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Dan Sherrard-Smith⁠ is the Founder and CEO of ⁠MotherTree, the world's first money carbon calculator. He is an international speaker who helped build the startup that achieved the best ever deal on Dragons' Den. In terms of YOUR investments, Dan is definitely worth paying your time and attention to... Mother Tree's mission is to make it effortless for us all to choose greener options in life. Dan and his team believe that if enough of us do this, we can collectively drive economies of scale, bringing down the costs to make green options the default, and ultimately create a healthier planet for all.    "As individuals," Dan says, "we were shocked when we took a close look at how our pension providers and banks were investing our money. Fortunately, we found that switching to align our investments to our personal values was much easier than we thought." And so they planted Mother Tree.   Listeners to the Frances Fogel - Story Strategist podcast - as I - cannot easily find the time to research the impact of our choices. But with Mother Tree's free ⁠money carbon calculator⁠, it is quick and easy to become aware of the impact of your savings and investments and switch to greener providers.  If you are a Founder, Leader or Custodian of a hopeful and conscientious business in London and the Southeast - and indeed all over the world, and you have money somewhere, do have a listen: https://lnkd.in/e7uTkjfp or a watch: https://lnkd.in/ecHkGfvr Do YOU want to go green and save money? Then join Mother Tree's FREE webinar on Thursday 9th May at 1pm BST, where Dan and his team'll show you the exact steps to take to go green. https://lnkd.in/ecDJnj7b

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I asked the 250+ founder community at Founders Capital how they have cut costs in their businesses. I have complied them into the notion below. Comment "𝗖𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗻" and I will send you a link! ♻️ Repost this to help spread the message to your network. And follow Hugo Tilmouth for more!

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Every Founder will ask themselves inevitably ... Am I doing enough? A staggering 92% of SaaS businesses failing, is crazy ! Five key areas that I have strategised to beat this crazy statistic: 1️⃣ Market Strategy ↳ Identifying the right target market and positioning your product for success 2️⃣ Product Strategy ↳ Building a product that solves an important and urgent problem ↳ providing value to customers in your target market 3️⃣ Go-To-Market Strategy ↳ Developing a scalable GTM strategy to acquire and retain customers 4️⃣ Funding Strategy ↳ Securing the necessary funding to fuel growth and expansion ↳ This doesn’t have to be VC 5️⃣ Exit Strategy ↳ Planning for a successful exit and maximising returns for stakeholders ↳ This also informs strategic partnerships in the short term Having a strategy around these 5 components have helped me maintain my calm amidst the chaos and lead my company consistently.

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Oly Platform (Techstars 24) is pitching following a talk with Hugging Face founder Clem Delangue 🤗 , who's trajectory (as many) I deeply admire and coincidentally (? or not) was a power-seller at eBay before revolutionising AI ! Not to mention the other amazing entrepreneurs/startups pitching Yannick Melameka, Kevin OUALLI, Nicolas Carlési, François Mattens. Imposter syndrome? not at all ... In all seriousness, so grateful (specially to Stan Coignard for all work in organising) to have the chance to pitch Oly Platform (Techstars 24) to this audience. Only 15% of supply on resale marketplaces like eBay, Vestiaire Collective , etc. come from resale businesses ( vs. individual sellers) , despite resale businesses owning more than 50% of global supply. At Oly Platform (Techstars 24) we are unlocking this amazing B2B supply and exposing it at a global scale. Improving the quality of second-hand products on these marketplaces is aligned with making second-hand more attractive for the end-buyer, which in turn will benefit the already staggering 28% year-over-year growth of the fashion resale market. Come to Mana Common on wednesday 17th to hear the whole pitch on how we are helping power the future of (R)e-commerce, and the other amazing line up of startups and conferences! Link in the first comment. cc Marion Tessier Moishe Mana Etienne Gillard French Tech Miami La French Tech FACC FLORIDA (French-American Chamber of Commerce Florida)

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With some time on our hands, we’ve launched a little project tooearly with a single and quite simple idea in-mind: personalised help for promising first-time founders. There is an abundance of resources online, but not enough 1:1 feedback, materials revision, as well as hands-on and community support. After working as a first-ticket/pre-seed investor, I’ve noticed how many stellar individuals out there are a little unsure when it comes to navigating the founding and fundraising journey (from ideation, to validating the hypotheses, speaking to the right customers, building your fundraising OS and raising VC funding), especially as first-time founders. If you’re looking to build something game-changing, let’s speak. Besides support, we will invite VCs to Investment Committees whenever we see actual winners inside the community to give them a kick-start on their raising journey. !!P.S. We have a 30% discount for the first 20 people who join. OMG!! Little disclaimer: This platform by no means suggest that everyone should raise from VCs or glorifies it (as it’s a tough journey), but this should help you figure out the best trajectory for your idea, and if the VC trajectory is indeed the right one for you, after some months, you should be ready to go out there and start speaking to investors (not stay with us forever, only if you wish to 😉 ). Martynas Cepas - a partner in crime 🙌

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Over the last few months, I've had countless conversations with founders. Many raised huge rounds in 2021, at sky-high valuations. But now? They're running out of capital, facing tough fundraising realities. → Down rounds → Lower valuations → Raising far less than before Some companies smashed their targets and are still seeing traction. But many? They spent like it was always going to be 2021. Now, they're paying the price. The lesson? In good times or bad—sustainable growth matters. P&L’s matter. Are you building for the moment, or for the future? #Startups #Fundraising #SustainableGrowth

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entrepreneurship — so fancy, so french. glorification of valuation over human conversation. founders founding software, the bar so low for "innovation". snapchat's worth like $20 billion — and for what exactly? voice cloning, disinformation ray ban vision without limitation — what are we even building? every incel non-stop filming. sure, let's give meta all our data because mark's always been so honest — let's record our every movement, privacy's so 1997. and once the world is fully rendered, in three dimensions x 8 billion — will our world be any better? or just better for a few? what's that metaverse really for? didn't orwell cover this? why can't we simply talk about it? are we scared of what we'd feel? are we not enabling the worst of us? when freaks have cameras on their shoulder? what's wrong with simply seeing the world what will be left when we've grown older?

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What is the hardest part about fundraising? Getting VC meetings? No, it's not what you might think... Here's the real deal: Fundraising is an emotional rollercoaster that usually ends up beating down your confidence completely... For all founders out there, venturing out on your first fundraise, here is what you'll be going through: The Calm Before the Storm: You're getting VC attention, feeling optimistic. But cool your jets! This isn't the time for daydreaming about that sweet VC cash. Keep on meeting more VCs, don't trust based on early interest. The Pitch Marathon: You're on fire, selling your dream! But then... The First "No": Ouch! That initial rejection stings. The Heartbreaker: Your favorite VC rejects you. The one that gave you the confidence to start fundraising from the start. Is this the end? The Final Stretch: You're beaten down and exhausted when that term sheet finally lands. Maybe from a VC you didn't even know before. Don't cave now! This is when you need to dig deep and find that initial founder confidence again to negotiate. Every founder goes through this wild ride. The key? Don't let it break you. Stay true to your vision, and know that if you follow the playbook you will get there. So, buckle up, embrace the madness, and get ready for one hell of a story to tell when you make it to the other side. What's been your craziest moment on this fundraising rollercoaster? Let's swap war stories in the comments! 🎭🚀

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1️⃣ I learnt to walk by seeing people walk 🚶‍♂️ 2️⃣ I learnt French by hearing people speak it 🥖 (I couldn't find a better emoji 😂) 3️⃣ I learnt how to pitch by seeing others pitch 💬 But I was only able to do No. 3 because I worked as a VC. To help you learn to pitch perfectly, I've put together a recording of a founder pitching a real investor I've gone through carefully it and laced it with my commentary. Telling you what the founder does right, wrong and key takeaways for your own pitch. In just 20 minutes and you'll understand more deeply than you ever will from any blog posts. Yes even including mine... You'll start to see pitches the way Investors see them. And then you'll be able to run circles around them. Get the full video here ⬇ https://lnkd.in/euZRZBeb

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In the 3+ years OneGuide has existed, we’ve run 200+ portfolio roundtable discussions. Here’s what I wish I knew about 200 roundtables ago… 𝗢𝗻 𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗦𝗩𝗣𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲: 1️⃣ Include invitees below the CEO/Founder level → yes you want to engage your CEOs and Founders, but they’re also the busiest and least likely to show up to events. Functional leaders are often more eager to engage AND they’re the people who benefit most from tactical knowledge. Double win. 2️⃣ Encourage invitees to bring their team → by and large, you don’t need to worry about people forwarding the invite willy-nilly (they won’t). If you’re having an event on win/loss reporting and the VP of Marketing wants to invite their Product Marketing Manager, you should definitely let them! 3️⃣ Make sure registrants get a calendar item (WITHOUT clicking “add to calendar”) → the tool you use for registration should have a calendar integration so the event automatically gets added to the calendar. OneGuide didn’t have this for the first year or so, and it did make a big difference 😅. This also gives you visibility into who's accepted the calendar invite, so you have a better idea of the yield you’ll get. 3️⃣ Send reminders → the cadence we like best is inviting people a few weeks before the event, then sending two reminders: the day before and 15 minutes before. Tip: More attendees are not always better → smaller groups are often more engaged. My non-scientific assessment is that you get the most engagement with 6-10 people. As it starts to get bigger, the conversation becomes more one-directional. That isn't necessarily bad, but you should know what your goals are and adjust accordingly. 𝗢𝗻 𝗗𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: 1️⃣ Ask for pre-submitted questions when people register → at that moment, they’re thinking about why they want to attend, and those qestions end up being interesting ways to get the discussion going. 2️⃣ Have a facilitator (separate from the people hosting/presenting) → that separate person can deal with admitting people, managing the recording, monitoring the chat for questions, or tech snafus. That way, the host and guest expert can focus on the conversation. 3️⃣ Bank 25-50% of the time for questions → you might intentionally put a slide somewhere in the presentation that tees up questions that people in the audience ask. That can be a good place to have a conversation checkpoint midway through the event. Then, make sure to leave time at the very end for questions. 4️⃣ If you do a feedback survey, do it through Zoom → we find that you get a much higher response rate from the survey if you embed it into the Zoom/webinar tool so that it flashes up on people's screens. The next best option is putting a survey in the chat, the worst performing is putting it in the recap email. Ran out of characters! Next post: planning content

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Last week - the CEO of Klarna, a large European fintech startup - posted about how they used Gen AI to save millions of dollars on marketing costs. There was a massive backlash from artists who accused him of being proud of making hundreds of marketers jobless. He eventually deleted the post but the related press release is still on their website - you can see the relevant portion below. In the (now deleted) post - he also wondered about the impact of AI on creative industries: "But it makes me think, what will happen to the hugely talented marketing and creative industries? There is of course still a need for super great, super creative massive campaigns but a lot of the daily work of creative businesses can be done far quicker, more easily and at a fraction of the cost using AI." While it might sound unpopular to a certain section - it is true for better or worse. AI will effectively make an average content creator redundant, but enable the best creators to create more output. As a brand - you will realise in the near future that a high-quality content creator is not much more expensive than an average one - with AI being the productivity multiplier for the top 1%.

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We just launched our new Fundraising Co-Pilot on top of our existing network that makes it 25x faster and more efficient for founders to identify, research, and target their most ideal investor profiles. And we're giving 2 months of it away for free to 1 founder... But first, here's how the product itself works ⬇️ 1️⃣ M.L. Investor Matching: The backbone of our platform is a network where investors interact with startups. We use the tens of thousands of unique data points that we have on our network to find the most relevant investors for your startup using a proprietary algorithm based on their thesis, the firm's thesis, their portfolio, real time activity, and much more. 2️⃣ A.I. Research Agent: The most effective outreach is well-researched and personalized. Our research agent aggregates all relevant information about an investor to supercharge your outreach so the process takes seconds as opposed to 30 minutes. 3️⃣ Getting connected: Warm intros are often the best way to get in touch with the right investors. We help you find the best way to get in touch with the right investors (warm intros or cold messages), and then help you build the actual message. 4️⃣ Tailored outbound message generation: Messages have to be highly curated in order to stand out. We've built a model that is trained on successful outreach messages, combines all the right pieces of your information and theirs (from the research agent) to help you catch the eyes of any investor. It also learns to sound more and more like you the more you use it. 5️⃣ Status management and CRM: With our integrations, we make it easy to track the status of the raise and get insights into the startup's performance. You're also fully a part of the network and can track how organic investors engage with your startup. 🚀 The coolest part of all of this is you can try it for yourself in 10 seconds. We've built it into our landing page so all you need to do is put your website link in here https://theorcanetwork.com and watch the magic happen. Customers have been loving it in the 2 days since it has launched, so we decided to have some fun with a little giveaway: 🤑 Any founder who tags another founder in the comments gets entered into a raffle where the winner will win 2 months of the Co-Pilot plan for free. That's 9 days, 17 hours, and 20 minutes saved. Tag fellow founders below to be entered! As Charlie Wehan alluded to in his post, the fundraising co-pilot is just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the future of ORCA. A lot more to come with the power of the data we're collecting and the models we're building. Stay tuned 👀

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Fundraising, its the hardest it’s even been. Fundraising along most stages of a business cycles have been very tough. Speaking to fellow founders, or even funds raising capital - money is harder to come by. But, it’s not impossible. I recently closed an additional round of £300k from angel investors to help us for our next stage of growth. Here’s some suggestions to anyone looking to raise funds in this climate: 1. Do a rolling close, you can bank the money in whilst raising the rest. Don’t wait for a target - it only takes one investor to pull out for you to be back at square one. 2. A company in the same industry that has just raised? Speak to them for tips, intros and more 3. Targeted approach to relevant investors with personalised intros - most are happy for cold DM’s 4. It’s a numbers game, make your life easier - use tools that can scale your outreach when you’ve figured out 2 5. Go back to existing funders or those you may have engaged with before, it’s easier to raise from people who are familiar with you 6. Hustle, engage with pitching events, angel networks and people who are connected to the ecosystem Do these 6 things and give yourself 6 months from when you start. P.S - the word from credible VC investors is that in the next 9 months, there is a LOT of dry powder becoming available. Exciting times ahead to build exciting products, services and businesses. ♻️ Repost this to help others who might be fundraising, too. Follow Dhruvin Patel for more.

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🚨 Funding Alert: It's the last day of October, and 2024 is slipping away faster than you think... You know it, I know it – the funding world moves at LIGHTNING speed ⚡️ Timing is everything, and opportunities vanish in the blink of an eye. If you're aiming to land a funding deal before year's end, we've got your back! 💪 At Magdalena Reith, we're offering a special Q4 deal: Book a pitch deck package before November 15th and get a FREE one-pager 🎁 Your strategic conversation starter that turns "Maybe later" into "Let's talk!" Looking to finish Q4 strong and slingshot your startup into 2025? Here's what you get in our Q4 Power Package: 🎯 Expert guidance  🎁 FREE one-pager  💼 Professional pitch deck  ⏰ Priority completion (optional) Reach out via DM or drop a comment below to learn more and lock in your package before November 15th! #StartupFunding #PitchDecks #Startups

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Founders, if you’re going to check all the boxes, make sure one of them is “having a business.” Far too often, I see founders ticking off boxes that they think investors want to see, hoping for an easy investment—without the metrics to back up the existence of their business. Founding team made up of founders with 200 years of combined experience. ☑️ Mission is to save the world. ☑️ Operating in emerging markets. ☑️ Pitch deck that is a work of art but lacks anything fundable. ☑️ Graduate of an accelerator you’ve never heard of. ☑️ Solving a problem with a massive TAM. ☑️ But wait, what’s this? Users. ❌ Revenue. ❌ Product. ❌ Plan to make money. ❌ It’s great to check all those boxes, but if you can’t check the “actual business” box, you might as well be auditioning for a role in a reality show called "Startups: The Next Big Flop." #startup #founders  #venturecapital

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Last week I advised startups to drop the 5-year revenue projection. If a VC asks for it, I said, I'll eat my hat. One common reaction was "but Europe!" So here I am eating a tasty beret. (See link in comments for last week's post and the discussion that followed.) Having eaten that beret, here's my analysis of the Europe point, as well as some others that were made in the comments: ¶ First, it's certainly true that where you stand depends on where you sit. I've lived in Silicon Valley for 30-odd years, and I currently do seed-stage VC. So there's that. ¶ In any geography there is a range of investor styles. As commenters made clear, European VCs are 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘭𝘺 to insist on these projections than their US counterparts, but individuals don't always match the stereotype, on either side of the pond. ¶ If we accept, though, that the detailed 5-year projection is a mostly European requirement, then let me ask a (deliberately) provocative question: how's that working out for you? Correlation is not causality; and there are lots of other factors at play; but it's also the case that US-style venture investing (and specifically California-style venture investing) has been empirically more successful than that practiced in other places. It's certainly possible that this success is despite us "doing it wrong" for all this time; and it's also possible that what's worked for the last 50 years is no longer valid in 2024; but neither of those seems like the most likely conclusion. If anything, time horizons are getting shorter, not longer. Now, all that said, there 𝘪𝘴 information content in a 5-year projection. Last week I mentioned four things that are important to VCs: 1) are you ambitious enough, 2) are you realistic, 3) what's your Price and Cost at Scale (PACAS), 4) what's your Customer Acquisition Cost at Scale (CACAS). (Et oui, je me suis bien rendu compte des autres significations :). To those I would add: 5) what's your level of business and financial sophistication? The thing is, these are all things I have to 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘦𝘳 from a 5-year model. All of them can be gotten in other, usually better, ways. Such as the direct approach: "what's your ambition here? can you show me your unit economics? how much marketing spend do you think it will take to deliver $100 million in revenue?" Some founders in last week's comments said that when a VC demands a 5-year projection, that's someone you don't want to work with. That's an overreaction. More important is to get to the question behind the question: I understand that you're asking for this, but what is the real concern? It's good to figure out if it's one of the five things above, or something else entirely, as that will tell you a lot about the investor as well as how best to answer the request. OTOH, if they don't know why they're asking, or if they won't tell you - "that's just how we've always done it" - that's a red flag; you want your investors to be thoughtful and transparent.

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The “More Fundraising” Trap 🎣 How can VCs build their track record if they usually aim to exit after 5 to 7 years (as promised to their LPs)? By valuing their portfolio. And to show that their portfolio’s value is increasing, they need two things: They need startups to raise another round of funding at a higher valuation. They need a liquidity event to exit (the startup being acquired, going public, or selling to other investors). So, they want you to take on the maximum possible risk because they accept losing 7 out of 10 times. Meanwhile, founders are playing an “all or nothing” game because the startup is everything they have. You need to ask yourself if you’re ready to take on that level of risk, knowing that you might have more control and a better chance of success if you grow on your own without external funding. P.S: I have nothing against the VC-backed path, As I am currently raising funds from VCs for the Startups I’m on the Board of Directors of, And I’ve seen the great benefits of having VCs involved. But I feel it’s crucial to know what game you’re playing 💪. If you need to build a roadmap for raising capital and growing your business from $1M -> $M25 revenue in 03 years, you can check out this solution: https://lnkd.in/gu_ET-WY    

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Do this before your Series A I often see founders Once they have proved the concept Get pressured into scaling fast and expanding further so much so that they get into the trap of expanding and burning To avoid that watch this #seriesA #growthstage #pr #expantion #Vc #startups

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