What investors look for before they heart a listing

Founders imagine investors reading their listing the way they wrote it: top to bottom, section by section, weighing each argument. They don't. They look at the card for a few seconds, decide whether it is the kind of thing they back, and if it is, they go straight to the numbers. Everything else is read afterwards, if at all, to confirm or overturn what the numbers said. Once you know the order, you can write for it.

The ten seconds: the card

Cover image, company name, the amount being raised, the tagline, the sector and region chips. That is all an investor sees before deciding whether to open the card. They are asking one question: is this the kind of thing I back? Stage, sector, ticket size, instrument, geography. If the answer is no — a pre-revenue consumer app shown to someone who does B2B software at £50k tickets — nothing you wrote will matter, and that is fine; they were never your investor.

What you control on the card: a cover image that shows the business (the bakery, the product, the team — not a stock photo), a tagline that says what you do and what you are raising in one line, and accurate chips. "Bramble Bakehouse · Raising £400k · Food & drink · North West · SEIS" tells the right investor to open it and the wrong one to pass quickly. Both are good outcomes.

The ten minutes: the order they actually read in

1. Traction first. They scroll straight past the summary to the numbers. Revenue, growth, customers, retention, each with a date. What they are looking for is the shape of the line and whether the dates are recent. A flat line with a big number is a harder sell than a small number with a steep one.
2. Then the team. Have these people done something like this before, and do they know the customer? Relevant operating experience carries more weight than anything else on the page.
3. Then the ask. Is the amount sensible for the stage? Is there a milestone the money reaches? Is the valuation explained or just stated? A pre-money of £3m on £18k MRR needs a reason; an investor who doesn't see one assumes there isn't.
4. Then the video. To decide whether they would want to sit in a room with you for three years. Most hearts are decided here.
5. Then the summary and the problem — read now as a check on whether you can explain your own business simply.
6. Then the documents, if they are still there. Deck first, plan second, accounts third.

Five things that make them heart

1. A problem they recognise. Investors back what they understand. A founder who describes a problem the investor has seen first-hand gets the benefit of every doubt that follows.
2. Evidence with dates. Not "strong traction" — "£38k MRR in July, £21k in January". It is the single biggest difference between listings that get hearted and listings that don't.
3. A founder who says what they don't know. "We haven't cracked enterprise sales yet, which is what hire two is for" reads as competence. Claiming everything is solved reads as inexperience.
4. A specific ask. Amount, instrument, milestone. "£600k in SEIS/EIS shares to reach £60k MRR in fourteen months" invites a yes. "Seeking investment to scale" invites nothing.
5. SEIS/EIS with advance assurance. It changes the investor's downside from 100p in the pound to around 27p. Investors who use the schemes will not open a listing without it.

Five things that make them pass

1. "Disrupting a £50bn market." It signals that the founder has a slide, not a customer.
2. Numbers without dates, or no numbers. The investor assumes the worst and moves on.
3. A valuation that does not match the traction — and no explanation of why.
4. No video. Read as "not serious" or "something to hide", neither of which is usually true, both of which cost you the heart.
5. Copy written for a grant panel. Passive voice, "stakeholders", "leverage", "synergies". Investors want to hear the founder's voice, because that is who they are backing.

After the heart

When an investor expresses interest on Find, they usually write a line about who they are and what they back. Read it before you accept. The best matches are investors whose note shows they understood the business; the ones to think twice about are notes that could have been sent to anyone. Accept the former within a day — momentum matters — and when the conversation opens, lead with the number they will ask for next.

Questions founders ask

"Nobody has hearted us in two weeks. What's wrong?"

Usually one of three things, in this order: the card is not making it obvious what the business is; there is no video; or the numbers are not dated. Fix the card first — cover image that shows the business, tagline that says what you do and what you are raising. Then the video. Then put dates on every number. Most listings that stall come back to life after those three changes.

"An investor hearted us but their note was vague. Accept?"

Accept, and ask one question in your first message: "What do you usually back, and what caught your eye here?" A serious investor answers specifically. A vague second answer tells you what you need to know, and you have lost nothing but a message.

"Should I update the listing while it's live?"

Yes — new numbers with new dates are the single best thing you can add, and an update goes to everyone who has matched. Keep the structure stable so investors who have already read it can see what changed; the update itself should say "July MRR £41k, up from £38k in June."

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