A killer traction slide needs as much favorable customer and market data as you can gather, such as recurring revenue, customer acquisition cost and conversion rates.
It’s your first opportunity to show off and build investor confidence simultaneously. But what if you don’t have any wins to boast about yet?
For pre-revenue startups, Haje Jan Kamps says the traction slide should “describe the risk you’ve designed out of the business,” such as regulatory uncertainty.
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“To figure out what investors are most scared about, talk to them and pay attention to the questions they ask,” he writes. “You can then design an experiment around that and report your findings as traction.”
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Globally, companies that are trying to solve environmental and social problems are worth more than $2.3 trillion, according to a study by Dealroom.co.
The entrepreneurs building in this sector have lofty aspirations, says Agnes Svensson, chief impact officer at Norrsken VC, but enthusiasm can only get you so far.
“To help drive more trackable impact investments, here are five key questions that all founders should consider asking impact investors competing for a space on your cap table.”
America’s medical and recreational cannabis market took off after decades of prohibition, but Anna Heim interviewed investors in Europe who are “wary of the mistakes they’ve seen being made in the U.S.”
Now that German regulators recently “watered down its law reform plans,” she asked the group about how they’re advising portfolio companies, whether their approach to investing has shifted, and if they’re accepting cold pitches:
“The hybrid recreational-medical experiment has already been played out in North America, and there were a painful amount of lessons learned that it would be reckless to ignore,” said Lamb.
A pooled investment fund — better known as a fund of funds (FoF) — gives LPs and investors “a way to enter a market, sometimes to get into early-stage deals,” explains Dominic Madori-Davis.
But is the evolving model fostering a more diverse community of investors (and hopefully, founders)?
To learn more, she interviewed several FoF managers and found that “as with most debates regarding diversity within venture, the argument always boils down to who is willing to take the risk.”
CleanHub closed a $7 million seed round to scale its marketplace that connects consumer brands with local waste companies that process plastic materials.
The company “is building a marketplace for the circular economy of plastic,” writes Haje Jan Kamps:
FedNow, the new initiative by the U.S. Federal Reserve that will enable instant payments 24/7/365 has officially launched.
Last month in TC+, Fika Ventures managing partner TX Zhuo predicted that the rollout will create new avenues for fintech companies of every size, “the effects of which could be realized as early as next year.”
Source @TechCrunch
