Acquiring funding for a startup in india has become a hassle. I myself have been doing research on seed funding Vc's and angel investors. All they ask is pitch deck and LinkedIn profile. Which they don't even go through and just reply with an email saying we are not eligible for funding. On the other side US and other countries are getting funding at the ideation stage. I guess we can't even go for crowdfunding. Started building MVP, but halfway through the hurdle and unable to resume the development due to limited resources.
I completely get your frustration, having been through this cycle myself while building. And yes it's true, it's hard to raise funding in this market, but you'd have to probably go more focused on your approach.
A few suggestions from my end to maybe make the fundraising meaningful.
Customers: Ask yourself if what you're building is a priority item or simply a challenge in the industry? You have no idea how many folks get to these much later on in the journey. What I mean by that is, will what you are building be a priority item for your ICP maybe because it impacts their bottom-line or drives higher efficiency, anything that contributes to revenue. If not, if you're only solving for a challenge, do your research whether this is what your customers are looking at at the moment?
Focusing on Closed Sales- Instead of closing sales given you're still building your MVP, get your solution validated. Get your target customers to give you nuggets on why you're needed. It's great to get a LOI if you're in the B2B business, because that's the amount of contract value your funding will help you hit and VCs would prefer a more active pipeline than something that's purely on ideation.Also gives you the right thesis on your product, the pricing, any misses etc.
Team: While I get why many people say hire from Tier 1, Tier 1 always doesn't equal more quality for you. Find folks who have on the ground operator experience in your domain, get them to validate your idea and sell your vision. Ask them to get involved in part time activity. Offer them healthy ownership, find advisors many folks including me do free advisory for ventures because it's a way to give back to folks where you feel they are solving something critical. So get crafty to get a more holistic founding team
Angel Investors: Investment like anything else works on sales like lifecycle. You have to be concise with the investors you approach, find out investors who represent your domain or have invested
Contd.
Or have invested in similar ventures or your competitors. Most of the time it's better to focus on the quality of angel investment than simply looking at it from a capital POV. This could mean if it's solid, you can have senior executives invest in you from your target market that can also help you get a foot on the door to close these customer deals. They are more likely to do so than a traditional VC.
Hope these help. If you have any specific roadblocks and can provide more context, happy to share more detailed way on how you can go about it from my experience :)
Thank you so much for the briefing. I'll take a note on every point. Thanks for sparing your brother time to reply to this thread.
How will funding help you?
For acquiring the license and team expansion along with the certain resources that needed for my startup to crawl up. 🙂 I do understand that some just try to exploit money from investors for their own joy. But some need it for them to rise from the sand. Hope you understand
Can you really not acquire at least 1 customer without all these heavy investments?
Alternatively, can you fake these (license, team) and acquire 1 paying customer?
If you are clever enough to achieve that, reach out to scroll@proton.me, i angel invest plus I'll warm intro to few VCs.
Hi @Catshowl can totally understand this. If possible, can you share a brief about your team and the idea that you're building upon?
I could help in sharing a few notes on how we approach first calls (I work at a T1 fund)
Just to add some points as well:
Having pedigree is what gets attention (good work experience or good education) - this is because there is a crazy amount of founders building, and it's impossible for VCs to meet as many. Unfortunately, these filters come in
If the above isn't there. The best way to get noticed is by writing really good cold emails to partners/principals/VPs. They'll typically send them downwards and your first meetings will get set. It helps if your idea is related to a thesis they already hold.
Perhaps be more broad based and reach out to more funds, get a few conversations rolling
Giving an advice that most VCs would hate: If all else fails, create fomo. It works for a lot of the funds. Try to get to a better stage with smaller funds and say that you're about to close your round etc. This will get attention despite everything
Hope this helps
@WittyFeed thank you for pointing out these. I shall take note of these. Please let me know how I can contact you for sharing my team details and the product idea with a pitch deck if necessary.
your startup is of which sector?
It's a fintech. Sorry for not specifying it on my post.
I am an enthusiast of Fintech startup. wanna talk
If your product is good/doable you wont need vC funding... VC funding should be opted only scaling up. Any one who comes for funding at idea stage is just another scam.
😄 it's at mid MVP development stage. I guess we should focus on MVP rather than seed funding. Thanks btw
@Catshowl @MetalMan20 @WittyFeed
I can totally relate to it. I'll share my experience.
Building a SaaS and raising our first cheque. Some stats,
Fundraising stats
We did a killer pitch deck and I wrote an investment memo which alone is converting into meetings (this is not to brag but the quality of memo and deck is top notch)
Some common feedback from VCs
I planned to close the round by today (June 30). But didn't land a single term sheet yet. I don't know what mistake we are making. Is it my lack of ability to close deals (first fundraising exp.) or investors particularly invest based on strong background.
Also we are stuck in a chicken & egg problem, everyone who gave a meeting wants someone else to lead for them to co-lead. No one wants to take the first leap. Getting the first YES is quite challenging.
We need the fund for accelerating the product development. (Team + Tech infra)
Funding is really stressing me out and slowing our product development (I handle products). Rejections don't hurt, everything is just feedback. I want to know where we are going wrong, so that we can reiterate.
Any referrals/warm intros/suggestions is welcome. We can connect on telegram.
Wow that's cool. Do you mind sharing your telegram username ?
@GreenRanger30
Follow Prateek Sanjay (based in Norway) on LinkedIn and read his posts and methodology of approaching investors. Try speaking to him for advice, he's pretty helpful and active online.
As for MVP, I'd suggest using your own/team's resources to build it out. No one will give you money to build an MVP when others are already entering the market with their MVP in place.
I know it's difficult but it's the harsh reality. Fintech is extremely competitive but once you start getting customers it would become way easier to pitch for funding.
I don’t use linkedin so I can’t get funding?
Hmm so LinkedIn is mandatory for funding ?
Try crowd funding
Currently at mid-mvp stage fintech startup looking for pre-seed funding to resume their progress. Does this qualify the requirements to achieve a pre-seed funding ? I bootstrapped the startup myself at the beginning and we have not yet r...
I am building something, say like a social network, for the consumer where they will use it. Now, I don't feel good raising from any VC because of their heinous nature,
Can I raise pre-seed funding for my startup via equity as tokens w...
Can we talk about how ridiculous the startup funding scene is in India? It feels like VCs are throwing money at anything that has "disruptive" in its pitch. I mean, I’ve seen startups with zero traction getting millions while solid ideas...
Alright folks, time for some real talk. I fucked up. Big time. And I'm here to share my story so you don't make the same mistakes I did.
Back in 2021, I co-founded a web3 startup. Yeah, you know where this is going. I was caught up in...
I will never understand this phenomenon of people getting funding based on pitch decks , while startups like mine wit...
Finally a good post on grapevine. Was getting tired of all the fake and gay posts about how janitors at code coolie c...
✋ How much money did you personally end up making by the end of it.
