EastFounder.co The Fundraising Marketplace for the Eastern based startups ecosystem Like everything else Tech investing is going online and driven by data ….

How to Fundraise on EastFounder.co

Earlier you will make your startup fundable, faster you will raise

Raising Funds on EastFounder

1 Be Fundable

2 Take it seriously

3 Get your Corp. stuff ready

3 Understand your needs

4 Understand the investors needs

.. Always remember that “There are two kinds of investors: the ones who try to create value by finding good people and helping them create something great, and others, who want a piece of someone else’s things. The builders and the extractors. Avoid the extractors.”

5 Get started, build your funding campaign

6 Keep your startup profile alive

7 Big Data is watching you

8 Experiment pain & failure ….. And never stop raising

Short intro to EastFounder

We are building this platform to help Eastern based startups to fundraise and network with investors, talents (for jobs) and Corporates (for business).

We provide to startup founders: A guidance to profile their fundraising campaigns, Access to useful (and Free) documents (like term sheet templates) Connection to investors interested by their market/location Access to accelerators applications Access to services providers dedicated to startups Regular News & Reports on the startups ecosystem selected by the EF team.

On the other side we help investors and MNCs to sources suitable startups using data analytics associate to the EF startup profiles

Never forget that fundraising is about data The ones about your startup, your market, the trend, the investors…

Be Fundable

You want to raise money from investors? Make your startup fundable.

Ok you have a startup that will disrupt a complete industry…We got it. But investors need more than your cool product/service to measure their potential return.

Raising funds against equities is not a charity campaign.

Investors need to get an idea of a potential return based on different criteria like:

Product/Business/Customers/Traction => Business Founders/Team => Execution Market/Competitors => Scale

Take it seriously

If you think you can raise fund by registering an account on EF with just a 1 pitch line under the name of 1 of the founder… Don’t waste your time to try.

Fundraising is a process and we provide you a guidance with fields to fill in. Try to provide the maximum of information you can about the founders, the team, your company, your traction, your fundraising history and new campaign.

Don’t forget that investors access to hundreds of startups every month and they have no time to consider incomplete profiles.

Take the time to make your profile attractive with founders and team members pictures, associate to cool introductions. Everyone like to put a face on a name…

Get your Corporate stuff ready

VCs have their due diligence check list Corporate and financial documents are part of the list

Company registration and Team list, positions and payroll Financial balance sheet, cash flow and (short term) forecast Cap table Previous fundraising documents Are some of the documents you need to have ready

Understand your needs

What do you need to achieve? and how much you need for that?

In the lean startup roadmap, seed is a process not a 1 shot. => Pre Seed => Seed => Post Seed to go to a series A.

You should think about having funds for 18 months (in theory)

You can build your seed process with - $25K to $500K in pre-Seed and Seed to build your prototype and develop your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - $500K to 2M$ in post seed to get an PMF (Product Market Fit) and get traction. … Before to jump to a series A to scale. ($3M to $10M)

Don’t try to raise less than your next 12 months cashflow need … and get few months more if you can… in case of rainy days .

Appendix EF Intro

Position yourself in the lean startup lifecycle

The industry is driven by a new and shorter startup lifecycle which can help investors to faster determinate the scalability of a startup

Structure - 5 -12: persons team

- $500K - $2M post seed investment - Syndicate angels, small VC Improve product / customers, test revenue with a Product Market Fit (PMF) - (6 to 12 months) - Develop customers adoption - Go to “Many people use it, we start to make money!” - Improve design, UX, conversion metrics - Determinate the Org. structure, key hires

Structure - 10 -25: persons team - $3M - $10M investment

- Series A / VC fund Be sustainable / Make money and / or go big - (12 to 24 months) - Focus on revenue / growth - Go to “We can make a lot of $$” - Improve infrastructure for scale and growth - Determinate future milestones: Profitability / Growth Start to think exit options

Structure - 1-6: founders + founding team

- $50K - $500K pre & seed investment - Incubator environment, angels Test prototype / Minimum viable product (MVP) - (3 to 6 months) - Develop minimal critical features set up initial metrics - Go to “It works, someone use it!” -Test small scale adoption (100 -10,000 users) (2 - 10 clients) - Demonstrate concept, Develop metrics / filters for next investment

Courtesy to 500 Startups and Dave McClure for this slide

Understand the investors needs

Investors want first to estimate the chance to get their money back with a potential (minimum) X10 profit…. But they look for X100

Keep that in mind all the time. They are passionate people but not philanthropists. They want to find the next unicorn (B$ Co.)

Do the math. If you propose an investor to invest $1M$ for 20% of your company, he will need to be convinced that your startups can provide exits at $50M+ minimum.

More you give them data, better you can convince them.

The factors their like to consider: The Product & Timing: your special sauce, your biz model and your vision The Execution: (founders and team) The Market: size, competition, valuations The Exit: means who can buy and when

Is your business a venture?

Understand the investors needs

Try to answer to the 3 Why:

1) Why users / clients need your product / service

2) Why from your company and not from your competitor

Is your business a venture?

3) Why they need it now

Understand the investors needs

Anticipate the 5 things an investor should ask you before to invest.

1) Information about the founding team (founders and initial team) All start-ups will go through challenges as they grow, and the strength and savvy of the founding team will determine if the company can make it through the rough patches.

2) Information about your early adopters. The users or customers that will help you to develop your business

3) What is unique in you offer. Your defensible “special sauce” that will allow you to carve out a leadership position in the market

4) What’s your plan to get rapid traction?

5) What is your plan/vision to get a leadership position? your start-up needs to define a clear opportunity and have a distinct vision and path to build a truly big business … if possible in a $Billion market

Get started

Start by your profile, take your time to tell your story and start to network.

Next is your startup. Each part we propose you to fill is important.

Some of the information in the traction and fundraising parts are accessible only by qualified investors.

Introduce your co founder(s) and your team, add advisors that can influence your business with their XP.

Introduce previous round investors or any investors in your actual round to motivate new investors.

Don’t forget your deck, make it short, fun and clear. We have samples for you.

Last one… Use a language that your Mum can understand and avoid the ‘we want to make the world a better place‘ … we are in 2015.

Keep your Startup profile alive

You need to show your progress keeping your startup profile updated.

First add new investors and update your funding campaign regularly It is the best way to attract more angels … Social proof always works.

Don’t forget to also: Add any traction with new clients, partners and significant figures (users, clients and MRR Monthly Recurrent Revenues…)

Base your forecast on facts (your traction) not on Techcrunch articles… But add any news or article about your company Add also new team members

Remember: Traction and Lead investor with track record. This is what motivate investors. Do your homework for the first one we will help to find the second one

Big Data is watching you

Super angels, Syndicates, VCs are more and more prospecting founders, companies and trends in early stage through complex data mining and pattern recognition.

We are entering the age of ‘the quantitative VCs’

They are digging the massive amount of data available, such as information from CrunchBase, social media, web & mobile metrics and a number of proprietary data sources to both identify the best opportunities and be able to add value to startups in a scalable way.

You need to be part of these information sources. EF is one of them. we are connecting (East) founders to (world) investors while coordinating financing as well.

Experiment Pain & Failure

“…In order to achieve greatness you have to go to a lot of pain first…”

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