Tag Archives: fund raising

@StartSpain #AngelSchool: 101 Investing in Internet Startups (Powered by @Zoomry)

Posted by admin on 14/02/2012 None comments

Howdy friends!

Nast Marrero, here! Last week we launched Startup Spain‘s first program: the Angel School. Our take is: it’s been a great beginning for Startup Spain. We had more than 60 attendees of which more than 2/3 were potential investors.

This is an unusually large display of interest in the Spanish investment arena, where most events see no more than 20 or some participants maximum. Mentoring Angel Investors to better navigate their deal analysis is a keystone in fostering ITC startups in Spain. The program was a real marathon: 10+ hours of training (don´t worry we let them stop for lunch ;) . Thankfully, our first group of graduates proved to be up to the challenge, taking advantage of all the different elements of the day.

Missing from the program were the typical made-up miracle cures and formulas. We strived to keep the content practical, following the Tetuan Valley Way with hands-on exercises and significant mentors’ experiences

The event was hosted @ the awesome facilities of Madrid International Lab and kicked off by Iñaki Ortega, Director of Madrid Emprende, and one of the main forces behind Startup Spain. In his opening speech, Iñaki brought up the importance of joining private and public efforts to facilitate and develop entrepreneurial activity, and the key role those efforts will play in the long-run global competitiveness of Spain.

Two roundtables with rockstar speakers cherry-topped the program: one from Investors already Angel Investing and another from Entrepreneurs. Each of them gave invaluable insights on what it is they look for, value, and ask during an early stage investment.

The investors’ roundtable was moderated by our very own Alex Barrera (co-founder of Tetuan Valley & CEO of Press42), and formed by:

On the other corner, moderated by Ricardo Fernandez (director of Step One Spain), the entrepreneurs’ roundtable formed by:

Both roundtables aimed to give participants a overview of the ecosystem, showcasing startups from their seed stage through founders that have already made an exit, with similar ranges of experiences coming from the Angel investors, from managers that were just launching their first investment through those who have been in the game for a while.

Given the success and the of the program and the importance we place on such event to foster investment culture we’re already iterating on the feedback from the first event to run a LEGENDARY second edition of Startup Spain Angel School on March 22nd. Wanna get your tickets? Check here!

We had the pleasure of following all the twitter interactions of the event through Zoomry, now in it´s beta stage. The product is awesome and if you check #AngelSchool Social Media @ AngelSchool.Zoomry.com… You can see for yourself they’re up to something big!

You might want to check the slides of our presentations in our slideshare or check the pictures in our flickr group.

Thank you for reading… Bestest!

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…