12. Pecking order of finance
• Self or network
– Personal savings/time
– Crowd funding
• Loan
– Normal
– Subordinate
• Equity
– Investor
– Strategic Partner
13. Funding stages
1. Pre Seed (50k): Self, friends, family & fools
– Idea stage, search for customers demand, only founding team
2. Seed (500k): Business angels
– Prototype stage, first customers, first employees
3. Series A/B/C (1M+): VC’s / Strategic Investors
– Scaling stage, serious revenue, growing team
4. Exit (a lot): IPO / acquisition
– Serious challenger or opportunity for big players
15. Checklist for an investor
• A working product
• A growing market
• A launching customer
• …. A great team
• …. A great team
• …. A great team
• …. A great team
17. The search for an investor (1)
• Do you have the ambition?
• Define your risk profile?
• How much funding you need?
• What are you willing to share / give away?
• What do you need besides funding?
18. The search for an investor (2)
1. Make your materials: one pager, pitch deck, business plan
2. Mobilize your network and announce you are looking for funding
3. Make a list of potential funders (desk research)
4. Visit events to meet potential funders (field research)
5. Approach the least appealing funders first and practice
6. When you have enough feedback and confidence, approach the most
appealing funders
Be critical to yourself, if you do not find investor’s interest maybe it is because
of you!
19. Making the deal: Term Sheet
Two main negotiation topics: Economics & Control
• Economics
– Valuation
– Type of stock
– Dividends
– Anti Dilution Rights
• Control
– Valuation
– Governance
– Vesting conditions
– Management and CEO replacement
– Ambition for exit
• No experience? Always get an advisor!!
20. Making the deal: Due Diligence
• Due diligence
– Product
– Market
– Team
– Financial
• Do your own due diligence!
21. Making the deal: Bring in the lawyers!
• Participation agreement
• Shareholders agreement
• Guarantees and disclosing
• Management agreement
• Company constitution
• Representations
• Warranties
• Etc. etc. etc.
22. Making the deal: Champagne!!
• Closing
• Day at the notary!
• Lot of signatures!
• Don’t forget to celebrate!!
23. Getting an investor is like a marriage
• Are you sure you need funding?
• Put everything on paper and
assume the worst case scenarios!
• Never sign anything until you
fully understand everything!
• Trust and share the vision!
• Remember: you can only give
away shares once
24. Tvilight BV
“Intelligent streetlights, reducing energy consumption”
• Spin out from the TU Delft
• Started in 2012 as a one person project
• In 18 months company grew to 25 employees
• In Summer 2013 we closed an investment of 4M
• Now growing rapidly on global scale
www.tvilight.com