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How to Diligence a Therapeutic Startup

How to Diligence a Therapeutic Startup

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Fundraising, Investing

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    Building a List of Investor Prospects

    September 3, 2020

    1 min read How to Raise Funding Part 1: Building a List of Investor Prospects (You Need Several Hundred, Not Just a Dozen or So) By now, you probably have your pitch deck and financial projections ready, and your due diligence box (some call it a data room) is coming together. Now it is time to take your deal to a list of investor prospects. The first step in a fundraise is to build a list of potential investors. You’ve to go through your contact list, your LinkedIn connections, and you rack your brain for potential investors in your deal. You’ve done a few Google searches and added a few local angel networks, you know. The list stands at about 15 names. Now what? You know the fundraise is similar to sales; it’s a numbers game. Only a small percent are going to invest, so we need more names. A lot more. You can search Medium and find a few lists online. Some have email addresses; most do not. You start asking around for lists from friends, and they share some with you. Some of the lists are up to date, but many are over a year old. Now what? At TEN Capital, we have over 12,000 investors in our network that you can access. We can introduce your deal to those investors based on their interests, so that you can confidently build your list of solid investor prospects. That doesn’t mean they will write a check for $1M in a few weeks, but now you know who you are targeting, and you can start the work of building a relationship with the investor. Read more in the TEN Capital eGuide: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/how-to-raise-funding-eguide/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network.TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

    Should you Raise Funding?

    November 6, 2019

    1 min read Should you raise funding and if so, how much should you seek? Funding helps accelerate what you already have going into your business. You should have a core process for acquiring customers and providing a service. If you don’t have it then funding at this stage will only hurt your business. It’s best to continue testing your core business model until you know it works. Keep in mind that it’s important to find the best channel for acquiring customers and at the most efficient cost. By stating your core business in numbers, you now know what it costs to grow your business. Then ask yourself, what is the best source of funding for your business? In addition to equity funding, you may consider debt financing, self-funding, or bootstrapping. Debt financing requires you to pay back the loan but after you do so, you own the business outright. You could self-finance, which means you put in your own money, or you could bootstrap it, which is another way of saying ‘find a customer who will pay for your product/service’. I call this customer funding. For this, you may need to offer additional services at a higher price to cover the startup costs but is a great way to grow your business as it keeps you focused on your product and customer. If you decide to raise funding, how much should you raise? Raise enough so that it will take your business to the next level. Think about the position you need to achieve to raise the next round of funding. Your fundraising should take you there and set you up for the next raise. Your valuation in any startup is low at the beginning. Raising too much money at a low valuation will end up giving away too much equity. For those with larger fundraises you may want to break it down into several milestone steps in which case you can raise your valuation for each step as you achieve more revenue. Read more in the TEN Capital eGuide: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/how-to-raise-funding/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

    What We’ve Learned Over the Years- How You Can Tell you are Talking to a Pretend-preneur

    May 8, 2019

    The startup world is open to anybody, and it seems like everybody comes through it at some time or another. I receive calls daily from entrepreneurs seeking to start a business, raise funding, or hire a team member. I can always tell who is the serious entrepreneur and pretend-preneur – someone who likes the idea of running a startup but is not committed to the work required to make it a success. That’s important because a pretend-preneur who raises funding will ultimately waste it, and there are too many good startups to spend money on those who don’t see it through. Here are some telltale signs of a Pretendpreneur –They are more worried about job titles and credit for the work. –They don’t seem too focused on the customer and what it will take to make them happy with the product, as that’s a detail to be figured out later. –They focus on the superficialities of the business and not the core functions of building the product and selling it. –They look for ways around the hard work rather than working their way through it. — Problems are everyone else’s fault, and nothing can be done about it. –They don’t know who their customers are, and it doesn’t bother them. –They think funding will solve all problems and make life easier after the raise. –They don’t know their numbers, but someone else in their organization does, and that’s good enough. Everyone dreams of a successful startup and fundraise, but it takes more than a dream to be successful. Hall T. Martin is the founder of TEN Capital and a builder of entrepreneur ecosystems by startup funding through angel networks, funding portals, syndicates, and more. Connect with him about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies

    How to be Successful at Raising Funding for Your Startup

    January 31, 2019

    1 min read From the Fundraise Process Series: How to be successful at raising funding for your startup. The key to raising funding is consistency and persistence. Most startups spend time with investors and then fail to follow up and keep them informed. In your fundraise, when you meet an investor and pitch him, you must have a plan for follow-up and keeping them informed. It could be as simple as adding the investor to a list and sending a regular email update. From time to time you reach out to offer a call or meet up for coffee. Investors are looking for team and traction so you need to find ways to demonstrate you have a great team and that you are achieving traction. Traction will look different at each stage. Seed: building an MVP, recruiting team members, raising family and friends funding, identifying customers who will buy a pre-sale version. Series A: building a robust platform, raising funding from angels and early-stage VCs, and closing recurring revenue sales. Series B: recruiting channel partners and scale partners, raising funding from later-stage VCs, and building out unit economic revenue models proving scalability of the business. Celebrate every win whether it be a customer, an investor, or product achievement. It helps to recruit a big-name angel investor which signals to other investors that you have traction with investors. If you reach a milestone in product development, make note of it to the investors and customers. If you reach a turning point with a customer, make sure investors know about it. It takes seven touches to close a sale so it takes seven touches to close an investor. Take the investor “on the journey” with you and keep them informed. Consistent communication will show you are purposeful in your efforts to start and grow your business. Read more from TEN Capital: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/education/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

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