There are tons of tips There are many out there about how to approach VCs for startup fundraising, but in my experience as a former VC and current founder, I’ve found that there’s no one-size-fits-all method.

Venture capital Investors enter the industry for many different reasons and come from a wide variety of backgrounds that shape their perspectives on the companies they consider to invest in.

Founders need to understand what type of VC investor they are dealing with in order to have the best chance of closing a funding round. Here are the four personas of VC investors and what founders can do to partner with them:

#1: The Follower

It’s incredibly difficult to predict which companies will be the big winners in the long run, and for early-career investors, getting your first 3-5 Investment bets wrong can limit your future career prospects. That’s why investors in the follower category care that other credible brands are investing alongside them: holding on to big-name interest can help reduce the risk of high-pressure investment decisions. This is VC’s version of “you don’t get fired for buying IBM.”

These investors will never risk funding something based solely on their thesis or initial business metrics. When you dig into their portfolios, you’ll see that followers rarely lead funding rounds and invest alongside brand investors 95% of the time. If they are leading an investment, the company is usually led by a well-known repeat founder or close friend, or the company has already raised 2-3 rounds of funding from blue chip investors, which makes leading a Series C+ feel safe.

This is the most common type of VC person, and the trend following approach can be quite successful. In fact, there is an entire discipline of quantitative investing in the public market called “trend following” that has made this strategy systematic. Despite its strong Academic validation as an investment strategy, no one likes to be called a “follower” and because of this, followers will almost never admit to being a follower.

For founders approaching this type of investor, it’s critical to onboard one of the other three VC types before reaching out. With that investor’s term sheet in hand, you can syndicate your round to one or more followers.

#2: The Academic

Investors in the academic field have clear theses and do not deviate from them. They deeply understand your business space and have the knowledge and network to perform due diligence on the business. Academic investors can become extraordinarily valuable thought partners and almost feel like co-founders in the way they help you develop your thesis.

Academics are leaders. In the early stage, they are often the first investors or lead rounds largely by themselves. In later stages, they are not afraid to invest in tipping points and often catalyze turnarounds. This information is harder to see publicly but easy to spot in conversations. If you suspect an investor may be an academic, ask them what investment thesis they are working on. If the answer sounds vague, they are followers or probers. If it sounds very specific, they are academic.

For example, if you hear “we’re very interested in how AI can be applied to vertical software,” you’re a follower or a feeler. If, instead, you hear something that sounds very specific and even a little confusing like: “I’ve met with every neural chip company to launch in the last seven years and I’m convinced that analog chips are the only way to apply AI inference at the edge”, is an academic.