1/ A month ago, our team at @defihelper raised $500,000 in the Pre-Seed round from a number of VCs with @bigbrainholdings leading the round. In this thread, I will summarize our fundraising experience.
#fundraising #VentureCapital #crypto 🧵
2/ The first thing to work out is what type of investors you are targeting. If you are a truly ambitious protocol, with a strong concept, then you should be able to find capital easily enough.
3/ The key is to remember that an investment is a PARTNERSHIP — what the investor can offer you (besides money) is crucial for a healthy, working relationship.
4/ Then there is the question of where to find investors. We used Crunchbase, Twitter, Linkedin, and Telegram.
5/ Webforms and common emails (info@...) work poorly. Direct messaging, especially on Telegram, is way more effective.
6/ I should also stress that 1 intro is worth about 20-50 cold messages. Intros are very important, and you must leverage all the connections that you have.
7/ Crypto space is overfilled with 'fixers' and intermediaries who promise much, but deliver nothing. Some intermediaries are useful to a certain extent, but always be careful with them.
8/ There are also plenty of frauds posing as tier-1 VCs. Some of them are very cunning and skillful. They are not even afraid of arranging calls and appearing on video.
9/ What about the content of the message? In brief, keep it short and sweet, introduce your aims at the beginning and explain your concept in the first 2 sentences.
10/ Many investors do not even read Litepapers before the call, so do not expect them to read your documents on the basis of a cold message. If you can attach a video, an MVP, or a demo, then you are way better off!
Here is our intro video:
11/ Now, we move on to possibly the most important part — the pitch. First of all, it is crucial to form some type of personal connection and rapport with your potential investors. A generic ‘what’s the weather like where you are now?’ is always a good icebreaker.
12/ Try to speak about personal trifles for the first 5 minutes in an attempt to try to build emotional rapport with the investors. Personal chemistry is of utmost importance, and people invest in people, as well as companies.
13/ It is very important to feel confident in your pitch — you need to know it by heart, so that it doesn’t feel rushed, and that you are under no pressure. Creating a personal connection also makes you more relaxed and confident.
14/ We had our Head of Business Development @ben__kwasnik do the bulk of our pitches — he is a native English speaker, and a good public speaker. Here are some basic, crucial factors to consider:
15/ a) Don’t waste time. Your presentation can be long, but don’t repeat the points, or include irrelevant material. Investors probably have 10 calls like this a week at the least, and are usually very busy people.
16/ b) Do not read off the screen. The slideshow presentation should only be a visual aid for the presentation, instead of containing the entire written speech.
17/ c) Start off with why you created the project, and which market issues you are aimed at fixing.
18/ d) Have a "killer" ending.
19/ All investors care a LOT about exits and tokenomics.
20/ One top-tier, well-connected investor is worth 10 ordinary investors. Networking is everything in crypto.
21/In the end, what matters the most in crypto are the team and the product. Unlike most crypto startups, we at @defihelper are not trying to sell the token first. Our main concern is the product itself. We are striving to build a homescreen app for DeFi investors of all scales.
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