The Preseed Advisory
Merely by your presence in the Preseed Whatsapp/Telegram/Chattodo groups. Expect the Preseed touch on your founders trickling into your team members and your language.
FOR STARTUPS THAT COME TO US
Finally, the identity of startups within the Preseed Ecosystem and Brand Values is centered on its comprehensive and tailored support for early-stage startups. Here are the key proposition elements :
1. Focused Early-Stage Support
Specialization: Preseed targets early-stage startups, offering specific resources and assistance that are crucial during the formative stages of a business. This specialization helps address the unique challenges faced by new ventures.
2. Holistic Resource Provision
Comprehensive Support: Preseed provides an end-to-end support model that includes spiritual guidance, seed funding, mentorship, strategic guidance, and business development resources. This holistic approach helps startups at multiple levels, from financial support to operational advice.
3. Mentorship and Expertise
Experienced Advisors: The platform emphasizes access to a network of experienced mentors and industry experts who offer valuable insights, strategic advice, and practical guidance. This mentorship is tailored to the specific needs of early-stage startups.
4. Tailored Funding Solutions
Flexible Funding: Preseed offers flexible funding options designed to meet the needs of early-stage ventures. This can include seed capital, investment terms, and financial support that align with the startup’s growth stage and requirements.
5. Strong Network and Partnerships
Strategic Connections: Preseed leverages a robust network of industry connections, partners, and stakeholders to provide startups with additional opportunities, market access, and collaborative possibilities.
6. Community Building
Supportive Ecosystem: The platform fosters a community-driven environment that supports collaboration and networking among startups, investors, and advisors. This community aspect helps startups integrate into a broader ecosystem of innovation and support.
These elements combine to make Preseed a unique platform for early-stage startups, offering a comprehensive suite of resources and support tailored to their specific needs.
For an early-stage opportunity what we lay through our leadership and advise lays the foundation for a strong impact on the following fundamentals of your startup:
- Mentorship/Advise — Our advice will lead you to decipher the startup plan, its phases and over all strategies so crisp and simple that it actually STARTS lean, bootstrapped. So, it can conduct itself in smarter and contemporary ways. We continue to function as advisors throughout the course of the business so long as you feel our need.
Permanent Advisory
All of above/below and any meaningful advise we may have for you, will be conveyed, proactively, forever.
Ways of achieving milestones timely — So that you cut the crap and do what you would do with an uncluttered approach of the mind. Right Tasks and Milestones is what we mean when we say ‘Permanent advisory’ — If you are able to achieve these really fast then we can build the startup really fast. There are ways of procrastinating e.g.
a. Losing yourself to the information on the web.
b. Too much phone, thinking and communications.
c. Waiting for money — Remember that the first iteration of your idea that we will suggest in most cases would not need money but would need the real will to identify people who are willing to collaborate with you for they believe in you or the future profit deal you strike with them. Removing the need of money to do something worthwhile by building those bootstrapped models and effective connections. Inspire humans instead of buying them.
d. Bootstrapping — I live so seamlessly and minimaly, so can you and your startups..
e. Simplicity — Since we love it we don’t shy away in conveying its value in the context of the business so that it is modeled in the simplest ways for the purpose of scalability.
Profound Questions
The kind of questions, the answers to which can deliver catharsis. So long as you and us dialogue, this service will get established, seamlessly. From day 1.
The idea — What we tell you ensures that you work on ideas that are doing something of value to a large set of people whether for entertainment reasons or social upliftment reasons or solving a big / small problem in the consumer web space or just improving the experience of another kind of a solution. We make you think the right idea.
Marketable Answers
Answers won’t just be for talk sake, but for the sake of the market you want to solve a problem for.
Sales Pitch
You are looking at the product inside out. We look at it, outside in. From that place, your story needs to be told. It should be ‘seductive’. There is too much noise. If you don’t sell crisp and sharp with right articluations on the right channel, your sales pitch is not done.
Consumer Web Perspective — Since we are mostly on the consumer web side of things in the way we think just naturally, we end up weaving that perspective into everything we do making it very scalable.
Branding (also Designing and Content)
What is the instant experience your audience will have when they think of you? The bottom line is, something that is first, clearly understood in the minds of that audience, and established in the solution realm of their problem. Extraordinary Visual Communication when it becomes imperative.
Legal & Due Diligence
Founders, so you focus on your product, we take care of protecting you and your company as a legal entity which is in an arrangement with you/your team/product from day 1, until the day you are funded.
We understand that the Preseed stage of any startup is made up of its early team over dialogues made up of roles, responsibilities, goals, key milestones and associated rewards. We take this among you all into contracts, so all of you are bounded with each other over clarity. Legal also includes Incorporation, IP and legal/statutory audits.
Scale up Connections
These connections are thoughtfully created potential tie ups that make the process of building a great company faster, more efficient, more cost effective and more scalable. We create a structure around you that leaves you more time to focus on what is most critical to your business so that you do what is most important and others do everything else. These tie ups could be infrastructural tie ups, operational tie ups, process tie ups, technology tieups, human resource tie ups or any other tie up that can help grow the startup.
Vendors
We connect you to the vendors for various executions. These vendors are those vendors we have identified as most cost effective vendors over our experience of the last 5 years.
Investments
We put you through the right potential investors for your startup and in exceptionally good cases we will get you the investments too.
We work with you on anything that we think requires our attention towards chasing a common goal with you. We hope you understand that most ideas that people write to us about are redefined by us, and sometimes even completely changed. (Obviously in the interest of the business).
Etc.
What is a “questionologist?” (And why should you care?).
This link will give you some perspective on the importance of questioning. However, if you know the importance of being questioned for your own good, proceed to read below..
What do we do for you? We open doors of expansive perception.
We also help you tweak designs on papers and content for your product’s identity website. What we will talk to you about across the next few months through our whys, whats and hows will aim to help you achieve — a more conscious, iterative and scalable vision; and in the process:
- Brand positioning — We give you something we call the first page of your words to your audience. This is a defining one. This sets the tone for what you will be known to have done, at first, and completely. Here we take care of the words that reveal your brand and identity — The identity of your business in the mind of people who want to know you. This and this alone will determine, what kind of handshakes you do, simply, just by communicating on the website about you. This is the first thing we like to dabble with you over. Having the right identity means, saving energy from having to explain, yet ambiguously, about who you are and why you deserve the handshake. Whether you are aligned with your brand, it reflects on your slide deck — that your business plan is in harmony with the brand possibility you are after in its position in the market. (I have a great understanding of Prelaunch Marketing. I found out that in best cases of software dev. — prelaunch marketing precedes coding. I would like to open it up to any tech startup to start learning from. Strong Prelaunch marketing should tell if the product is worth coding or not. It’s better than any other kind of validation.
The first thing you have to get right according to us is the vision as an iterative plan, where the first iteration really truly is the MVP with a globally scalable possibility in shortest amount of time. We craft with you visions of that magnitude. This renewed vision and advisory alongside is more than double your business potential — for there must be some extreme value in the lessons I will be sharing with you. If we shake a hand, it must be on the grounds of that possibility.
- Clarity over MVP — This can make or break your budget. One simply definable idea — I often notice how the exercise towards this is underplayed. Ugly MVP — Minimum Viable Products should remain ill designed till not customer validated, and that is alright, but not after. I help such MVPs be used by more customers by guiding the improvement of their current UI by far — In fact, I believe that you must create demand by being use-able at the level of your MVP all the way to it being beautiful, and not by being too many things and then annoying them with pushing banner ads about your product, meaning, by pushing your promotion with too many words, for too many things take too many words. One thing can be spoken about well, in one line. Be so good at doing one thing, that they talk about you with each other, let alone use you. I will help you with this one thing. I will also give you broad MVP wire frame, functionally, fairly differentiated with a similar product out there on the web anywhere in the world. (A design that works).
- Clarity over the next sets of product iterations/versions
When the above three fall in line — you are ready to move forward. This is a philosophical process which gives birth to the RIGHT DIRECTION.
- Vendor/Candidate Intros — I may be introducing you to relevant vendors, however, I myself may not be a part of anything more than the introduction. My commitment to you so far is, the time I will spend with the founder on matters of great intellectual challenges all the way to final strategies. I would expect the founders to be able to execute these strategies with their teams and vendors I will introduce them to.
Leading right handshakes not just recommending them — Support from the right set of investors and handshakes. Without the right kind of connections and deals, your business being game-changing will only be a concept in theory. Here we take care of the words that reveal your brand and identity — The identity of your business in the mind of people who want to know you. Having the right identity means, saving energy from having to explain, yet ambiguously, about who you are and why you deserve the handshake.
- Connections — We open some possibilities for your startup’s growth almost immediately. It may lead to some solid connections for your idea/startup. Many talented people from our extraordinary network get led to developing relationship with our startups.
E.g. Preseed connected Jitendra Sharma of Taxipixi with Pritesh Agarwal who was the VP at Ola at that time. This connection leads them to become cofounders in a spin-off using their collective lessons to create something new as co-founders. They ended up starting up Zipgo.
- Right slide deck — It is not just for the investors. It is for you to see for yourself, and to show your company to anyone, in 12 slides. Being able to put that one line on the very first slide for the investor has got more to do than to just put that one line. It forces you to be able to speak to everyone in that one line in a manner that convinces them about the novelty of your business. The drive to achieve the manifestation of that one line helps you simplify your idea, and to build the first marketable iteration in that exact direction, hence, a more likely and clear product market fit, the new found simpler product vision. It is this slide deck you pitch to most suitable investors.
- Meetings — Having us on your side of the table will mean, you will mostly have a proxy leader in the meetings in our voice and orchestration. We help you make the deals and train your team that define your business direction of the future.
- We will give you legal advisory, contractual/negotiation points and appear for meetings, that serve as the long term foundation of of your handshakes with others, going forward.
As soon as we are on the same page about this through a written contract with you, we will further our engagement. But by this time, you may have felt the potential impact of our thought on your venture.
Don’t read any further if you are not ready to share 5% of your company just to continue to have conversations with me over the next few months towards nailing all of the above.
Your Total Cost:
Your cost — Upto 70% equity in your business for a few hours with us every day over our lifetime. This, because our presence will grow your business by at least 10x purely out of strategies we do for you and the presence we make in our business’s meetings. When our deal is this, we just work with you and no other client.
Terms and conditions:
One day, at a cost of Rs. 50 Lakhs, and 5 % equity of your business, you would have begun to find the answers to the questions that will enable you to be a larger business, someday, in 10 years. The adding of this colourful perspective means, they will always be thinking beyond norms.
If you are sending the slide deck to an investor then your slide deck should be in sync with this :
If you don’t have a slide deck, make one. We won’t be able to serve you to the floor of our depth, without one. I have written a lot about what a slide deck should be about, here. Read it, it is a work of genuine research and experience.
Make use of this free gyaan about making of a slide deck. It is not the deck, but the process to making your deck, that satisfies us. That will be the key. This matters in how you and I learn or relearn to look at your business.
It will aid you in your presentation the day you sit with me to vet your presentations before they reach the investor.
It has a list of questions, the answers to which must be prepared while pitching your startup before an investor.
I hope you READ WELL as I attempted to express myself, as your potential mentor.
Note — It is also necessary that when you will raise further funds in future then you may have to issue fresh shares to external investors and this may result in “dilution” of x% stake of Preseed in the then equity share capital of your company. This issue needs to be addressed with clarity and detail by the CA who is advising you. Please also ask your CA/lawyers/advisors to create a Legal Agreement [Shareholders’ Agreement] that ensures 15% of equity of your company in favour of Preseed and what services will be sought by you from Preseed (which should be from within the scope of what is written here). Preseed will also like to know who are the other Shareholders in your company as those shareholders will have to sign the referred Shareholders’ Agreement along with a “Deed of Adherence” which shall also be signed by all future subsequent shareholders of your company ensuing seamless x% stake to Preseed in equity share capital/ownership of your company in future too.
