How Dealroom Has Made It Easier for Startups to Source Funding from The Right Investors
This article is written by Munira Hussein, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Yoram Wijngaarde founded Dealroom.co in 2013, a platform that provides market intelligence to corporates, investors & tech companies to help stay ahead of the competition. Before that he worked for 10 years in investment banking, advising media, telco, and internet companies. At Startup Istanbul 2014, Yoram delivered a speech where he shared his startup journey and Dealroom.co with the audience.
There are various terms and conditions that come with taking money from investors. It is tasking for a startup to do all the work by yourself. This will require you to understand the terminologies and legal contexts. You might find yourself selling off your company without even knowing it.
Once your startup starts getting traction, money and investors will come to you naturally but what do you do next? As a founder, you have two choices. One is to do everything yourself or hire an advisor. You save by doing it yourself and you are in control of everything. The downside is that you speak only with the people that found you and those might not be the best people to work. You basically have no connections and networks outside to give you pros and cons and raise issues that you might overlook.
You lack tactical experience and signing contracts can be dangerous, and what do you do when your relationship with VCs go wrong? It can be devastating. The second option is to hire an advisor. The downside is that it is costly. You can be working with an advisor but, it is hard to know what they are actually doing. There is just a whole lot of process going on. Having just gotten your first funding, you wouldn’t want to be dealing with all these things that you barely understand.
To take that burden off your shoulders, Dealroom comes in. They allow you to work with investors and angels of your choice. This is to ensure that you get an investor who gets you. They offer the best of both world solutions. You can pick what VC you want to work with. You get to choose and they make sure you get in front of them online. You have a timetable and you know when the deal is going to be complete. So you know your wait period and can plan for any other actions that you need to take afterwards.
They will still your advisors, so when you need help, they are there. You can fire them if you do not like them. If your investor didn’t come through them, you don’t owe them. The site allows you to get insights on who is looking at your numbers, you upload your data and we see if it is the right data and can attract attention.
The best part is that there is a free version if you already have a relationship with your investors. They can just look at your data on the site, fund you and all the decision is yours to make. They only ask for 1% fee to get you the investors and ensure it gets to the finish line. That is if you use them to get investors, otherwise, the free version is free.
https://youtu.be/XftPqP3q1Kg