How can I meet EF companies at Seed?
Nearly all of my posts are aimed at the founder audience. It’s an honor and a privilege to share insights and give back to the founder community that has given me so much. However today I’m excited to switch focus and share a note intended for investors. Specifically those early-stage investors that want to meet with, and hopefully invest in, EF companies.
Question: How can I meet (seed stage) EF companies?
Answer: Take part in Investor Month!
For the past several cohorts we’ve held investor office hours and it’s always been a great effort. There’s nothing novel about this. We arrange time for investors to meet with the founders teams they’re interested in. Founders get to meet with loads more investors so it’s time efficient. Investors get to meet with loads of teams so it’s dealflow efficient. And we (the EF Launch* team) get to access valuable investor feedback to make our company-building product better.
*Launch is the second phase of the EF programme and turns Pre-Seed teams into Seed funded businesses. We own all funding efforts for the portfolio at the Seed stage.
But what has historically been an ad hoc process is no longer fit for purpose. Europe11, which debuts in London on 27th March, will be the largest cohort in EF history. We’ll have ~30 companies spread across 3 cities. Launch now operates at scale and with scale comes the need for operational excellence. In the last cohort we trialed a pre-booking system that worked really well so we’re expanding that to full scale for Europe11.
Investor Month is pretty straightforward. The month of April will be 100% dedicated to maximizing exposure between our seed-stage portfolio and the investment community. All investor types (VC, angel, Corp VC) are welcome to take part and are encouraged to pre-book a session with our Launch team. To pre-book you need to answer two questions:
- What city would you like to “visit”? We’ll be holding office hours in each of our 3 European locations; London, Berlin and Paris and you can find the schedule below. One important note to mention, any investor will be able to meet with teams from all of our EF sites. I.e. London office hours will also include our Berlin and Paris teams (schedules and interest permitting). Launch is a very deliberate pan-European product and we believe the best founders deserve the best capital, regardless of location. We want to encourage cross-border investment wherever appropriate as it makes a stronger ecosystem, from which we all benefit.
2. Would you like a half-day or full-day session? A half-day session is approximately 4 hours and allows an investor to meet with 6 teams plus a short debrief with the Launch team. A full-day expands to 12 teams. Of course any investor is free to do multiple days if that works better for their schedule. In fact this is a common strategy for many of the prolific Seed funds in London.
With those two questions answered my team will get you scheduled and set for April. We call them “pre-booking” because you won’t know which teams you’ll want to meet with until the debut on Demo Day. But starting as soon as the evening of the 27th we get moving very rapidly with organizing specific team schedules. You just need to let my team know which picks you want.
Note: We’ll run on a first come, first booked basis but will prioritize seed investors that lead or co-lead rounds
If you’re interested in taking part in Investor Month for the Europe11 cohort please reach out to my colleague Dominik (dominik@joinef.com), who would be happy to oblige. Europe11 cohort promises to be the largest and strongest cohort in EF history as we can’t wait to introduce you to the founders.
