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You are here: Home / Misc / Be Investable

Be Investable

August 16, 2013 By Bobby Voicu 4 Comments

hockey-stick

People often asked how MavenHut, with three co-founders that nobody knew anything about in Ireland, managed to get a seed round so quick and so big (especially in terms of European investment levels). And I was having a hard time explaining it in short words, until I’ve found this: Be Investable.

The first thing you’ll notice about Graham’s essay is that it isn’t filled with tips or tricks for getting investor’s money. Rather, the best way to convince an investor to give you money is to actually be investable. Usually that starts with having a product with some amount of traction, but some people are investable even if they have no product. Usually those aren’t first-time founders though.

Basically, MavenHut was an easy sell (as far as looking for investment could be called easy). And that was because of one thing: we had traction. We had a product that was up and running, that was acquiring users, that told us (and the investors) things like demographics, buying intent, session length aso.

This means that before going to investors with “I have a great idea”, find a way to make it happen. Yes, I believe you can get investment with just an idea, but not the first time you try.

There are, obviously, other elements that help the investment process (the team, the industry, the type of investor targeted), but I think the most important thing you need to do is to Be Investable: make their decision as easy as possible.

P.S.: You would be surprised how many startup founders (or wanna be founders) don’t really grasp the concept of having something to show investors, other than “And I have this idea…”.

Photo from ShutterStock

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Filed Under: Misc

Bobby Voicu

Bobby Voicu writes here from time to time.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Cristi Badea says

    August 16, 2013 at 9:24 am

    reminds me of a pizza box

    Reply
    • Bobby Voicu says

      August 17, 2013 at 9:10 am

      Yeah :)) Now that would be an interesting blog post.

      Reply
  2. Oliver says

    August 16, 2013 at 9:52 am

    Hey Bobby,

    Great post – we’ve gotten a lot of interesting statistics from having our MVP available (invite-onlyfor the past few weeks) and it’s incredible the difference having hard traction stats makes – not just for opening investors doors, but also the insight you get into your customers & their needs.

    Really enjoying the blog!

    Oliver

    Reply
    • Bobby Voicu says

      August 17, 2013 at 9:10 am

      Yeah, but isn’t it surprising that there’s not a lot of people doing more of this? :)

      Thanks for the kind words regarding the blog!

      Reply

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