Why Capital On Stage becomes fundsUP
What a ride! Capital On Stage has been around seven years today!
For seven years long, we’ve demystified venture capitalism and accelerated the funding process. Throughout Europe and USA, but also in South East Asia and Israel. My cofounder Sander and I started Capital On Stage because we needed funding for our own companies and thought “What’s better than having these guys pitch us!?”
It worked.
23 flagship conferences and hundreds of VIP gatherings (dinners, cocktail parties, boat rides, rooftop food tastings, board room workshops, … and very memorable club nights). All with thousands of selected founders, investors, politicians, technology industry leaders, big brand services firms and, at times, royalty.
More than 400 top-tier VCs dared to pitch themselves on our stage. Some pitches truly sucked, some were enlightening, but they all caused transparency. Despite our niche events, we received a lot of media coverage including Forbes, TNW, TechCrunch, TechInAsia and many more.
My team and I did this to improve and increase deal discovery for investors, teach startups and firms, and of course: get great founders funded. All through offline efforts.
Capital On Stage has built a significant network in the professional investor and technology scene. With all our learnings and trust gained, we are ready to take things up a notch. We’re going all-digital to automate and scale what we do best: deal discovery for investors.
We call our matchmaking technology fundsUP.
fundsUP is an iOS app for investors and a web platform for founders. It enables investors to access relevant deal flow, for the first time (really!) . Our algorithms ensure that no potential referrals are missed from within an investor’s own network. We take loads of data points into account when drawing conclusions — especially un/aware investor biases (some listed in this TechCrunch article). We dig deep in team, team and team, as this is at the core of early stage investing. For over 15 months or so, we’ve built a growth score to soon show founders how fundable they are compared to their industry peers.
And our technology is self-learning. Investors apply for access to our (iOS) app, and founders can create an account on the web platform.
Investors are able to screen their “first dates” at lightning speed in a tinder-like fashion. They can discover investable deals themselves or get recommendations from us. The app is fast, fun and overall provides a gamified experience that’s digesting a low-information diet (unlike most competitors who provide a high-information diet for investors, as it’s a typical investor bias!). Here’s Wouter’s 1minute explanation on youtube.
I wanted to write this Medium post today to not only thank you for your trust and for participating in Capital On Stage, but to pre-invite you here to register for our beta release. It goes live next week, so I’d love for you to give it a spin as one of the first users ever! It’s free and I’d very much appreciate your feedback.
That’s it. The gloves are off — we are ready to forever change how investors do deal discovery! See you at fundsUP.co
Arjen
fundsUP B.V.
