Elena M.

I have always wondered if you can build A tech company with £0 to billions. Until now. Yes, It’s possible to build a tech company With no money To an impressive $8bn valuation The youngest-ever founder Of a billion-dollar European company Markus Villig Is living proof of that. If you’ve traveled across Europe, you’ve probably used Bolt A taxi service giving Uber a run for its money. What you might not know is how Markus Turned a $5k loan from his parents Into an $8bn company. It’s an inspiring story for anyone building a business Especially in a David vs. Goliath industry. Here are three key lessons I learned from Bolt’s journey: 1️⃣ Think outside the box for funding When traditional VCs said no, Bolt secured capital from an unlikely source—a real estate firm in Estonia. Even at $25M ARR, they were turned down by top investors. 2️⃣ Expand efficiently Bolt targeted underserved regions like Africa and Latin America, scaling rapidly with minimal resources. Their data-driven approach identified high-potential cities and kept costs lean. 3️⃣ Operate lean, always Even after raising millions, Bolt stuck to a resourceful mindset—avoiding overhiring and overspending while prioritizing operational efficiency. As early-stage founders, This story resonates deeply with our journey We’re bootstrapping Taking smart bets And staying committed to following a path Like Bolt’s to create something extraordinary. The odds may be against us But we’re all in. If you’re an ambitious founder Remember: You can start small and still build BIG. What’s holding you back from starting? #Startups #Entrepreneurship #TechFounders #Ambition #Innovation #Bootstrap #Scaling #investablefounder #Raising

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A Guide on Raising Money the Right Way: The Dos and Don'ts of VC Fundraising Don't Be a Rookie When Fundraising: - Connect on a personal level to make VCs fall in love with your idea. - Skip the NDAs, as VCs respect your uniqueness and avoid conflicts of interest. - Avoid mass emails and spam, opt for thoughtful and personalized outreach. - Accept the final "no" from VCs, it usually means it's a "no." - Don't ask for referrals after a rejection, it puts them in an uncomfortable position. - Surround yourself with a team, solo founders face challenges in fundraising. - Don't over-rely on patents, especially in software businesses. #startups #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #investing #caovaisshah

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A true pleasure to join Daniel Tannor on his podcast and share my experience bootstrapping Kontax AI. Listen to the full episode & follow Daniel for more B2B marketing insights!

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🔥 tracking all open calls for startups 🔥 Generate hot leads on autopilot 2x a day 🤖👇 We used to pay a team of people for this - but the turnaround was never so fast! This is a trigger-based workflow monitoring all the open calls for startups from accelerators, VC funds or corporates looking to join acceleration programs or innovation challenges. There is so much opportunities for startups every day! The workflow, powered by N8N, Apify, and our proprietary APIs and outreach platform, is designed to: -> Monitor feed for any relevant keywords -> GPT-4 summarize and decide if relevant or not -> Push notification to Google Chat or Slack -> Turn relevant posts into leads -> GPT-4 rephrases the post -> Find the most relevant people to contact -> Add relevant leads to an always-on campaign -> Waterfall Email enrichment -> AI-personalized outreach -> Rotate multiple inboxes and go low volume for best deliverability Tomorrow, I'll be hosting a workshop at The Marketing Festival, where I'll be excited to teach people how to build trigger based - AI-powered workflows like this one. Do you WANT a blue-print how to build workflows like this? 👇 —> COMMENT to get a template —> Like it /repost if you want to see more content like this

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Mercury's recent decision to suspend the bank accounts of Ukrainian founders is causing a stir, and sadly it's not a good look. I talked to a number of startups today, and here's the scoop: 👉🏻 Founders in Ukraine and immigrants an email from Mercury saying that their accounts will be soon suspended. Overall, Mercury's communication was rather poor. Brex, on the other hand, jumped in, being super responsive and supportive all day. (Allan Lvov thanks for your help!) 👉🏻 Most founders aren't waiting for any explanations. They're switching banks immediately because startups can't afford downtime. 👉🏻 Many startups I talked to, including our portfolio ones, already have accounts in 2-3 banks or are quickly moving to alternatives. 👉🏻 This situation has also spooked non-Ukrainian immigrants. Some founders are preemptively leaving Mercury "just in case". Political crises are hard to predict and they don't want to wake up to a similar email one day. 👉🏻 Nearly everyone I spoke to believes having multiple bank accounts is a must for immigrant founders to hedge against unpredictable risks. I agree. 👉🏻 Our portfolio companies weren't hit hard, but even some of those who didn't get the email are reconsidering their banking options. Another case which proved that quality of communication and healthy human relationships matter A LOT to customers. #Mercury #startupfounders #vc

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These are excellent benchmarks.

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I spoke to a founder whose business didn’t break even this year. He had a killer product—the problem? He tried to do everything. He followed the growth playbook and expanded rapidly. Launching new products almost monthly—his long-term customers loved it at first. But slowly, he started to see an onboarding problem—it was a more complicated sell to new customers. The more new products they launched, the less time they were dedicated to refining the beloved ones - old customers got jaded. The team got spread too thin. The product’s messaging got spread too thin. He got spread too thin. Their initiative for the next 3 months? Cut features and refocus. #entrepreneurship #founder

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Valuing Pre-revenue Companies One of the most common questions that every founder has is: How do investors value pre-revenue companies? Even most angel investors are not aware of the factors leading investors consider when valuing pre-seed or seed-stage startups. If you have similar questions, check this guide by Kauffman Venturing to learn about how to value pre-revenue companies... 👇 Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/eggvJJRE . #startups #vc #funding #valuation #founders #investors #venturecapital #founder #startup #startuptips

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Valuing Pre-revenue Companies One of the most common questions that every founder has is: How do investors value pre-revenue companies? Even most angel investors are not aware of the factors leading investors consider when valuing pre-seed or seed-stage startups. If you have similar questions, check this guide by Kauffman Venturing to learn about how to value pre-revenue companies... 👇 Worth a read! 💫 Check out my free newsletter for more insights: https://lnkd.in/d3QaTQwC . #startups #funding #founders #fundraising #money #founder #investors #invest #valuation #value #fund #investment

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There should be a checklist for founders to determine if they've achieved Product-Market Fit.

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How to manage early stage VC questions? We raised our seed round on a deck. We had not quit our jobs but had signed terms and had money in the bank. Series A came quickly after. But it was not easy to raise. This was not 2021 but 2019 where you still had to have a strong story, team and idea to get funded. Raising capital is never easy. So, what helped us and how did we navigate questions during our marathon pitches with tier 1 VC's for NextBillion.ai? -Alpha/No product with minimal/0 revenue. Q: Hows your traction? We are early stage and pre revenue. When you have little revenue, 0 is always better. Once you say a number, most questions next time will be around how its growing, logos, traction etc. Keep it pre revenue till you achieve something meaningful. So "we are early" works wonders when you have a good team and a great idea thats yet to manifest into something good. - Single digit customers. Q: How many customers? We have a few "design partners" who are testing our product. We chose them because they expressed strong interest during early discovery calls and our product vision aligns with their roadmap. For us, we had done enough pre work to have a few top tier customers from day 0. - Team has great pedigree but 0 sales experience. Q: What is your sales strategy. How do you go to market? We have "early believers" who we worked with in the past. They have expressed strong desire to test our product and pay as well and we have already begun commercial discussions. We feel the first 12 months will be iterations of the product with few customers while we learn how to sell and market discovery. We realize we need sales pedigree and will be hiring a small team soon. We hope to "exit year 1 with $1m ARR". - FAANG competition. Q: Google has been gold standard and owns a lot of data for the past 2 decades. How are you confident you wont get crushed? FAANG can kill anyone technically but to answer specific questions on maps, Google has remained a consumer tech company and their stack does not allow for any customization from a data layer perspective. In fact Google has already built a business for maps API's which works great for us. "Replacement with innovation is better than market making". We intend to innovate on the engineering side by giving a data agnostic platform that scales with the businesses rather than charge a lot of money like Google. No data ownership is the future of maps and we feel the best software will win. - AI everywhere but you are #saas. Q: Where all do you use AI? We don't do fundamental research but more secondary i.e use AI models that are opensourced but put them on steroids to make it enterprise grade. In the process we'll definitely file patents but it's not P0 today. - You are not ultra ambitious or tick the quintessential founder material box. You appear too normal. Q: How will you change the world with this idea? No idea. We'll figure it out "together". #venturecapital #founders

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All-in-One Guide to Venture Capital Valuation Method. What an investor wants from a startup, a successful exit. They seek a return equal to multiple of their initial investment or aim at a specific IRR. How do they make sure of that? How do they evaluate startups? They use “Venture Capital Method.” This Method assumes, startup will undertake an IPO at some point in the future.... The Future Value of the Firm is determined by multiplying the earnings of the firm in the year of IPO by the expected P/E ratio that the market will support. Let’s do simple math to understand this. Consider a VC looking to invest in a startup- Some assumptions: - For a company, the month of IPO is 60 months from the First Investment -Based on the forecasting, the start-up’s Annualized Earnings at IPO is $6m -P/E Ratio at IPO= 15 -Market Cap at IPO= $6m*15= $90 m VC Firm Investment Round: First Round at Month 0: - Investment Amount= $1m - Expected IRR= 35% - Duration of Investment= 60 months - Firm Value at the Time of Investment = (Market Capitalization) / ((1+Expected IRR)^(Duration of Investment/12)) = $90m/ ((1+35%)^(60/12)) = $20.07m - Future Value of VC Investment at IPO = (First Investment Amount) * (1+Expected IRR)^(Duration of Investment/12) = $1m*(1+35%)^(60/12) = $4.48m - VC Ownership %= Future Value of VC Investment/ Market Capitalization = $4.48m/ $90 m= 5% - Investor’s ROI= $4.48m/ $1m= 4.48X Second Round at Month 12: - Investment Amount= $2m - Expected IRR= 30% - Duration of Investment= 48 months - Firm Value at the time of Investment= $90m/ ((1+30%)^(48/12))= $31.51m - Future Value of Investment at IPO= $2m*((1+30%)^(48/12))= $5.71m - VC Ownership %= $5.71m/ $90m= 6.34% - Investor’s ROI= $5.71m/ $2m= 2.86X Third Round at Month 24: - Investment Amount= $3m - Expected IRR= 25% - Duration of Investment= 36 months - Firm Value at the time of Investment= $90m/((1+25%)^(36/12))= $46.08m - Future Value of Investment at IPO= $3m*((1+25%)^(36/12))= $5.86m - VC Ownership %= $5.86m/ $90m= 6.5% - Investor’s ROI= $5.86m/$3m= 1.95X - VC Firm’s Ownership= 5%+ 6.34%+ 6.5%= 17.84% - Founder’s Ownership= 100%- 17.84%= 82.16% Now after this analysis, the VC may negotiate with the Founder about their ownership % - Suppose after the first investment the #VC Firm’s target ownership= 10% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*10%= $9m - Investor’s ROI= $9m/ $1m= 9X - Investor’s IRR= ($9m/ $1m)^(12/60)-1= 55% Second Round: - VC Firm’s target ownership= 7% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*7%= $6.3m - Investor’s ROI= $6.3m/ $2m= 3.15X - Investor’s IRR= ($6.3m/$2m)^(12/48)-1= 33% Third Round: - VC Firm’s target ownership= 6% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*6%= $5.4m - Investor’s ROI= $5.4m/ $3m= 1.8X - Investor’s IRR= ($5.4m/$3m)^(12/36)-1= 22% - VC Firm’s Ownership= 10%+7%+6%= 23% - Founder’s Ownership= 100%-23%= 77% Download VC model excel sheet, Link in the comment. . #startups #funding #founders #vc #entrepreneur #valuation

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All-in-One Guide to Venture Capital Valuation Method. What an investor wants from a startup, a successful exit. They seek a return equal to multiple of their initial investment or aim at a specific IRR. How do they make sure of that? How do they evaluate startups? They use “Venture Capital Method.” This Method assumes, startup will undertake an IPO at some point in the future.... The Future Value of the Firm is determined by multiplying the earnings of the firm in the year of IPO by the expected P/E ratio that the market will support. Let’s do simple math to understand this. Consider a VC looking to invest in a startup- Some assumptions: - For a company, the month of IPO is 60 months from the First Investment -Based on the forecasting, the start-up’s Annualized Earnings at IPO is $6m -P/E Ratio at IPO= 15 -Market Cap at IPO= $6m*15= $90 m VC Firm Investment Round: First Round at Month 0: - Investment Amount= $1m - Expected IRR= 35% - Duration of Investment= 60 months - Firm Value at the Time of Investment = (Market Capitalization) / ((1+Expected IRR)^(Duration of Investment/12)) = $90m/ ((1+35%)^(60/12)) = $20.07m - Future Value of VC Investment at IPO = (First Investment Amount) * (1+Expected IRR)^(Duration of Investment/12) = $1m*(1+35%)^(60/12) = $4.48m - VC Ownership %= Future Value of VC Investment/ Market Capitalization = $4.48m/ $90 m= 5% - Investor’s ROI= $4.48m/ $1m= 4.48X Second Round at Month 12: - Investment Amount= $2m - Expected IRR= 30% - Duration of Investment= 48 months - Firm Value at the time of Investment= $90m/ ((1+30%)^(48/12))= $31.51m - Future Value of Investment at IPO= $2m*((1+30%)^(48/12))= $5.71m - VC Ownership %= $5.71m/ $90m= 6.34% - Investor’s ROI= $5.71m/ $2m= 2.86X Third Round at Month 24: - Investment Amount= $3m - Expected IRR= 25% - Duration of Investment= 36 months - Firm Value at the time of Investment= $90m/((1+25%)^(36/12))= $46.08m - Future Value of Investment at IPO= $3m*((1+25%)^(36/12))= $5.86m - VC Ownership %= $5.86m/ $90m= 6.5% - Investor’s ROI= $5.86m/$3m= 1.95X - VC Firm’s Ownership= 5%+ 6.34%+ 6.5%= 17.84% - Founder’s Ownership= 100%- 17.84%= 82.16% Now after this analysis, the VC may negotiate with the Founder about their ownership % - Suppose after the first investment the #VC Firm’s target ownership= 10% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*10%= $9m - Investor’s ROI= $9m/ $1m= 9X - Investor’s IRR= ($9m/ $1m)^(12/60)-1= 55% Second Round: - VC Firm’s target ownership= 7% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*7%= $6.3m - Investor’s ROI= $6.3m/ $2m= 3.15X - Investor’s IRR= ($6.3m/$2m)^(12/48)-1= 33% Third Round: - VC Firm’s target ownership= 6% - Future Value for Investor at IPO= $90m*6%= $5.4m - Investor’s ROI= $5.4m/ $3m= 1.8X - Investor’s IRR= ($5.4m/$3m)^(12/36)-1= 22% - VC Firm’s Ownership= 10%+7%+6%= 23% - Founder’s Ownership= 100%-23%= 77% Download the VC method excel sheet, Link in the comment. . #startups #vc #excel #fundraising #valuation #method

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What do investors get right (and wrong) about Ukraine's ecosystem? There are founded and unfounded fears. "The founded ones are two-fold. First, it is indeed hard to operate in a country at war. VC as a concept is already risky, so GPs look to minimize other, exogenous sources of risk. The “war” factor is unnerving for many. Second, while Ukrainian founders try to sell to Western markets, it is objectively difficult to do so from Ukraine. Especially the US market, which is tough to break into without presence on the ground, deep cultural understanding, established networks…. The unfounded ones revolve around misunderstandings. I’ve overheard some foreign investors express wariness at “Eastern Europeans”. In other words: they thought that since the founders were from Eastern Europe, they would get scammed. That is simplistic and erroneous. You can get scammed by anyone, anywhere. Local Ukrainian founders also have a hard time pitching themselves. They have different backgrounds from what foreign VCs are used to seeing. They aren’t Ivy League graduates, nor are they ex-FAANG engineers. Foreign investors struggle to value these alternative backgrounds, while local founders need to do a better job of pitching them. That being said, we’re seeing an increase in US interest in the CEE region as a whole. I encounter more and more Americans at regional conferences. They aren’t doing much yet, but they’ve started their due diligence." Insights pulled from Elena M. from Flyer One Ventures' piece on the Realistic Optimist. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/g26GZhGk

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𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 seeking investment from 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 📌 let's bring you here. Free List of 700+ 𝐕𝐂𝐬 in Europe (Link in the comments) We have created a list of more than +700 VCs based in 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞. You can access six distinct VC information sources with this list. ♦ 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 ♦ 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥 ♦ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 ♦ 𝐇𝐐 𝐀𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 ♦ 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭 ♦ 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐭 I hope InvestRoster.com helps you close the investment ✨ Powered by Invest Roster

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Our clients called 170 top VC funds and angels in the last 6 months including A16Z, General Catalyst, Sequoia, Index Ventures, and many more well-known funds. Here is how it happened 👇 I do believe outreach can fuel a successful fundraise. But you need to ‘think smart and react fast’. Here's my checklist for getting great results from your outreach: 1. Carefully prepare all your materials before you start reaching out. Make sure your pitch deck, P&L, cohorts, and other key documents are in top shape. 2. Start with warm outreach. Think about anyone in your network who can make an introduction to a relevant investor. Personal connections can open a lot of doors. 3. Stay active in the startup community. Attend conferences and events, engage with other founders online, and work to expand your network with useful contacts. Personal offline connection is always better than a Zoom call. 4. Make sure your LinkedIn profile and email are ready to outreach. No funny emails, random photos, and no info in bio. 5. Find the right contacts to write to. NOTE: You can have 1000 contacts, but if they don't invest in your industry or stage - you are wasting your time. 6. Follow up potential investors with traction and product updates. To really fundraise like a pro, be sure to check out the first link in the comments. I'm launching a course that dives into groundbreaking strategies for effective outreach and fundraising. Will be glad to see you! #startups #fundraising #investors #seed #round #outreach

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Founders should be able to sell secondary whenever they’d like to do so. If you make something - and that thing is valuable - you should be able to sell it. Actually selling that secondary can be tricky. Let's go through the actual steps (or read the whole essay https://lnkd.in/eajr238N): 1. Get the term sheet. 2. Negotiate “normal” major terms: dollars in, price, board, etc. 3. Don’t forget about re-vesting. Founders often do. 4. Sign the term sheet. Go out and start figuring out allocations for the remaining dollars. 5. If you’re lucky enough to have more demand than you do space, you have the opportunity to sell some secondary. Figure out how much excess demand you have. 6. Talk to your lawyer and your accountant about what you want to do. Ask them to explain the pros and cons of selling secondary as common shares vs. preferred shares (which is a bit out of scope for this essay). 7. Decide how much secondary you want - ideally this is “reasonable,” which is a moving target. One good way to frame “reasonable” is to give a clear reason as to why you want to sell. This is particularly important in early rounds. Good reasons include: “Need to pay off student debt” and “Just had our first kid after years at below market salary.” Less good reasons include “Need a new Porsche” and “LinkedIn ghostwriter prices went up.” 8. Go to your new lead investor and say “Hey! Great news! We have 2x demand for available shares. It would mean quite a lot to me and my cofounder if we could take (insert reasonable amount here) off the table because (insert reasonable reason) here. Obviously as our lead, you get first access. Sound good?” 9. Work with the buyer to figure out if you are selling common shares or preferred shares. (a) If you are selling common shares, and the buyer is willing to buy these at the same price as preferred, great! Just make sure that you aren’t creating any challenges around voting by giving those shares to an outside party. Also, talk to your lawyer and accountant. (b) If you are selling preferred shares, go back to your lawyer and accountant to make sure you’re not creating any issues for yourself. You’ll also need to confirm with your existing investors that they are ok with you doing this because it will change the preference stack - which impacts them. 10. Triple check your numbers. 11. Complete your transaction and close the round.

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The most important question for pre-seed investors: What makes this founder truly exceptional? Nothing else matters. The GTM will change. The business model will change. The development roadmap will change. This is the reality of investing in early-stage startups and is why, for ex-operators, it's the most engaging stage to be investing in. Being exceptional is underpinned by the founder's ability to execute and at the earliest stage of startup development, this is all that matters. #founders #vc #startup #growth

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One Founder asked that why VC is not accepting his $60 million Acquisition Offer, instead they are telling him to grow the business. Here is why: Last VC Round Dynamics: - Pre-money Valuation of the Company= $15 million - VC Investment= $5million - Post-money Valuation= $15mn+ $5mn= $20mn - VC Ownership= $5mn/ $20mn= 25% - Founder Ownership=75% Startup Acquisition Offer= $60 million after 1 year - If VC accepts the offer then VC’s return= 25% of $60mn= $15mn - Founder will get the remaining $45 mn (this would be huge for a Founder) - Founder may think that they are giving 3X return to the VC (from $5mn to $15mn) as VCs always expect that they are getting at least 3X Return from their investments - But in reality, this is not the case Here we need to understand the Power Law in Venture Capital: - For a VC, this means that most of their Portfolio Companies will fail - A few will produce middling outcomes - And a handful will generate the vast majority of returns. In a VC portfolio of say 27 companies - Total Investment Amount in various stages is $200 mn (this is the Fund Size) with an expected ownership percentage at Exit of 10% to 15% - Fund has to show 3X Return which is $200 million*3= $600mn - A Bulk of that $600mn will come from a single company - 3 companies would return 70% of the $600mn. - This is just to give an idea. The numbers vary from one VC Firm to another. There are probably two reasons why this $60 million Acquisition Offer is not acceptable to the VC: - they think that the potential of the Startup is huge - Because the VC entered at a $20 million Valuation and within one year they have got a $60 million acquisition offer which is a good sign - As the Fund is looking for a 3X return, let’s say that this Startup investment can give them at least $200 million (remember VC Power Law) - VC Ownership at exit= 15% which is equal to $200 million and the startup value at Exit would be $1.33 bn - Second, the VC Fund doesn’t have any other company in their Portfolio that can give them this much of a return. That’s why you should always be careful and do an investment analysis when taking VC money. ~~~~~ ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost it so your network can learn from it, too. And follow me, Fazlur Shah for more content like this. #startups #entrepreneurship #venturecapital #investing #finance

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