A 19-year-old intern is struggling with ineffective outreach to family offices for fundraising for a $40M deep-tech fund. Despite sending over 200 emails, the response rate is extremely low, with only 2-3 replies, none of which resulted in successful fundraising. This highlights a significant pain point in reaching and engaging potential investors through traditional cold outreach methods.
Pain Points
- Low response rate from family offices
- Difficulty in identifying the right target audience
- Ineffective cold outreach methods
- Lack of warm introductions or network
- Challenges in engaging high-net-worth individuals (HNIs)
Hey everyone, some of you might remember my post about the random coffee shop meeting that turned into a freelance fundraising gig. still on it, just hit a wall and need some perspective. quick context for new people i'm 19, doing an IB internship, met a fund manager randomly, said yes to helping with outreach for their $40M deep-tech fund. sectors are semiconductors, space-tech, robotics, GenAI, genomics, and advanced manufacturing. tied to India's big national R&D push. I handle outreach and call booking; the manager handles everything else. So for the first few months i was going after family offices. Sent outreach to offices in the US, UAE, and UK. Got almost nothing back. maybe 2-3 replies out of probably 200+ emails. The ones who did reply were polite but not really interested, or said the ticket size wasn't right for them. So we're rethinking the approach. The new idea is to focus on indian-origin HNIs who are already working inside these sectors, think senior engineers or CTOs who spent 20 years at Qualcomm or Intel or a biotech firm, understand where India is going technically, and might have capital they want to put to work. feels like a more natural fit than cold family office outreach. But honestly i have no idea how to reach this group either. LinkedIn feels like shouting into a void. What I'm trying to figure out: **Did I do the family office outreach wrong, or is that just genuinely a hard channel for a new fund?** **for indian-origin HNIs in the US/UK specifically, how do you actually get in front of them without it feeling like spam?** **Any warm intro tactics that worked when you had zero existing network?** This whole thing has been a massive learning curve. would love to hear from anyone who's navigated something similar. I will not promote anything here, just trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong