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Pavel Gvay
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5 tips on fundraising from a founder who raised a $12M seed
Have you ever wondered, how founders raise LARGE seed rounds? By large I mean $12M large.
I interviewed John Winner from Kizen and he was kind enough to tell me his story.
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Round details
🌐 Company: kizen.com
🤑 Round size: $12,000,000
📍 Stage: Seed
📅 Date: September 2022
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1️⃣ Timing
It took John over a year to raise this round.
2️⃣ Funnel
John contacted over 100 investors.
3️⃣ Biggest...
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
How EirSystems raised a $1.5M seed round
What to do if an investor said: "You're too early"? The founders of EirSystems decided they need to demonstrate growth for 12 months. And they did.
Result: $1.5M seed round.
I interviewed the founders about how they raised it and here's my summary of the interview.
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Round details
Company name: EirSystems
Round size: $1,500,000
Stage: Seed
Date: September 2022
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1/ “Investors invest...
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
I interviewed a founder who raised $2M
Hey!
I interviewed Steven Charlap, the founder of SOAP Health about his $2M seed round.
He was struggling with fundraising for 2 years until he hired senior executives and required them to invest in his company. That sparked VCs interest.
Here's my summary of the interview:
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1/ Any approach that works - works
Steven recruited senior executives who were required to invest as part of...
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
6 things I learned from interviewing Clutch CEO about her $1.2M pre-seed
Myth: first-time founders don’t know how to fundraise.
Reality: Madison Long from Clutch raises $1.2M pre-seed round for her first startup.
I interviewed Madison about how she raised it and here are my Top 6 learnings:
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1/ Join an accelerator
Madison joined an accelerator to learn how to run a tight fundraising process and develop a solid pitch. Also, accelerator = network = warm...
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
How Hera Biotech raised a $2M seed round
Hey all!
I interviewed Somer Baburek, the founder of Hera Biotech, about her $2M seed round and here's what I learned.
1/ Grow your network of investors with pitch competitions
Somer had 0 connections with VCs when she started fundraising. After 4-6 months of pitching at startup events and competitions, she knew enough investors in her niche to close $2M instead of the planned $1M.
2/...
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
I've been using Spatial Chat for over 5 months now. Waaaay better than Zoom
SpatialChat 3.0
All-in-one space for collaboration, all-hands and networking
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
I've been using Shortcast for almost 6 months now — awesome product!
Shortcast.io
Short video notes in Chrome with a smartphone-based prompter
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
Awesome! I was just thinking about building a community for my product!
Tribally Community Guide
How to build a community: guide for startups
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
How do you know if an investor is a good fit for your startup?
Hi all,
I’m building a platform that finds investors for startups and I want to understand how to prioritize investors in the search results.
We currently sort investors based on these parameters:
1/ % of portfolio companies in your industries.
2/ % of portfolio companies in your stage.
3/ % of portfolio companies in your industries.
4/ The number of deals in the past 180 days.
I also have a...
Best investors are those who already invested in companies like yours in the past — get 100+ of them in <60 sec for free😎
Investor Pipeline Speedrunner
Find investors who already invested in companies like yours
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
Hey doers and makers,
On one of my customer interviews, a founder who raised $26M for his startup shared a hack on finding investors: find relevant startups in your industry first, then find their investors.
This approach guarantees that all investors you find are relevant — they already invested in a similar company in the past.
And it's 10x faster than searching for 300 investors you need...
Investor Pipeline Speedrunner
Find investors who already invested in companies like yours
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
Who wants to test my investor pipeline speedrunner?
Hey,
I'm building a free tiny tool that finds investors who already invested in companies like yours in the past.
How it works:
1/ We show you startups from your industry and stage
2/ You select those that might have relevant investors.
3/ We send you a sheet with all their investors.
It works because of ✨logic✨. This approach guarantees that all investors we send you are investing in your...
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
We're a team of 13 and we only have 1 meeting room at our office. With Qrono we've been able to build a booking system for the room in like 30 minutes or so. That's awesome!
Qrono
Build a rental company in 15 minutes
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
I just got 700+ upvotes for my product (fundraising guides, templates, and tools on Notion). I teased the Notion in a couple of startup communities and asked for feedback. More than 300 founders reached out to me! I responded to all of them. I literally had 300+ 1x1 conversations going on. Today I reached out to all of them and asked if they want to support the launch.
🤔 Did you build an audience before launching your product/s?
Evelina Radoycheva
Join the discussion
A free Notion page with everything you need to raise a round: 8 guides, 20+ templates, and 30+ tools. Based on 100+ founder interviews. Reviewed by 300+ founders 👀
Fundraising Kit
All you need to raise a round
Pavel Gvay
left a comment
Hey makers and doers 👋
As a first-time founder, I struggled with fundraising. I had all kinds of stupid questions like: "What is the process of money raising?", "Am I doing it right?", "What to put in my emails?". And (surprise) I failed to raise a seed round 🤷♂️
Fast forward to today. I interviewed 100+ founders about fundraising for my indie product. I learned quite a lot and decided to share...
Fundraising Kit
All you need to raise a round
Pavel Gvay
started a discussion
Is it appropriate to use memes on a SaaS landing page?