The last 7 days has provided some interesting insight into the startup fundraising world. We haven't been successful on 100% of our pitches so far for investment, but 95% of them, wouldn't be too far from the truth. This is nothing like raising funds the first time around, at this point we have added to our original pitch - user growth, market validation, an impressive client list including ASOS, Topshop and Burberry, and a strong, growing social media following. We have created a 5 minute 'super pitch' which is starting to paint a nice picture for investors without taking up too much of their time.
At the end of December, Angel Lab had contacted us to say we were successful and could pitch them. This provided, at the time, pretty much our only lifeline to fund out £80K round required to keep us going. Then something strange happened, and the offers started pouring in, angels that had invested already were introducing us to others, and at present we have a very strong list of meetings lined up to add to those we have already executed.
In fact, of our initial £80K round, we have now had offers of anywhere between £150 - £200k. We even presented the exact same 5 minute pitch yesterday to "Lion's Cage" another group of established Angel investors and the first response to come back in 'feedback' was: "I have no feedback, that was perfect, you guys are highly investable, well practiced, sound brilliant, the company is at a great stage, I think that's the best 5 minute pitch I've ever heard, and this is the first time I don't have negative feedback'.
The other investors on the line were equally positive, in fact the only 'comment' anyone could offer was "Take more money because that's the only thing stopping this going brilliantly'. These were encouraging words - we have follow up meetings individually with all 4 of these investors, who followed up in under a minute as 4 separate emails hit our inbox to meet them immediately - this week if we could.
And so, whilst our fundraising continues at full steam I suppose it's crucially important to remember that you will have set backs, people will ignore you, laugh you out the room, tell you your product is shit etc, but the only thing to do is find more people to speak to because, it turns out, you may just be on to a winner....
