Getting funding is the name of the game for the startup world and we strongly believe that CEO’s and founders should be professional entrepreneurs and not professional fundraisers. Too many spend countless months neglecting their companies and focusing solely on funding as their key definition of success.
It is our goal to help you spend less time fundraising and more time running a profitable business. We will now share how we are doing it for you and also some practical tips on how to structure your round.
On our side, we organize the annual Arctic15 conference (May 3rd – 5th). At the event, we aim to get the best possible startup/investor ratio and get them matchmaking to the max. Last time, in 48 hours, we had: 250 investors, 400+ startups and a total of 1500 attendees.
They organized over 3000 meetings between themselves. 40% of them led to deals. Some investors had 23 meetings per day. For the next two days only, you can get your ticket for EUR 219 instead of the final price of EUR 599, just follow this discount code link.
This year we aim for 300+ investors, 450+ startups, a maximum of 2000 attendees and again – the name of the game will be “Deal Room”. As a bonus, it will be a three day conference and we hope you will be able to start and get your funding round negotiations as close to being signed as possible in the shortest amount possible.
Now, let’s get to some of the real tips on how to structure you funding round.
Prepare Before You Start: Investors, Presentation, Financials, Answers.
Before you start, the best thing you can do is to get ready. Before you do anything – understand which type of investors you want and what type of round you want to raise. Here are some practical tips:
– Make an excel table (Or a CRM like Pipedrive) with all the investor leads you have. Do not start sending out e-mails before you have at least 25-50.
– Create an investor deck and test it on friends and investors you know well. Record their questions and get ready for answers. Use something like DocSend in order to track how they view your document.
– Create a Dropbox/Google Drive location for all your documents: past financials, projections, company information, and any other documents.
Plan Fundraising To Be As Short As Possible. Send All E-Mails At Once.
If you casually fundraise here and there – it will take months. Once some of your investors feel like it’s taking you a long time, they will jump the boat. Thus our best advice is to try to squeeze in as many e-mails and meetings into as short a timespan as you can.
For instance if you send 50 investor e-mails at once, you can start getting 5 meetings per week. The moment one of them says they are “in” or are “soft-committed”, you can immediately update all the rest. They will be impressed with the speed and might react quickly. This speeds up your fundraising process enormously. We hope you can do all of this in just three days of Arctic15, for which you can get your discounted ticket here. (Code will work until the 30th of December, 11:00 Helsinki time).
Consistently Follow-Up And Update Your Investors
Once the ball gets rolling, it is your job to keep it rolling. Any update you have – update those investors you are talking to. If you get a “no”, you can always try to ask for a reason to have a better understanding. If you get a commitment, you should try asking for introductions to investors who they think might be interested.
Make sure your round looks dynamic, fast-paced and that you are focused on running your business. Great businesses are built by great business people, not fundraisers.
See you all at Arctic15. Grab your tickets here.
