Raised $400,000 USD
by Chris ButtenhamHaving almost no-luck raising venture capital after graduating from 500 Startups in 2017, we decided it was time to raise a modest amount of funding to double down on in-bound growth strategies we have been experimenting with and solidify product market fit. This money brings us just shy of $700,000USD in total funds raised, which after almost 5 years, isn't a lot of money to work with!
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Congrats!
How did you got about raising the money?
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Good question! Learning from past failures in this department, I took a very calculated approach. I'll try and disseminate below:
- Made a list of prospective investors who had made investments in complimentary companies and ordered them by most to least desired
- Began asking "advice" about a potential of a raise with existing angel investors on our cap-table and angel investors that I knew from tech circles
- Polished up my investor deck (10-slides) and shared it with the "friendly" angels
- Convinced 1 angel to open up the round with a 100k check (most important step)
- This took a month or two 👆then I began to setup meetings (via warm-intros) with my list of prospective angels
- Tactically, I used a SAFE convertible note to limit friction in the process and ran a "rolling-close"—meaning I told investors I needed them to wire me the money before I considered it "committed"
- 👆this was critical for momentum to avoid the "my check is too small to move the needle, so I'll wait until it's all committed" objection
- Got 60% of the money committed before getting a micro-vc to commit the rest of the money—angels move faster and more freely than vc's.
It's a relatively small amount of money, but ended up "oversubscribing" by setting the bar much lower than I had in the past.
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