage. In an angel round the difference between indicated and committed is the difference between a round that is closing and a round that feels like it is. Read the weighted figure, not the top line. Each raise is its own room with its own terms and pipeline, and the fundraising round page shows the whole thing.
Step 5: Sending updates so a not-yet stays warm
Angels who pass in month one very often commit in month six, and the thing that brings them back is a short, regular update that shows the numbers moving. Draft and publish updates to the investors in the round from inside it, so warm leads stay warm between meetings and the pipeline never goes quiet. The AI can draft the update from your KPIs and pipeline, and it never sends anything: every outbound action needs your click. A monthly update with one chart and three sentences beats a quarterly essay.
Step 6: After a no
Log the reason, schedule a re-approach on that angel's cadence, and watch the objections across the whole pipeline. Five angels saying you are too early is not five rejections, it is one thing to fix before the next twenty conversations. When an angel moves to diligence, open a data room rather than sharing a folder, so you can see who read what and revoke access when a conversation ends.
What this costs you in time
Adding an angel, logging a call and moving a card takes about a minute. The alternative, reconstructing the state of 30 conversations from your inbox before each week begins, takes a morning and is wrong by Wednesday.
Finding angel investors in Europe
Most guides to finding angel investors are written for the US, where the accredited investor rule shapes everything. Europe works differently in three ways that change how you search.
Tax relief decides whether a UK angel says yes
In the UK, the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) gives an angel 50 percent income tax relief on up to GBP 200,000 invested per tax year, against a lifetime limit of GBP 250,000 that a company can raise under the scheme. The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) gives 30 percent relief on up to GBP 1 million a year, or GBP 2 million where at least GBP 1 million goes into knowledge-intensive companies. From 6 April 2026 a company can raise up to GBP 24 million under EIS over its life, or GBP 40 million if knowledge-intensive. Both schemes require a three-year hold and cap the investor at a 30 percent stake.
The practical consequence is that many UK angels will not take a meeting until you have SEIS or EIS advance assurance from HMRC. Get it before you start pitching, and put it in the first line of the email. It is the single most effective thing a UK founder can do to raise the reply rate.
Networks matter more than directories
Because there is no accreditation gate, Europe's angel activity runs through networks rather than platforms. EBAN, founded in Brussels in 1999, is the umbrella for around 100 member organisations across 50 countries. UKBAA, the UK association, represents more than 160 member organisations and about 18,000 investors who put in roughly GBP 1.5 billion a year. Germany has BAND, the Netherlands has BANN, France has France Angels, Denmark has DanBAN, and Austria runs a national matching service through aws i2. Each national body lists its member networks, and each member network has a screening process you can apply to. Start with the one in your own country, then the one in the country where your first customers are.
Instruments and data rules
The US-style SAFE is common in the UK and increasingly in the Nordics, but many continental angels still expect a convertible note or a priced round, and some national tax reliefs only apply to shares. Read our guide to term sheets and the term sheet entry before you propose an instrument to a German angel that only works in Delaware.
Lastly, a European founder emailing European angels is processing personal data under the GDPR. Pitchroom is an EU-native fundraising platform for startup founders: GDPR compliant, hosted in the EU, with data encrypted in transit and at rest, and outreach sent from your own Gmail or Outlook address only when you choose to send it. For a raise that lives in a spreadsheet and a US mail tool, that is not a marketing point, it is a compliance gap.
What it costs
The fundraising CRM, the pipeline and unlimited investors of your own are on every Pitchroom plan, including the Free plan at EUR 0 with no credit card, no trial and no expiry. Free also covers pitch deck sharing with open and engagement tracking, and your whole team.
The Startup plan at EUR 25 per month, or EUR 20 per month billed annually, adds the investor database at 15 leads per week, AI investor search including Smart Match, outreach campaigns, data rooms, advanced analytics and real-time notifications. The Scaleup plan at EUR 100 per month, or EUR 80 billed annually, adds 50 leads per week, multiple fundraising rounds, custom pipeline stages and AI-assisted outreach.
Pricing is per company rather than per seat, so adding a co-founder or an advisor to the round costs nothing. Full details are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
What is an angel investor?
An angel investor is an individual who invests their own money in an early-stage company, usually for equity or a convertible instrument, and usually before any fund would. Most write cheques of $25,000 to $50,000; super angels and syndicates go up to $1 million. In the US they normally have to be accredited investors. The UK and most of the EU have no equivalent test.
Where do I find angel investors?
Through people first: warm introductions from your lawyer, accountant, customers and former colleagues, operator angels who used to hold the job you sell to, and founders in your sector who raised recently. Then angel networks and syndicates, investor databases such as AngelList, OpenVC or Pitchroom, accelerators, sector events and equity crowdfunding. Directories widen the list; people close the cheques.
How do I get angel investors to invest?
Ask for a specific amount inside their normal range, give them one number that proves the company is real, and make it easy to decide in one call. Angels back founders they trust and problems they recognise, so target people who have lived the problem. Get two credible names in first; the next eighteen follow social proof far more than they follow a market slide.
How much do angel investors invest?
Most individual angels invest $25,000 to $50,000 per company, within a wider range of $10,000 to $100,000. Super angels and syndicates typically invest $100,000 to $1 million, and a member joining through a syndicate can come in from around $5,000. Cheque sizes are higher in Silicon Valley and New York and a little lower in most European cities.
How much equity do angel investors take?
An angel round as a whole usually sells 10 to 25 percent of the company, split between the angels in proportion to their cheques. An individual angel putting EUR 25,000 into a EUR 500,000 round at a EUR 2.5 million pre-money valuation ends up with about 0.8 percent. Under UK SEIS and EIS no single investor may hold more than 30 percent.
Do angel investors have to be accredited?
In the United States, usually yes: an accredited investor has a net worth above $1 million excluding their home, or income above $200,000 a year, $300,000 with a spouse. The UK and most EU countries have no equivalent income test for buying shares in a private company, which is why European angel activity runs through networks rather than platforms that check accreditation.
How long does it take to raise an angel round?
Plan for three to six months from first email to final wire. A EUR 500,000 round at EUR 25,000 average cheques means around 20 commitments, which usually means 80 to 120 conversations, and angels decide fast individually but arrive one at a time. Rounds close faster once a lead has set terms and the first few names are in, which is why the first month is the slowest.
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Written by Pitchroom
Pitchroom is a fundraising platform for startup founders, built and hosted in the EU. Deck sharing with page-by-page analytics, data rooms, an investor database and a fundraising pipeline in one workspace.