Founder tips + angel advisors + WebSummit 🇵🇹
Free tips for founders and intros to angel advisors requested
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash
Making connections between founders and angels 🛠️
We’ve just wrapped up a cohort of the Revenue Now - How to get Customers before you get Investors programme. The purpose of the action oriented, accountability based content is to empower founders with the knowledge and network they need to generate early traction.
The key points were how to precisely identify of your customer and their needs, plan a viable business model and create a Minimum Viable Product. We wrapped it up with some IfWeRaise angel advisor <-> founder networking for feedback on their plans.
Each week we had some pre-learning content, a deep dive into the topic and cohort collaboration for accountability and troubleshooting.
See it, say it, sell it 💰
Why do we offer a course that focuses on traction generation rather than deck polishing?
Three reasons why early revenue can be gold:
Validation that people will give you money in exchange for value that you’ve created, i.e.that you’ve successfully cracked some early problem/solution/early adopter fit
You’ve demonstrated to investors that you can hustle - even with limited resources you can make things happen and that your strategy is at least somewhat correct
It’s cash in your pocket! If you’re bootstrapping then revenue can offset expenses
I have to confess that I probably lean a bit towards the builder mindset more than the visionary mindset. I’m more interested in grabbing today’s opportunities, making consistent progress and letting that compounding progress enable tomorrow’s opportunities to be significant. I recognise this is is absolutely not the only playbook, or in fact even a viable one for many sectors (regulated products and services, DeepTech, HealthTech etc).
But I do believe this strategy can be an overlooked one with founders, all too often I see founders waiting for a £250k+ round before attempting to deliver value to customers or generate revenue. A good example of this close to home is the journey of an IfWeRaise member. They pivoted from a very capital intensive B2C strategy that was being held back by a difficult fundraise to a capital light B2B strategy that successfully generated revenue within weeks. With some key bits of the business up and running they’ve got some great leverage able to tackle their goals and traction for a raise.
I think investor emphasis on vision, differentiation defensibility can sometimes mislead founders that they need to actually deliver those outcomes right now, rather than just show they’ve been considered. Right now, with limited resources I want to see a founder’s ability to identify and reach a real customer and deliver value, within the resources that they have available to them.
Free IfWeRaise things for founders
Lots of tips in our free First Time Founder’s Roadmap or sign up for one our free coaching calls.
Angel advisors 🔥
IfWeRaise doesn’t work without our angel advisors. A diverse group of experienced investors, operators and advisors who believe in our mission of fairer access to entrepreneurship. We request time from them and and when it’s possible they join an event, review a deck or make introductions.
Know someone with the right experience who shares our mission? We’re recruiting, send them our way!
New impact syndicate - Daring Capital
“£100k - £300k in equity investment: must have a social mission at the heat of your work that aims to solve a problem experienced by disadvantaged groups such as women, ethnic minorities or those with mental health challenges”
IfWeRaise at Web Summit Lisbon this week 🎟️
Come and say hi ➡️
What every first time founder should know about venture capital
Hattie will be keynoting the Venture stage on Wednesday at 15:30
Where angel investors and undeserved founders meet
Tim will be hosting a roundtable on Wednesday at 12:00
Take care