Investors tend to invest in what they personally understand, so their personal experience says a lot about their potential interest level.

There are essentially two categories of expertise with investors – the expertise the firm itself has (if it’s more than just a single investor) and the expertise that the single investor has, which is more relevant in things like individual Angel Investors.

We’ll always want to do some homework to figure out where the individual investor has worked and by way of that what their domain experience might be. Almost all of this can be found in their Linkedin or Crunchbase profiles.

We’ll look for:

• Past Jobs. Where have they worked? What role? This says a lot about what they know about our space.
• Board Seats. Investors tend to sit on lots of boards which represent similar investments and experiences.
• Education. What did they major in? This will often indicate where their focus has been career wise.

If we’re starting Uber and we’re looking at someone’s resume that indicates they have worked for similar transportation or automotive startups, this is a good signal that we’ll have a productive conversation about our startup.