business angels finland presentation
TRANSCRIPT
Background• Founder in six companies
– First one in 1983– Taken company from 0€ to 120m€/180 empoyees/7 countries
• Portfolio entrepreneur• First ”angel” steps in end of 80’s
– Originally project financing, active angel investments since 2008– At the present invested in 40+ startups– Yearly dealflow around 300 startups
• Full-time angel and founder in Gorilla Ventures Vigo-accelerator• Founding member in Fiban ry
Start-up financing
Capital
Demandfor ROI/ ownership
FFF
Why do 94 % startups fail ?
• No Team
• No customer focused product development
• Overbuilding
• No Metrics
Despite the fact that they knew these !
• Funding Hunting
• Bad mentors / Environment
• Limited Network
• Premature scaling
Challenges angels face• Not enough preparation
• Searching for money, not selling
• Run out of money
• Unclarity between company and entrepreneur
• Angels role, entry or exit hasn’t been thought
(angels ROI)
• Investment too large for the stage of the company
• Other financing methods not considered
•Approach from perspective, not from customer
perspective
• Avoid following:
1. Our projections are concervative
2. Research company estimates market
growth/market
3. Big customer is shortly buying our product
4. Key employees will join us shortly
5. No one is doing we are doing !
6. No one can do what we are doing !
7. We have multiple interested investors
8. Competition is too slow/dumb
9. We have proven management team
10. We need to get only 1 % of the huge market
11. I will do exti in 5 years
12. I do not need additional financing
Before you approach angel…
• Think what kind of angel you need and what is his/her role
– Money, experience, vertical expertee etc.
• What is your exit strategy and is fully understood
• Think and prepare your materials well
– KISS
• Angel is rarely interested in your product
You can only succeed…
• If you are good in paying customers perspective
• If you are good in paying customers scale
”Good is enemy of GREAT !”
“No startup business plan survives first contact with real customers”
Steve Blank
Finland has many promising start-ups with lots of potential. Yet very few of them ever reach
international scale.
We want to change that !
Gorilla Ventures Oy
