An investor’s perspective

Christopher Emmott, Associate Director, Investing in Energy Access, Acumen

A few ways that entrepreneurs can think about utilizing investors beyond funding.

• They often can provide quite a critical view of your business and can really see where there are gaps and where you could work to try and improve that. So that's understanding criticism around your actual products, your technology, how you're offering it, how you might be able to scale that. 

• If you're assuming that you'll be able to raise a lot of debt to be able to finance a lot of capital expenditure, investors can really provide some really useful solutions from what they've seen about different approaches you could take to try and make it easier for you to scale.

• They're also very helpful for relationships with other investors as well. So building a good relationship with one investor can often lead to introductions to others, even if it doesn't necessarily work and fit within the mandate or the timelines. Others will have great expertise in technology or other elements. And so really thinking about what is this investor going to bring to your organization, not just from a financial perspective, but also from their contacts and their skills and experience as well.

A social entrepreneur’s perspective

Nidhi Pant, Co-founder, S4S Technologies 

We've always looked at our funders and investors as a partner in our journey. So we are very open in strategizing with our board and with our investors. 

We would always validate our thought process or the strategy that we are taking. We have a very strong discussion with them, a very enriching discussion on strategy, and that's how, which is the most important way in which our investors have supported us.

A second way in which our investors have supported us is through access to different networks. So ask more, ask. Even if you don't know whether the investor can help you. So just asking more of different resources that are available, different programs that can fund you.

The other thing that our investors have helped us with is to think about our customers in a deeper manner, whether it is women micro-entrepreneurs or food and beverage industry customers, how to prioritize their needs, what ways in which we can service them better.

And lastly, which is a very important way in which our investors support us, is through technical assistance. They also help us find pro bono consulting support, access to expert calls, which we can then use in organization building, whether it is a digital transformation plan or market research. 

Key takeaways 

• Utilize the unique perspective of investors to gain critical feedback on your business model 

• Tap into the technical assistance and consultancy offered by investors to improve your organization

• Forge strong relationships, as these connections can lead to introductions to other potential investors