Tag Archives: business angel

Tetuan Valley Startup School VI – Session6

Posted by Julie on 16/04/2012 None comments

Tetuanees!

Yesterday, at the last session of our Startup School Spring 2012, we had a great evening and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We were particularly glad to welcome our former interns Fredrik Hoel and Matthew Maxwell and the co-founder of Tetuan Valley, Alex Barrera, who came to see our teams’ progress.

Katelyn did a great recap of the takeaways entrepreneurs  should keep in mind when they leave the program. These include creating a culture from day 1, making noise with their project, defining who their stakeholders are and how to make them happy, how to deal with potential investors and finally the importance of being legally air-tight.

Tetuan Valley Startup School VI (Session 6)
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Then, we had the pleasure to welcome Jose Martin Cabiedes from Cabiedes & Partners, who gave us a look inside the mind of an Superangel investor. He explained to us what differentiates his business model from a simple business angel or a venture capital, what type of relationship they usually maintain with their clients, and what they are looking for into a project. We really thank him for having taken the time to answer to all our questions.

Finally, our teams presented their projects with an incredible punch and we noticed great progress! Lucky for them (or not :) ), Alex gave them a lot of very useful advice that we hope could help them in their future. And moreover for the final DEMO DAY on the 25th of April! During this special and final event of the season, we will welcome all the Tetuan Valley community and we will celebrate the graduation of our current students.

We really hope to see you there; it will be a good occasion to meet new members, share our experiences and like always, eat pizzas! So go get your tickets in Ticketea and see you there!

Here is the video of the session:

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Tetuan Valley Session 6 Briefing!

Posted by Will on 11/04/2012 None comments

Tetuanees! Tonight we dine in hell! Er….Tetuan Valley!

Just a quick reminder to everyone, tonight at 7 PM will be the 6th and final session of the Spring 2012 edition of Tetuan Valley´s Startup School. This week we welcome a very special guest, Jose Martin Cabiedes, of Cabiedes & Partners, to give everyone a look inside the mind of an investor.

Afterward, our teams will have their final shot at practicing their pitches. Everyone has come a long way since the beginning of the program, and I´m sure that we´re in for some really high quality pitches this time around.

I hope everybody is as excited as we are here in the office. We can´t wait to see you all tonight! (And if you can´t make it, don´t worry! Remember you can always follow along with our live stream at froozetv.com)

The New Rules of Fund Raising

Posted by Toorisk on 08/12/2011 2 comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2011 Fall edition. This post is written by the Toorisk team, formed by Tomás Carbonell, Francisco de Ángel Gimeno and Jesús González.

As an entrepreneur one of the most challenging activities you may have to face in the early stage is raising funds for your startup. Basically, what you do is trying to get resources for your project to grow and create value and profit for your stakeholders. And if you have not realised yet, you will have to invest a lot of time and efforts, probably much more than you could ever imagine, to this end.

Our personal experience, raising funds to grow Toorisk, is being tough and amazing at the same time; we are learning a lot, and sometimes it looks like we will get married to the devil. And devils in this case, are hiding behind the friendly name of business angels. They set the rules, deal done!!

When you deal with social network/community industry, many doubts arise. It is a new sector, competing strategies are not as established as other sectors, and even Porter model is been adapted to this new environment. Nor talking about monetizing strategies or revenue streams, considered as the endemic doubt of this sector. All this uncertainty arises in the investors side of the table as well. And based on our experience, we have seen two approaches, the one of “the valley” and the european one.

The valley model is built on the claim “If you build it, will they come?” In other words, they take investing decisions based on the number of users that your startup has, the traction and the virality of it. And when you are looking for seed capital, having contracts in place with customers is not seen so necesary in that early stage.

On the other side, when facing european investors, we are always asked about revenue, about contracts in place, because they are the main criteria for investments. It is not so relevant the number of users, subscribers, etc. We just have to show a significant revenue figures to get them onboard.

But, what is the right approach? Is there a right approach? The valley model can be seen as a bubble incubator, but the european one may be too heavy a burden for a startup, killing disruptive innovation. When facing a global marketplace you have to think big, and find the right investors who also think that something big is going on. Have a look out there, and see where those big social companies are coming from…

Elevator pitch sucks

Posted by Dapedro on 09/11/2010 2 comments

These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the control+ad team, formed by David Pedroche.

Every one tell you that you have to write an elevator pitch. When I think about it one image comes to my mind, I see my self talking with a woman and you saying “estudias o trabajas?”.
There is only one situation where you are going to be close to a business angels two minutes, and that is when both of us are peeing and this is NOT the right time to talk about business. We have to take us seriously if we want to look serious. Today it’s easy to get a  5 minutes presentation at an investor forum, there are enough forums where you can reach them.

We are not begging for tips, we want to share a business. They need us, in the same way we need them. The first impression we make on a business angel will define our relationship, if we don’t speak to him face to face no one will take us seriously. Our relationship with venture capital has to be win/win situation.

It’s so important to look confident and professional when we talk to a BA.  They not only test our products and ideas, they will also test our negotiations skills. In the same way we negotiate with them, we will negotiate with our providers and customers.

Venture capital needs ideas and the hard work of the entrepreneur if they invest in a project.  Entrepreneur that at some point don’t want to continue will make the VC  loose his money.

We have to put one clear idea in our minds “money isn’t more important than projects”.