Where Do All Those Investors Come From?
This map shows where the investors now in Venture Bonsai live. Click on the country to find out more!
There are investors from almost all European countries by now – it’s a great thing for both the entrepreneurs and investors. It’s a win-win for everybody so remember to tell your fellow entrepreneurs and private investors to sign-up now (it’s free). There are great examples of successfully using Venture Bonsai for a crowdinvesting round already, maybe you are the next one?
Figuring Out The Term Sheet Terminology
An entrepreneur looking for funding from investors has to understand a whole new terminlogy related to the investment terms. We thought it would be useful to give you basics of the most important ones, along with examples or further real-life implications. By the way, it is not uncommon that the other side (for example less experienced Angel Investors) are also not familiar with these terms, so this list can be useful for both sides of the table.
Have any words or phrases to suggest? Let us know in the comments!
Accredited Investor (US+UK): A high-worth individual allowed by their government to make risky investments in private equity.
Angel: A high-worth individual who invests in startups. Generally speaking, Angels are less afraid to take greater risk, and usually invest with their own money.
Common Stock: The unit of ownership of the company typically owned by the founders. Common Stock is also the lowest level of financing. If the company goes into bankruptcy, money is only repaid back to common stockholders once the liquidation money is first paid to debt and preferred stockholders.
Convertible note: A form of financing where the company is lent money which acts like debt, unless… Continue reading
Featured Company: AppGyver
We’re instituting regular blog coverage of the companies we have featured on Venture Bonsai. The goal of these posts is to provide an easy and accessible way for our readers to see what your company has to offer, and to get started with the due diligence questions investors may begin asking with your funding round.
If you would like your company to be covered on our blog, please email responses to the following questions to info(at)venturebonsai.com. Also feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions or would like to change up the format.
The first company we have featured is AppGyver.
What is the quick pitch for your company?
AppGyver makes App Factories. AppGyver App Factory enables our customers, such as Mobile Operators, to enter the Mobile App business to make money with their existing customer base. The App Factory users are able to easily create customized Apps for specific business verticals based on the predefined App Templates, and easily sell and distribute the final Apps to their business customers and consumers alike.
What does your team look like and what are their backgrounds?
AppGyver is founded by three people: Marko, Antti and Henri. They… Continue reading
Some Data on Investors in Venture Bonsai
Venture Bonsai is continuosly growing as an Investor Network. For entrepreneurs this means you can increasingly locate potential investors from your own country and be able to meet them in real life as well. Using Venture Bonsai gives you tools to not only promote your investment round in a controllable way (as you give access to the Private Investment Round Page to only those you want to) but also all the tools for communication and other practical matters.
There are investors from quite many countries by now, including:
- Austria
- Estonia
- Finland
- Czech Republic
- UK
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Latvia
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Russia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switerland
- Turkey
- UK
and also from non-European countries such as
- Australia
- Brazil
- India
- Malaysia
- US
Sign-in or sign-up to learn more!
How to Make Your Products Page Stand Out
Product Page with Multiple Products
The first thing you’ll notice when you click to view some product pages is that they can be split in several parts. You can easily add multiple products by clicking “Add New Product” in the toolbar on your company’s product page.
The main benefit of doing so is to organize your different products or business areas into different areas. This allows us to keep our tool’s for investors separate from our funding platform for entrepreneurs, which makes everything easier to follow. Also, a “deeper” profile provides your investors with more than a quick glance of information.
An Individual Product Page
It is… Continue reading
What’s The Strategic Exit Value Of Your Company?
Why Do Big Companies Buy Small Companies?
Big companies buy small companies because small companies are simply better at innovation than larger companies. Employees of a big company do not want to be seen as trying out a new idea and then abandoning the venture midstream if it does not work. The career of managers wishing to move up the corporate ladder do not want to have failures in their history. Now the world of innovations is such where small companies develop new products and services, gather early customers at high cost, and then sell the business to a large company. These large companies can use their existing distribution and/or manufacturing organization to turn the company bought into a large profitable business.
Employees of a big company do not want to be seen as trying out something and then abandoning the ventures midstream if they are not working out as expected.
Should Your Company Be Valued Based On Financials Or Strategic Value?
Many entrepreneurs view the value of their company as being tied to generating revenue and profit growth, but fail to appreciate how this view limits their ability to fully exploit their company’s potential. The key to the strategic value is having developed a product which has the potential to reach a very high level of sales, if it is given the proper resources. A… Continue reading
White House Announces Hope for U.S. Crowdfunding Exemption
As part of the President’s Startup America initiative, the Obama administration announced it will work on raising the cap on “mini” public offerings and allow startups to raise money through crowdfunding.
While no one know what the final iteration of this reform might look like, we image this larger marketplace should mean an easier access to capital coming from larger amount of investors overseas for startups on Venture Bonsai. The same goes for our investors– this allows easier access to American companies without being an accredited investor.
Venture Bonsai currently focuses its energy on following EU rules and regulations on selling securities. The state-by-state patchwork of America’s blue-sky financial regulations has limited our reach to the European continent, but we’re already positioned to expand to become the global go-to marketplace for financing great companies. As more news is announced, we’ll keep this blog updated on Venture Bonsai as well as crowd-investing’s progress overseas.
Read more about Startup America here, or visit VentureBonsai.com.
Crowd-Investing: Your first IPO
With LinkedIn, Groupon, and other tech companies in the news for going public, you can now pay attention to their IPO process and see the similarities to your crowdfunding strategy on Venture Bonsai. The motivations for IPO’s and crowdfunding are the same, and both involve drumming up demand, picking a price, and issuing securities to a large number of investors. Once your company makes it to an IPO (of course, if you decide to turn down all the acquisition offers) you will feel confident and in control, because hey, you’ve done this before.
The American IPO Process
1. Initiation
The IPO process is initiated by appointing roles to outside entities whose job it is to make the process run smoothly. Here, the company will decide on its underwriter and registrars.
2. Pre-Issue activities
The company now prepares its forms and documents. One such document is called the Prospectus, which is a part of the Due Diligence process, and contains all the facts an investor needs to make an educated investment. This document also fills a marketing role because the SEC limits the company’s marketing activities while it’s in the IPO process.
3. Filing the documents
The company then files its… Continue reading
Demonstrating your Startup’s Social Proof
Angels, VC’s, and strangers who wish to take part in crowdfunding your company are much more likely to believe in your ability to deliver if you already have a successful company or an exit behind you. But how do you break into the funding market for the first time? Especially if you don’t have a referral from a high profile investor? The answer is to prove your intellect, trustworthiness, and work ethic through Social Proof.
Social proof can be crudely defined as saying, “Well, I know that guy’s not an idiot,” or, “hey, they all cant be idiots.” We use this to make decisions every day based on the size of the crowd or the authority of the person giving the review. For example, we take note if 6000 people give a book on Amazon a five-star rating, just as we take note similarly when we hear the book reviewer of the New York Times gives a book a top rating. But what does that mean for your startup on Venture Bonsai?
Demonstrating your personal Social Proof
Chances are, you’ve got a lot of social proof already out there by adding up the little stuff. LinkedIn have positioned themselves as the… Continue reading
Venture Bonsai Now Supporting Movenote Presentations
Movenote‘s online presentation software is now integrated into Venture Bonsai! We think this will be an awesome tool for our entrepreneurs because compared to making a video, making a movenote requires very little production time and it’s straightforward to use. We also think it helps build trust between investors and entrepreneurs by building a personal connection to the people behind the pitch.
Watch this Movenote presentation to see how to implement a Movenote as part of your pitch to investors on Venture Bonsai:
And what information should you include in your Movenote presentation? Our blog post may prompt you with some good topics to cover.
