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The Ins and Outs of Whistleblowing: What You Need to Know

The Ins and Outs of Whistleblowing: What You Need to Know

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Fundraising, Investing

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    Quick Tips for Your Fundraise

    January 29, 2020

    1 min read At TEN Capital, we have many startups looking for Quick Tips for their fundraise. One of the biggest questions for any startup is: How do we raise funding? The funding question can be an intimidating one. It’s intimidating because it can be difficult to navigate how to raise funding for your business. Moreover, it can be a challenge keeping track of and evaluating where funding should come from while figuring out where these sources for your raise can be found. The important thing to remember is that funding accelerates what you already have going for your business; you want to ensure you are doing everything you can to propel your success forward. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind while you consider raising for your business: Find the best funding for your needs. This may be debt financing, self-funding, or bootstrapping. Each method has pros and cons. Pursue the one best suited to your business needs and situation. Choose the right investors for your raise and initiate a conversation. You don’t need to know an investor before approaching for funding. It’s okay to raise funding from family and friends. As a general rule, ask for no more than $5k per person and ask for these funds as a donation. Consider your deal structure and figure out what type of structure works best for you. Usually, convertible notes are a great way for startups to kick off a fundraise. Milestones are important and attractive to investors. When crafting your fundraise story focus on key milestones because these milestones demonstrate that you are making progress. For an in-depth look at raising funding for your startup, check out our guide: https://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

    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: https://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

    How Fundraising is Like Fishing

    June 26, 2019

    1 min read I meet a great number of entrepreneurs and have seen numerous approaches to raising funding. Some approach it as an opportunity to meet new people and explore another part of the entrepreneur ecosystem.  Others see it as a chore that distracts from the real business such as product development, selling customers, creating the next unicorn (take your pick).  Some bring their sales skills to the process and are quite good at meeting investors, listening to their concerns, and closing the deal. Others expect the investor to be bowled over by the idea, the pitch deck, the rock-star team (take your pick), or otherwise. When that doesn’t happen they look at it as a failed meeting. The key is to bring your best game to the meeting and treat it as you would fishing. In fishing, you have to set the bait and be patient for the right fish to come along. Just like you can’t rush a fish to take the hook so you can’t rush an investor. If you don’t get a bite in one place you can move to another location or you can stay where you are and change the bait. I see entrepreneurs setting specific time schedules for their raise. This is the same as casting the line and then saying “by 3:25 we will have our first fish”. The fish rarely work on your schedule. Investors won’t do so either. While a fisherman can throw a stick of dynamite into the waters to expedite the process, this is where the analogy ends as you can’t do that with investors, patience is still key. Read more in our TEN Capital eGuides: https://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/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

    How to Find Investors From Your Network

    February 6, 2019

    2 min read So you have begun your fundraise, but how to find investors? Start with your personal network. This includes family, friends, coworkers, past coworkers, and those you know through 1 to 2 degrees of separation. For most contacts, this comes to about 15 to 20 accredited investors. Your Network The first place to start is with those in your network so you’ll get initial questions (usually easy ones) that you can start to flesh out your deal and update the investor documents. As you expand the circle from your close friends to acquaintances to friends of friends, you’ll find the questions become increasingly more difficult. This initial phase is helpful in making sure you have the answers to the questions investors will ask. Some entrepreneurs are surprised at how some investors just don’t get it and why don’t they see the great opportunity it is. This is because the entrepreneur looks at the opportunity in the deal while the investor looks at the risk. Be Prepared Although they understand there’s an upside, the questions will revolve around the downside. The key is to have a response for each risk and demonstrate how you have ALREADY solved it and not just promise to solve it. What if you can’t sell the product? “We have already sold it.” What if you can’t recruit the right team members? “We have already recruited most of the team members.” Once your deal fleshed out and you have some funding, you don’t want to take it to non-family and friends and say, “no one in my network would invest, how about you?” That’s what they will hear, no matter what you say, if you don’t have some funding in the deal. Investors for the most part don’t want to be the first and they look for someone else to lead. Read more in the TEN Capital eGuide: https://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

    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: https://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

    How to Raise Funding

    September 26, 2018

    1 min read How to raise funding: a little at a time. Traditionally fundraising takes a tremendous amount of time on the part of the startup CEO. Some CEOs drop everything to run the fundraise. I advise against spending too much time fundraising but rather set up a system to help with the fundraise. With the right use of online tools (analytics, CRM, Drip campaigns, etc.), the CEO doesn’t have to let fundraising become a huge distraction. Building a list of investor prospects and keeping them informed of your progress, the CEO can reach out to ask for an investment at the right time. Instead of raising two year’s worth of funding, the CEO can raise a few months, which is a great deal easier. This type of funding works best for early-stage and those with recurring revenue business models. TEN Capital helps startups raise funding through online tools. TEN Capital helps startups raise funding through online tools (sourcing investors, prepping documents, and running campaigns). These techniques were popularized by crowdfunding but can be applied to accredited investor raises as well. As investors see more and more deal flow, they need help finding, qualifying, and following up the deals. At TEN Capital, we let the investor select the deals they want to see and then send updates only on those deals. We work with the startups to build updates to share with interested investors. All of this happens online. At some point, interested investors set up a call to talk with the CEO, and later they decide to invest or pass. Most of this process, if not all, takes place online. Read more about the TEN Capital Fundraise as a Service Program: https://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/company-landing/ 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

    Closing the Investment

    September 12, 2018

    2 min read How to Raise Funding Step 7: Closing the Investment After initial interest, the investor often proceeds through due diligence and will ask for documents on your business, including legal entity filings, articles of incorporation, patent filings, tax returns, before closing the investment. In any due diligence exercise, ninety-five percent of the documents will come from the startup any way therefore, it makes sense to start building what is called a due diligence box or data room, from the very start. There are many checklists on the web that you can download and use as a guide to building out your list. For early-stage startups, there will be a number of documents that simply don’t exist. For example, if you don’t have a formal board of directors, there are no board of director reports to include in the data room. One final word about due diligence: it’s for serious investors only. A serious investor has had several discussions with you before asking for the due diligence, and there’s at least a soft-circled investment figure on the table. If the investor is not that far along, then it’s premature to hand over data room access. Continue discussing their interests and concerns before proceeding. Read more on the TEN Capital eGuide: https://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

    Research the Investors

    August 22, 2018

    1 min read How to Raise Funding Step 4: Research the Investors for Prospective Fit In fundraising, most startups think it’s the startups who pitch, and it’s the investors who ask questions and run due diligence. The reality is that startups should be asking as many questions as the investors and should also be running due diligence on the investor.  It’s important to research the prospective investors and qualify them for a fit for your deal based on their investment criteria and track record for funding. In your analysis, you should separate them into A, B, and C, investors, with A being the ones that fit best and you want, B are the ones that have some fit, and C’s are the ones that don’t fit. There are many venture capital funds, accelerator programs, and other forms of fundraising on the market. All claim to be “founder friendly,” have a great program, and talk about how they are the best. How do you know who to pursue? The startup should be analyzing the investors for their fit to the startup deal. Do they invest in companies like yours? Do they have expertise in your area? What exactly can they do to help? There are tools available to help understand the funding landscape, such as Crunchbase, which tracks venture funding and makes the results available to subscribers. You can track what companies are getting funded, as well as sectors. You can see which venture groups are active and doing deals and which are not. In your analysis, you should keep track of what investors are funding and what valuations they are providing. This will give you some indication of what valuation you should negotiate for. The operative word here is “negotiate.” As the saying goes, “You don’t get what you deserve; you get what you negotiate.” And knowing what to ask for is the first step to a successful negotiation. Read more on the TEN Capital eGuide: https://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

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