Raising money is hard.
It's so hard most companies fail at it.
In this video, we'll look into traction requirements,
pitch decks, some alternative funding sources
and how to find investors.
This is seed funding for startups.
(INTRO VIDEO)
I'm the CEO of a company called Slidebean,
and thousands of startups have used our platform
for creating their pitch decks.
Their success is our success,
and this is why we get involved with them
and have learned a thing or to about what works,
and what doesn't.
I started my first company in 2011,
and we failed at raising capital.
I know the pain of shutting down this website
you worked on countless hours,
or having to email all your customers
to say it's game over.
The problem with that company
is that we wasted so much time trying to find investors,
that we failed to find some fundamental flaws
in our product.
For Slidebean, we raised a seed round of $800,000
which has allowed us to grow to a team of 25,
increase our revenue to seven digits
and become profitable in the process.
And yeah, it was hard.
I'm telling you this because I want you to trust my advice.
I tried and failed,
and now I can look back and see why I got a 'NO'
from most of the 142 investors that we pitched.
Yeah, 142 to raise $800,000.
So now, let's talk about traction, first.
I have this problem with startup press
(Except for Jordan Crook, we absolutely love her).
It gives new founders a false notion of how fundraising works.
You read the story of Yo,
an app that just sent notifications saying 'Yo'
and how they raised a $1,000,000 seed round,
and you assume that's something
that anybody with a couple of lines of code can do.
Most companies raise money AFTER getting traction.
Very few companies raise money with just a prototype and no users,
and certainly, NO company
raises money without a fully formed founding team.
The most extreme case here is
tech companies that are trying to raise money
to hire their CTO.
This makes no sense in the mind of an investor.
Tech talent is expensive,
and it's scarce,
and the first proof that your company
is worth something
is that you, the founder/CEO
managed to find a full stack developer
that would turn down this job
at Google to work on this idea.
As a CEO, you need to be able to find and convince that guy,
who joins your for the stock and not for the salary;
when he could be making $150,000/yr otherwise.
The reality of startup fundraising today,
at least in Silicon Valley and New York,
is that companies are pitching investors with traction,
with excellent traction.
Traction usually comes in the form of revenue:
Tens of thousands of dollars per month,
growing over +20% month-over-month.
I'm not making this up,
check this article by VC Elizabeth Yin.
Pure play, no-revenue traction counts
only when you are dealing with millions of users
and fantastic retention rates.
So how can you get to these numbers
if you don't have any money to start with?
Yeah well, the answer is bootstrapping.
We bought our domain in 2013
and started working on our product,
but it was only after 18 months
that we managed to get any decent money to
ramp up growth.
It was $100,000 from the 500 Startups program,
but we'll talk about accelerators in a minute.
From May 2013 through October 2014 we bootstrapped.
We did part-time consulting so we could pay our bills.
We had a $1,000 salary each,
and we shared an apartment.
It was barely enough,
but the backgrounds of the three founders
made up for all the talent we needed at that point.
No need to hire anybody.
Our company burn rate was probably $3,500
including our 'salaries' and the services we needed.
It sucked;
but if you can live on a budget
and put up with your co-founders
while having no idea what's going to happen,
you've passed a very tough,
initial test for your company.
I've been through too many startup accelerators,
more than I like to accept.
It was a program called Startup Chile that allowed us to drop consulting and finally
dedicate 100% of our time to the product.
We love Startup Chile!
They provide +200 startups a year with a $35,000 government grant,
no equity in exchange.
All you need to do is move down to Chile for six months,
and get involved with the local startup community.
It's insane if you think about it, free money!
It might as well be all the capital you need
to launch your product and start generating revenue.
And we did it.
We actually moved to Santiago,
and this is where we launched our first beta
and signed up our first few thousand customers.
Thanks to the traction we got here
we eventually got accepted by 500 Startups,
which then provided $100,000 in funding,
plus it allowed us to move to Silicon Valley
for a few months.
High end, top tier accelerators like
500, YCombinator, TechStars, and DreamIt Ventures,
they provide you with so much more than just cash:
They give you an office space, they give you advice,
a community of brilliant people to bounce ideas with
and more importantly, validation.
The process to get in is hard and extremely selective,
but again, it's a fantastic validation
of the potential of your business.
Check out this link for more info on how to get into an accelerator.
We wrote a good article about it a few months ago.
There are hundreds of lesser-known accelerators,
and they certainly provide less value or lessfunding,
but for many of us,
they are the crash courses we need to get to a fundable point.
Once you feel ready to raise money, and hopefully
you have the traction you need,
you need to come up with a pitch deck.
DO NOT try to reinvent the wheel.
There is the standard pitch deck template structure most investors expect.
You can just download a template for this deck on the links below.
We've also prepared an in-depth video,
breaking down every single slide
and giving you insights
on how to complete each one of them.
Check that out.
The key points are that,
- Simple is better, again, don't get creative
and don't make it longer than 15 slides.
Consider this a hard rule
- Don't overcrowd your slides.
If it doesn't fit,
then it probably shouldn't go on the deck.
- Your pitch deck is an intro to your company
and more importantly,
the story of your company and your founders.
Don't get into advanced tech details
or wild revenue projections;
save those for the follow-up meetings.
- Most investors take about 4 minutes
to review a deck they got over email,
and if it's longer than that,
chances are they will skip it,
so no point adding that information anyway!
Another common mistake
is treating your pitch deck like a state secret.
No investor on the planet will sign an NDA
for the chance to see a pitch deck.
It's a rookie move that will probably
burn that connection for you.
These guys look at hundreds of decks a year,
and the liability of signing NDAs for each
one of them is just not worth it.
Don't get upset with this,
but most ideas are worthless without execution:
it's your ability to execute
that matters.
If anyone seeing your pitch deck
can go on and start a clone company of their own
and beat you to market,
then it might not be a great idea to begin with.
I heard at 500 Startups that you need to pitch
100 investors for every $500K you want to raise.
At least in our case, the math held up.
Getting in touch with 100 investors is no easy task,
but the point here is don't expect
that you'll get funded by the first, second, third
or tenth investor you speak to.
You need to get in front of many, many more.
The first thing to know
is which type of investor you are targeting.
My experience and my advice relates to VCs and Angel Investors,
which are normally interested
in tech, high growth, high scale companies.
These guys look for companies that can raise
$1MM or so as a seed round;
and use that to get them to a
$4-$5MM Series A stage in 18 to 24 months.
This means 3x annual growth and a huge market opportunity.
If you are building a more traditional business
that can't sustain that sort of growth,
you should aim for a different kind of investor.
So first of all,
leverage your LinkedIn network.
Make sure you add everyone you know and
tirelessly browse their connections.
If you find a match,
- Check that the investor is actively investing.
You can use AngelList for that.
- Ask for a warm intro.
This will almost guarantee a chance to share your pitch deck.
Many investors just don't reply to cold emails.
- Share your deck with a link
(don't send a PDF file and NEVER send a PPT),
that way you can track activity,
or remove access if they say no,
then they can't check it again.
Once you've depleted your LinkedIn contacts,
start attending startup events and befriending people.
Just talk to them, add each other up,
and expand your network.
If you play your cards right,
you can eventually request introduction from them.
This is another point where accelerators are really, really useful.
If you absolutely don't have a network,
then that 5% or 7% that the program asks
in exchange for their help,
becomes much more valuable now
because they will unlock those contacts for you.
We recently launched a (free) product called FounderHub
as a branch of Slidebean.
We connect founders with potentially interested
angels and accelerators.
We also have the contact information of
thousands of investors that you can browse,
filter and target, but remember,
cold emails should be your last resort.
You'll want to keep a spreadsheet
and keep a log of every conversation
and the status of your relationship;
trust me, by the fifth you talk to
your brain will start mixing people up.
You can go to FounderHub to download the template
of the spreadsheet I used when we raised funding.
A typical investor flow goes like this:
-You do an email intro.
- They ask for the Deck, and you send it over.
- If there's interest, maybe some follow up questions.
If that works, then you get a meeting
These meetings usually are 1 hour long.
And they consist of a quick 10-15 minute pitch.
Make sure that you stay on time.
(Using a variation of the pitch deck you've already created)
followed by a Q&A session and discussion.
At this point they will either destroy you,
tell you that you are too early,
or show obvious interest in investing.
If you are destroyed,
take it and go find the solution to the problems
and the questions they asked.
You are probably not getting another chance with them,
so cross that out on your spreadsheet
and don't waste your time.
If you are too early, fine, take it.
Ask them if they'd like to stay posted on your traction,
they'll normally say yes.
If most investors are saying that you're too early,
then, it's probably right,
so stop wasting time with meetings
and get back to your product traction.
If they agreed to stay posted,
make sure that you email them
every other month or so.
It's valuable to keep the contact alive and active,
and then maybe, they can invest later
or maybe, you can request an introduction from them.
Make sure to track those emails too.
Use Slidebean to send a traceable deck,
and know if they actually read your updates.
If you are still watching
and your investor says yes,
first of all, congratulations!
you are part of the lucky 1% of startups
that is actually able to raise seed capital.
When you have a lead investor,
finding others becomes a lot easier.
When an investor is interested, they'll probably ask about your terms.
Seed rounds in the US
are usually handled as convertible notes or SAFEs,
stay away from equity rounds if you can.
We can prepare another video explaining the differences between
SAFEs, convertible notes and equity rounds,
so pleae let us know in the comments
if that's something you'll like to see.
Drop us a comment anyway
and subscribe to our channel.
We'll see you next week.