Business Plan App | How Pre-Revenue Startups Should Fundraise

Disclaimer: The information shared in this newsletter is for informational purposes only and represents my personal opinions. It is not intended as, nor should it be interpreted as, financial or investment advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

In today’s article:

What I’m building
Where pre-revenue startups should be fundraising from
Investing in DeFI

Business Plan App

I write a lot of business plans each year. Many are for my clients to help them in fundraising, others are for my day job where I’m one of the go-to people for writing business plans for our new ventures.

Over the years I’ve been able to establish a process that let’s me move quickly with new plans, albeit it still requires a lot of manual labor on my part. Still, I can pump a plan out in less than a business day in most instances.

Regardless, I’ve been working on a business plan application that will further automate the process for me and others. You can watch a recorded video of a live session where I started working through the build and the requirements doc for the app.

Since I’ve been traveling and have a lot of consulting work on my plate, I’ve not been able to spend as much time as I’d like on the app. But, I hope to get back to it this week, and I plan another live session. So, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to be notified when I go live again.

Fundraising for Pre-revenue Startups

Probably 75% of the founders that I work with are early in their startup journey. So early that they are pre-revenue.

When it comes to raising capital, investors look for accomplishments/milestones/traction as signals for if there is something worth investing their money.

A good idea is not enough.

One way for you to think about fundraising is that if your venture is pre-revenue you are most likely suited for startup accelerator programs or individual angel investors that like to support budding entrepreneurs. Not the investors that are return focused.

So, if you are looking to raise your first outside capital for a pre-revenue venture, that’s called a pre-seed round, then consider focusing your fundraising efforts towards applying to accelerator programs.

This is the exact playbook that the folks at Cr3dentials have used to slowly build momentum. This month they are piloting with multiple betas and then we will move towards raising a larger round from traditional investors.

You can try this list of programs.

Investing in DeFI

DeFI is having its long awaited moment.

Because I’m in the fintech space, I try to stay up-to-speed and where things in the decentralized finance industry are going.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how quasi-banks, such as Coinbase, are a real threat to traditional financial institutions. Coinbase offers deposits, credit/debit cards, and has recently launched a lending program on the back of stablecoins. Those services are exactly what a bank does. Here’s one catch - Coinbase is regulated like banks are.

On the back of that research, I’ve decided to invest into Coinbase and Circle through my backdoor IRA. To understand more about that decision, head here.

One note - Circle is down a chunk from its IPO. But, I’m still a believer and am holding my shares.

Again, not investment advice.

By the way, by now you may have noticed that I’ve been changing up the format of the newsletter. Instead of articles on specific topics, I’m spending more time just sharing the lessons I’m learning while I work through my own venture or consulting with other businesses. If you like the new format better, would you take a second and hit reply to let me know?

Thanks as always for your support.

What else is going on?

I’ve been focusing time on learning front-end programming. I like it better than back-end, for now, because you get to visually see the output of your work. The guys at Cr3dentials that I’m consulting with, Elo and Kofi, recommended this course on Udemy. I recommend it as well for anyone wanting to learn front-end programming.
I finally broke down and bought a laptop. I prefer Apple products for my business plus programming. But, since I’m a gamer I thought about getting a gaming laptop. I ended up with the Macbook Air that I’m typing away on now. I really enjoy the Apple hardware experience. I upgraded to the 24gb RAM to give me a little extra power, since I do plan to play some games on the device when I’m traveling. If you are thinking about a laptop, while PC laptops are good, I recommend an Apple for business. The Air is lighter than my work Macbook Pro and more than powerful enough to handle everything I am doing.
New show - if you’ve been living under a Netflix rock, Untamed is one of the hottest new shows streaming right now. The Mrs. and I decided to give it a shot. While I’m not normally a crime/drama fan, the show is good and worth the watch.

If you’ve found this information helpful, I hope you’ll do two things for me.

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