Our Series A fund raising experience

Boyan Ivanov

co-founder & CEO

History of fund raising

Pitch in Vienna

11.2012

First intro to ‘VC A’ 01.2013

LH demo day

03.2013

US Trip 04.2013

London ‘VC A’

05.2013

BkVF pitch

‘VC A‘ offer

06.2013

TechCrunch SF pitch 07.2013

‘VC A’ TS DD start 08.2013

Pirate Summit

‘VC A’ – end of DD 10.2013

Angel round

‘VC A ‘IP DD

11.2013New

Investor (NI)

Angel round closes

12.2013

Declined ‘VC A’

ClosedNI

01.2014

~14 months

History of amounts sought

€200-250

$245-310k

€2m / $2.5

$500k

₤550k /

$800

€700-800k

$100k

06’12 11’12 02’13 04’13 06’13 07’13 10’13 11’13

$1+ m

Some statistics

Spoke to 50-70 Business Angels

Spoke to ~50 VCs / Investors

Hundreds of calls

Thousands of emails

~14 months

Estimated – $30-40k of funding related costs

Some ideas

Prepare well – look beyond the formal criteria of VCs

Some ideas

It is all about people – research them even more

Oh, sh*t!

Some ideas

Traction is good. Competition and scarcity are even better

Some ideas

EU vs. US

- Closer to ex-bankers than VCs

- Risk focused

- Easier to get

- Understand technology better

- Potential focused

- (Close to) impossible to get from Europe (“start packing”)

Some ideas

Get good advisors

Source: http://animatedtv.about.com/od/clonewars/ig/Star-Wars--Clone-Wars/Yoda.htm

Some ideas

Never mind the media

Blah-blah-blah

Some ideas

Turn your weakness into strength.

Some ideas

Check references…and take it seriously!

Some ideas

Be very selective on how and who you spend your time on.

Some ideas

Prepare for a marathon – 12+ months

Water, CASH, CASH, water…

Q & A

Blaž Triglav

- Having gone through that experience, do you think you could have saved any time if you did it again?

Dragos Andronic- Deck?

Q & A

Q & A

StorPool

storpool.com@storpool

Boyan Ivanov

bi@storpool.com @bhivanov