The Transformation Issue | Idealog.co.nz
036
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BROADBENT: There are a few. Raising funds
takes a lot of time and it’s a massive distraction,
so the longer you can put it off, the more time you’ve got
to put towards the actual product, growing it and growing
the company."o_o7b7o-1|-ѴѴv|-u||_;=m7bm]uom7=ou
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One of the early conversations that proved to be quite
fruitful was a conversation with the Flux team at Icehouse.
You need to find someone who’s going to lead your
round, someone who’s going to write terms, agree on the
valuation, etcetera, and then once you have that, moving
forward becomes a lot easier."oķ_-|-u;bm;v|ouv];m;u-ѴѴѴoohbm]=ouĵ
For early stage investors, or even seed investors, they’re
looking for some form of product, a proof-of-concept in-
market. They’re not expecting you to have all your figures
down or to know what your LTV [life-time-value] andi
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how we got
NARRATIVE
cost of acquisition is, but they want to see that you’ve got
far enough along that something is in the market and it’s
gaining traction. At the point we were raising, we had a
growth rate far above average and an incredibly low churn,
so we were coming in with strong figures.
The story that we took to our investors was, ‘These are
the figures and these are the next two products that we’re
building. We need a team to help us build these products
because we’re too small.’ That’s the story we raised on.v|_;u;-v;1u;||orbtbm]|_;bm|;u;v|o="bѴb1om
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Something we recognised early on was that when you’re
pitching to VCs, they’re not interested in $100-million-
dollar companies, they’re interested in billion-dollar
companies, so we really had to make sure we spent time
focusing on the size of the market and the potential our
products hold. We had to show them how Narrative will
become a billion-dollar company.|Ľv1;u|-bmѴ-]oo7u;vѴ|bm-v_ou|-lom|o=ঞl;ķ
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I would have started conversations with investors earlier.
These conversations take a long time and you need to give
yourself time to build relationships with those that may be
interested in investing in you. Someone said to me, ‘Make
sure you get out there and kiss as many frogs as you can so
you can work out who you connect with’.
By the time we finished our raise, we had about
30 names of people who were interested, but that was
just the people we’d managed to speak to in a couple of
months. Best to start those conversations as early as you
possibly can.
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I still often hear my friends say ‘Oh, I’ve got this crazy idea,
I just wish I had the time to do it,’ or ‘or I wish I had the
skills to do this’. And I always say, ‘You’re probably not the
only person thinking about that idea, but if you action it,
you’d probably be the only person actually doing it’.
VCs are looking for unique ideas with market fit. The
crazier the idea you’re pursuing, the more likely it is that
you’re going to lift eyebrows and actually get meetings
with VCs. If you can show them that this wild idea could
work in market and change the industry, then you’re on to
something good.6RPHWKLQJZHUHFRJQLVHG
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