Faircado’s Post

😮 My last post about fundraising during such 'winter' time received a lot feedbacks - thanks! I mentioned one crucial part is: Try not to die. Keep surviving. It means not just a mentality, but in every practice: keep the burn low, make your customer pay, optimise your GTM instead of spending on Ads, and etc. I learned these from founders actually! Founders use their life journey to teach us valuable insight. For this I am always super grateful and inspired. 🙏 That's why we are having this panel in KL this week (Thursday the 22-Aug!): From Bootstrapping to Venture-Backed. It'd be a luncheon. If you have some questions, it's always good to learn from people who's been there done that! RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/g-vrr9Eg

Random thought that keeps coming to me through convos with other founders - particularly platforms. Unless scale IS the mission, you need to consider how scale compromises your mission. This particularly matters if a big part of your overall value prop is curation/superior quality. If you are raising money whilst also selling on being curated/better, you need to consider how the pressure from investors could erode your willingness to keep that bar quite so high. A little more growth this month could be too tempting. Very hard tightrope to walk, usually relegates you to a luxury market/product. #founders #marketplaces

E06: The Danger of VC Funding in SaaS Matteo Grassi founded Popup, an eCom SaaS and Shopify competitor. He raised from leading VCs including Accel, 20VC & Seedcamp. However, after failing to live up to an inflated valuation, market movements and VCs losing faith, they were forced to close up shop. In this episode we discuss: - How Matteo raised $3.5m at $22m valuation from Tier 1 VCs - What went wrong and led to him closing the business - Matteo’s unique insights from working at Shopify - The dangers of raising from VCs Link to listen / watch: https://lnkd.in/gT6GZSsW

Here's a company that just closed $5M from Accel Shashank of CasaOne also raised $5M+ from Accel (an investment in our portfolio) Here's how these two legends do it.... INVESTOR RELATIONSHIPS NETWORK. They built out an incredible network of investors BEFORE they began fundraising Arcane CEO was former Head of Growth at Deliverooo in the UK Shashank, CasaOne, formerly worked with Bessemer and Accel in house It's critical you build your investor network. CEO network is key to wining. --- Don P.S. If you like AR/VR, you'll love my weekly newsletter (free, duh). Weekly insights to help you pitch AR/VR investors, and more. Join 5,000+ subscribers here: https://bit.ly/48ggBGB

Webvan raised $880M to launch in 10 cities before they had proven one leading to their demise in 2001. Webvan needed $1B for each distribution warehouse in a category with small margins (e.g., 5% on groceries), while the company had a 5:1 expense to revenue ratio.   It’s important not to scale go-to-market until you’ve had repeatable success with your product and/or geography expansion just like I've written about Bird, Hopin, Convoy Inc, WeWork, and Google Glass. Featured in this photo are some of my favorite Failure Museum collectibles, including an unopened champagne bottle from Webvan's IPO date, a San Jose Sharks hockey puck, and a stock certificate. My hobby of collecting artifacts from failed companies and products can be seen at www.failure.museum. I feature over 500 items and their story of failure.  You can learn more from failure than success. Please check out the website and let me know if I'm missing any failed companies or products.

🥂 🌟 GOOD NEWS: Contribe has raised €1M in pre-seed funding! ⭐ 🎉 We have some gooood news in the world of good impact. 2024 will be the year of turning all purchases into a way of doing good. With this funding, we're ready to take Contribe to the next level. We'll be focusing on developing our product and market expansion, all with the goal of boosting businesses through the power of good impact. With this, we’re excited to welcome Business Angels, Morten Bæhrenz, Jonatan Hjortdal, Maria Steinhauer Krogh and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO) as well as continued support from Rockstart and Human Act Development. Check out our announcement video to learn how this funding will empower us to help merchants do goood impact, while getting gooood business. Read about the fundraise in Finans https://lnkd.in/eNdNXvXX Lots of gooood things coming soon, so stay tuned! #ContribeInAction #preseed #expandedproduct #newmarkets

Huge thank you to everyone who joined us for our Growth and Financing event last week in Toronto with our friends at Loop Financial 🏦👏 Starting a business is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do… until you start looking for answers to funding and fundraising. Thankfully, we were able to bring together an expert panel of successful CPG founders, VC investors, and entrepreneurs for a night to ask all the difficult, niche, unGoogleable questions. Here's my two biggest takeaways! 👇 💡 Venture financing comes with a high bar of expectations. Look for non-dilutive options like grants and a line of credit first. 💡 Learn the impact between a P&L and a forecasting model. If you don't know how to create a thoughtful forecasting model, hire someone who does! Huge thank you to Laura Burget at Three Ships Beauty, Charlene Li at EATABLE INC., and Colin Harding at BrandProject LP for being our amazing panelists. Also huge thanks to Christian Harinarain and Loop Financial for hosting the event with us at Centro Commerce. Can't wait for the next one! 👏 #fundraising #financing #torontoevents #CPG #ecommerce

⭐ BIG NEWS ⭐ Beans is raising funds to accelerate our growth and help secure our position as the No. 1 speciality coffee marketplace in a growing sector. DTC speciality coffee sales were worth over £500M in 2023 and are set to grow substantially in the next 10 years. I am both proud and excited to share that last year we tripled our revenues with a marketing budget of just £86k, think what we could do with £600k!   Not only did we see 300% YOY growth in 2023, but we also launched our own purpose-built platform, providing a market-leading experience and giving us the foundations for substantial growth.   We are raising £600k through parallel raises. We are raising £200k via a Seedrs campaign, leveraging our substantial community of over 40,000. We are also raising £400k through a private raise.   Here’s our key highlights: - YOY growth with revenues tripling in 2023 to £650k - Operationally profitable since Sept 2023 - An established business with a low-risk operating model (we don't hold stock & receive payment upfront for orders) - Proprietary tech providing a market-leading customer experience  - A unique proposition tailored towards mass market appeal – curated subs, consistent price point, low-price entry point, letterbox friendly and convenient - Established partnerships with retailers and manufacturers - DeLonghi and Currys - A large customer base and the foundations to focus on driving growth & profitability - A blended margin of 36% - Raising £600k, EIS approved Our private campaign is open now and our Seedrs campaign is launching soon. If you're an investor in this space, or know someone who is, we would love to hear from you. DM directly for our pitch deck or email myself or Rich on Fiona@Beanscoffeeclub.com or Richard@Beanscoffeeclub.com

Your first money is going to be directly from your network: Angels, friends & family or a combination. Back in 2012, I looked up to Bonobos, Everlane and other D2C brands that were getting funding.  It seemed so easy from the outside, vs the fundraising journey we were having with my D2C startup. I’m now reading Andy Dunn’s book Burn Rate. Bonobos teetered on the edge of running out of cash, many times.  Their first few rounds were angel rounds.  It wasn’t until their 4th round that they got VC money involved. Who were their angels? Initially people the Bonobos team knew: friends, family and professors. And at that point D2C was a warm/ hot sector. Your first round and fastest money is people who you already know and who are aware of what you’re doing.  You may say “I don’t have that kind of network,” but you’re underestimating the people you know. Talk to everyone you know about your company and your raise, and you’ll get the money you need faster. If you want to chat about your 2024 round, now is the time! Book time with me. You'll leave understanding what you must do now to raise money. https://lnkd.in/eKTy99bS

🌟 Once in a while, you come across some brilliant people on a mission that resonates deeply—driven by purpose and packed with executional excellence. I’m talking about Contribe —the founding team, and the incredible community of Contribers they’ve rallied around their Good Shopping Movement. I’m beyond thrilled to not only back them as a fan but also to join as a trusted advisor and co-investor. Having spent much of my career in the retail industry, I’ve seen firsthand how loyalty and community building has evolved. The new generation of customers isn’t just looking for discounts, goodie bags, or newsletters—they want to make a meaningful societal impact. 🌍 That’s why I’m excited about Contribe’s unique offering—a simple plugin that allows customers of online shops to support critical causes like plastic collection, carbon capturing, and women’s rights through everyday purchases, with no extra cost to the customer. 🚀 It’s a win-win for everyone: enhancing ESG impact, boosting retention and conversion rates, and increasing order values for e-commerce businesses. The best part? Contribe makes it transparent and seamless, making it easy for both online retailers and customers to keep contributing to positive change. 🌟 Contribe truly proves that doing good business IS good business! 💼💙 Well done Christoffer W. Bouet, Tobias Ørskov, Lasse Viggo. Thank you Morten Bæhrenz for the introduction and to initial investors, Rockstart, Human Act Development, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO) and co-investor Jonatan Hjortdal. Now let’s go! #Entrepreneurship #ImpactInvestment #TechForGood #SaaS #Sustainability #GoodBusiness #Contribe #LoyaltyInnovation #ECommerce