Investors particularly venture capitalists (VCs) add value to startups in a lot of ways:
1. Stakeholder Management: Investors manage the company board and leadership to facilitate smooth operations of the startup. In addition, their functional experience and domain knowledge of working and investing with startups imparts vision and direction to the company.
2. Raising Funds: Investors are best guides for the startup to raise subsequent rounds of funding on the basis of stage, maturity, sector focus etc. and aid in networking and connection for the founders to pitch their business to other investors.
3. Recruiting Talent: Sourcing high-quality and best-fit human capital is critical for startups, especially when it comes to recruiting senior executives to manage and drive business goals. VCs, with their extensive network can help bridge the talent gap by recruiting the right set of people at the right time.
4. Marketing: VCs assist with marketing strategy for your product/service.
5. M&A Activity: VCs have their eyes and ears open to merger and acquisition opportunities in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable greater value addition to the business through inorganic growth.
6. Organizational Restructuring: As a young startup matures to an established company, VCs help with the right organizational structuring and introduce processes to increase capital efficiency, lower costs and scale efficiently.