As I’ve met many VC’s and angels in the New York area, I’ve noticed a few small things entrepreneurs seeking funding can do to connect with investors . Investors are people, connecting with them on a personal level is the only way they’re going to like you and write you a check.

1. Connect with them however they communicate: If an investor tells you to tweet @ him or writes a blog post and tells you to pitch your company in the comments, do so. It’s marketing, you have to go where your audience is. Go through Venture Hacks Angelist. With a lot of investors email might be the best way, but do your research and connect with them on their preferred platform.
2. Make it easy to schedule a meeting: Suggest dates and times for meetings not, ‘sometime next week’. The reason these people have money to give you is because they’re successful businessmen and women who are busy. You might also want to set up a Tungle.me account, a service that syncs with your calenders and allows other people to suggest meeting times. You can send them a link and make it easy to schedule the meeting.
3. Check their schedules: It’s pretty easy to meet investors in New York, it’s once again about research. There are sites  Garysguide, Meetup, NextNY, and Plancast will let you know of a number of events each week where investors are. Mailing lists like Startup Digest, Ultralight Startups, and Startup One Stop are also great resources. Some of them have public calenders on their blogs. Get in front of the right investors and allow them to get to know you and your business.
4. Know who they are: This doesn’t mean knowing their name, firm, and title. You should know where they’ve worked what their interests are, where there from and other stuff like that. Read their blog, check Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Its all about making that personal connection. if you went to the same school as they did, know a mutual associate, like the same band or think the same way as they do on politics there’s a chance to strike up a conversation about something other than your business. It shows you’re human and, if they like you, they’re more prone to like your company (you still need a great product though).
5. Be courteous: If you see that an investor is pressed for time, get into your elevator pitch and offer to follow up. If they want to know more they’ll ask you more questions. If they want you to get back to them late, email them that day with a concise pitch and follow item 2 above. They’ll appreciate your sensitivity to their time constraints.
6. Be human: If you’re meeting for a 30 minute coffee, it might seem like waste of time but you should start off with a brief conversation about something other than your company. Be a human being and chat bout sports, music, or politics. Show what you’re thinking about and how your mind works. Most investors I’ve met have said they’re investing in a team. A team is made up of human beings, so be one!
7. Be a HUMAN, not a QUANT: A lot of investors went go to business school and a lot of them didn’t. I’ve heard from both types that they hate MBA speak, they find it pretentious and boring. Use regular language when possible but be passionate telling investors why your product is great, why consumers or businesses will use it and why they’ll pay for it. Investors want to know about the numbers, but please don’t talk about synergizing backward overflow.
8. Listen: If investors give you advice, listen and process it. You shouldn’t be pitching an investor who you don’t want shaping your company’s future. And they want to know you’ll listen after they cut a check.
9. Adjust and Follow Up: A no right now doesn’t mean it’s a no forever. Boxee pitched Union Square Ventures more than once before receiving funding. Boxee listened to investors and changed their business model.They ended up with an exciting business and funds to help it grow. It doesn’t mean you need to change the core of your business, but they want to see that you can adjust to customer feed back and be persistent in the sales process. That’s what fund raising is, sales, and investors want to see how you’ll execute after the funding round.

I’m by no means the first person to say any of these things. Most of it has been said before on Venture Hacks and other sites. If you have any thoughts or comments, leave them below.

Thanks for reading.

Checkout my story in VentureBeat on a Q4 venture investing report released by ChubbyBrain, a New York based startup aiming to be the Bloomberg for high growth private companies and investors.

Over the past few years, New York City has become a hotbed of startup activity. On Tuesday, the First Round Capital team took a tour of incubator spaces to survey the NYC scene.

A seed and early stage venture capital firm, First Round already has 15 New York based startups in its portfolio including Hot Potato and 33Across. “We typically fund PowerPoints, we fund prototypes, we fund pre-revenue prelaunch companies all the time,” managing partner Josh Kopelman said. With an average initial investment of $600,000, according to Kopelman, the fledgling startups coming out of the incubators are prime investment targets for First Round as they open up their New York City offices.

Kopelman was accompanied on the trek by First Round managing partners Howard Morgan and Chris Fralic, with entrepreneur in residence Charlie O’Donnell, principal Phin Barnes, and general counsel Doug Bernstein also on hand. The group made their way by foot through the cold New York air to 8 different facilities in Manhattan including Sunshine Suites, Rose Tech Incubator, and the NYU/Polytechnic Incubator. The spaces were surprisingly plush, specifically Sunshine’s Tribecca location. While on the lookout for potential investments, several members of the First Round team were impressed with the workspaces, remarking how ideal they were for portfolio companies looking to conserve cash.

Amongst the startups that spoke with the First Round team throughout the day, the most compelling companies were creating disruptive technologies intrinsically linked to New York’s economy and fast paced mindset. One of the more impressive offerings was DrChrono, a SAAS medical practice management platform that provides web-based scheduling, medical record management, billing, and practice analytic tools. The service is secure and can help doctor’s communicate with their patients, staff, and insurance companies to streamline the onerous task of running a medical practice. I found the ability to automatically send email, text, or phone appointment reminders to be a particularly useful feature, communicating with patients on the medium they use.

Another promising startup was Aerocity Wind. Aerocity builds vertical wind turbines to be placed on existing structures. Horizontal wind turbines are more prone to break and fall, can be nosy, and would disrupt the architectural aesthetic of a building. Aerocity turbines  are more suitable for the turbulent environment atop skyscrapers, generating power in a  safe, quiet and efficient manner that can be consumed by the building or sold back to utilities at near market rates. The company is also developing software that will tell building owners where to place turbines to optimize production amidst the obstructions of a vertical city.

Already the finance capital of the world, New York City is also home to a few noteworthy startups in that space. One such company was Hedgeable, an investing analytics product targeted at high net-worth investors. The company’s free retail service, which provides investors with tools to track their portfolio’s performance and risk profile, is already managing approximately $300 million in funds. Investors can pay for a premium service, with premium users on average managing $200,000 through the system. The service is integrated with several online brokerage services including Etrade, TDAmeritrade, and Fidelity Investments.