I have a cool app idea, how do I find investors?

Before finding investors, it is important to understand WHY you need funding for your venture.

Is it because you have no money to start? Or because you want to grow/expand an existing business?

Fundamentally, all investors want returns, irregardless of whether your business is at the early stage or late stage.

And when it comes to raising funds, you need to communicate clearly to them on how your business will be able to raise money.

At any stage of fundraising, you will need to show how investing in you has tremendous potential, and how they will get their money back.

1. If you have no money to start

Unless your startup capital needed is high (ie: you're working on some R&D project that requires lots of equipment), my suggestion for you would be to try and self-fund it and bootstrap until you gain something called 'product-market-fit'

In other words, to try it out on small scale until it starts to gain some level of traction / customers.

If money is necessary to start, I recommend reaching out to the "3 Fs" - Friends, Family, and Fools at this stage. 

Generally people who invest very early in an idea (or early prototype) are called 'Angel Investors'.

These are generally people who support you, or have unfathomable faith in your "idea".

2. If you already have something and you want to scale/grow it further

Raising funds at this stage is easier, as you already have something to show investors.

Ideally at this stage, you should be making some revenue, and have some clear unit economics to show:

• Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC)
  
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
• Churn rate (drop-off rate of customers)
• Month-on-Month / Year-on-Year growth of the company

Companies that are in the growing stage can easily reach out to:

• Angel Investors
  
• Institutional (Venture Capital or Private Equity Investors)
• Equity Crowdfunding Companies
• Banks (usually requires a 2 years old company and above)
• P2P Lending companies

At the end of the day, fundraising should only be done when you're seeking to overcome a major hurdle in starting up, or if you need dry powder to outgrow your competition.