One thing everyone can agree upon in the startup entrepreneurial ecosystem is that more founders would succeed if they had access to networks to raise the initial $200-$500k. In this Tweet today this one point was clear and pretty unanimous. The debate circled around the predatory alternatives that leave early stage founders most vulnerable to the "sharks".
WeTransact | SkillVill is way ahead of this debate and has already created some solutions that are fostering more equitable options and smarter ways not only for the founders but also the entire ecosystem.
There's many ways WeTransact | SkillVill is providing better infrastructure for the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to thrive for all of their members. In this article we're going to dive into some practical things the entire ecosystem can do to foster better outcomes together. For greater understanding of why transparency and equitable access for a more diverse ecosystem is better we recommend you to learn more about the Kauffman 7 e-ship goals of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Now that you've Tweeted your opinion...
Let's take some real action together to make a real difference in your own community.
WeTransact has tested these techniques with our own Real-Raise community. We always refer to things as an experiment to try, track and interpret the results together to determine the next experiment to get us closer to a more inclusive and accessible ecosystem.
The first learning is to assess time being spent. Sounds kinda deep. We assure you it's really not. One of the most valuable resources in life is time and again this is 10 fold for early stage founders whose runway and survival to keep the lights on depends on it.
Did you know that when a founder doesn't have a wealthy family & friends round, they have to spend 100% of their time to network just to get meetings on the calendar to even meet people for the first time.
For those who have wealthy networks of high worth individuals or know partners at VCs it's a phone call away and "due diligence" is often fast tracked from 5 mins of hearing an idea to even a clear answer within days. While they are off and running to the races with funding an ideas often jotted down on a napkin founders without generational wealth and support are still trying to just get in the room with their ideal investors for 1 month up to 1 year.
This is not the only additional time it takes for founder without wealthy networks. Often it takes up-to 6 months of courting and building trust with their new found networks to maybe get 2% of the actual funding runway they need. This 7 month if they are lucky and more often 2 year head start between these two founders' "starting lines" to launch and then compete demonstrates the significance of time in this scenario.
This only hurts the company as the founder's time is not focused on ROI but rather fundraising. This opportunity cost of the founders time being protected and spent on 6 months of micro-tractions and growth would be much more valuable to investors/VCs/scouts and to the value of their investment going up.
Here's one female founder's tracking of her time while raising with a fairly wealthy network in Seattle, WA:
"They say fundraising takes way more time than any Founder accounts for. I spent 300 hours in 200+ investor meetings this year. And that's not counting time spent preparing for the meeting, revising our pitch deck, updating our Data Room, etc. Not to mention running my business so I could demonstrate the traction / revenue need to raise.
Tribute closed our pre-seed round at the end of July, after beginning our raise in March. I'm excited to have 25% of my time back to focus on sales, customer success supporting my newly expanded team and my favorite thing of all - building product.
Ladies, do not underestimate how much time you'll need to spend fundraising. Set a deadline, qualify investor meetings in advance, hire that admin to help you do team related activities, and network, network, network!"
To expedite the redundancies that every founder (without a wealthy network) and yes even the VCs/Scouts/Investors could be saving in meeting times as well, WeTransact planted the seeds for a new way to connect the many dots faster together.
Early stage is all about investing the team/the people. remember often just ideas on napkins before MVP/BETA or even market fit traction.
SEEKIING A SOLUTION:
Reduce the time/runway for a founder to access aligned resources and for VCs/scouts/investors to discover and invest.
WETRANSACT EXPERIMENT:
What if we could collectively act in a new way to cut out the standard 6 months of courting and networking?
#1 Define Your Tenants: Is this someone you'd want to work/invest with?
As a community of founders, Real-Raise crafted our shared tenants of the humans we'd like to work/invest together. This is our net to catch and reach a more aligned short list to prioritize our meetings and save time. It's the same process as inbound marketing evergreen funnel when we need to have our websites pre-qualify our customers.
This may not seem like a big thing, but when you add up the total of hours x each founder x each VC/Scout/Investor doing this still 1-on-1 in meetings and events, this is HUGE savings of time for everyone!
WeTransact leverages it's own SaaS innovation platform to lay down the pipes to funnel the 3 main sides of the ecosystem spending between 25%-100% of their time just trying to connect/meet. The Real-Raise experiment began and we're sharing because it's working better.
It's begins with registering with the "Virtual Village" and our tenants.
#2 Purpose Driven Alignment: What do you need most to help you reach your next milestone?
There's millions of good people who share a mission and/or purpose but timing is everything in life. By asking a simple question quarterly with our amazing humans we align with we can help ourselves unlock the resources we need this quarter. We all have resources we can share and support each other if we only knew who needed it. To remove this burden of discovery and time spent on chance of talking to the right people at the right time and/or hoping to get an introduction we do a collective quarterly check-in. In one collective action that we all do together in under 5 minutes ensures that we can expedite the flow of the most helpful shares/offers/needs to help each other reach a specific milestone this quarter.
#3 Needs Driven Events: What topics, shares of information are most relevant to help you or the community this quarter?
Instead of event being set up to sell or promote community, we experimented with asking the community what they needed. Then we focused to do 1 quarterly Real-Raise Summit of the topics and even speakers nominated and voted with the most interest form the community to be most relevant. It also provides ongoing insights and reporting of our shared successes each quarter building a truly authentic community and loyalty to keep paying it forward.
#4 On Demand Report: What is happening each quarter across the community?
Even batching the Quarterly Summit and collecting updates it's still required more time than necessary to maximize connections of all the dots across the community. We created the "cliff notes" of everything each quarter from clips of highlights during the Summit, and even easy click and respond to each article with very specific asks from those being featured. Offers of help are great but can be even better when it's what the person truly needs this quarter.
By providing the pipe lines of easy connection of these dots and making it easy and accessible for everyone aligned to take action together saves more than time, it changes all of our trajectories of success this quarter. The dynamic between the founders, scout/investor and ally becomes more of a team sport vs the out dated parent child relationship of the 1-on-1 manual approach. We're increasing the odds of all our success by acting collectively and more efficiently by leveraging the WeTransact platform.
We hope these experiments provide you with insights to try out new ways of connecting the dots across your ecosystems and fostering more win-win outcomes for all.
Interested in learning more about how you can use WeTransact platform to start connecting the dots across your community and ecosystem faster?
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