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We met with 50+ investor & didn't raise
Sounds familiar?
Marco Fazio
April 29, 2024
On today’s edition: What to do when you can’t raise from investors. Sponsored by Fuel Finance Free Valuation Calculator
“You need to meet 100 investors to get a term sheet”.
Sounds like an inefficient process, right?
I am half way through now in our seed fundraise & still didn’t manage to get a favourable termsheet to scale hypeal.com.
“So, what do we do now?”
We pivoted efforts to customers.
Our pitch deck reflected too much what investors wanted to hear and not what customers needed.
The great thing is that potential customers are “easier” than investors. Talking to them will help you get that very needed traction to raise & will boost your confidence after many rejections. Your team should do it, but you - the founder - should do it too. Speak to prospects and close clients or beta testers.
So - if you are struggling to raise after a lot of meetings - go back to the basic. Get more customer, Get Recurring Revenue (The key metric to convince investor), Keep your investor list updated & try again after 2-3 months.
Lastly: make sure to track your ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) pipeline, estimating the value of each prospect customer you are speaking to. This is more credible than your pre-seed financial projections for investors!
hypeal.com ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) Seed Pipeline From Customer Outreach
You’ll thank me later!
[Free Resource] Valuation Calculator by Fuelfinance
Ever wondered what is your valuation? Here’s a valuation template from Fuelfinance, a financial management solution for startups.
This is a FREE template we created based on Andreessen Horowitz's article to help all founders understand how margins, revenue growth, and other metrics impact your valuation.
Just add your financials and get your valuation in a second. You can play with metrics, check different what-if scenarios, and have KPIs to get our target valuation.
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Cap Table Seed Round Simulator Upgrade for Example.
When to use? When investor asks for round valuation
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Creating a lead magnet to test your idea or feature with $1,000 Upgrade for Example
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