How do you raise funds and seduce investors in Luxembourg?
Contact me for support on your fundraising.
This article was first published in Silicon Luxembourg.
In the past ten months, I coached six Luxembourg-based startups to raise EUR 4 million and I’m currently working hard on additional fundraisings, which could amount up to EUR 5 million this year only. When it comes to fundraising for startups in Luxembourg, Entrepreneurs now know that they’ll find suitable fundraising advice and connections to Investors, by (almost) simply knocking on our door at Nyuko.
The hard truth when you raise funds is that we live in a world of accelerated returns.
In the next ten years, technologies will improve faster than they have in the past ten years. And the last decade saw technology improvements going faster than in the previous one. The direct consequence for you is that Investors expect you to come at them with a modern graphic design and a working demo. No more excuses, recess is over. I could find you ten brilliant graphic designers from around the world within an hour; I could list you ten mind-blowing different online tools to make your mobile app alive, without any coding skills and within that same hour. The worst part of that reality? Everyone is doing it. Every team you’re competing against for funding money is bootstrapping as much as possible, reaching Investors even after their product/market fit and early traction.
Allocate the necessary time to work on your pitch-deck, content and layout wise.
You’ll have one chance and one only to retain an Investor’s attention, before he/she clicks on that deadly delete button. Part of the process, at least with me on your sides, will be to take your well-detailed “this is what I’m trying to achieve and all the complex things behind it” dozens-of-pages business plan and wrap it up, in the sexiest and friction-less 15-slide presentation ever. The aim of such a document is not to convince the reader to write you a check right away, but rather to close a first meeting with them. After a couple of face-to-face sessions at Nyuko, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what’s important from your business and personal story to put in your pitch-deck.
Let me tell you why we need to do this right. Investors rarely, if not ever, invest without telling and discussing about it with their entourage and/or fellow partners, often in a well-orchestrated weekly deal flow internal meeting. Go ahead and picture it as a scene from an old movie, where the big money guys gather to discuss important matters, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, except without the cigars and whiskey part. If your pitch deck did not provide easy-to-remember and simple-to-replicate messages, odds are that your project will not even be mentioned around the table. Who would take the risk to look like a fool by introducing something that he/she is not even sure to understand him/herself? Especially surrounded by smart minds, that VC partners supposedly are.
Another must-have in the fundraising process is getting the right introductions to the right Investors.
Do not waste time building a 100-line Excel spreadsheet with plans to cold email them all. Rather visit Investors’ websites, identify the best contact for you in their team and then find a common connection that will make a double opt-in intro. Ask LinkedIn and your fundraising adviser, they’ll both amaze you at it. At Nyuko for instance, we’ve carefully built strong relationships with dozens of business angels and VC partners over the past months, throughout Europe. Chances are that we’ll find you multiple investors, even from outside of Luxembourg. And that would be ok. Some random American startup called Uber recently had to travel all the way to Arabia Saudi to raise its last USD 3.5 billion round, didn’t it?
Entrepreneurs, I urge you to discuss with a fundraising adviser before welcoming any kind of money from external Investors.
I have seen too many disastrous toxic rounds happening in Luxembourg. Rounds with obvious and less obvious tricky terms, that simply kill the startup from day 1, without the founders noticing. Until I meet them and start asking questions…
Feel free to ping me on Twitter (@NicolasValaize) and to request support on your fundraising.
