Conversation Theme: Support for members who are currently fundraising

Date: 11th August

Time: 1pm - 2pm WAT

Venue: Pando Lounge on Discord

Summary

We had our first fundraising catch-up, insights, and feedback call today. Members Emilie (TopUpMama), Jason (UTU), and Yacob (Pariti) spoke about strategy, timing, and current round dynamics. Michael, Nkechi, Selman, and Wossen joined as well.

On Timing - Look for more activity in mid-September

• Emilie has seen a slowdown with partners on vacation, etc. and feels like some firms are delaying. She was curious how to push toward a close.
• Yacob mentioned that from a macro-perspective, firms still have a lot of capital and need to deploy some of it before the end of the year. His thinking is that mid-September to mid-November will be peak fundraising time. He suggested that maybe scheduling follow-ups for September is best and to try to close leads then. Trying too hard to close in August might end up just being a frustrating experience and draining energy needlessly.
• Jason is raising in web3/crypto and said that it seems like many firms paused in the last quarter to figure out their strategy in a downturn. However, he’s seen more activity lately and it seems like a lot of firms recently met with their LPs and decided either they have permission to invest now or they don’t, but the ones who do are starting to write checks again. But - they are writing checks primarily for rounds that promise 2+ years of runway.

On Funding type & cost of capital - consider debt vs. equity

• Yacob and Emilie also had a discussion specifically about whether other sources of financing would be good for her business and how to prepare for them. Equity’s cost of capital is very high.
• Related, there was a discussion about crypto options for FX.

On Crypto/Web3 funding

• Jason’s round has ended up being a lot of checks of $100k-$200k and he feels that’s more typical for pre-A crypto companies than to have a formal lead.
• Jason hasn’t really approached DAOs for funding because it felt like there may be a lot of overhead to learn about each one and their process. Michael suggested the DAO+Traditional Fund model and offered to run Jason’s pitch past Orange DAO and VC3 DAO.

<aside> 👉🏾 In the future, we can organize more member check-ins & discussions like this. If you want to join the next one, reach out to Nkechi on Discord or write a message in the #fundraising channel. Let’s scale together!

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