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Wednesday, 23 September 2020

Venture Capital Philippines

This post first appeared on Venture Capital Philippines
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

This article talks about the Venture Capital Philippines ecosystem where it answers the basic questions of what is venture capital, why do companies require a venture capitalist to listing down venture capital companies in Philippines. Lastly, we provide several tips in helping you find the right venture capital firm for your company.

What is Venture Capital?

A venture capitalist or VC is an investor who either gives funding to startup ventures or supports small organisations that desire to expand but do not have access to equities markets. Venture capitalists are willing to invest in companies that fit in those criteria because they have the potential to earn a huge return on their investments if these companies end up being successful.

Some of the aspects that venture capitalists look for are strong management team, large potential market and a unique product or service with a strong competitive advantage. Also, they seek for opportunities that they are familiar with, and the opportunity to possess an enormous stake of the business so that they can influence its direction. Here at NEXEA, we are interested in tech start-ups as this is our expertise.

Why do companies require a Venture Capitalist?

You may be thinking, “Why do I need a VC? or What kind of value can a VC bring in to my business?” Well, it is true that not many Venture Capitalists are able to bring in much value. This is because they are too busy managing 10-20 companies per partner as well as managing their Limited Partners (investors).

Nevertheless, any VC is more than just providing funds. Since they will become part the owner of your business, they would want to see the company grow as well by providing any necessary help succeed a startup. At NEXEA, we offer to our invested startups ex-entrepreneurs who can guide young entrepreneurs with their business as well as provide some advice to avoid making the mistakes that they have made in the past.

For entrepreneurs and CEO of rapidly growing companies, most of them are inexperienced and they do not always know what to look out for. That is why a lot of startups need venture capitalist and in order to lessen the risk for a venture capitalist, it is important that startup founders are being connected to industry experts.

“You will need to do the due diligence in order to really understand if a VC is going to add value in addition to capital. This value can be introductions for potential partnerships, their network of other successful founders or the infrastructure the firm brings.”

Venture Capital Philippines – Environment

The ecosystem of venture capital Philippines has been growing steadily over the last three years. With the recent implementation of Innovative Startup Act or Republic Act 11337 as well as the Revised Corporation Code by the Philippine government, this shows the support of the local government towards promoting entrepreneurship.

Currently, the top successful startups are within the industries of financial technology (Fintech), e-commerce as well as medical and healthcare technology. As local regulatory are slowly changing (in-favour for entrepreneurs), the majority of venture capitalists is looking forward to the growth prospects of the Philippine startups.

Very Early Stage Investment Firms in Venture Capital Philippines (<US$1m)

Later Stage Investment Firms in Venture Capital Philippines (>US$1m)

Finding the right venture capital firm for your company

The first step to finding the right venture capital firm for your company is to know what stage your company is at right now. After figuring out the stage of your business, you can start applying to venture capital. Remember to prepare an informing pitch deck in order for you to have a higher chance of getting funded when pitching your company. Here are some examples of how a pitch deck should look like made by other successful companies.

Secondly, in order to find the best VCs, you should look out for their infrastructure and “speciality”. It is best to find VCs that specialised in the industry that your company is in because you will then be provided with the best support tailored to your needs. Venture Capitalists like First Round Capital, Y Combinator or 500 Startups have a dedicated team of marketers, recruiters, experts and other necessary resources to bring into the company that they invest in. At NEXEA, we have dedicated lawyers, regional level CFOs, a lot of world-class CEOs that mentor and invest in startups as well as other supportive infrastructure in place.

Lastly, it is important to set some boundaries for yourself. If your company are one of those companies that are founded by multiple people, it is very important that there is a mutual understanding between each other on what you are willing to give away. Giving away is not only in terms of equity but in time as well. When a venture capitalist invests in your firm the whole working dynamic can change as you hopefully transition your company into a fast-growing firm.

Steps to finding the right venture capital firm

Besides that, here are some additional tips on how to find the right venture capital firm for your company. We’ve made it into several easy steps where you can easily implement through the list of companies in Venture Capital Philippines to see which ones that fit well with your firm’s needs.

Geography: The location of your startup should be in the region which the VC is operating in. At NEXEA, we invest in tech startups in the SEA region. However, for some programs, we prefer companies that are based in Malaysia as our HQ is located in Kuala Lumpur. Thus, do some research on the VC to know if your location is applicable to them.
Sector: Usually VC’s only invest in companies that operate in fields of business where they have a lot of experience in. That goes to show why at NEXEA we invest in tech startups because we have a lot of expertise in tech-related companies. For us, a company which has a traditional business model would not be applicable.
Portfolio conflict: A VC will typically not invest in a company which is a direct competitor of a company in their portfolio. So before applying to a VC, you should find out about their portfolio and see if you can identify any direct competitors to your company.
Involvement: There are two types of VC firms. The first group are the VCs that are very involved. These type of VCs typically do not invest in a lot of companies as they do not have the time to be highly involved in all the companies that they invest in. The second group of VCs are the opposite where these firms are not very involved in the companies they invest in. This is usually due to the number of startups they invest in. They simply don’t have the time to have a meeting with each startup every week.
At NEXEA, we are highly involved with each startup due to our startup mentor network. For a startup, it is essential to know from each founder whether they prefer a highly involved VC or less involved VC.
Fund size: A startup has to know beforehand what series a VC invest in. It does not make sense to apply for a pre-seed startup while you are doing your A-series. Furthermore, if you plan beforehand that you want to do your B-series and A series with the same VC to ensure good collaboration, you should check whether or not they invest in both series.

Venture Capital Philippines Summary

The Philippine venture capital ecosystem is slowly growing as more and more startups are expected to increase in the succeeding years. With that said, for startups wanting a venture capital, it is crucial to first identify the stage of their company is as well as setting boundaries for the company in order to find the right expertise needed for the company.

We hope this article has provided you with a head start on what you should be looking for in a venture capitalist. Let us know in the comments section if there is anything else that you would like to know more about venture capital Philippines.

If you’d like to know more about venture capitalists in other Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, check out the Southeast Asian Venture Capital article.

Learn More About NEXEA Venture Capital & How We Provide More Than Just Money

VC Venture Capital

About NEXEA

References:

For more, check out NEXEA
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

source https://www.nexea.co/venture-capital-philippines-nexea/

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/09/venture-capital-philippines.html

Tuesday, 15 September 2020

Entrepreneurship Courses and Organisation for Tech Entrepreneurs

This post first appeared on Entrepreneurship Courses and Organisation for Tech Entrepreneurs
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

Starting your own company is never easy. Most founders and entrepreneurs know that it is incredibly tough and there are no hard and fast rules in starting your own company. There are various ways you can learn when it comes to knowing how to manage your team and handle your company’s finances. These can be taught through the participation of various entrepreneurship courses, or even entrepreneurs organisation and networking groups.

Entrepreneurship Courses

If you feel like wanting to learn as much as possible within a short period of time, here are some of the popular (free and inexpensive) courses that you can find online:

Or, if you are looking for something else, check out other online courses platforms such as:

Entrepreneurs Leadership Training and Development Programmes

The entrepreneurship program is designed to develop entrepreneurial skills in people that would facilitate them. You may think that this is similar to entrepreneurship courses but the entrepreneurship program involves the collaboration of high growth entrepreneurs and experienced mentors. The main objective of such programs is to impart the necessary skills and knowledge to help entrepreneurs and founders in starting and running a successful business. We have listed down several programs that we think you could benefit from.

Malaysia Tech Entrepreneur Program (MTEP)

MTEP is a program initiated by MDEC and the Malaysian Government to attract entrepreneurs and founders from all over the world to set up their business in Malaysia and to expand their business across the ASEAN region. Through this programme, tech founders are able to apply for either a 1-year or 5-year stay in Malaysia to start and run their business.

The requirement for the entrepreneurs would be to provide a 3-month personal bank statement (minimum amount of RM50,000 but not limited to Malaysian banks). For an established entrepreneur, there is an additional requirement of supplementing the proof of your business performance.

CEDAR Entrepreneur Development Programs

Centre for Entrepreneur Development and Research (CEDAR) is a subsidiary company of SME Bank. The centre conducts research-based coaching, function-based facilitation, and entrepreneur-focused programs. Some of the Entrepreneur Development Programs that they are currently organising include Customized Grow! Coaching and SMEs Enrichment Workshops which varies from credit securing strategies to leadership skills for supervisors.

Entrepreneurs Programme

Here at NEXEA, we organise Entrepreneurs programme that is catered for CEOs of high-growth startups (potential to grow more than 100 million in market size). The Entrepreneurs Programme advocates founders and entrepreneurs to have a peer-to-peer growth mindset as they believe it allows CEOs to learn and relearn the things that they know as well as openly discuss with their peers about the challenges and failures that they face.

NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own and have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. The combination of experienced mentors, experts, and partners prove potent as the 35+ startups invested by NEXEA have grown 3 to 16 times per year.

Entrepreneurs Networking Organisation

As an entrepreneur, you must have attended numerous entrepreneurial events and joined thousands of different organisations. However, there are many out there that you don’t personally gain anything out of.

Regardless of whether you’re hoping to network, meet mentors, or increase your knowledge on the most recent industry patterns through entrepreneurship courses, joining and taking an interest in an entrepreneur networking group has a plenitude of advantages that can make you a more grounded and successful entrepreneur. Here are some entrepreneurial organisations that you should consider joining should you want to experience more success than failure.

entrepreneurship courses — Entrepreneurs’ Organisation

By joining such CEO networking groups, here are some of the things that you can expect learning from participating in these network groups:

You get mentorship from people that are experts in your industry. As harsh and rough the business world can be, it is important that as an entrepreneur or the founder of your business to be surrounded by mentors that you can run ideas by. This is because these people are experts in the industry that you are in and they are able to help you reach your long-term plans.
You will be able to solve CEO level problems. By participating in CEO networking groups, you will be surrounded by peers who are also CEO or founders of their own business and they would most likely have experienced similar situations. Thus, you will be taught systematic ways of solving these issues together.
You will be trained to have a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset means you are able to speak about your challenges and failures openly and how you have dealt with them. By doing so, you are establishing an environment that allows openness, transparency and risk-taking amongst your team members, allowing ‘thinking outside the box’ solutions to occur through open discussions. It also promotes development because at the end of the day, growing your company is a continuous learning process and it is important that through such programmes, the importance of independence (in thought and action), interdependence (the value of a win-win attitude among team members and leaders), as well as continuous development (commitment to continuously grow personally and professionally), is being heavily promoted.

If you are drawn towards the benefits mentioned above, you should check out NEXEA’s Entrepreneurs Programme where the program caters to CEO’s of high-growth startups (have the potential to grow more than 100 million in market size). NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own and have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. The combination of experienced mentors, experts and partners prove potent as the 35+ startups invested by NEXEA have grown 3 to 16 times per year. Thus far, 30 CEOs of high-growth startups that have enrolled in the programme, where combined, they are worth more than US$50m.

Conclusion

Joining these entrepreneurship courses, programs and even the entrepreneurship networking organisation will give you the exposure that you need in order to stay or grow your company. Nevertheless, it is important to note that you should not exhaust all your time and energy participating in all of these entrepreneurship activities at once. You should know what you would like to focus on and start signing up to the right entrepreneurship activity at this current period.

Here’s a summary of the different types of entrepreneurship activity that is mentioned. Entrepreneurship courses are for you to learn and understand the fundamentals of starting and running your business. Entrepreneurship programs are for those who have already started their business and would like to grow their company even further. Lastly, entrepreneurs organisation is for everyone no matter what stage you are as an entrepreneur. It is basically a gathering of every entrepreneur to help and become more supportive of each other.

Sources

For more, check out NEXEA
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

source https://www.nexea.co/entrepreneurship-courses-for-tech-entrepreneurs/

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/09/entrepreneurship-courses-and.html

Monday, 17 August 2020

Mentorship Programs for Tech Entrepreneurs

This post first appeared on Mentorship Programs for Tech Entrepreneurs
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

There could be thousands of reasons why a person chooses to start their own business, but no matter what their incentive is, all entrepreneurs will require some help and support in order for them to have the best chance of succeeding. Some may revert to friends or family, but for others may require support in the form of a mentor.

Why mentorship programs you may ask?

Well, as an entrepreneur, you are bound to have countless strengths and one of them is being able to overcome the challenges along the road. Nevertheless, it is inevitable to have some gap of knowledge in certain business aspects – which is why having a mentor to provide you business advice and support can be a very important element to your business’ success through mentorship programs such as business mentoring programs or find business mentors for startups specifically.

“If you ask any successful person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road.”
Sir Richard Branson

Business mentors

Why having a mentor is so important? Well, a business mentor is someone with many years of experience being in the industry of your business and they are the “been-there-done-that” type of people where they have gone through business hardships have succeeded in their fields. Thus, by having an industry expert as your mentor, he or she will be able to help you in realising your goals and provide you with the necessary guidelines on how to achieve them.

According to Sage, a leading provider of enterprise resource planning software who surveyed more than 11,000 small and medium-sized businesses across 17 countries, found that 93% of business owners recognise that having business mentors can help them to succeed.

There are three important elements that you can take advantage of when participating in a business mentorship program:

Experience: As much as you think you know everything there is, you just don’t know what you don’t know. By having someone who is experienced and able to relate with you the challenges that you are currently facing, may it be starting or growing a business, you are able to obtain priceless knowledge and guidance that is hard to come by.
Networking: Networking with the right people is also another important aspect of being an entrepreneur. Business mentors can help introduce you to the right people in your industry as well as identify the right ideas and opportunities for your business.
Encouragement: Having the grit and determination to pull through hard times is important for an entrepreneur, but even then, it is important for entrepreneurs to have someone who can cheer them on by their side at tough times, a background sounding board who motivates them to keep ongoing.

Some of the programs that are available are organised by organisations such as Growing Giants, LIT, Women In Payments and many more.

Leadership Mentorship Program

The leadership mentorship program is a mentoring scheme designed to develop CEOs and executives through one-on-one interactions with experienced mentors. The aim of this CEO mentorship program is to provide confidential, non-judgmental and constructive support towards mentees in order for them to develop and grow their leadership skills (both personal and institutional). Through executive mentoring, mentees would be exposed to new perspectives and way of thinking as well as insider tips in leadership.

Mentorship not only brings benefits to the mentees but also to the institution as a whole because, through leadership, it leads to higher job satisfaction, job retention as well as work engagement among staffs. This will also increase the level of work efficiency and productivity in the organisation.

Mentorship Programme for Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneur mentor program is a mentorship scheme that is catered to founders and entrepreneurs of startups. This program is usually executed by combining two elements:

Pairing with a senior startup mentor: Mentee will be paired up with successful and experienced CEOs as well as having exclusive one-on-one meetings.
Peer group mentoring: A group of founders who come together to support each other to achieve success in their personal and professional life.

NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own and have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. The combination of experienced mentors, experts and partners prove potent as the 35+ startups invested by NEXEA have grown 3 to 16 times per year.

Conclusion of Mentorship Programs

Not every CEO has had the benefit of having a valuable mentor. But with many programs available for high calibre leaders, perhaps more of them should participate in one for the good of their organisations. With the right mentoring, not only will companies thrive, but everyone will also stand to gain.

Resources

For more, check out NEXEA
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

source https://www.nexea.co/mentorship-programs-for-tech-entrepreneurs/

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/08/mentorship-programs-for-tech.html

Business Advisors for Tech Entrepreneurs

This post first appeared on Business Advisors for Tech Entrepreneurs
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

The life of start-ups or fast-growing companies can quickly become extremely stressful and chaotic. There are many different areas that you have to take care of as a leader, and that can be a challenge. Topics such as business planning, financial forecasting, employee management, and customer acquisition are the daily routine for small businesses. So it’s no wonder that people are seeking help!

Below is a bit more about business advisors and business coaches.

Why Businesses Need a Business Advisor?

As much as you like doing most of the things yourself, no one is really a master in everything they do and taking a do-it-yourself approach for your business can create some trouble. That is why entrepreneurs are recommended to seek advisors assistance in crucial aspects of a business, before making any decision. Here are some of the things that business advisors can offer:

Help you with business plans, marketing and planning. Through a business advisor, you don’t need many experts in your organisation because the advisor has the practical know-how in all the different areas of your business.
Unbiased opinion. Recruiting a business advisor also means that the advisor will observe your entire organisational structure with a pair of fresh eyes and would provide you with an honest and unbiased opinion on what he sees. This is very important for any founders or CEOs because the sooner they realise what they are doing wrong, the faster they can undo their mistakes and grow their company.
Time. A business advisor will take the time to understand the company well and explore the areas in which there is an opportunity for the business to venture into or even to improve on. This relieves the burden on yourself and gives you interesting insights from a different perspective.

Nevertheless hiring a business advisor is a big decision that can seem a bit discouraging for business owners. It is a great responsibility to share your business strategies with a completely impartial third party.

Advantages of Hiring a Business Startup Advisor

1. Expertise.

A business startup advisor can help you to fully exploit your potential and to look beyond one’s own horizons from time to time to discover new ideas. It can also help to remember ideas that work. Perhaps to achieve what seemed to be unattainable so far.

2. Good work-life balance.

With different roles in the private and working sphere, each with different requirements, it is easy as an entrepreneur to lose track of what is going on. Therefore by hiring a senior executive coach, he or she will be able to assist you to keep the overall view and focus of the company in check, so that you can fully perform your current role.

3. Confidence

As an owner of your own business, it is common to always have a lot of self-doubts. We tend to perceive ourselves as being completely different and often see weaknesses where our strengths lie. This usually leads to us not being able to see things clearly. Thus, with a senior executive coach with you, he or she will provide encouragement and valuable insights where we start to see ourselves in a better perspective. The road of a startup business is already tough as it is, so having someone by your side that can give you the confidence and motivation to succeed does help you make better decisions and in the end achieve better results.

4. Improve Communications Skills

Communication is a broad field with different challenges and levels of impact. It is important for you to have good communications with anyone that you meet or even work with because you will be able to engage with them in a more effective manner.

How do you communicate with employees, subordinates or customers? What is important in detail when communicating? How can it be made even clearer, more targeted or more effective?

All these questions can be answered through the guidance of a business advisor. A business coach will be able to coach you to optimise different scenarios with different tactics.

Entrepreneur Coaching Programme

An entrepreneur coaching program is a program that is designed for an entrepreneur to receive coaching from a senior executive on how to create a thriving and successful business. In Malaysia, there are numerous leadership entrepreneurship programs catered for entrepreneurs. However, there are still some entrepreneurs who will never consider being coached, either because they feel they know their business better than anyone else or because they think they should know everything about their business. It is understandable that it can be difficult to ask for help. Nevertheless, let me give you some key points on how valuable a senior business coach can be.

They focus on where the business currently stands, evaluates what works and what doesn’t, sets goals, and creates an action plan.
They can be a guide to the challenges facing business and life. These knowledge-building experts offer the entrepreneur added value. They can identify weaknesses, give objective advice from outside, and hold you accountable for your goals. These experts have seen companies grow in every phase and know the obstacles that come with every step.

We at NEXEA also offer an Entrepreneurs Programme for tech entrepreneurs in Malaysia. It is an exclusive private forum for top tech entrepreneurs to learn & grow together. Entrepreneurs are guided by some of the best Startup mentors & investors. NEXEA has the strongest mentor profile in the country with people that own listed companies (IPO), done M&A, are CEOs/CFOs, or are ex-entrepreneurs that have successfully grown their companies regionally.

It is a forum for you to solve your business problems with peer entrepreneurs who have probably experienced similar issues. NEXEA uses systematic methods to solve issues together.

NEXEA Academy focuses on value provided to members to ensure that learning & growth is constantly & increasingly provided to members.

Summary for Business Coaching

Some entrepreneurs or managers shy away from hiring a business coach – nevertheless, there is no better way to learn more about yourself and to understand how to make better decisions and invest in your career. It is not only about success and goals, but also about relationships and trust.

Sources

For more, check out NEXEA
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

source https://www.nexea.co/business-advisors-for-tech-entrepreneurs/

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/08/business-advisors-for-tech-entrepreneurs.html

Saturday, 11 July 2020

Equity CrowdFunding (ECF) in Malaysia

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/07/equity-crowdfunding-ecf-in-malaysia.html

Thursday, 9 July 2020

Principles of Startup Leadership – How to Lead your Startup

This post first appeared on Principles of Startup Leadership – How to Lead your Startup
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

Founder? Yes! Leader? Not necessarily!

Every day, the motivated youth are creating hundreds of startups worldwide. Startups that bring great ideas to the market that make our future easier, more interesting, and better. But just as quickly as startups are created, countless others disappear into oblivion. Why? Because a good founder is not necessarily a good leader.

Being a leader means having a vision for your business, finding employees who fit that vision, and maintaining that direction over time. But even if founders are not born leaders, there are a few simple tips for successfully managing startups.

#1 Good leadership is teamwork

In the areas in which the founders are not so well experienced, the right experts are needed by their side. Founder should search for employees who are the professionals in their field and who can take the startup to a whole new level.

So if founders notice that they do not know which criteria to use when making certain decisions, they need to create a highly professional environment of the right consultants. To achieve this, good founders choose the people who are willing to help the company grow and achieve their maximum success.

After all, you can only be a good leader if your team cooperates and supports your kind of leadership and ideas.

#2 Inspiring Leader & Successful Manager

When managers today still rely on personal vanity and strict supervision, not only does the satisfaction of the team suffer, so does the business. After all, the innovative strength of each employee has never been so strongly challenged as in times of digitalisation.

This can be implemented in different ways. Steve Jobs, for example, always made his employees feel part of a revolution and motivated them to perform at their best. The current Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, is quite different.

A BuzzFeed report describes him as a rather boring and predictable leader, with a “desire to see others succeed”. Both are successfully leading two of the most influential internet companies worldwide.

This demonstrates that there is no one ‘perfect’ way to run a business and be successful. Finding a healthy balance between being an inspiring leader and a manager is both a challenge and an enormous opportunity.

#3 Leadership needs to be well thought through – From the Beginning

First of all: Founders have certainly done a fantastic job. They had an ingenious idea, started a company, and are well on the way to navigate their company to success. But this can only be achieved if founders make the right decisions at this early stage of their startup. This includes, for example, thinking intensively about the legal form of the company or making a conscious decision about where to locate the company.

Is the place of the foundation also a good permanent company headquarters? And what does this mean for other aspects – for growth potential, patent rights, and domain registrations? And there are countless more of such small decisions. Hence the tip: Founders must think far ahead and ask themselves the essential questions and make conscious decisions right from the start.

#4 Boost everyone’s self-confidence

As a leader, you should avoid giving unjustified tasks to your employees. You want them to be motivated and their strengths to be highlighted. Every employee has his strengths in different areas. Everyone works at their own pace. Some employees are slow in the learning stage, but once they get the hang of it, they can do things better than everyone else. Others may learn quickly but are not as efficient as others as performers.

Especially new employees should not be overstrained right at the beginning, because it can be extremely demotivating.

You should try to understand your employees and assign them tasks based on their talents. Everyone wants to grow in their role, and therefore you need challenges. If you don’t know your employees, you will always give them tasks that are feasible from your point of view but don’t fit the profile of the employee. As a result, they will not be able to perform the tasks and will often experience defeats. As a consequence, they will be frustrated and their self-esteem will be weakened.

#5 Founder & Leader?

Even in a startup, there are countless decisions to be made. And this includes clarifying whether the founder is also the most suitable manager of the organisation. If not, then he should start looking for one.

Of course, this step can be challenging. After all, a start-up is the founder’s idea, a lot of work and commitment. Nevertheless, this will not change just because he gets help and advisors on his side. On the contrary: founders can finally concentrate fully on the things they enjoy and care about – while their start-up continues to grow and be successful.

#6 Keep an Eye on the Competition

Competition is a decisive factor for the success or failure of your start-up. You can’ t encourage yourself and your employees to live in a world of ignorance. At the very least, leaders should avoid it if they want to succeed!

Competition analysis is an essential step in the formulation of your start-up’s success strategy. It is not enough to have a good idea, you need to know who your competition is and develop strategies to outperform them.

As a successful leader, you should carefully analyse your competition, look closely at their mistakes and learn from them. You should also look at the points where your competitors are successful and try to adopt similar strategies. Nevertheless, it is essential to differentiate your company from competitors in the marketplace.

#7 Never Justify Failure

In daily life, mistakes occur to everyone, and that is quite normal. In your private life, you can tell them, “It’s okay; you’ll be fine.” But in business life, it’s a little different. Mistakes can happen as well, but you should never give the impression that this is okay. Your employees will get the wrong impression about the responsibility and the expectations that are placed on them if you always let people off the hook. Accepting mistakes gives the impression that poor performance is acceptable.

That’s why you should tell your employees from the beginning what is expected of them. Likewise, you should not simply say that it’s fine when people fail, but you should encourage them when they have done their job well.

See failure as an opportunity to get to know your employees better and coach them to avoid future mistakes.

#8 Get Feedback

Feedback from the employees can be very helpful to identify your mistakes and possibly change the structure of the leadership. Sometimes other people have different views on a topic than you do.

By allowing your employees to express their opinions freely, they feel more involved and get the feeling that their opinion is important.

The feedback will also help employees to reflect on their work. This allows the leader to see how committed they are to the company, or whether the leader may have misjudged them and assigned them tasks that do not match their strengths.

It can be a win-win situation for everyone.

Conclusion

In principle, management in a company includes everything that concerns facts and figures, i.e. planning, results, optimisation, controlling and organisation. Leadership, on the other hand, focuses on people. It is all about perspectives, visions, development, identification and attitude, appreciation, inspiration and motivation. So while the manager is responsible for ensuring that the business runs, the leader is responsible for ensuring that the company develops. This is especially important now with the tough times faced in the COVID-19 pandemic. Please do check out our other post about this.

Sources

10 Tipps für die erfolgreiche Führung von Startups

https://www.gruenderszene.de/karriere/leadership-studie-fuehrung-generation-y

https://www.15five.com/blog/startup-leadership-advice/

For more, check out NEXEA
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

source https://www.nexea.co/principles-of-startup-leadership/

source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/07/principles-of-startup-leadership-how-to.html

Thursday, 25 June 2020

38 Pitch Deck Examples – How to Improve your Pitch Deck

This post first appeared on 38 Pitch Deck Examples – How to Improve your Pitch Deck
For Startup Investments check out https://www.nexea.co

Click Here

A pitch deck is a short presentation that is designed to give your audience a quick summary of your business plan. Typically, you will present your Pitch Deck in personal or online meetings for potential investors, clients, partners, and co-founders. However, the quality of a pitch deck can differ quite significantly. To convince an investor or customer of your idea, there are a few points that can dramatically improve the pitch deck.

You don’t just want a good pitch, you want a great pitch to convince the investors.

Pitch deck examples

Every large, international company started as a start-up and has prepared its pitch deck to present to investors. Even Facebook, Airbnb, and LinkedIn started small and impressed investors with their pitch decks until they finally became unicorns.

A pitch deck should normally have about ten to twenty slides and should provide a summary of the company. When creating a Pitch Deck, there are some things to consider (see “PITCH DECK GUIDE: THE 12 TOP SLIDES YOU NEED”). For the inspiration of your own Pitch Deck, some examples of large companies can also be looked at more closely. Here are some pitch decks from different startups, some of them even became unicorns:

1. Facebook

Imagining a world without Facebook today seems almost impossible, but even Facebook started small. In 2004, the 21-year-old entrepreneur Eduardo Saverin had to convince the audience to invest in his company Facebook.com. He and his friend, Mark Zuckerberg, launched the startup. The pitch deck at that time was mainly meant to be a media kit. It was supposed to contain the startup’s value proposition, key metrics, and online marketing services.

At that time Facebook was not focused on revenue traction, because at that time no money was made. They would only, later, figure out how exactly the business model should work and how to improve it. Instead, they relied on numbers, such as user engagement, customer base, and growth metrics for selling their pitch deck to investors.

2. Airbnb

Airbnb is a platform that enables people to rent, find, and hire accommodation. Fast, easy, and convenient. This is one of the most sought-after references on the Internet, probably because it is a company we are all so familiar with.
The Airbnb origin story is perhaps one of the greatest start-up success stories of our time. Airbnb’s Pitch Deck has even become one of the most popular references for entrepreneurs around the world.
Airbnb’s biggest takeaway is the intro. It’s all about captivating the audience. You have to describe your company in just a few words. Imagine telling a 5-year-old what your company is all about. If you can’t do that, it’s time to rethink your intro for your investors.
The most convincing slide in this presentation may be the “business model” slide because it shows your profit model most plainly. They make a 10% commission on every transaction, period.
The way Airbnb presents the problems is remarkable. 3 simple bullet points are enough to make the problem understandable for everyone.

3. Uber

To mark the ninth anniversary of Uber’s founding, co-founder Garret Camp presented the first slides they had created and presented to their investors at the end of 2008. Initially called UberCab, Uber has evolved from a simple idea into a major platform that has improved the auto service industry.
There is much that entrepreneurs can learn from the pitch deck of Uber. When you introduce a transportation company like Uber, you need a presentation that covers every aspect of the business. That’s what makes the Uber Pitch Deck template so great. It is a comprehensive, full-length presentation that covers all the important aspects of a pitch deck.

4. Buffer

Buffer is a social media planning platform that allows you to plan content for social media like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest.
The startup pitch deck, which Buffer has used to raise half a million dollars, is popular because of its transparency. The founder decided to publish it to help other startups raise capital.

5. Square

Square is a company that enables merchants to accept mobile credit card payments via a dongle.
Particularly special on their pitch deck is the slide about the team. The experience from large companies that the team brings along can be a great advantage to convince investors.

6. LinkedIn

There is hardly anyone these days who doesn’t have a LinkedIn account in their professional life to promote themselves, find other team members for their company or read the latest business news.

LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and is the leading business-oriented social networking platform.

The company’s pitch deck includes a great deal of focus on the company’s values and how it differs from other social networks.

7. Mint

Mint is a personal financial services tool that helps people track their expenses and find ways to save.
Although this pitch deck example has never been used to raise money, but only for competition, it is a very powerful deck that startups can learn a lot from.
Since the deck is very simple in design, it offers a clear value proposition to customers and investors.

8.MapMe

With this deck, a start-up financing of 1 million dollars was raised. The company we’re talking about is MapMe.

With MapMe, users can create universally accessible (i.e., on smartphones, tablets, and computers) maps from anywhere without the need for encoding.

What is special about their pitch deck is that they focus on social proof. The deck showed that the start-up had over 20,000 unique visitors, 18,000 monthly notifications and average 12-minute sessions on the site.

Although the deck has less than 13 slides, it provides investors with information about the pulling power with which the site became known in the social media and its go-to-market strategy.

9. Mixpanel

The pitch deck is for the series-b- funding of Mixpanel. It has helped them raise more than $65 million.
Mixpanel is an advanced analytics platform for mobile phones and the web. Not only does it measure page views, but it also analyzes the actions people take.
What’s interesting about its pitch deck is that it starts with a problem. In the following, the startup presents a solution to the mentioned problem and explains its competitive advantage.

10. Buzzfeed

Pretty much every internet user has stumbled across Buzzfeed before. It is a free, open platform for launching buzz. They also offer premium services for paying clients as advertising as content, distributed promotion, premium tools & extras and trend targeting.
As of today, the company managed to raise over 240 million US dollar.
Similar to MapMe, Buzzfeed focuses on its big numbers like the millions of users who visit the site every month.

11. LaunchRock

LaunchRock allows users to create landing pages and quickly promote their startups through social media, even before the launch of their full website.
What’s really striking about this pitch deck is that it has only 15 slides. However, in this small number of slides, all the important points are addressed and it is shown how the product works and how it can be used in different ways. They also use a similar analogy to Linkedin in their decks.

12. Moz

This is the pitch deck of the series-b-funding for Mos. With this pitch deck, they have collected over 18 Million Dollar. The deck contains a lot of information about the company. It was founded five years before this pitch. This enabled them to provide an accurate estimate of turnover, return on sales, average customer lifetime value, cost of pain acquisition, etc.

Moz started out as an SEO company but has turned to support marketers in all inbound marketing strategies.

13. Foursquare

Foursquare is a mobile platform that helps you find the best places to go in your area.
What makes this deck special is that it uses screenshots of social evidence that the app already has from its users tweeting about being “mayor” of a certain area.

14. Dwolla

This 18-slide pitch deck earned Dwolla $16.5 million. They offer a payment solution that allows users to send, receive and request funds from other users.
As is so often the case with pitch decks, they tell the story of the company and why it was founded. However, sometimes it is difficult to tell the story so well.
Dwolla told a great story about how the founder paid $50,000 a year in credit card fees and then found a solution to never do it again.

15. Adpushup

Adpushup has raised more than $632,000 in investments through its funding rounds. The company enables other companies to maximize advertising revenue through advanced A/B testing.
The deck has a very classic structure.
It contains the basic principles such as a great introduction, an overview of problems, potential solutions, market opportunities, products, case studies, milestones, traction and a future plan.

16. Manpacks

This company, Manpacks, which supplies men’s necessities such as underwear, razors, grooming products and other products through a platform, has raised $500,000 with this pitch deck.

This deck is designed with a lot of wits and draws attention to the product.

17. ZenPayRoll (Now Gusto)

There is something special about this pitch deck. You can use it as a template and replicate it by filling in the gaps.

The company, Gusto, has raised $6 million in investments with this pitch deck.

Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) is a cloud-based solution tool for small businesses to pay employees.

18. Wealthsimple

The pitch deck is kept very short but fulfilled its purpose. Wealthsimple is Canada’s first online investment manager. It has raised more than $2 million in start-up financing.

19. App Virality

AppVirality is an application that allows app developers to extend their platform using growth methods that have been proven to work for other startups.

20. SteadyBudget

SteadyBudget is a budget management software that helps PPC analysts manage different budgets through multiple channels.

21. Podozi

Podozi is an online e-commerce platform for women of colour. It is based in Nigeria and made a huge difference in the beauty market.

22. Fittr

Fittr is a workout generator that takes in users equipment access, time commitment, and goals for working out.

23. Swipes

Swipes is an app that enables users to manage their tasks and increase their productivity.

24. Canvas

Canvas made it its mission to replace paper-based processes with applications that are affordable and easy to use.
The company raised up to 9 million US Dollars with their pitch decks.

25. Ooomf (now Crew)

Ooomf that changed its name twice after the founding from PickCrew to finally Crew is a marketplace for freelancer. It connects mobile and web developers to work together on projects.

26. CASTLE

This pitch deck from the startup Castle, that enables rental owners to put their properties on autopilot, raised up to $270,000.

27. Sequoia Capital

This deck is not filled in with information about the company Sequoia Capital. They are one of the leading investment firms in Silicon Valley. The deck shown above is recommended by them for startups.

28. Quora

A social ask-and-answer platform where users can access continuously relevant, quality content.

29. WeWork

WeWork that was founded in 2010 in New York. They create working and living spaces that are responsive to the productivity needs and stylistic preferences of today’s mobile, creative workforce.

30. Sonder

The deck is a Series D Deck of the company Sonder. They want to become to world’s largest and most loved hospitality brand.

31. YouTube

YouTube is a name to everyone. They wanted to become the primary outlet of user-generated video content on the Internet and to allow anyone to upload, share, and browse this content.

32. Amazon

This is a deck of how Amazon pitches itself to agencies.

33. Match Box

Tinder-like Pitch Deck from Match Box.

34. Radiant UV

This Pitch deck was designed for Radiant UV’SDemo Day presentation. The company provides ultraviolet and disinfection technologies for commercial and industrial markets.

35. Wanderlust

Wanderlust is a platform made for millennials to make shopping more entertaining, fun, social and transactional.

36. UStadium

uSTADIUM enables interaction between football fans, whether online or offline. It is the first social network for football fans. They can join forces and no longer feel uncomfortable when they publicly bitch about their favourite team. Loneliness during the football season is not an option. uSTADIUM is the solution and arena for football fans, creating instant fan companionship and boosting the fan experience.

37. Zarfo

Zarfo is an app that makes it easy to create and share videos.

38. Tega

Tega is an app to automate the users’ savings. They will figure out how and where to save the most money based on your lifestyle.

How to Improve your Pitch Deck for Investors?

Every start-up that presents its pitch deck to investors also wants to convince with it. However, this is not always that easy (see 7 all-important pieces of Startup Advice). In the following, 10 tips on how to make your pitch deck more attractive for investors.

1. Timing

When presenting a pitch deck, a certain time window is usually given, which must be adhered to. The time of the investors or your audience, in general, is precious.

With your pitch, you should bring your business plan briefly to the point. Only talk about the most important points and compactly present your idea. A short pitch can often be more impressive and be remembered longer.

If the investors are interested, they will ask questions after the pitch.

2. First Impression

It only takes a quick look, roughly seven seconds, before someone rates you when you first get together. In that short amount of time, the other person will form an opinion about you based on your appearance, body language, behaviour, mannerisms, and clothing. The first impression is extremely powerful and can determine the rest of your pitch. The first two to three minutes are the most important.

Be prepared to make a good first impression in order to convince your audience.

3. Tell a Story

The goal here is to tell a story of the founders or of the start-up itself to involve the audience emotionally. The purpose is to connect with the listeners to create an image in their mind. Storytelling is a scientifically proven method to attract and hold the attention of the audience. It also makes your pitch unforgettable.

You should highlight the actual pain point and then present your solution, your product, or service.

4. Focus on a Clear Outline of your Presentation – Make it understandable for everyone

You want to have each of your listeners at the same level, and you should, therefore, pay attention to a clear structure. Each of your slides should compactly summarise the necessary information.

You must present your pitch in such a way that someone who has no prior knowledge is convinced of it in the end. You should not get too deep into the topics with e.g. tech speak or the use of acronyms.

5. Standardized Look of your Presentation

Pay attention to keep a consistent look in your presentation. Use the same font size, color, and format in all slides of your pitch.

Don’t use too many bullet points as the audience cannot read and listen at the same time. Try to keep the text to a minimum and use pictures to create a visual effect. You should also make sure that the font size is not too small and it is easy for the audience to read. It is advisable to use 32 to 44-point for headlines and not smaller than 28-point for text.

6. What differs you from competitors?

With a business plan, there are rarely any competitors. If you tell investors that you are the only one in the market offering the product or service, they will think that you have not done your research well enough. In almost 100% of the cases, there are competitors usually domestically, but also internationally.

Therefore you should clearly state in your pitch what makes you different and unique.

7. Talk about Yourself & your Team

As always, the team is essential. Your audience, your investors want to get to know you and your team better. They first invest in people and only secondarily in the idea. No start-up can function if the team is not working properly.

Focus on one significant, relevant achievement for each person on your team, including yourself that identifies that individual as a winner.

8. Traction & Revenue Model

Numbers speak louder than words. If you have already shown traction, highlight that and fill your pitch deck in with the current numbers. Investors are mainly interested in how they can make a profit from their investment.

The same applies to your revenue model. Identify exactly what type of revenue model you intend to use and how you plan on applying it.

9. Practice and Test your Pitch before Presenting

The goal of your pitch is to convince the audience of your business idea. Your concept that you created can be really good and unique, but if you sound uncertain during your presentation or if it seems as if you don’t know what you are talking about, no investor will fund you. Practice your pitch a few times and present it to an audience of 5-10 people, maybe friends or family. This way, you can identify which questions are frequently asked and see what information is missing in your pitch deck. It is also advisable not to just read from the slides but to come across authentically. This way, you will convince the investors of your idea.

10. Focus on Startup Fundamentals

Quite often Startups are running way too fast and falling hard. There are different reasons why this keeps happening, but there are several opportunities that allow Startups to start flying instead. For this to happen, we, at NEXEA, have developed the Startup Fundamentals.

Startup Fundamentals include a few different things such as the problem you are addressing, the solution you are offering, the market size, and Monetisation. Without any one of these fundamentals, a Startup may likely fail. Therefore, validating these four fundamentals of a Startup can help avoid much pain from falls. For further information on the startup fundamentals check out our other article on “EARLY-STAGE STARTUP FUNDAMENTALS“.

Conclusion

You hardly ever get a second chance to present your Business Plan, so be sure to take the additional time to improve your pitch. While this may feel like a poor use of your time, it is immensely important because if you can’t captivate your audience from the start, you’ll be fighting a tough battle that will buy you even more time.

The objective of a successful pitch is that investors are begging to invest in your business. Of course, that sounds very far-fetched at the moment, but it is possible.

If you manage to successfully implement what an investor wants, you will have a truly unbeatable pitch.

Sources

https://pitchdeck.improvepresentation.com/what-is-a-pitch-deck https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251311 https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/FirstImpressions.htm https://articles.bplans.com/9-things-that-take-a-pitch-from-good-to-great/
https://pitchdeckexamples.com/startups/uber-pitch-deck?rq=uber
https://pitchdeckexamples.com/startups/airbnb-pitch-deck
https://pitchdeckexamples.com/startups/facebook-pitch-deck
https://slidebean.com/blog/startups-pitch-deck-examples https://piktochart.com/blog/startup-pitch-decks-what-you-can-learn/

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source https://nexeaaccelerator.blogspot.com/2020/06/38-pitch-deck-examples-how-to-improve.html