Project Pegasus

Get intro’d to a vetted pool of angel investors.

1 follower

Get intro’d to a vetted pool of angel investors.

1 follower

Project Pegasus is an experiment. We’re 3 early-stage founders who know the inefficiencies of the “if you’re worth your salt, you’ll manage to network your way to us” attitude of VCs and angels. What if someone could do this work for you?

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Atmos Financial

Maker

Hi everyone! Welcome to our experiment! Can, Dorena and I are 3 early stage founders ourelves, and we believe that founder talent is uniformly distributed – having a network is not indicative of founder success. The current market for pre-seed investing has super high information asymmetries and is an inefficient market. Accessing pre-seed capital through a network favors the status quo, which is a huge disadvantage for people of color, females and people that don’t have an ivy league school on their CV. We know from our own experience that raising a pre-seed is a huge pain and every founder you’ll talk to will tell you the same – while raising an angel round for our current startup, we just couldn’t take it anymore and had to do something about it, so we're piloting project pegasus as an experiment. If it's successful and we can make some matches between founders and angels, we'll build this out as a platform. If not, that's fine too and it was worth a try! If we can make matches, we'll take a small commission from the angel investors – but for founders the service is free! Thoughts? Ideas on how we could improve? Let us know in the comments below!

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@niko_dunk Rock and roll!

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8yr ago

@niko_dunk JFDI

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@niko_dunk YAAAAY!!! Let's do it :)

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8yr ago

Hustle Crew Academy

@niko_dunk Interesting concept! How do you find the angels you pass the applications onto? This feels a lot like the VC scout model applied to angel investors.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@niko_dunk @abadesi Thanks! Niko's currently in SF and sleeping so I'll respond :-) In the beginning we'll see if any of the applications is a fit for angels that we already know. If we think so, we'll do a double opt-in intro. If we can make successful intros, hopefully more angels and startups will want to work with us. Let's see if that plan works out :-) What do you mean by VC scout model?

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8yr ago

I think I'm more curious if the pool of investors is vetted or qualified in any capacity. "Investor" is a very loose word with a broad definition. Startup and investor is a two-part equation for the relationship to be a fluid and a mutually supportive process. Exposure to your "investor" pool/database and their previous investments successes/failures even their preferred geographic location would be helpful. If this is just the traditional headhunter experience when someone with minimal knowledge just rando blasts your resume to a PR list in the designated industry. As-is seems kinda half-baked. Where is the initial value to the startup or the investor? I don't see any case studies or data analytics on your site at all.

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8yr ago

@elizabethhannan Randoblast (you need a tm! on that) could even damage your future chances. And "vetted" is an interesting question too. Who would vet those investors?

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8yr ago

Atmos Financial

Maker

@elizabethhannan @ipstas Hi Elizabeth and Stan! Thanks for clicking! :D The initial vetted pool is simply our networks that we've worked with here in the Bay Area. Investor is a loose word, you're right, so we think founder-based intros will be most relevant to good startups. We are still manually vetting and making the matches currently. All of the historical data and successes/failures you'll be able to discuss with them over the phone – just how it's worked for us personally in the past too. Preferred geographical location is a great idea! The idea is definitely half-baked. We're trying to solve this problem, and this is a first experiment towards it. Thanks for bearing with us! :) Case studies and data analytics will be shared soon after the first batch.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@elizabethhannan @ipstas @niko_dunk Better half-baked than not baked at all. Old Chinese proverb. Joke :-)

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8yr ago

@elizabethhannan @niko_dunk @canolcer The road with 1000 stadiums starts with killing your first legion (the old Roman saying). In some manuscripts it is not a legion but a manipulus

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@elizabethhannan @niko_dunk @ipstas 😎

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8yr ago

Love the idea. Random one, did you end up getting funding on your initial concept(s), or did you shift to this?

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@william_fanning Thanks :-) So @dorenanagel and I are working on our education startup, Kosmos, full-time since 1 year and will continue to do so. We are currently wrapping up our pre-seed round. @niko_dunk is currently exploring different projects (incl. this one) and might just end up doing Pegasus full-time :-)

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8yr ago

@dorenanagel @niko_dunk @canolcer Dope. Well super enthusiastic about the mission. It seems like the thing no one wants to talk about is that there is no real advice for getting that first bit of money, so if you aren't from money (or a genius coder) you are pretty much out of luck. We have some nibbles for pre-pre-seed (I am calling it a "Discovery" round, in place of what would be a "friends & family round" for most startups). But if it turns out not working we will probably submit an application to you. And one unsolicited thought, as I have pondered this topic a lot; I would keep the option open to take a point from the founders (in addition to your plan now to take it from the angel). Reason being, the point is totally worth it for people who are genuinely unconnected/poor. And if you do find that your process is effective ... without it there is no reason that people who are connected (and not poor) wouldn't use it too. That said, being that you will want to advance the projects with likelier success, those outliers you are trying to reach might be left out in the cold, seeing as they are competing for your attention with less resources. So in a way, charging the unconnected founders a point could help them in the long run, by keeping your platform focused on them. Good luck!

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@dorenanagel @niko_dunk @william_fanning Thanks a lot, William and good luck with your round. You can still apply even if you're not looking for an angel actively - maybe we can still do an interesting intro for you that might help you out later down the road. Regarding taking a fee from the startup: I can't put it to words, but it just seems wrong to take money from the founders for something like this. From a purely economics perspective, angels have orders of magnitudes higher purchasing power than a typical early-stage founder. So it does make sense to have a higher price (or a price at all) for them, as they are less price sensitive.

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8yr ago

@dorenanagel @niko_dunk @canolcer Definitely on P1 (although if this money comes through we might fly stealth for a bit). And totally get it on P2. And not to belabor my point — but from someone who spent a long time figuring out the venture scene as an outsider — I would have gladly given a point for a warm intro that led to my first angel investment. I might be an outlier, but just wanted to let you know that value prop is out there :) Super excited to follow your journey regardless!

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@dorenanagel @niko_dunk abl@william_fanning Thanks a lot! And yes, you are right. I probably also would have. Let's see, nothing's set in stone :-)

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8yr ago

On average 3-5% startups get their seed. I would be interested to see how that number changes with Pegasus

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8yr ago

Atmos Financial

Maker

@ipstas Agreed! I doubt whether projects like this can change that percentage much, but hopefully more high-quality startups will get funded!

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8yr ago

@niko_dunk Well... and who decides that startup is a high-quality? Why startup would leave information at all? How many angels you have already (nothing on your LP)? How do you vet them? How do you vet startups? What is your expertise? To vet a startup in _any_ niche you need a LOT of expertise. Same for an angel. I can keep asking, because your LP creates more questions than answers

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8yr ago

Atmos Financial

Maker

@ipstas Hi Stan! Good questions! I can only say right now that this is an _experiment_, we don't have all the answers either, and we'll see how many intros and matches we can make by the end of this week. But I think this problem requires a solution, and we're taking a crack at solving this inefficiency.

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8yr ago

@niko_dunk Food for thought: Sometimes inefficiency exists just because the market participant (in this case an angel investor) wants it to exist.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@niko_dunk @ipstas True. But we think they shouldn't exist :-)

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8yr ago

Interesting concept; I too find this to be an application of the scout/headhunter model to the angel round as another user pointed out.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@mike_at_indivius By scout model, do you mean what they mean in this article? https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/2... If yes, I would say what we are trying to achieve is different. Because students and founders (that work as scouts) reinforce the status quo (because they are probably also male, white and went to an Ivy League school). As a founder, if I already have a network of good founders, it's not that hard to get an intro to an angel. Or if you go to Stanford, odds are that you or your parents know enough wealthy people. Does that make sense?

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8yr ago

@canolcer Not quite what I meant. Job headhunter is the easiest parallel for me to draw. You take a commission in exchange for a completed/successful pairing. I think it's reasonable depending on your fee (would love to see some numbers or examples posted) Additionally, some understanding of what arenas your angels specialize in would be some helpful additions to your website. I'll be following this for certain.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@mike_at_indivius Got it. Hmm never heard of VC scouts before, but makes sense that they exist. Not sure how they operate. Do they also have platforms where any startup can apply? We're on purpose not specifying any arenas/industries for the time being. Everyone is welcome :-)

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8yr ago

Atmos Financial

Maker

@canolcer @mike_at_indivius Great point. Datapoints will be added soon. I agree that we're a version of the scouting model: a scout takes up a startup case, and searches for investment for them, keeping 7-8%. Copy pasted from another of my answers above however there's a big difference: VC scouts accept any case, and match it with any kind of money. We only intro the very best cases that apply to legitimate angels that we personally know. Why? Because since we have enough applications we can intro only the very best early-stage startups to the very best angels in our book and still profit WHILE upholding our reputation. Hope that makes sense!

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8yr ago

@canolcer @mike_at_indivius @niko_dunk -- I agree that we're a version of the scounting model: a scout takes up a startup case, and searches for investment for them, keeping 7-8%. illegal in states, so you know

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8yr ago

This is pretty cool guys. I think my startup could use this as we are looking for seed funding. Shoot me a message and let's link up, and I'll volunteer to be a guinea pig for you guys.

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8yr ago

Froggodoggo

Maker

@matt_hakimi Thanks Matt. We're currently only focusing on pre-seed (that means usually less than $500k and only non-institutional investors). If you're interested, feel free to fill out the application our website: http://projectpegasus.io/

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8yr ago

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5yr ago

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