Raising money: Illusion vs Reality of an early-stage founder
Germany is a country for founders, but not always for investors. Even if the willingness is there to invest into early-stage startups, it’s still tough for founders to raise money. This might be because Germans don’t have a great affinity of risk-taking and gambling.
When we started streetkickers, I didn’t have much experience in fundraising beforehand, I had only helped out with a few pitch decks for friends before. So I felt confident to raise money because of all the rumors you hear “investment tickets are basically laying on the street, you just have to pick them up”, “literally everyone is investing who has money”. You only hear the great success stories from other founders, but we also had to experience the hard way that this is not entirely true.
I admit it, I imagined the journey to be easier. It’s not for the lack of strong contacts. It’s pretty easy to find and connect with big investors, even on LinkedIn. I was naive to believe that I will build a pitch deck, present it to a few investors and boom — money will roll into my bank account. That’s not what happened.
The first six months we kept streetkickers afloat by bootstrapping. Basically by living off our savings and investing in the first MVP with our own resources. Since we are four co-founders, it’s also very tough to arrange the expenses, especially when it comes to a loan. I stopped eating out, I never went to the cinema or to clubs anymore, my favorite meal was pesto pasta parmesan. Of course, you have to restrict yourself at first — we knew this.
Our strategy, at first, was focusing more on personal contacts, starting with the low hanging fruits, like family and friends. It’s neither a blessing and curse letting your friends be your first investors, it’s still business and you have to be able to divide between the person and the business.
Afterwards, we evolved lists with investor names, who we wanted to meet. We went to several investor summits and meetups, to just get the chance of an elevator pitch. The number of investors attending was always relatively low at these events — it’s sometimes ridiculous what other founders are willing to do to get an investor’s attention. Removing to move during Speed Dating or literally using their elbows to push away other founders — we all have seen that. Moral and ethics seem secular.
The big issue is that many investors estimate traction before investing. The chicken and egg-dilemma: sometimes only with investments great traction can be seen. It wasn’t that easy for us until we finally got the investment by a business Angel and APX, who believed in us in our Pre-Seed stage.
It’s great to not bend or break because of financial pressure, which really can prevent you from risking and growing. Because if you look back — every restriction, every failure, and every unsuccessful pitch, paysoff in the end.
streetkickers is the ultimate football training app. We deliver professional football training to every player with video tutorials, a tracking, and gamification system. We are helping young players to get a little closer to their big dream of being a professional football player.
