Team Foundersuite (Nathan, Hilde, Helga and Tomek) had a blast roaming the streets of Austin for South by Southwest.

We tried something new — we hauled around a 6-foot bear for “TEDdy Talks” — interviews with startup founders.

Check it out for some amazing tips that will help you raise capital:

And, for fun, check out our “behind the scenes” footage of hustling at SXSW:

Until next year! :)

Fundraising Tips from SXSW was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Building and qualifying a list of target investors is a critical first step when raising capital for your startup. Here’s how to use our Investor Database (found in the “Find Investors” section of Foundersuite.com) to speed up the process.

For seed stage startups, we recommend aiming for a list of at least 100–200 potential targets. Fundraising is a “numbers game” and if you’re converting 5–10% of your pitches into commitments you’re doing well.

To hammer home this point, Pandora’s founder famously pitched over 300 VCs before he got a “yes” (the company went on to go public on the NYSE). Similarly, Kathryn Minshew, CEO of TheMuse pitched 148 investors before she finally got one to put down a term sheet.

It’s a numbers game, and we’ve got some “numbers of our own” to help you succeed. We built a database of over 21,000+ venture funds and over 100,000+ angels, family offices, fund-of-funds, PE firms, hedge funds, and more to browse from.

Here are a few common questions and tips for getting the most out of it.

What types of investors are in the Foundersuite database? Are they only in the United States or global?

Of the 121,000 investors in our database, about 2/3rds are angels, with the rest being a mix of Venture Capitalists, Corporate VC, Incubators and Accelerators, Fund of Funds, Investment Banks, Family Offices, Private Equity and Buyout Funds, Investment Consultants and RIAs, Real Estate Investors, Lenders, and even a few Sovereign Wealth Funds.

The mix is roughly half based in the US, half global. For example, a search on “New York” returns 12,000 investor results, whereas a search on “London” returns 7,300 results, “Paris” about 2,200, “Sydney” and “Melbourne” combined about 1,100, and “Hong Kong” returns around 800 results.

How do I search this investor database?

By Name:
If you know who you are looking for, simply type the person or fund name into the first search field and hit enter. You can also enter partial names if you can’t remember the full name. For example, if you enter “Bench” it will return Benchmark Capital as well as others.

By Type:
In the next column over, you can run a search solely by Type of investor simply by picking the best match from the drop-down menu. The list includes: Venture Capital, Accelerator / Incubator, Fund of Funds, Investment Banks, Corporate Venture Capital, Family Offices, Private Equity and Buyout Funds, Investment Consultants and RIAs, Real Estate Investors, and Lenders.

By Market and Location:
To the right of the Type are Market and Location fields. Each investor is tagged with a Market Tag and a Location Tag. Thus, To search the list, you MUST search use one or more of the pre-set tags (i.e. you cannot “free form” search the database).

To find the best Market Tag, start typing the name of your industry — then pause for a moment — then select from the suggested keywords in the drop down menu. For example, if you’re in Fin Tech, start typing “F — I — N” then pick from the resulting choices.

Try combining a few different alternative keywords to get the maximum results (e.g. “artificial intelligence” + “machine learning” or “marijuana” + “cannabis” or “crypto” + “blockchain” + “bitcoin”).

Importantly, when you add multiple Market Tags, it’s an <OR> function and will expand your search. When you add a Location Tag, it’s an <AND> function and will narrow your search results.

Another tip is to search only by your location. Importantly, location search works best using CITY names, for example, use “London” instead of “United Kingdom” and if you add more locations in your region, your results will grow.

As another example, if you’re a startup in Australia, try searching on “Sydney” plus “Melbourne” plus “Perth.”

What happens when I click the “Add To Research” button? Is the investor notified?

No. They are not notified. An investor card is created on your Investor Board in the Research column with that investor’s name and social details, as well as contact information when available. Most of our users will typically spend some time going through the list they created and then “qualify” each lead by looking at their websites or LinkedIn profiles to make sure they do indeed invest in your sector / stage / geography etc.

Check out this video if you’d like to learn more about building and qualifying your investor list (click here).

What investor information is provided in the search results?

Generally, a short bio, a profile picture, and icons which link through to their various online profiles, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and AngelList pages. When possible, we also link through to their blog or personal web page, or the corporate web site. We also display previous investments to give you a feel for what they actually put money into.

In many cases we display contact information such as email and phone.

The goal of providing this info is: i) to help you learn more about each investor to decide if they are a good fit for you; and ii) so you can “map” your mutual connection paths and find someone to make the warm introduction.

When I add investors to my Investor Board, do they get added to your database?

No, The investors you bring into the system — for example, by uploading a CSV or by adding them one by one — are viewable by you and you only. They are not added to our master database. We do not harvest our users’ investor data in any way.

How did you build this database?

To build the database, we first compiled and assembled several master lists of angels, VCs, and PE firms using our own algorithm. Next, we employed a combination of web crawlers along with several thousand human-hours manually researching the social links and bios for the investors.

Thus, in general the data provided are the investors’ own links; assuming they keep their LinkedIn, Facebook, Website, and AngelList pages current, the data should be accurate and up-to-date.

How much does it cost?

On the Free / Basic plan, it is free to search the investor database up to a limit of the first two pages for each search result. When you find an investor you like and you click “Add To Research” that investor is added to your Investor CRM. You can add up to 25 investors into your CRM on the free plan.

On the Silver and Gold plans, the searches are unlimited. On the Silver plan you can add up to 75 investors to your CRM. On the Gold plan, you can add an unlimited number of investors to your CRM (with a general limit of around 800 per investor board.)

For full pricing details, please see www.foundersuite.com/pricing

How can I trust this info is correct?

We collect and aggregate investor data publicly available on the web, but we do not check each investor’s accreditation or verify the data published by investors on their proprietary pages — that would be beyond the scope of what a small team could do.

We strive to provide accurate info, and if you find something wrong please let us know; however, we cannot guarantee the accuracy of every single field. If you need a higher level of information, you might consider using Pitchbook or CB Insights (keep in mind these services — each of whom employ hundreds of data scientists — run between $15,000 up to $100,000 annually).

Our goal is to provide a simple and easy to navigate investor database to help you build your target list at a reasonable cost.

Will you introduce me to the investors I find?

Sorry, no… that’s not how fundraising works :) To get introduced to investors, you typically should network your way into a “warm intro” from someone who knows you and who knows the investor. Any site that promises to directly match you with investors is probably a scam.

That said, we have made dozens of intros for our customers — ones we have gotten to know personally at our events or online.

If you need some tips on how to get investor intros (even if you don’t have a strong established network check out this video (highly recommended!).

Can I export the data?

Yes. If you are on a Gold subscription (see Foundersuite.com/Pricing) you can export your Investor Board to a CSV file. However, if you use the service in an attempt to scrape and export the database, your account will be terminated.

Our mission is to build a reasonably-priced, quality database that helps Founders raise capital more efficiently. Please keep in mind any large scale scraping or downloading (generally defined as more than what would be in a “typical round” of several hundred investors) violates the terms of service and is strictly prohibited.

Any more questions? Just reach out anytime!

Investor Database FAQ was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On a global scale, the cost of food waste is staggering. One-third of the world’s food is thrown away every year, with an environmental impact equivalent to the CO2 emissions of three million cars. If that seems abstract, consider the financial loss, which adds up to $1 trillion.

With a mission of “saving the planet, one meal at a time,” Swedish startup Karma is addressing the problem with a platform that allows restaurants and grocery stores to sell surplus food to consumers at half price.

The value proposition is simple: “We help take care of restaurants’ food waste while they generate more revenue and foot traffic. We also make sure that great food isn’t wasted. It ends up in the hands of hungry people instead,” says Hjalmar Nordegren, Karma’s CEO and one of its four co-founders.

Once a business sets up an account, he says, “it ends up taking less time to post to the platform than to throw it away.”

Since its launch in 2015, the Karma app has grown to include more than 2,000 retailers and 450,000 users in 150+ Swedish cities as well as London. Businesses love it because they can easily recoup costs while attracting new customers, and foodies are thrilled to “rescue” their favorite dishes from the restaurants they follow.

Social enterprise has never tasted so good.

Pivoting despite the naysayers

Karma didn’t initially set out to change the world. At first, the platform was a “crowdsourced Groupon”-style app featuring flash sales and daily deals. Bolstered by its participation in Sweden’s leading accelerator, Sting, and an angel round, the previous incarnation of Karma was moderately successful, but “not fantastic,” Hjalmar says. “We could see that the metrics weren’t going to take off anytime soon.”

It wasn’t until a restaurant posted its leftover meals on the app that Hjalmar and his team saw the potential for a fresh focus. They decided to relaunch as a food-only, mission-centric company.

They pitched the new plan to their existing investors with mixed results. “Some of them were like, ‘if that’s what you believe, then go for it’,” Hjalmar says. “Others were pretty annoyed we shifted directions like that.

“I remember being so frustrated and angry that we didn’t have their support. But that turned out to be one of our greatest drivers going forward — we said, ’we’re going to show them how wrong they are.’ We got an extra power boost from that.”

App-enabled serendipity

After the pivot, “we started to get real product-market fit” in Sweden, says Hjalmar. “It organically spread, not just with the demand side, but also on the supply side. We realized that to take the next step, we could either sit on our hands and wait for revenue, or we could look for funding.”

They embarked on another seed round focused on European VCs, which Hjalmar estimates as “50 percent coming from previously nurtured contacts and 50 percent cold outreach.”

It was a rocky start. “I don’t think we were all that prepared,” he laughs. Several funds that told them it was way too early. “We didn’t really understand how it worked. I don’t want to say we winged it, but now that we’ve raised a Series A, I see that we definitely weren’t structured in the same way. It was very much like running a startup — you learn on the job.”

Karma gained traction with an early investment from German firm e.ventures. “They timed that reach-out perfectly,” Hjalmar says, describing how an e.ventures investor came to Sweden to meet the founders, and wanted to try Karma for the first time. “He bought a cinnamon bun on the app from a nearby cafe. We went to pick it up, and stood outside while he walked in. We could see there was something going on inside.

“It turned out that two other people were there, buying Karma food, and sort of jumped on him, which is a very non-Swedish thing to do. They were like, ‘isn’t this the best platform?’ When our investor came out, you could see he was skeptical. It was a hilarious moment. We were obviously super excited that people were talking about Karma, but he was trying to assess whether we planted them there!”

Hjalmar and his team still laugh about it. “They had decided already to invest, but that was hopefully just an extra push,” he says. “They inherently understood what we were trying to build.”

Good metrics = green light

Fast-forward to Karma’s 2018 Series A round, led by Swedish VC firm Kinnevik AB. The company had planned to fundraise later in the year, but decided to start six months early. “We had metrics trending the right way,” says Hjalmar. It was kind of an opportunist move, but we basically said, ‘let’s go for it.’ You can’t semi-fundraise. You have to go all in.”

The cap table also includes Silicon Valley’s Bessemer Venture Partners, a firm that “was really engaging with us, trying to put themselves in our shoes,” Hjalmar says.

Stockholm-based appliance giant Electrolux is another notable investor. “I can’t disclose too much. We did really cool stuff together that we’re going to announce soon, which ultimately led to the investment,” says Hjalmar.

Now that Karma has plenty of resources, it plans on expanding internationally, he says. “We’re going to put that capital to good use and make sure that Karma is available in a lot more places soon.”

Skype, Spotify, and the Swedish wave

“Sweden is a small country, but we do have a strong belief in entrepreneurship,” says Hjalmar. “There’s a lot of willpower, access to capital, and access to knowledge here. That makes it fairly easy to start your own business.”

He reports that the Swedish startup scene is booming, set off by Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype in 2011, which created a wave of new startups like iZettle, Klarna, and Spotify, which went public this year and created a new crop of investors. “I think we’re going to see another wave soon,” Hjalmar suggests.

What’s his advice for entrepreneurs seeking investors?

“So many times, people said we’re never going to make it. You need to be able to turn that into fuel,” he says.

Persistence pays off in other ways as well. “If you’ve got enough grit to sort of harass people long enough, they will eventually, hopefully, sit down with you. Or block your email. But you’ve made progress.”

Lastly, says, Hjalmar, “don’t underestimate the power of people. It all comes down to the people you inspire to join you on the journey. You’ll never build the next amazing thing by yourself.”

This article is based on an episode of Foundersuite.com’s How I Raised It podcast, which goes behind the scenes with startup founders who have raised capital.

Good Karma: How a Swedish Mission-Centric Food App Pivoted its Way to a $12M Series A Round was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nathan: Hi. Welcome to another episode of “How I Raised It” produced by Foundersuite.com. Today I have Avi Meir of TravelPerk (www.TravelPerk.com) coming to us from Barcelona. How’s it going?

Avi: I’m great! How are you doing?

Nathan: Pretty good. Where are you from originally?

Avi: I’m from Israel, from Tel Aviv.

Nathan: That’s awesome. And what led you to Barcelona?

Avi: I actually moved here for business school and we kind of decided to stick around. It’s an amazing city and has a really nice balance of professional opportunities, but also great quality of life. My wife and I decided to stay here, and actually our two kids were born here, so I guess we are really a part of the community now.

Nathan: That’s great. I’ve been there — years ago, not since I was in college, which feels like forever ago, but it was a fun town for sure.

Avi: It’s changed a lot. I wasn’t here before we moved here 9 years ago, but apparently it was a completely different city. They reinvented the city, in a way. Super interesting, it’s a startup in itself, right? I mean, that’s interesting.

Nathan: Yeah, cool! Well, I do want to talk about the Barcelona startup scene and its funding scene. But first, let’s actually just start off with what TravelPerk does. What do you guys do?

Avi: We fix business travel. Business travel is a $1.5 trillion industry globally and it’s really not working the way it should. The two categories that companies can choose from when they have to send their employees around the world for business do not work. So the first category we’re talking about is using a travel agent, like the American Express of the world. And when I speak on stage, I always ask people: “When was the last time anybody here used a travel agent for vacation?” Then, unless you go on a very niche trip, like a safari trip somewhere, people don’t need physical travel agents anymore. It sounds obvious, but they book online. So why is it that we, as companies, ask our travelers to use travel agents? It’s clunky. It’s expensive. They charge high fees because they are service-based companies, rather than product or technology-based companies, that have limited inventory. It just doesn’t work. That’s category number 1. And the second category is giving up and saying: “Just go and book anywhere you want.” This is called unmanaged and that’s 60% of that $1.5 trillion I mentioned. Unmanaged by definition gives you access to good inventory because you have the entire internet at your hands, but then you waste time comparing 12 websites on average. As a CFO, you lose oversight of the company by not knowing what people spend and why, and what the other options were. You really have to choose between two bad categories. I have to expand a bit on our background as a founding team, we came from Booking.com before, so from the consumer side of travel. And we thought to ourselves: “Why can’t business travel behave like consumer travel? Like leisure travel.” And that’s what we’re trying to do — to fix it in a consumer way.

Nathan: Interesting. Is it a markup on the cost of the travel or is it more of a subscription model? What’s the business model?

Avi: We actually have the same business model as leisure travel websites, meaning we are getting a commission from the supplier. Mainly from accommodation. Hotels pay a commission and we’re getting a piece of that. It’s not a markup but just a part of what you pay. Let’s say you pay $100 bucks a night to the hotel, I’m getting some of that as revenue. That’s the main revenue stream. We also have Premium and Enterprise accounts where we have guaranteed SLAs and easier payment terms. Basically, companies can pay at the end of the month against an invoice and get credit from us. Then we charge for that on a per trip basis.

Nathan: Gotcha, cool. Is it just in Europe now? You guys are based in Spain, or are you global?

Avi: We are globally minded. We have customers in practically every continent of the world. That being said, we are focused on Europe at the moment. We opening offices, now, in London and Berlin to expand within Europe. But by the nature of the beast, this is travel. Even European companies travel a lot outside of Europe, so you have to be everywhere. You have to have a solution that works globally.

Nathan: I wanted to get to the backstory or the genesis story. You touched on it already. You guys were a couple of founders from Booking.com. Was that like Orbitz or in the same category of Do It Yourself price comparison? Or was it something different?

Avi: So I had a startup before called Hotel Ninjas, where we did software for luxury hotel management and we sold that to Booking.com. Booking.com today is the largest online travel agency for accommodation. They’re selling millions and millions of transactions every day. They’re part of the Booking Holding Group, which used to be called the Priceline Group. It’s the same group as Priceline, Kayak, OpenTable, RentalCars.com and a few other companies within online travel on the consumer side.

Nathan: So with Hotel Ninjas, did you raise money for that or did you bootstrap that to your exit?

Avi: We bootstrapped it. It was a very small business at the time of acquisition.

Nathan: Interesting. So let’s talk about raising money! It looks like you guys have raised quite a few rounds. Maybe give me just a summary of how many rounds and how much you guys have raised.

Avi: Many rounds! It feels like a lot. We raised a seed round, an A, B and C round, so 4 rounds in total.

Nathan: And when did you guys start? So how long has this been in business?

Avi: We started in 2015. We raised a $1.5 million seed in early 2015. We invested our own money there too, so $300k of our own money and the rest came from angel investors. Then we pivoted, and after the pivot we raised the following rounds.

Nathan: Let’s just go a little deeper into each one. So the angel round, was that Spanish angels? Were these Israeli angels? Were these just people you knew around the globe? What was the makeup?

Avi: Actually we didn’t have any Spanish investors. That’s a great investment in Spain, but we really had global ambitions that they wanted, and we didn’t want to be number one in Spain. We keep saying that we are a global company that happens to be in Barcelona because… Why not? But we don’t have any focus in Spain, not in customers, not in employees. English is the official language in the office here and 80 percent of the workforce is from outside of Spain. So it just made more sense to raise from investors that have these kinds of more global states of mind.

Nathan: So you had global ambitions from the beginning. So how did you put together this angel round?

Avi: It was the usual friends and family. I hope we didn’t have the third f — the fools. We have very smart investors. So friends and family — these are mainly business connections. And then we did have one early stage VC also in the angel round. So we had a fund called LocalGlobe out of London, and it was founded by Saul and Robin Klein who are partners at Index — they were the first partners of Index in London. They left Index to create this new fund called LocalGlobe. We were very fortunate to have them early on. We were actually, I think, the first investment they did out of the fund. They took most of the angel round and then the rest was mostly small tickets from friends and family.

Nathan: And did you have a product in the market at that point, or was this pre-product?

Avi: It was pre-product. Not a good one even.

Nathan: Then let’s go to the Series A, it looks like that was about an $8 million series A. I see some of these names I recognize — Spark Capital, Felix. Who led your Series A? And any stories about putting that together?

Avi: Yeah, it’s actually an interesting one. So Spark led A, Felix actually joined in the B. So the A was Spark and Sunstone. Sunstone is a VC here in Europe, based in Berlin and Copenhagen. So the story of that is actually interesting and I think it’s hopefully one of the first learning points that your listeners can have from our story, in that we didn’t look for the round. We didn’t go and do a roadshow and we didn’t pitch it. The way it worked is we have a very close advisor to the business, a guy called Johannes Reck who is a CEO of a very successful company called Get Your Guide here in Europe, out of Berlin. Johannes started as an advisor, and now he’s actually a board member and invested also. And one of the first things that he told me is: “Don’t stick with investors. You have enough money” — we had just raised 1.5 million — “Focus on building a product, focus on building an MVP and getting the source customers”, which was great advice. So I listened to him, and then one day he calls me and says: “Hey Avi, I told you not to speak with investors, but you have to speak with this guy”. And I went: “Okay, I’ll speak with him.” And the guy was Alex Finkelstein from Spark in Boston. So Alex and I speak, we connect really well with a video call. And then he says: “Do you mind if I come over next week?” And I’m like: “What, do you have a trip planned or…?” “No, I just want to meet you.” So, okay that’s interesting. And Alex is a Senior Partner at Spark. So when he flies over from Boston to Barcelona, this means business. So we took it very seriously, obviously. We spent a day with Alex, my Co-Founder and I, and we didn’t have a product. Or a very basic product, I would say. So it was mainly around getting to know each other as individuals, that was the main point. And I remember working, it wasn’t like today, today’s a rainy day here in Barcelona unusually. But it was April in Barcelona, which is very nice and sunny. So we were walking down the beach by the ocean and just talking about our vision for the company, where do we think we should go, how big it can be. And during this walk, and a few beers were involved as well, he said: “How about you come to Boston next week and we’ll give you a term sheet.” And I couldn’t believe it, it sounded too good. Spark is a great fund. Look at the success story they had, it’s amazing. I mean I should probably not mention too many portfolio companies, I don’t want to offend everybody else, but Twitter was an early stage investment for them, when they were only a handful of people there. They invested in Cruise, that was sold to GM for over $1 billion only 8 months after they invested in their A round. So a really great portfolio of companies — Trello, Stack Exchange, etc. So they are A player VC and getting invited to go to Boston as an official partnership was a really great opportunity.

Nathan: So what do you think it was? It almost sounds too good to be true, right? This guy talks to you on Skype or whatever, and then comes over and you guys are walking down the beach drinking beers and you know, that leads to a term sheet. Did he have a thesis about the travel space and he identified you? How did this actually happen?

Avi: So firstly, Alex is a very smart travel investor. He does in other verticals as well, but he has a few great investments, including at least one unicorn that he invested in the early stage, and Get Your Guide. So he’s a very experienced and smart travel investor. I spoke with him about it, so I’ve some notion of what he had in mind. Basically the way he looked at it was: if you assess all the risks that there is in an investment, you could have a product risk, or market risk, or team risk. We had an interesting idea for a product, the initial product. So of course there is a risk, and we scaled the product, and we built the next version. It’s some kind of risk, but we show that we can build at least the first version and get people to use it. At the time, I think we had maybe 10 customers — 10 companies using us — something like this. Today we have 1500, just to give you a scale of magnitude. Around 10 companies probably using us, maybe less. So MVP with an initial product market, not really product market, initial users let’s say. So the product risk was minimal according to him. The market is huge — we’re talking about $1.5 trillion — there is no question about the market. People will travel for work in the foreseeable future, unless Elon Musk comes with tele-transportation, or whatever technology that kills air and hotel industries. This is here to stay. So if you look at all the risks — product, markets, competition, etc — the only real risk that we had at the time, and to a certain extent we still have today, is execution. And that’s an interesting risk to have because it depends on you. It’s about the quality of the team and about the quality of execution and strategy, and it’s just like that. It’s a very clear proposition, solving a real pain point. Nobody likes the way they travel for work. We’re solving a real pain in a huge market. I think a great team that we had already then, for sure has become the team we have now. So he saw all of that. And he was like: “That’s interesting”. And that’s the kind of deals that VCs are dying to find.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s good. And this actually syncs up a little bit with a similar interview I had yesterday. It was a big market, and a team that had done things before. And again, there was an execution risk, but with some proof of concept, and that seemed to be a good sweet spot for these investors. They were a very different story. They were making an ecommerce platform for plus size women, but the team had been in fashion together at Gilt Groupe. They had a big market, hundreds of millions of women, and that was enough for the investors. Alright, let’s go to the next question. So, that was Series A and then from there, was it just building product, scaling and progressively raising more? How did you know when to raise the next round?

Avi: It’s a good question. The thing is our B and C looked kind of like the A in the sense that we got an introduction for an investor. At each of the rounds, we were not actually about that. We were not looking to raise, at least not very actively. Always open to speak with more people, but we never actively went there and did the roadshow. And almost the same story actually — just meeting great investors, seeing that we have the same ambition and vision about the product, and about the market. And then deals just kind of shaped out of that.

Nathan: In the Series A, you had Johannes sort of as the catalyst or initiating this to the introduction to Alex Finkelstein. At the B and C, was it Alex saying “Hey, let me connect you to a couple guys. I think you guys are ready to talk to them”? Or was there some other catalyst?

Avi: Yeah, it’s always introductions. And this is, I think, very important also to note. It was always intros from people from the network. If I’m not mistaken, we have two colleagues in the Round B. I think one of them was actually Johannes again, and the other one was LocalGlobe, our seed round investors. And then for the Series C, it was also another introduction from an existing investor. Always intros was the catalyst for the beginning of the conversation with the lead investor.

Nathan: Did you ever run a process and really get out and shop the deal around? Or was it a couple of introductions, term sheet and get back to business?

Avi: No, it’s actually a bit unusual, but in any given round we never pitched it to more than three funds.

Nathan: Interesting. This is a different strategy than most of the folks I’ve talked to. Do you ever feel like you didn’t go on enough dates with investors, if you only talked to three funds per round? Or did you just have a good feeling about the ones you did talk to?

Avi: You always have the thought: “Maybe I could’ve got a 10% higher valuation, but I think it’s also very important to make sure that you have a strong fit with the investors. It’s not only about valuation, because it’s a partnership. It’s the partnership that you just cannot unwind, right? I mean, you think about partnerships, like business partnerships or even marriages, there are ways out legally. This is the one that you look at an SDA, and there isn’t a way out, you cannot ask the investor to step down and take his money and go away, it just doesn’t exist. The cultural fit, or the ambition, and how we see the business values — your values as a person and their values as people — I think all of it is extremely important and probably more important that a valuation, within a range of reasons.

Nathan: Well we’ll maybe touch on that because I think that’s interesting. So a lot of these calls, we’ll talk about almost building the funnel and how people did that. You didn’t have to do so much work on building the funnel. So how did you sort of map your business values, or what sort of business values were you really trying to optimize for?

Avi: I approached it the same way I approach hiring. So I interviewed the investors the way I interview a candidate, and you ask in exactly the same way. So you ask them to give you an example and a few stories, three examples, two reference calls about them, which is also very important both for candidates to join the company and also for investors. I think that’s something that entrepreneurs are always very shy about — due diligence on your investors. And I don’t think we should be. Let’s not forget that in the equation of raising money, we are the ones who are deciding who to buy from. We are buying cash and we’re selling equity. And if you have a good company and you are able to get term sheets, if you can get one term sheet, you can get two and three and four. So it’s up to you to decide who to buy from, and you have to do your diligence. You cannot just go into a partnership without knowing who you’re talking to. So I just interviewed them the way I interview a candidate, and then I do reference calls and we regroup as a team, and talk about the investor and try to assess if they’re the right fit for us.

Nathan: Do you have one or two interview questions that are your favorite, or that you find really uncover good stuff?

Avi: So I think there was one that is great for all kinds of interviews — asking about failure and how would they handle failure. So: “Do you have an example of when you failed, and what you learned from it, and how you approach that?” Because companies, especially startups, will go through good times and bad times and I’m trying to assess how this person will react if we have a quarter of missed growth, or we lose an important team member within the company. That’s a more general question. Then specifically for investors, we as a team have a very strong willingness to create a big independent company here. So to assess fit, we just ask it straight: “What if we get an offer to sell the company for $400 million in the next 12 months, what should we do?” So imagine if somebody just invested at a lower valuation than that and I tell them: “Exit in 12 months at $400 million,” because I want to see if they are in it for the long term, like we are. The obvious answer should be: “Hell no!” Why would you sell for $400 million if you can create a $100 billion company? It’s a no-brainer.

Nathan: Interesting. So you’re using that to gauge whether they’d be in it for the long term. I can see other founders using a question like that to gauge whether the investor would maybe block an exit, because this is one of these conflicts.

Avi: Yeah, but I want them to block an exit at this size. So that’s actually something very important for us. I want to have a round, especially the board, but also investors that are not on the board, I want them to push me to say no. We shouldn’t fool ourselves. I mean as a founder, especially in early stage, getting an offer to sell your company for 400 million, this is a life changing amount of money that we’re talking about. My grandchildren’s grandchildren will never have to work again. And this is Spain, so this is a lot of money. So it’s actually better at that round, I want them to block us. I want them to really put up a fight. Because it will be tough for anybody to say no to this kind of money. And I want them to be there and say: “What are you talking about? Didn’t you say that you’re going to build a multi-billion dollar business. Why are we talking about selling for 400 million?” So it’s actually by design that I want them to be like this.

Nathan: But just to play Devil’s advocate, that’s all great if things continue to go up and to the right, and everything goes well. But maybe you miss a quarter, a couple quarters, and then you better raise more money. It’s usually the founder that suffers the dilution and the protective provisions, and the VCs are protected because of the term. So I mean, does that factor in? This is more of a bigger question, but any thoughts on that?

Avi: We’re not in a safe line of business. If I wanted “safe,” I would go to work in a bank. Actually no, not anymore, even banks are not safe. This is a risk and you have to factor it in. I definitely have it in mind. If we have a down round scenario, this is something that is part of the game. As long as you understand the rules of the game, I think it’s fine. The issue is if sometimes you don’t understand that. So, of course, that’s a risk.

Nathan: Okay, good. A couple of other questions here. I notice when looking, if PitchBook is correct, you did the Series B in May 2018, then a Series C in October 2018. So it looks like the fundraising has got faster between rounds. Any strategy on that? Are you in a market that has a lot of competitors? Is this like a horse race to gain market share or is there any deeper strategy?

Avi: So, it’s a great question. Yes, the thing is — business travel, the whole market, is now transforming. It’s a $1.5 trillion beast that woke up. The opportunity, that almost didn’t exist five years ago, now is so clear. The way we see it is that we are now in 2005. This is the year where so many things moved around in leisure travel — Booking.com got acquired and there was a spin off a few years before that of Expedia. All of these changes in leisure travel that ended up with three big players, Booking Holding Group, Expedia Group and now Airbnb is obviously growing very nicely. And of course, more and more smaller players. This is what is about to happen in business travel. So we’re going to see in the next 10, 15 years, probably 2 or 3 groups that will dominate business travel. You don’t have a $100 billion company in business travel, you do have in leisure travel. Booking Holding Group is now roughly a $100 billion in market valuation, Expedia is smaller than that, but it’s still a very big business. The same is about to happen in business travel, so this is what everybody’s realizing now. And those like us that have a 3 year, almost 4 years now, head start against everybody else is the reason why we are able to raise more money and blast our growth rates, and our vision about things. The idea is that this is a land grab. A lot of companies that are not using any business travel tool today, will be using something in the next five years and this something should be TravelPerk. This is what we’re going for and hence the importance of going fast, and you need to raise more money to go even faster.

Nathan: Looks like Spark is in the US, but a lot of the investors are European. You had DST, which is Yuri Milner’s fund. He’s kind of an interesting personality. What was it like pitching him? How’d you get connected with those guys?

Avi: So to be precise, this is Yuri and his partner Tom investing personally, this is not DST. Their check book doesn’t contain checks small enough to fit our $44 million round. We know Tom Stafford, based in London. So we know him through, again, introductions and he was the one who introduced us to Yuri. It was probably one of the most interesting and intense pitches I’ve ever done in my life. Yuri is, I don’t know if you know, but he’s actually a scientist by training, and is also extremely smart and a very interesting guy. It was longer than the average pitch, and we almost didn’t talk about the business. And this is what he was trying to do, and that’s why I liked it so much, because he was trying to assess me as a person and I was trying to assess him as a person. I think after the conversation, we realized that we just like each other as people and we decided to do business together.

Nathan: Interesting. Just for kicks, do you remember one of the topics you guys talked about?

Avi: I think the main one was ambition, and what’s your goal? And Yuri and I share the same belief that the work-life balance is a bit of a misconception. If you really want to build a huge business, you really have to dedicate your life to it. And I think this is something that both him and I see eye to eye on.

Nathan: Good segue, I wanted to talk about building a startup in Spain and raising money in Spain. It almost seemed contrary to what you just said about ambition and everything, to build it in Spain. Because I think of Spain as your holiday destination. Why are you there? And what’s the startup scene like in Spain?

Avi: I’m in Spain because I moved here for business school and my wife said that we are staying here, and I listen to my wife. I learned that very young. And it’s a great destination for talent. So this is one of the hacks that we have in Barcelona — we are able to relocate people from anywhere in the world. We have people here who have moved from the valley, we have people who moved from any place in Europe, we have people who have moved from the Middle East, from Asia, and it’s just a very easy destination to move to. Especially when you’re young and are interested in doing a 2 to 4 year adventure, and maybe stay and maybe not. And so we have a lot of smart people that moved here for that adventure. The startup scene is actually becoming really interesting. It was kind of nonexistent. There are a few early success stories which were basically national champions in Spain. Privalia is a famous one, it’s a fashion ecommerce website, acquired by Vente-Privee. Trovit, Budget Places, you have a few online successes. Social Point is another one, it’s a gaming company. All of them in the range. So relative to Europe, it’s a nice success, talking about a range of $80 to $400 million exits. So these are nice ranges for Europe, they’re not as impressive as the valley. That was the previous generation, and now you have a new generation of startups that are more global and less thinking about Spain as the core market. Just to name a few — Badi is a great startup here, it’s an app to help people find roommates, created by an extremely smart young entrepreneur. Glovo is another one, it’s an everything delivery app, doing amazingly well, they’ve just closed I think another round of more than $100 million. And expanding extremely fast to South America, and I think Africa they mentioned last time in a press release. So yeah, a few of these. It’s not as vibrant as the valley for sure, it’s not as vibrant as Tel Aviv or even Berlin yet, but definitely up and coming. It’s definitely beginning now for a new generation.

Nathan: Is the startup scene concentrated in Barcelona or Madrid, or is it spread around?

Avi: So you have Madrid and Barcelona as the two hubs. Barcelona has more direct investments and more VC money flowing into it, especially from foreign investors and Spanish investors. And I think just by absolute number of startups, Barcelona has more than Madrid, but definitely Madrid has a few interesting startups as well. So these are two hubs that exist in Spain. There’s one company in Valencia that I know of, so Flywire is half in Valencia and half in Boston. And the rest of the city is a more holiday destination, rather than startup destinations.

Nathan: You mentioned, and I think this was kind of fun, the hack is to get people to move to Barcelona. Can you recruit there and what’s the talent pool like? And what’s the work ethic like of local talent?

Avi: So local talent exists. I’m hiring great people, especially engineers, designers, but also all roles. It’s never easy, I don’t think it’s easy in any place in the world to hire great people. And for the great talent everybody’s fighting for. And as I said, we do have some competition in terms of other startups, and also bigger companies. Local talent is great. You have a young generation of engineers and designers and product owners that have traveled, that have worked abroad, and came back with these notions of thinking about a startup in the right way, I would say. Not as a lifestyle business, but really as scaling a business to a very big size. So we’re doing the education ourselves for sure. And actually we don’t have an issue around work ethic. I think it’s maybe outside of the big city. I’m not Spanish, I don’t know exactly if it’s a true stereotype or just a stereotype, but I don’t see it in Barcelona that much.

Nathan: Good, okay, great. Any tips for any Spanish startups that are, up and coming? Maybe at the earliest stages, raising seed, Series A, just to navigate the scene?

Avi: I would say start global day one, think big. Don’t try to be number one in Spain, try to be number one at least in Europe, if not globally. And don’t be afraid to be ambitious, I think there’s a lot of shyness. I think something that everybody can learn from Americans, especially from the valley, is being extremely bold with statements, even in the early days. People start, where there are three people in a garage and they talk about being number one in something, globally. And I think this kind of ambition is crucial to create your startup. You cannot be anything less than that in your ambition.

Nathan: Yeah. Good. And then I guess just in general, navigating the European, venture scene, it sounds like almost all of this started from introductions. But any thoughts and tips of just raising money in Europe, any advice you would give?

Avi: Yeah, so at the moment there is a lot of money and a lot of opportunities and great investors have raised big funds and are looking to invest. So there isn’t any kind of liquidity issue right now in the market, especially early stage. Not that I see, and especially not in Europe. It sounds tough and I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs, especially if they never raised for their startup, are a bit confused about how do you get around to getting introduced to investors, but it’s not that difficult. I mean at the end of the day, as I said, you have a product that the investors are really, really interested to know about. Their job is to find good companies and deploy as much capital as they can into this company. So don’t be shy about asking for introductions then use your network and if you don’t have a network, build your network. And if you don’t know how to do it, well that’s your first task as a founder, and you have many other challenges in the future. So nobody said it’s easy. By the way, my first recommendation is do not start a company, come and join my company. We need great people. And if you’re really, really, really crazy and you still want to do it, and you don’t listen to my advice, then you should really not give up. It’s difficult to create your network, it’s difficult to get introductions, but that’s, I think, the best way to approach it, especially in the early stage.

Nathan: I think that’s good advice. And this is also a pattern I’ve heard on a lot of these interviews. I’ll ask the founder where they built that network and a lot of them intentionally went to work at a startup that was on a growth trajectory, partly just to build the network before starting their own. So I think that’s a longer term hack, but it’s a good hack actually.

Avi: And here’s supporting evidence for what you just said. I sold my first startup to the Priceline Group, Booking Holding Group they’re called now. Currently the CEO of the group is an amazing person called Glenn Fogel. He’s a legend in online travel. He bought Booking.com for not a lot of money, I think it was something around $100 million and this asset is worth north of $80 billion now as a group. So he’s arguably the best M&A person for sure in travel, but maybe in history, I’m not aware of all M&As that happened. I know Glenn, because he came to meet us in my previous company where I was an employee. So I joined a startup as an employee, I met Glenn, we kept in touch, and then I called him when I was looking for investors in my startup. So to support what I just said, if you don’t have a network, a great way to build your network is join a company that has investors and you can meet the investors. In a company like ours, we are very happy for employees to join the board meeting, present something. We do dinners where people from the team are invited to meet the investors and the board members. It’s a great way to me to build their network for sure.

Nathan: Yeah. Oh, that’s great. Very good. All right, well I will let you get back to building TravelPerk. Anything you want to plug, promote, open job reqs, discounts, deals, anything happening that you want to call attention to?

Avi: I think it’s a great service to your listeners, if they travel for work they need to know about TravelPerk because we are a way better solution than whatever they have. So if you’re listening to this and you’re traveling for work, get in touch — www.travelperk.com. Or send me an email at avi@travelperk.com.

Nathan: Avi@travelperk.com. Could a startup with four people use it or is it more enterprise?

Avi: Well actually we’re focused on small and medium size businesses, so startups are a great customer for us, and we are a great solution for them.

Nathan: That’s cool. All right, this is great, fun, fun stuff. Congratulations on raising multiple rounds and the growth — 1500 companies. Pretty cool. So good stuff, we’ll look for you after your next round. How’s that sound?

Avi: Sounds good. Hopefully it will be more than six months from now because we need to focus on building.

Nathan: All right, sir. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

PS if you’d like to watch the interview with Avi, click here: https://youtu.be/M0ANilIDP_U

How I Raised It with Avi Meir of TravelPerk was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This has been on my to-do list for ages, and it took a Thanksgiving break to finally get to it.

At long last… here is the Complete Video Guide To Using Foundersuite :)

We’ve broken up the how-to-use instructions for each product into short videos, below. But if you’d prefer to watch the whole series as one un-interrupted stream, go here: https://youtu.be/cjS_Puh5i7c

1. One Minute Overview

2. How To Set Up Your Round

Here, we cover how to create a new round, invite team members, and more.

3. How To Add Investors To Your Board

We start by showing how to invite investors one-by-one, and the difference between individual cards and firm cards.

4. How To Import A List Of Investors

Many founders already have an Excel or CSV list of investors; here is how to import them into Foundersuite and add them to your Board.

5. How To Search The Investor Database

We have a database of 21,000 VC funds and 100,000+ angels, fund-of-funds, family offices, PE firms, hedge funds, etc. Here’s how to search the DB.

6. How To Use Investor CRM

This video shows all the features and functionality of the CRM. Use it to manage your investor funnel, keep track of activities, files and emails, track overall metrics and funding progress, and more.

7. How To Use The Investor Update Tool

This video shows how to use the Investor Update tool to create a regular newsletter. Use it to both update investors on your cap table, and to “nurture” investor prospects for a future round. Also see how to host your Pitch Deck.

8. How To Access Startup Docs and Founders Market

As an added bonus, we have a collection of 80+ templates (pitch decks, cap tables, term sheets, etc.) plus deals and discounts on Stripe, InVision, Intercom, Bench, WeWork and others.

And, last but not least… here’s the full set of how-to videos in one (30 mins):

Complete Video Guide To Using Foundersuite.com was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In recent months, we’ve seen an increasing number of i-bankers, CFO consultants, attorneys, brokers, and other financial intermediaries using Foundersuite to help their clients raise capital.

So, we did the next logical thing: we built a product specifically for this demo.

I’m pleased to introduce our new “Agent Model” which will enable you to set up a single account and then run multiple private deals / companies / projects under that account.

How To Get One

The best way to set up an account is to go to www.foundersuite.com and then scroll down the page (below the fold) until you see “Do you help companies raise capital?”

Click the button and then enter your email and company name on the next screen. Keep the drop-down selector on “I’m An Agent.”

Next, start your one week free trial by scrolling down and entering your credentials. You won’t get charged until the trial is over, and you can cancel any time before the trial is up without any fees or charges.

How To Use It

Watch the video (5 mins.) <or> read steps 1–5 below.

Written Instructions:

1. First, go to Settings and add a Photo, Name, etc. (optional).

2. Next, click the “Investor CRM” link and then the “Add New Deal” button:

3. Next, you’ll be prompted to pick what type of Deal you want.

Choose “Internal Deal” if this will be private to you and your team (associates, analysts, etc.). Give it a name and you’ll be dropped onto the Deal Board.

Choose “External Deal” if you would like to invite the company CEO / founder to be part of the deal team (and if you would like to eventually transfer the deal to him / her). Give it a name and type the name and email of the Founder or CEO of that Company (he / she will get an invite to access the account):

4. Next, you will be dropped into your Deal. Under each Deal you can set up multiple “Rounds” for example, one Round for “Seed” and another for “Series A,” or one round for “Equity Investors” and another for “Lenders” (each Round constitutes a separate investor pipeline or funnel.)

For example, this image is showing where to click to edit the “Series B Round” of the “Carnegie Steel SPV.” It also shows where to add a new Round.

Make sense? (In short, “Rounds” are nested under “Deals.”)

5. Lastly, to navigate back to your primary Account, or to create a new Deal, or to navigate between Deals, simply hover your mouse on the link above the profile photo and pick the Deal like so:

The above describes the key elements that constitute the new “Agent Model” type of account.

For a few tips on how to use the rest of the platform, including:

• Inviting team members into the account to work with you on a Deal
• Connecting your email to the account so that conversations are automatically logged onto Investor Cards
• Importing your own list of investors into the CRM
• Using the built-in investor database to build your pipeline
• Using the Investor Update tool to create newsletters

… and more, please see our video tutorial list here: https://medium.com/foundersuite/complete-video-guide-to-using-foundersuite-com-7f740ed8c511

Any questions? What features would you like to see? email us at info@foundersuite.com

Soft Launching “Agent Model” was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nathan Beckord: Hi. Welcome to another episode of ¨How I raised It¨ produced by Foundersuite.com. Today I have Maria Chatzou CEO of Lifebit coming to us from London. How’s your day going, Maria?

Maria Chatzou: Hello, Nathan, it’s going really great.

Nathan Beckord: Awesome. Maria is out in the field right now. And you’re in what neighborhood? You said Angel Street or Angel area?

Maria Chatzou: Angel area. The offices of Lifebit are just next to the Angel station. I was on my way to another meeting, as usual.

Nathan Beckord: I love it. This is real startup life. Let’s pack in a podcast while we’re walking from one meeting to another. That’s good. Tell us about Lifebit. What do you guys do?

Maria Chatzou: Lifebit is on the mission of building a full blown cognitive system, a software technology that will enable our clients, pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology companies or research and government organizations to streamline their analysis of genetic data and reach insights much faster and better. That’s what Lifebit is all about.

Nathan Beckord: So your customers would be governments or pharma labs, or who would be the customer in this?

Maria Chatzou: We have a big range of customers. As we like to say, everyone that analyzes or needs to analyze genetic data for whatever purposes that might be, ranging from research, clinical applications, drug discovery, research and development within pharmaceuticals, for wellness and lifestyle recommendations, or even for building better products that are for nutrition, wellness and lifestyle and even for cosmetics. The Lifebit technology is here to help them do a much better job on that, and also enable a big portion of these clients and individuals that would like to be able to analyze and understand genetic data, but they don’t necessarily know how or they have the technology in place that will enable them to do that in a timeframe that would actually make sense.

Nathan Beckord: Okay, interesting. Are you guys in the market now or is it still in development phase?

Maria Chatzou: No, we are the market as of a month and a half ago. We just launched our first product into the market. It’s called Deploit. It’s more of the, I would say, bioinformatics engineers, the data scientists that analyze the data. So the tool is more for them, rather than more end customers or more geneticists or more people that do not have that much data analytics and computational skills yet. It’s a BETA version. We are now at the stage where we are piloting the platform with different different companies, research organizations and governmental as well.

Nathan Beckord: Very interesting. Okay. And where did you come up with this idea? What were you doing before starting Lifebit?

Maria Chatzou: Both myself and my co-founder Pablo, we were computer scientists by training, then we did a Masters in bioinformatics and, Pablo was working for different startups and then as a consultant. I was working as a research engineer in some of the biggest research institutes. And then eventually, we decided that we will both start working as researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), a big international genomics research institute in Barcelona, and we also did a PhD there. We met during that period because we’re working in the same group. And a lot of the things that we did during our time there as PhDs, but also as researchers, had quite a lot of success, with not just the scientific community but also outside the scientific community with different companies and different organizations.

Because of that, we got the chance to interact with many people within research and academia, but also within industry. And very soon, we actually saw a huge need and everyone was trying to build custom software and hardware to somehow be able to handle and convert genetic data to actionable insights. To be able to analyze them and understand what they need and then get out of that actionable insights that inform them about how to develop better drugs, better therapies, better diagnostics, better products, I was saying before, give better wellness recommendations to people. We just saw that big gap and then we were like, we can do something about it. I mean, a lot of the work that we did while we were still researchers already solved part of that problem for a big bunch of people. Then we were like, well, all we have to do now is build the rest of the technology stack to make it completely automated.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. I was just reading I think somewhere recently about how they’re close to cracking the genome for wheat, which is a surprisingly complex code and I guess that it was pretty exciting because then you can build or modify wheat to withstand changing environments and climate changes to fight that. Is that kind of in the right vein? I mean, is that like an example of what your customers could be doing?

Maria Chatzou: Yeah. It’s so funny that you mentioned that because I’m sure my co-founder was in the project were they did the first reference genome for wheat. Probably a lot of his work is helping towards cracking the rest of the stuff needed for that.

Nathan Beckord: Very interesting. Yeah. Really amazing. Cool. Okay. Really, really good stuff. This is like pretty much mostly over my head, but I’m fascinated by it anyway. So let’s see. So talk about getting this company off the ground. Why did you start it in London? It sounds like you are both from Spain originally?

Maria Chatzou: My co-founder is Spanish from Barcelona, but I am Greek and by now I think I’m like very much European, having lived all over the place like Sweden and Germany for awhile, in London for awhile, and then Barcelona for the past five years.

Nathan Beckord: Okay. So what led you to England as your home for starting Lifebit?

Maria Chatzou: So what led us here? So within Europe, I would say UK is the country leading the genomics and personalized medicine revolution. And our clients are here. A lot of the most exciting projects are here, a lot of the talent and the big research projects are within the golden triangle being London, Cambridge and Oxford. So, that was one of the main reasons. The other reason was that Lifebit is actually my second startup. My first startup is called Innovation Forum and we co-founded with a couple of other people and that’s more of a non-for-profit organization, like a Linkedin for like entrepreneurial scientists, bringing together entrepreneurial scientists wanting to paid startups. And because of that, I mean we managed to grow Innovation Forum, it’s running in over three continents and we have over 200 people, most of them, of course, volunteers.

But I got quite a lot of experience and a lot of my support network because the headquarters of Innovation Forum are in Cambridge were actually in UK. So I knew a lot of people here. I think that was the second main reason. And the third is because we got accepted to Techstars London, who were our first investors and who as I say, transformed us. When we entered Techstars, our company was still a project, there was no company, there was a nice project. And when we exited Techstars, we had the proper startup and they were our first investors, they were here in London. And then the follow-up investment, our seed investment, was from a UK VC. So we had all of the reasons in the world to actually stay in London.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah, that makes sense. Talk about Techstars a little bit. So was that one of these vertical tracks that I see Techstars doing a lot of? Or was it their kind of general program?

Maria Chatzou: No, it was a general program. They really liked it. The first time I ever pitched the company was in the WomenWhoTech Startup Challenge 2017. And I was very lucky because one of the judges was Max Kelly, the former Managing Director of Techstars London. And it was funny because when I pitched there, he really loved my pitch. Again, I didn’t have anything, apart from the prior traction we had as researchers and the experience. But we didn’t have anything for the company, apart from a great vision about how we want to do things. And he really liked it because, we were pitching not yet another biotech company if that makes sense, but more of like a true technology company that was trying to build a tree infrastructure into technology applied in the biomedical world. So then he said you are a great fit for Techstars. And I also thought the same because as I said, that was looking to build a deep tech company but true technology company, therefore it was like a perfect match.

We were actually the first genomics company of Techstars. We still are, I think or now there are a couple of more. So it was, it was quite interesting as well for them.

Nathan Beckord: You completed that in 2017 and then you raised a seed round more recently. Did you start raising money right out of Techstars or did you need to wait for awhile?

Maria Chatzou: No, I actually just started raising money right after Techstars. It took me not that much. We announced the round quite late just because we wanted to be stuck for awhile, until we have a product for other reasons. But actually I just closed my seed round after two months of fundraising. We raised over $3,000,000. We raised about 2.25 million pounds. So there is a Techcrunch Press Release for that. It’s all now public information.

Nathan Beckord: Did you use TechStars Demo Day as the catalyst to kickoff real fundraising, and what’s it like raising in the UK? I haven’t actually had anyone else from the UK on this show yet, so I’d love to hear.

Maria Chatzou: The UK is a great place to fundraise. It depends on what sector you’re in and what it is exactly that you are pitching. There is a lot of money, especially in London. There are really high caliber investors. For me I will say it was quite exhausting, I guess like every fundraising round is. But, it was a pleasure to actually meet all of those investors. So I would say the experience was overall really, really good. To be honest, we had quite a lot of traction and interest from both US investor and other European investors and we had those terms sheets on the table that weren’t from UK investors. I personally decided that I wanted to go with Pentech and Connect, who are two big London VCs, because I wanted to actually work close to my investors. And then I decided to leave the other investors for consideration for the Series A.

Nathan Beckord: So talk about how you actually did it. Did you just identify all the big data and/or genomics investors in the UK and work through Techstars to reach out to them? Give us a little bit of the tactical.

Maria Chatzou: During techstars we met a lot of people. But then, did I spend some extra effort to identify the right ones for us? No, not at all. I followed the playbook of Techstars on how to fundraise and it was extremely successful. So I ran fundraising, within what I call the three phases of fundraising. Phase one was to raise awareness and just meet as many people as you can because you can try to filter investors. But eventually, it is more important to actually go and meet them and then you get a better feeling. So that’s what I did. And I had over 170 investor meetings in two months, which is crazy if you think about it.

Nathan Beckord: 170. One seven zero.

Maria Chatzou: Yes, yes. Over 170 investor meetings in two months. So the first stage was like anyone that wanted to meet with me, I will just accept the meeting. It didn’t matter to me if they had the money I wanted or the expertise. I would to talk to anyone. And I would basically use each one of my meetings to refine my message to understand different investors have different levels of understanding of the genomics market. That was equally helpful for me because I had to pitch at different levels. If anything, it was really beneficial. And the other thing that I think investors also appreciated was that, in all of those meetings, I used an approach of not going into the meeting saying ¨What can I get out of this?¨

But more, ¨I’m here to tell you what I’m doing and I’m here to really learn what you are trying to do, what you are trying to get out of potentially investing in Lifebit¨. And then I ran those meetings more of as a chat, and as ¨If you want me to educate, I’m more than happy to educate you¨. So a lot of the discussion wasn’t even about the problem, they were about ¨What do you think about that, what about this, explain to me that¨. And I would be more than happy to. I was like ¨Just tell me about the companies in your portfolio, have you invested in any big data company, an infrastructure company, in any biotech company? In those that you have invested, how did that go? How do you feel about that? What were the obstacles these companies had face?¨ That was extremely beneficial for me. But then, I ran this phase for awhile.

Nathan Beckord: Real quick, I want to get to phase two, but on the phase one, were you telling these folks in the raise awareness phase, were you telling them ¨We are fundraising¨ or ¨We’re going to be fundraising¨? Was it kind of like a warmup chat or was it we’re raising money?

Maria Chatzou: No, we’re raising money. That was after the Demo day. And even before the Demo day, of course I was meeting with whoever I wanted to meet. It was my clear message that I’m not fundraising, I’m just meeting you to just catch up and to get to know you. And when the Demo day happened, we were fundraising and then I kept meeting everyone again and again. I would always go super prepared with my pitch deck, all of the business model. But I would still run it as ¨We’re fundraising¨, and then I’ll run a process through that.

Nathan Beckord: Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Now phase two, what was that phase?

Maria Chatzou: Phase two is after you have met with everyone, understand which are the investors that are more likely to be a match. Because I think it’s a match, right? So it’s not just if they can invest or if they would invest, or if they are appropriate for investment. It’s also about how was the chemistry. Do you see getting into this marriage with the particular investment firm. The second phase was all about going to the next phase of meetings with investors that were ready to put term sheets on the table. And the second phase was all about drilling down with those investors, and tell them ¨Okay, you like us, we like you, what needs to happen for you to put the term sheets forward on the table¨. And then they would give me everything that they needed. Then we’ll run that process and we’ll have as many meetings as needed.

Nathan Beckord: Sorry to interrupt one more time. So from the 170 in the phase one, how many do you think you met with in phase two? How, how short was the list?

Maria Chatzou: The 170 was a total for all of my round. I had about a hundred initial meetings, and then all of the follow-ups were about 50 meetings in total with several investors. I have all of those numbers, I just don’t have them in front of me. But that was sort of the breakdown with the investors that were seriously considering putting a term sheet forward. And then, we only continued on the phase three with the investor that had put the term sheet fast forward.

Nathan Beckord: Sure. Great. Okay. So then you’re in phase three, you’ve got half a dozen term sheets or five or six?

Maria Chatzou: I had a couple of term sheets. I would rather not say.

Nathan Beckord: No, no, that’s fine, that’s fine.

Maria Chatzou: But we had a several sheets on the table, and then we decided to just move on. So, when we had the couple of terms sheets on the table, we still were going, we would have more, but then we decided to stop when we had the terms of that we really liked. Eventually, we couldn’t actually decide between Pentech and Connect because they were bringing very complimentary things to the table. Connect specializes on product and they have invested in some really incredible companies like City Mapper and Type Form and many others. And then Pentech, on the other hand, has a really great track record of biotech companies and true innovation and they have already companies that have IPOed on their portfolio and so on, so forth.

We went back to them and said “How do you feel about doing a collaboration? And they said that they would love that. We were like cool because that means we did not need to choose. And then, we just moved on with them. Phase three for me was all about closing the investment agreement and getting the money into the bank. And I know that a lot of people underestimate phase three where it is like, oh, we have the term sheets that we have agreed and that they will now get the investment agreement. But a lot of things can go wrong on that and a lot of things can delay that it can kill your company. So I was running that process with great persistence and follow through.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah. Talk about that a little bit and you don’t need to say what things could have gone wrong for you specifically, but what were some of the potential trouble areas or pitfalls that startups need to watch out for in that closing phase. Because I don’t think the closing is actually talked about enough. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

Maria Chatzou: Yeah. I’m happy to discuss about where we had problems. So when we got the joint term sheet from both of our VCs was, as my chairman Paul called it, a term sheet made in heaven for entrepreneurs. It was really great. In my chairman is like 75 and he was like being a CEO of multi-billion companies and has invested. So basically, he has seen everything. So him saying that was like, “oh my God, that’s really great”. And it was making me very happy because I knew I had found the right type of investors that totally get what we’re doing, totally understand the challenges moving forward. Then when we actually came to the lawyers and the lawyers took that term sheet and then drafted a sort of investment agreement. Then the law firm who we were dealing with from the investor side decided that they actually wanted to totally different investment agreement that was basically just renegotiating everything that was on the term sheet to the worst benefit of us.

Maria Chatzou: And that was quite sad to see. Especially because the law firm is quite a famous law firm here in London, and a lot of investors are using them. For me, I have actually banned them. I’m really telling my next investors, if you’re using them then I’m not expecting any deal. And that is, for example, one of the most difficult things. I think, in general, lawyers can screw up a lot of things, even if you have negotiated things with your investors. And for us, it came to a point where it became a very frustration point where my investors were like, “Maria, how about we actually just remove the lawyers from the picture and we just start talking with each other and we agree on everything and we’ll just tell them to dress it and that’s it”. And I’m like, “how about we do that?”

Nathan Beckord: Were you in a no shop clause, where you could not pursue other term sheets, you were kind of locked up in this term sheet at this point? You know what I’m asking?

Maria Chatzou: No, definitely I wasn’t locked up. And to be honest, I seriously thought about it because I had investors calling me at the same time, where they were telling me just go out of this round, we can give you more money, or keep that investor and we can come it, and so on, so forth. Any temptation, especially when things are not that ideal, not because my investors were doing something bad, but because the lawyers had sort screwed up things. Um, and yeah. And I’m happy I didn’t do that. And there is a real danger, right, because when you are a first time entrepreneur for me, I’m a second time sort of, but I’ve never fundraised, so this was my first experience with that. And there was a true danger. If I didn’t have really great people mentoring me and advising me where they were like you don’t know and I didn’t know at that point. I knew my investor were like super cool and I already really liked them, but I never had worked with them. So I’m happy I didn’t walk out of the deal and I just made it happen.

Nathan Beckord: Awesome. Great. Any other tips on that closing period? How long did that take? What was the closing timeline?

Maria Chatzou: Really, really fast. But again I’m a very crazy person, so I know I’m complaining a lot, but to actually close the whole thing with the money being in the bank was maybe about a month.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah, that’s really fast.

Maria Chatzou: Yes.

Nathan Beckord: This is like, you know, one of these pretty almost perfect stories where you hear things go so fast and a few hiccups, but what do you think was the strength of your pitch? Why were you able to get it done so quickly? Was it just big data and genomics are hot sexy spaces or the techstars cache. What do you think was underlying this?

Maria Chatzou: I think it was the first phase of the awareness phase if you asked me. So don’t get me wrong. Definitely what matters always the most is what is your story? And what is the founder’s traction, right? Are the founders relevant or they’re pitching, right? Do they know what they are doing? Is the market really big? Is there huge potential for growth? All of those things matter. They are the first things that everyone will check? But once those things are okay, then it’s all about, it was the first phase that a lot of people underestimate. Where they think that in the first phase all they need to do is like look down to the 10 investors that they want and then just go and try to chase them desperately. And I did not do that.

Maria Chatzou: I was just speaking to everyone. And because I did that, investors started liking me. I never actually mailed not a single investor to ask for a meeting, and I had really many investors. I was introduced by other investors saying “I’m not investing in them because I say their seed round is too big or we are not investing in that, but we really liked them and I think you should talk to them”. And that is how I got all of my meetings and just because of that investors is are small group, right? So investors normally talk with each other. And on top people tend to think that all investors are competitive with each other. They really aren’t. They normally consult each other and they normally ask each other for diligence and expertise.

Maria Chatzou: And because at that point I had pretty much talked to every investor almost in London and Cambridge, not so much in Cambridge, but definitely in London. So everyone knew about me. And I think that really speeded up the time because then, investors put a very fast reference about us. And at the same time, we had the credibility of Techstars. I think that was number one. I would say in terms of number two, a lot of founders, what they do, their mistake is that they feel that fundraising is sort of like a job. It’s not a job, it’s literally a sprint. It’s a way of living. You need to say that for the next three months, four months, whatever it takes, I’m not doing anything else in my life. This is not my job, it’s literally my life. For me, it was my life.

Maria Chatzou: I was waking up in the morning and I had meetings. I was going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And then in evenings, I was preparing everything. I was refining my pitch, I was refining my messaging. I was preparing the extra documents. And then you keep going. That was my second tip to everyone. I don’t think of this as a thing to do, or a job to do, think of this as a way of living and there’s nothing else you are doing. And then the third thing that I could say is, get a back office person. Meaning that I had my COO, she was always there and basically I was telling her, “We need to mail this investor. I just exited from the meeting, this investor needs this and that. We need to get those documents going. We need to correct those errors on the business model. We need to refine these numbers. We need to get more information on that company and this investor. Or, we need to check those investors.” While I was running into meetings, she was doing all of the job for me. While I was in Ubers, walking, in buses, even in the subway, the underground, she would mail me stuff and we would catch up about all of the information that I needed. So then, I would be super prepared for my next meeting.

Nathan Beckord: I hope she’s still with you. Or did she get through the fundraising and was just like I’m done.

Maria Chatzou: No, she is. She is. So basically it was a way of living for both of us. And I would catch up with her. I would reach home, and sometimes I would even have meetings until like eight, 9:00 because I was speaking with US investors with different time zones. And we would catch up with her until like 11, 12, 1:00 and we would still work on documents because that was the time we had to work. But it depends, right? So again, like you said before, that this sounds like this story is so perfect and then everything moves so fast and you just had a few hiccups. And trust me for those stories to happen, there is so much work that has to happen behind the scenes that we had to do.

Nathan Beckord: It’s the duck metaphor, right? The duck is calmly gliding across the water, but underneath it’s paddling furiously. And then just going forward, are you already thinking about your next round? Will you be thinking about going to the US for the next round? Is this a business that’s going to take a lot of money? How are you thinking about fundraising?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, this is a business that will take a lot of money, unfortunately. I wish I could say no. A joke that I would always do with my investors when they were asking, “What’s your marketing stuff or what do you do?” And we do all of the buzzwords apart from blockchain, but we need money for that. Because we do big data, we do genomics, we do AI, we do high performance computing, cloud computing. We do all of those things. The big mission of Lifebit put very simply is the process of making sense of your genetic data. It is a two step process: the first is all about the biochemical process of getting the sample and extracting the DNA and just reading that DNA.

Maria Chatzou: And that, right now, is super automated. And it costs less than it costs you to buy an iphone, which is insane if you think about it, and it takes less than half a day to be done. And then you have your DNA read, all of it. But now the problem with that is that you can’t do anything because it’s fragments of DNA duplicated and just like random letters, like a magic sort of screen if you were to output it. Then, the second part of the process starts when you need to analyze all of this DNA and basically get the insights. And that process is not automated at all. It takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of pain to actually get anything meaningful out of that. Which is why genetic data are not being used for wide clinical application, and we’re not having personalized medicine.

Maria Chatzou: We’re not having everything that that genetic data could actually enable. All Lifebit is trying to do at the end of the day is built this technology that will make that process of going from raw data that comes from the sequencing machines, to the insights and the questions you want answered, fully automatically, and zero pain points and super fast. And to do that you need a lot of money, and really bright people to build insane technology. And that’s why we need money. I think for us the Series A round will come after a year or so. It will depend of course on the growth of the company as well. We’re already talking with really big Series A investor which we were anyhow in contact with during our seed round. But we will need money and most probably will go to get that money in the US.

Nathan Beckord: Do you think you’d have to open an office in the US or do you think you could raise from London in US investors?

Maria Chatzou: To be honest, I think we will need to have a presence in the US. But for us, it also makes sense because half of the genomics/genetics market is in the US. It’s actually the part of it that really is the fastest growing. So anyhow, we will make an office there as the growth phase of the company. It will have to be in the US and work more with the US market and with more of the clinical side of the US market, which right now we’re not targeting so much. Even now, we’re actually working with some clinics, but it’s more of the clinics that do more research and they are now experimenting with genetics, rather than, hospitals and completely diagnosis to patients.

Nathan Beckord: Do you feel like your UK investors have good relationships with American investors or are they kind of their own independent Brexit ecosystem? What do you think?

Maria Chatzou: I think I need to run a full phase one investment phase, so actually understand that a little bit better because I don’t have a full picture right now. But from my limited experience so far, I would say they have quite good relationships. Our VCs know a lot of VCs in the US. They work together. They back really good companies. At the end of the day, investors like working together when it is to go for something big that has a risk component to it. It’s good for them because they do risk investments. And there is no American investor that will say, “we wouldn’t invest in this company just because they are in the UK, or because they are in Europe, or because they have UK investors or anything like that. I think it’s on the contrary, they will just back up anything that’s really good.

Nathan Beckord: Last question. Anything we haven’t covered or any tips you would give your younger self going through or starting the fundraising process all over again? Or did you do it just right because you did it pretty successfully and quickly?

Maria Chatzou: I think I did it just right. Maybe my only advice to myself if I were to go back in time, would be to not stress that much and understand that this is a process that takes the time it will take. Eventually, yes, you can cut corners and you can hack different stuff, but eventually it is a process. And I think that would be my general advice to everyone. They need to just understand that they need the buckle up and go for it. It’s a process, you know, it will take the time it will take, and it is frustrating. And it’s a process that requires a lot of people management above all. A lot of people say, “it’s about the start, the technology, the mission and the vision.” Yes, it is definitely about that. And then a lot of people say, “it’s about the money and convincing that there is revenue.”

Maria Chatzou: It’s definitely also about that. But what more and above all, it’s about a people relationship. We raised that the amount of money as a pre-revenue company and pre-product company with almost nothing apart from like a lousy MVP that was barely working. At the end of the day, it’s like you’re trying to build a relationship and you’re trying ask people to trust you and to take a huge bet on you. I was presenting all of my vision and all of the huge potential and how we can become the next Google and Apple of the genomics revolution and of the biotech revolution. And then investors who were very high caliber, would ask: “Maria, we buy all of that, but tell me why you would be that one company and not someone else.” And my answer to that would be, “If I am honest, I don’t know if I’m going to be that company. But if I was to make a bet right now and if I was you, we are your best bet”. It’s true. I was being honest with them. Which is yet another big thing, be as honest as possible, investors can totally see through you. And that’s what I’m trying to tell them. Like I’m not gonna bullshit you like that. I can tell you that we will do the best that we can. We have a really solid plan. We know where we’re coming from and we definitely know where we’re going. No one knows the future. This is an emerging market. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong that no one could anticipate, even if you are God himself. But if you are to make a bet, we are your best bet. Which then, well do I really like you? Do I really want to make this bet with you? And this is where the most personal component comes to play. And if I were to advise founders I would say do not underestimate that and do not underestimate that, at the end of the day, it’s a people’s game. It’s really about building those relationships regardless of whether people are going to invest in you or not.

Nathan Beckord: Really cool. Alright Maria, this is great. If people want to learn more, it’s just lifebit.ai, is that correct?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, that’s correct. It’s easier than my name, right.

Nathan Beckord: Say Your last name one more time. I butchered it, I know.

Maria Chatzou: Chatzou.

Nathan Beckord: I’ll copy and paste that at the beginning, you know, kind of like overdub. This is awesome. Anything you want to plug or mention to listeners, open job recs? Anything special?

Maria Chatzou: Anything special? I guess maybe I can have an ask? My ask would be if people listening to this podcast, really love our vision and they are looking for jobs or they’re looking to interact, or they’re bioinformaticians looking for a cool platform to use for their company, then definitely we’re here to actually help you with that. We run now this pilot program and this partnership program and we’re really happy to talk to these people. So that would be my ask number one. And then my ask number two, which is a selfish ask, is if anyone needs help and it’s more advice, I’m here for them. Just mail me, it’s really easy, it’s maria@lifebit.ai. I hope I’m not going to get a thousand mails. But I’m happy to help founders, especially if they are first founders. So please, mail me if you need anything.

Nathan Beckord: Well that’s great. That’s really wonderful. Alright, thank you so much. This is really fun. Lots of good stuff in here and good luck. It sounds like, pretty exciting stuff. I’ll definitely follow you guys and we’ll catch you after your next round. How about that?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, that sounds great.

Nathan Beckord: Thanks for Maria.

Maria Chatzou: Thank you so much, Nate.

Nathan Beckord: Bye. Bye.

How I Raised It with Maria Chatzou of Lifebit.ai was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nathan Beckord: Hi. Welcome to another episode of How I Raised It, produced by Foundersuite. Today, I have Whitney Casey of Finery coming to us from New York. Hello, Whitney.

Whitney Casey: Hello.

Nathan Beckord: Welcome. We’re glad you could be here today. So let’s start off with the first question. What is Finery, and why did you start this business?

Whitney Casey: Finery is a wardrobe operating system, and what that means is that we basically find everything you’ve ever purchased past 10 years (sometimes up to 15 years) and pull it all into an online wardrobe for you. Then on that online wardrobe, we tell you when things need to be returned, which is a real problem for women. We also tell you when the things you want are going on sale, so you can really optimize your clothing. We started it because we found that women were spending more on their clothing than they do on their education. And as someone who uses the kind of technology like Tripit, or other software that is developed to manage your trips, your banking, or your music like Spotify and Netflix, at one point you have to ask, “When is there going to be something that’s going to manage the thing that you’re spending the most money on — your wardrobe?” I basically said to a friend of mine, “You know, do you find this to be a pain point?” And after she said yes, it was off to the races.

Nathan Beckord: That’s cool. So, how long how long have you been around?

Whitney Casey: We launched a year ago, but it took a year and a half to build the technology that finds your items.

Nathan Beckord: Gotcha. That’s interesting. I mean, it’s definitely a cool idea. Years ago, before starting my business Foundersuite, I was a consultant and I worked with someone named Christine Elia, who started Closet Couture. This was probably 10 years ago. I don’t think it’s still around, but it was a similar kind of inventory management for your wardrobe, so it’s good to see this idea come to life.

Whitney Casey: The predecessors to this product were all valued in their efforts because at the time, the technology didn’t exist where they could create this, but there was a clear need for it. There are maybe 15 products out there that don’t have the technology to automatically upload your items and find them out there in the ether. I think that was really the pain point with all those products. It’s like you have to spend that time to go through your wardrobe and take a picture of everything, then enter five data points, and you think, “The whole point of this is to make it easier for women.” That’s just a huge pain point.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah, that’s cool. So how much have you raised and over how many rounds? Also what’s the composition — angel, venture, friends and family?

Whitney Casey: Our first product I bootstrapped, and then we did a small raise with a group of friends, like all the women that we really look to, just to make introductions for us and see who really got behind the product. It was really important for us too, to make it “by women, for women, funded by women.” Those women were so instrumental in helping us make the connections we really needed to understand. And that’s one of the first tips; the first group of money that you go after in the friends and family round needs to be so strategic. You should not take dumb money ever. You really have to ask yourself, ”Do I want this product so bad that I’m willing to take money from someone that is so ancillary connected that doesn’t have any excitement about this product? But they will give me money.” That answer should be no because those people will somehow be the biggest Achilles heel, the thorn in your side. Every single thing that you can think of that could happen wrong (if the people don’t believe in it from the beginning) WILL go wrong. They’re just giving you money because they believe in you, or their family friend told them to, or whatever. Do not take it.

Nathan Beckord: Interesting. So how did you identify that first group? Was it five, or six, or more for women?

Whitney Casey: One of them is my co-founder (she’s also a celebrity), and I wanted her to be involved, but then she said that she wanted to invest also. So the best scenario is like co-founders who are both investing, and it really does feel good for other investors to know that you have some skin in the game other than your time. And not everybody has the ability to do that, but you have to make some sacrifices in some way that kind of shows your initial investors, “Oh, I’m willing to put in some of my own capital, not just sweat equity.” Even if it’s a couple thousand dollars, maybe you don’t get the car you want or you don’t have a down payment on anything. You’re not paying off a certain loan at that time. It just shows that you’ve got skin in the game.

Nathan Beckord: How much did you put in of your own money? I think this is an interesting topic… it’s interesting to know what it takes to get to a point where you can raise that first outside capital. So if you’re not willing to share that, you can pass.

Whitney Casey: I had promised the board we would never disclose that, just because that’s how we built the product. But it’s tech, so you have to know it’s expensive even to get to an MVP. I really don’t ever want to do anybody a disservice to try to believe that you can fund yourself and bootstrap tech. You can bootstrap consumer goods products. It depends on how complex they are, but when you’re trying to bootstrap tech, it’s really too complex and too expensive. Engineers are too expensive to bootstrap if you don’t have… I mean, I’m 43 and had a career. I had a best selling book, so I saved that money and put it towards my startup. But if you are 20 and you just graduated and it’s your life savings, I’m just saying that it should be in accordance to what you can earn and what your output is. But it is important to put some in, and when it comes to tech you need to be very careful unless you’re the engineer yourself. Then that’s a totally different story. But I’m not an engineer, so it was very expensive.

Nathan Beckord: Gotcha. Okay. So, let’s go back to fundraising. You got a small cabal of investors. How did you find the other three?

Whitney Casey: The others were found through my co-founder. I came from news, and she has such an affinity for fashion but this isn’t a fashion company, it’s a tech company, but when you try finding women in tech to invest, it’s not going to be easy. Especially out of your friends and family circle. Basically we decided that we were going to do an event. So, we flew to Dallas and we met all of these very fancy people at this opening of a ridiculous store. Then we sat them down.

Whitney Casey: We asked for a meeting with a group. We asked one woman to set up a meeting with a group of five women, and she was the one that invited us to the store opening. She had been an influencer who had a bunch of friends and was literally like, “I’m grabbing everybody I know and making them listen to your presentation.” And so we did, and one of those happened to be “the Man Repeller” (ed note: Leandra Medine, www.manrepeller.com). I don’t know if you know her, but she’s a really big blogger and influencer and just an amazing woman in general, and she said that she’d be an early adopter. Getting people to say they use your technology gets investors excited.

Whitney Casey: 0 You don’t need to put anything on Instagram. Just say that they’re using the product. They don’t have to say it publicly, they just have to tell you. And you don’t have to put that out publicly, but you tell investors like, I have really influenced this influencer who’s using our product, and she’s amazing. She loves and believes in it, therefore the people who follow her feel more comfortable. She’s not out there proselytizing for you, or wanting equity and all that jazz. But her support got all these women really comfortable. She was in the meeting and she was sort of like, “I love this, this is great.” She could’ve said, “I hate this, this is useless.” But that’s the risk you take.

Nathan Beckord: Did you say that was a tech event or a fashion event?

Whitney Casey: So we fashioned ourselves as a tech company, but it’s not always easy to find women in tech. So we went to the fashion group and said, “Would you find this valuable?”” And we were worried because we didn’t want to position ourselves as a fashion company because we are not. So having investors in the fashion space wasn’t optimal for us. We wanted tech investors, but we didn’t have access to them and we knew that we would work with women, and that was really important. So just go where you can, and still show them the value. Like this woman who was one of our investors… she invested in tech, but in fashion tech, and that’s very rare. The other ones were just fashion people.

Nathan Beckord: Gotcha. So where was the company at when you were there? Did you have a working prototype? And how much did you raise in that first round? If you can say that.

Whitney Casey: We had a prototype that we could share. It was in beta, and once we raised the first amount we just called them our angels; friends and family. It was kind of like a rolling round… “we’re going to get to this and once we launch, we want to reach certain benchmarks and then we’re off.” We thought, ”We’ll just raise Series A.” What was really interesting is we met with investors, and we said we wanted to raise $5M in a Series A, and a couple of these VCs said that we should call it a seed.

Whitney Casey: Okay, fine. Call it a seed. $5M is what we want to raise. It just seemed so arbitrary. Okay, sure, whatever you want to call it. But it was actually great advice because there are different benchmarks that these professional investors want to see based on A and B. They do seem very arbitrary because it should be based on what actual space you’re in. So it’s very odd. But it was great advice. I’m glad that this VC gave it to us because then we ran with it and it ended up being perfect. We had a lot more traction than a seed stage usually. We kind of threw them for a bit of a loop there, but we were like, “Hey, we didn’t expect we were going to get this much traction.” It’s not Series A traction of where we have engagement and are looking towards monetization, it’s just that we have amazing potential. So go for the potential.

Nathan Beckord: That’s interesting. So what were the key metrics you were putting in your pitch deck for that seed? Was it the number of people signing up or some other metric?

Whitney Casey: 1 That was really the number. Signups were very high. I would never want to give an entrepreneur advice on what they need to look at, like your one hero metric. You can say, “How am I going to position this company around that metric?” And it may not be sign ups, it may be your engagement. You may have low sign-ups, but maybe you have ridiculous engagement. You have high engagement, high sign-ups, you’re a rockstar, so just go for it. But we all don’t have that and you always have to answer all the questions and you need a solid response. You need to test it out on a bunch of lower tier people that you aren’t really going to be aiming for and get rigorous in your deck responses. Start with your own investors and then branch out from there, and then whatever your hero metric is, I always push the investor back to that.

Whitney Casey: One of the best pieces of advice I got was from Jen Hyman, who is the founder of Rent the Runway which raised a ton of money. She helped me practice my deck and she basically was like, “All right, let’s look at all your weaknesses first, and I want you to basically jump ahead of that. And before you even start your pitch, put those out there.” She was a genius for that because I immediately was like, “Alright, we don’t really know about our engagement. We just launched, and this is a product that has the possibility of being a productivity tool, which means we don’t know if the girls are going to be on it everyday or every month, or whenever she shops most. So we operate in the background, and we’re updating people’s things without them having go to the site. So I just had to get out ahead of that and say “Hey, just so you know, if you’re like looking for a seed stage company that has X, Y, and Z, that’s not us. We are thinking more about the big picture. We have a ton of signups. We don’t know where this product is going to go with that, but we are really hopeful for XYZ, but we’re not that company.” And I would just start out like that.

Nathan Beckord: Interesting. So I’ve never heard that advice, and it seems kind of counter intuitive, but I can see how it can be effective. It’s kind of a risky strategy, but it can be effective. Very interesting.

Whitney Casey: She was like, “Bring out all of your dirty laundry first, and in the way that you want to present it because they’re going to get to it.” That’s their job, and if they don’t get to it, you don’t want them as investors.

Nathan Beckord: Right. I’ve never heard of this before. That’s really interesting. Let’s touch on that a little more. Did it ever happen where you get the dirty laundry out there, and the investors just focused on that, not being able to get past it? They were just too stuck on that? Did that ever happen to you?

Whitney Casey: Only once, but I can’t remember how many meetings we’ve had. But that, wasn’t a right fit anyway. We also had a terrible UX, just terrible. That’s part of the engagement story, and an example of how I got out the dirty laundry upfront. We were going to these tech VCs, and a lot of them now have design and UX partners on the team. Even Lightspeed, or like Google Ventures hired somebody from Facebook who was the queen of UX design.

Whitney Casey: But the key point is, tech companies need to know that UX is becoming a really big factor in whether or not they’re going to fund you. And so I got out ahead of our (bad) UX, knowing that we’d never had a UX designer, knowing that only “this girl” (myself) was the one that designed it and I don’t have my 10,000 hours of experience. But I got an MVP out there, and it needs a lot of work, but it had a lot of signups. So let’s figure it out and we’ll hire for what we need. In other words, if I can do this as a non-expert, then we can handle it with a professional But you see how I got that weakness out ahead? It’s answering the engagement question that’s going to happen later. It’s like telling them about how my inexperience of creating UX is a weakness but is a fixable weakness. So it’s like that whole thing when you go into interviews, when they say, “All right, tell me all about yourself.” Instead, you start the interview with that, so you’re basically setting them up so when they start picking upon you, they now don’t have that material to pick upon.

Nathan Beckord: Yup. That makes sense. And then everything that follows after that is all the good stuff, right? So you’re almost setting the threshold, and now it’s all just exciting cool things on top of that. So how much did you end up raising in your seed round, who are the investors, and how many did you pitch?. What does your funnel look like? How many did you talk to, and how many did you end up with?

Whitney Casey: We set out to raise $4,000,000, as an A, and like I said, we ended up with a seed (and I put that in air quotes), and we ended up being oversubscribed and raised by at the advice of our lead investor, who was NEA and Tony Florence. So I took a very different approach; I met with a lot of founders to get advice on how to do this, and here it is. One is do a ton of research on who you want to approach — all the companies they’ve invested in, etc. and make your list. If you don’t start by picking your investors, that’s just not a scenario you want to put yourself in because it’s miserable.

Whitney Casey: You’re like a masochist if you do that. So really hone in on who’s invested in your space, and who understands your space because otherwise you’ll just end up having a lot of really bad meetings. So, really suss that out and cull that list down, then once you do that, wait and set up all of your meetings within two weeks of each other. Seriously. It’s like a barrage. Look, they all went to HBS. they all went to Stanford. They are all very bright, amazing people and they happen to all know each other. They’re all back channeling like, “Have you heard about this deal?”

Whitney Casey: Then all of a sudden your deal is blowing up. Not because it is, but because you’re having four meetings a day and you are scheduling them like X, Y, and Z. So we did three days in San Francisco, three days in Los Angeles, three days in New York, and even though we’re based in New York, we essentially would say we’re going to be in New York these three days, and so we just hammered it out. It was painful because it was basically like a two-week process because we would have one day in between where we travel, but when you say you’re setting them all up in those times, they don’t want to miss out. The “barrage approach” simply works. The women who raised a lot of money at Away and Lola were the two sort of founders that said to us, “You guys gotta do it this way.”

Whitney Casey: And when we did it like that it was good because all of a sudden after that, a week after, people started calling us saying, “We hear you’re raising, we’d love to hear the deal.” And then we had extra follow-up meetings, and we would add people to the schedule. But we put a date where we weren’t going to keep taking meetings. We then said, “Okay, we’ll stop taking meetings on this day. Let’s circle back with all these people.” We constantly kept them in the mix. Always. One of the investors said to me, “You did such a good job of keeping me on the hook without spamming me.” That’s the key: don’t spam them.

Nathan Beckord: 2 Were you sending a monthly update, a weekly update? How were you keeping them in the loop without spamming? What was the approach?

Whitney Casey: Spammy is like, “Oh, I have another meeting,” or like, “Hey, what’s going on with the, you know.” It’s like trying to get them to the table. I would just say that if we had something, if there was really something relevant, like a big benchmark, like if we were going to be on the Today Show and I was said, “Hey, check it out, blah blah,” that’s not spammy. That’s something cool that they would want to know about. But spammy is when you start to try to get them to the table and you’re trying to say, “We have this meeting here, what are you doing?” Even though they have FOMO, they do not respond to “I’m going to need an answer.“

Whitney Casey: I mean, I had one founder tell me “you need to just tell them that you have a term sheet.” And I was like, “But if I don’t, then what happens?” And she said, “Well, they can’t ask you who the term sheet is from. And I’m like, “Actually no, they do.” They ask you all the time who is on a term sheet and you sound so dodgy if you’re like, “I can’t tell you,” because, to be quite frank, you can. You’re not supposed to be out shopping term sheets, but at the seed stage of the first investment, your lead investor is not going to be like, “Oh, you can’t tell anybody who this.” It just seems ridiculous, so don’t try that. Just don’t.

Nathan Beckord: How did you finally get that first one, NEA, to come in so that you could then concentrate on filling out the rest of the round?

Whitney Casey: How did I basically get them to say, “Fine, we’ll be the ones.” Well, it was a good thing we had a lot of interest. So, I also I sent Tony an email that had some concerns he was focused on, and I had to get him back to where I remember where he was the most thrilled about the product. You have to be a good listener in your first meeting because in your first meeting, everybody’s going to be very excited. Remember what they were most excited about and make sure you can fulfill that thing. You don’t ever want to get them excited about something that you know you can’t really follow through on.

Whitney Casey: But if it’s something you know you can deliver on, then go back and focus on that and you say, “Do you remember? You think this is a huge play.” And you tell them what they were excited about, but you have to listen to them. You can’t be telling them what you’re excited about. You have to really listen in that first meeting. What were their concerns? What were they really excited about? What did you see? Let’s look at their body language. They’re poker players, too. But sometimes when they get really excited, they’ll show you and you have to be paying attention and not be so nervous and worried about your stuff. He was excited about a big platform play. I knew he was not excited about being able to sell data or being able to like have some women have other clothes.

Whitney Casey: He wanted the whole thing. He’s the biggest tech investor in this space. He’s going to go for a platform play. So I sent him an email that reminded him, “Hey, maybe this technology existed before, but so did Uber. They had technology that existed before like X, Y, and Z. Don’t forget the big picture. Remember, this is a huge play when we make it. We will be changing retail, so really just go with whatever. Like he kept saying, this is going to be a big platform. It has to be all encompassing, it has to be the entire life cycle of clothing. I just remember him saying that. So rather than focusing on the unbelievable data that we can get and that we can generate things like a great experience for our users, or about me really caring about the fact that women spend too much on clothes… no, no, no. He wants it to be a big platform play, and I believe we can be big so I feel like I can deliver on the promise that he wants. So after saying that to him and sending him that email, you have to reinforce the things he or she wanted because it is very rare to find a female investor that can invest in a $5,000,000 seed.

Nathan Beckord: Let’s touch on that briefly because there’s so much stuff in the news about female founders, and the dearth of money raised by female founders. Did you ever feel you were at a disadvantage or do you ever have any issues about being a female founder raising a healthy amount?

Whitney Casey: 100 percent. So we really sussed out the list of the people that we wanted to be in the round, and chose folks who had invested in women before. So we knew that had to be a requirement, but then the other thing is that we’re not a consumer goods startup, so it’s not tangible and it’s very hard. For the first part of our pitch, we spent the majority of the time talking about the first three slides which were going to explain to a man why this was a pain point for women, and we spent so much time feeling like this was unfair. Why do we have to do this? Half of the population are women and they feel this pain point.

Whitney Casey: But… get over yourself. You’re going to have to do it. And it’s just like if you were selling to some sector that didn’t understand your product, you learn how to speak and learn how to get them to understand this pain point, and they will. But if you don’t, then you don’t communicate to them. This is crazy, but we used Seamless, Open Table and Yelp as examples. For example, when you’re deciding what you want to eat as a guy, you will go through your phone — these are inventories of places you could eat.

Whitney Casey: So we had two images, one of a man looking at his phone and then you can see what’s on his phone, how he’s scrolling Seamless. And, we had a woman on a subway scrolling through her clothing. So when this guy is thinking about what he’s going to eat, she’s thinking about what she’s going to wear to go eat. And so we married them that way and tried to explain to men that you may think about what you want to eat tonight. Mid-afternoon, a woman will start thinking about what she wants to wear to a dinner perhaps two or three days ahead of time, as well as what she wants to pack. So to really wrap their minds around the fact that this is something that is a real pain point for women, and the fact that we have to stand in front of our wardrobe to decide what we’re going to wear. So it really plays on the accessibility.

Nathan Beckord: Very interesting. Okay, last question: what piece of advice would you give to women founders who are starting this process of raising capital?

Whitney Casey: Well, I think there’s just one other piece of advice that I would be remiss if I didn’t share that an investor once shared with me. The most important thing for a man or a woman is the last five minutes of your meeting. These meetings all last about (depending on how entertaining you are) 30 to 45 minutes, or sometimes an hour. But you start to know when it’s wrapping up, and what you need to do is finish strong and you need to get answers. Stop talking, and start asking questions. This is the most important time. You need to figure out where their mind is. Like the advice I told you earlier about really understanding what they liked. You’ll hear that throughout the conversation because they’ll focus on it, but in the end you need to drill home — what do you think?

Whitney Casey: If you don’t wrap your mind around what they’re thinking and what they’re worried about at the end,, then you are going to be setting yourself up for a terrible conclusion because you may go out thinking that they loved it but they don’t. Then you are wasting your time with them, and you’ll need to move on. And so that last five minutes, if you can really get them answering some really important questions like, “Where are you?” “What is your process like?” “What are the next steps?” You will get from those three questions a real strong feel. You will know where you stand with that investor.

Nathan Beckord: That’s awesome. I think that’s really good tactical, actionable advice that we can take home with you. So this has been fantastic. And for anyone who wants to check out your site, it’s just Finery.com correct?

Whitney Casey: Yes. We have an app, and it’s getting more love, but we just sort of soft launched it so that people can try it out. We’re happy to get all the feedback.

Nathan Beckord: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. This is really good. Lots of good nuggets in there and I appreciate it. So I wish you continued success, and onwards and upwards for Finery!

Whitney Casey: Yeah. Also, I’m happy to answer any questions from any founders at anytime. Email me. Whitney Casey@finery.com

Nathan Beckord: Wonderful. That’s great.

Whitney Casey: Thank you. I love paying it forward, and paying it back. All right. Thank you, I appreciate it. Have a good week.

If you’d like to watch Whitney do this interview, check it out on YouTube or listen to it on SoundCloud.

If you like this post, please share on your favorite social channels :)

How I Raised It with Whitney Casey of Finery was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fundraising is a skill that founders are not born with, but it can be learned. This talk contains basically everything I’ve picked up from 10+ years of raising capital for startups. I give this talk about 1–2x per month to new Foundersuite users, and I’ve given it at NASDAQ, 500 Startups, GAN.co, WeWork, General Assembly, and to 40+ top accelerators around the world.

In this talk, I cover:

• How to build and qualify a target list of investor leads
• How to secure the strongest possible “warm intro” (and what to do if you don’t have a mutual connection)
• How to run a streamlined process and drive momentum around your deal
• How to close your round faster and with greater negotiating leverage.

I hope you enjoy it — please let me know if you have any comments or additional “hacks” in the comment section :)

Hacking Your Funding Round was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On June 8, 2018 we held our annual conference at DocuSign’s HQ. This is a fun event, as it’s both a chance for us to meet our customers, and to learn what’s on the cutting edge WRT to raising capital.

Our first set of panelists included Christie Pitts of Backstage Capital, Mason Borda of Tokensoft, Ryan Singer of Chia, and Nikhil Gopalani of Republic.

Our second set of panelists included Jenny Lefcourt of Freestyle Capital, Mike Ghaffary of Social Capital, Paul Hsiao of Canvas Ventures, and Ben Levy of Bootstrap Labs. We also had several “flash pitches” from the audience.

Thanks to everyone who participated. A good time was had by all.

Check out the video in the link below.

Videos from Startup Funding 2.0 was originally published in Foundersuite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.