Author: Oliver Jones

Growth gets a lot of attention in the startup world. A lot of attention. If you Google “startup growth“, you’ll find a plethora of articles, blog posts and tools all suggesting that growth is the most important measure of your startup.

Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, asserts that “The only essential thing is growth“.

In some sense, this attention is well-deserved. But it is often misunderstood and taken out of context.

Growth is, of course, important. Growth is a telling measure of your product/service’s popularity; and, as such, strong growth metrics are invaluable when you’re trying to raise money from investors.

But growth can, and often does, flatter to deceive. And this is something both entrepreneurs and investors should be wary of.

Entrepreneurs need to be careful because “…many founders hurt their companies by focusing on growth too soon“. This is what Sam Altman, the founder of Loopt and President of Y Combinator, wrote in a recent article on the topic of growth.

His reasoning is simple: if you focus too much on early growth and not on actually building a product people love, then at some stage you will encounter the leaky bucket problem where the customers you worked hard to onboard, leave in droves ne’er to return!

But, if you focus on building a great product then you will have better customer retention and, as a result, growth should become increasingly easy as word-of-mouth spreads.

Consider the example of AirBnB who worked and iterated for years before they got the product just right; and then it spread like wildfire because people loved it.

Equally, investors need to be careful because there are often more telling metrics indicating the potential for success of a particular company. An app, for example, may have achieved 100,000 downloads in its first week, but if 95,000 of those users had stopped using the app by the second week, then the impressive early growth suddenly appears deceptive.

So there we have it. Growth should always be important, but it is also important that entrepreneurs and investors espouse a more nuanced attitude to it than believing it to be the ultimate measure of potential and success.

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A nice insight onto the European Venture Capital landscape from our friends at PitchBook. Check out the infographic below:

You can read their short analysis of the data here

I just stumbled across this infographic which gives some intriguing insights on the best city to be a startup in. Check it out… do you think they’ve missed anywhere?

Pivigo (https://www.pivigo.com/), a data science marketplace and training provider based in London, has announced the successful closing of its funding round with investment secured from high profile consortia including Angel Academe, Craigie Capital, Dubai-based Dunamis Ventures Ltd and London Co-Investment Fund, the Mayor of London’s early stage business fund.

Angel Investment Network is delighted to have made a significant contribution to this success story through its introduction of Dunamis Ventures Ltd.

You can view the full press release on the Pivigo blog here

Now that they are fully funded, they are well placed “to reach a much larger audience, help connect more people with each other and work with companies to gain value from data…” as Founder and CEO, Kim Nilsson, puts it.

We can’t wait to see the progress they make!

What’s the point of a proposal? Why use sites like Angel Investment Network? Why not just send your full business plan to people you want to invest?

Well, for a start, not everyone has the contact details of a large number of investors just sat in their inbox. Networking/Connection sites like Angel Investment Network hold the key to advertising your latest business venture to thousands of prospective investors so that you can find the right ones to suit the nature of the project. That sounds a little sales-y, I know, but it’s important to understand in order to realise the significance of the short proposal instead of the full-blown business plan.

When you’re marketing an idea to thousands of people, not just in the fundraising community but anywhere, you cannot simply take it for granted that people will actually take time to consider your idea; in any marketplace thousands upon thousands of ideas are competing to grab the attention of the onlookers. Precedence is not always, and certainly not necessarily, defined by merit, but rather by the ability to capture attention.

Don’t think ‘I know my idea is brilliant, so why wouldn’t investors read my business plan? They’d be stupid not to…’ That attitude will help you raise the square root of nothing. Think instead ‘How can I make it so that investors literally cannot wait to get their greedy paws on my business plan and start properly digesting my idea?’

Here’s where your short proposal comes in. It is meant to be pithy and concise. Something that can be easily understood and result in them wanting to know more. It is the first rung on the ladder towards them investing; and that can often be the hardest part – getting them to step onto the ladder. Once they’re on, of course some may fall off on the way to the top, but at least you’re beginning to win them over and it becomes progressively harder for them to get off.

As such you should consider your proposal as a ‘hook’, to use Nir Eyal’s term, or in internet-speak a CTA (call-to-action). In your proposal make them love your idea enough to take the next step. Tell them the best bits. Don’t swamp them in superfluous detail.

Tip #4 “How big’s the itch and is it spreading…like a rash?”

To continue the itch metaphor from proposal tips #2 and #3 (which dealt with the importance of giving a clear explanation of the itch you scratch and how you scratch it), in this post I’d like to touch on the size of the itch and how it’s growing.

For those of you beginning to find my strangled metaphor tedious, I’ll stop. I’m talking, of course, about the market your business operates/plans to operate in.

It’s no use solving a problem – even if you solve it unbelievably well – if it’s a problem only extant for a single hermit on the remote island of Tristan de Cunha, then it’s great for the hermit, but not a viable business (unless he’s sitting on pots of gold).

The problem you solve has to be one that a large and growing number of people suffer from without a solution; and are willing to pay for.

The more statistics you have to indicate this, the more prospective investors are likely to give your idea credence! There are plenty of websites available to help you with this, so don’t skip this bit…

Some good news came in over the weekend in a press release from Atlantic Healthcare. It’s encouraging to see our Pharmaceutical companies flourishing alongside their arguably more trendy tech counterparts.

We raised circa £350,000 for Atlantic Healthcare as part of their seed round. It’s taken a few years, but that’s nearly always the way with pharmaceuticals; and now they’ve just closed a $24 million round with funds coming from the founders of Salix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Fullbrook Thorpe Investments LLP (the family investment arm of Andy Leaver, founder of Clinigen Group plc); and LDC (the private equity division of Lloyds Banking Group plc); alongside their existing investors.

This round will allow them to complete the pivotal Phase 3 of their product development and will make alicaforsen market-ready for the treatment of IBD pouchitis which currently has no approved treatments.

So far in this series we’ve discussed 2 of my 3 recommended first steps for starting your pitch in a way that makes investors instantly grasp the value of your idea.

Third up is the natural corollary of the problem, that is, the solution.

Tip #3 “How do you scratch that itch?”

Once you’ve made the effort, as set out in Proposal Tip #2, to give a cogent explanation of the problem, and the investors have started to relate to the pain point, then you hit them with your solution.

How you do this will depend hugely on what your solution is, but the key point is to make it super clear. No one will understand your solution as well as you do – so don’t expect them to. Set out your explanation in as simple as possible terms as if explaining to a total novice.

Entrepreneurs often make the mistake of being too technical at this stage under the mistaken belief that if they sound like a genius then the prospective investor will fall head over heels and want to invest.

Wrong.

If someone doesn’t understand your idea quickly they’ll look elsewhere for an idea they can understand and relate to quickly.

You’ve been warned for this week…

Some very exciting news in this morning about one of the companies we raised money for last year. BIG news! Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to disclose anything yet, so will have to announce when permitted in a later post…so watch this space.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve all been on tenterhooks waiting for the second in my series of 52 quick proposal tips. The wait is over…

Tip #2 “What Itch do you Scratch?”

Last week’s tip recommended grabbing investors’ attention by starting your pitch/proposal with your company’s most impressive achievement or traction metric to date. But what next?

You’ve hit them first with some proof and validation, but now you need to make the explanation of your concept as concise as possible. Remember, you no doubt understand your business extremely well, but you cannot expect prospective investors to have the same level of understanding. So what’s the best way to articulate your concept clearly?

Generally, we encourage entrepreneurs submitting a proposal on Angel Investment Network to start with the problem. What real world problem do you solve? What itch do you scratch? What pain do you alleviate?

If I were the Founder of Uber when starting out, my proposal would start by setting out the problems that people who want a taxi face e.g. long waits, high fares, needing to have cash etc…

If you do this well, you will get investors nodding along as they begin to see the value of your concept as they relate it to their own lives.
That’s all for now. I’ll cover the next step next week…

This week I wanted to share a resource with you that we normally only give to our customers on Angel Investment Network…

It’s a short e-book that sets out in as simple as possible terms what should be included in the pitch deck that you send or present to prospective investors. An important point to be noted here is that ‘what should be included’ is, more often than not, ALL that should be included. In your pitch deck you’re trying to engage and persuade – to blow minds not to numb them. So the details you give should be the ‘minimum effective dose’ to get investors thinking and wanting to find out more.

The purpose of our site is to connect entrepreneurs and investors, so you might say that teaching people about pitching falls beyond our remit; but you’d be wrong.

1. We like to make sure our entrepreneurs are as well prepared as possible for the result of any connections made through our site (or elsewhere), so that down the line they can write to tell us how successful they’ve become.

2. We see so many bad pitch decks and so many good’uns (literally thousands a week!) that we know what gets investors giddy…

It’s yours if you want it!

Download from here

This week I wanted to share with you a great little article about user onboarding. While it’s primarily useful for web-based companies, there’s an important lesson in there for anyone who cares about driving success.

In brief, the article demonstrates that the most effective way to increase user retention, is to focus on onboarding – that first day or week in which a user is experiencing your product for the first time. By focussing on this ‘handshake’ moment not only will you retain a higher percentage of users/customers in that first day/week, but there will be a knock-on effect from this in the subsequent days/weeks; with the result that your churn will be significantly reduced across the entire user lifecycle and your revenues will have increased accordingly and significantly. Even though you only made changes at the start of the lifecyle.

Imagine two scenarios in which you are entering a hotel…

In the first, you go through the swivel doors into a silent and dimly-lit atrium across which you can just make out a receptionist slumped behind the desk. You lug your bags over to the desk gasping audibly from the effort. The receptionist does not even look up etc…You get the picture.

In the second, you go through the swivel doors into a dazzling atrium buzzing with fellow guests cheerfully chatting away whilst relaxing in comfy chairs as handsome waiters and waitresses serve them Prosecco and canapes; and have their luggage taken up to their rooms.

Obviously the second scenario is intended to create a ‘WOW’ factor. This ‘WOW’ factor is important because it creates a perspective in the mind of the customer which will set the tone for how they perceive the whole experience. In other words, the happiness created at the start will mean that the customer is more likely to use more of the various facilities and services, tip more and return in future.

So whatever business you’re in, remember you never get a second chance at a first impression; and the first impression is most important one you can make.

Experiential marketing has proven to be a cost effective, authentic and powerful way of growing your brand. For the uninitiated, “experiential marketing” is a strategy that encourages engagement from your target demographic by encouraging them to play an active part in the evolution of the brand. In other words, you give them an experience that makes them feel part of your brand. It’s a great way to create loyalty and evangelism for your business.

Co-founder of London-based restaurant startup, Grub Club, Siddarth VijayaKumar, shares how experiential marketing worked for them in this article for TechCityinsider including how Grub Club has been collaborating with Airbnb for Christmas…

Angel investment Network helped Grub Club fill their seed round and we are absolutely delighted to see them making waves alongside the big boys in the startup community like Airbnb; and winning awards like TCi’s 2015 Award for London innovator of the year.

Ask a sample group of people why startups fail, and, assuming they have a vague understanding of the modern world,  they’ll give you a host of different reasons. Misfiring team. Poor product. No market. No business model. Delusional founder etc. And undoubtedly, they are all true depending on the circumstances in which the particular startup failed.

But there is a root problem to many of these problems. And it’s a simple one: a lack of tracked data, or perhaps simply a wilful ignorance of it. Data is the only means of empirically measuring the performance of your startup and building good practices upon proven foundations. In other words, tracked data gives you actionable insights where you would otherwise be guessing. Build upon what you already know to be true and your chances of avoiding ultimate failure will be much greater.

What this means is that failing on a low key level can be invaluable for the knowledge it provides; and as such, a failure can be considered a success if you properly understand and learn from the data you receive. Knowing what not to do can thus be as important as knowing what to do throughout the early stages of your venture.

This is the important point about success and failure. Micro-failures are useful stepping stones to ultimate success provided the data is tracked and learnt from after each attempt. As Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, puts it; “If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”