Click the link (brown box, white type above) to see more, but here are immediate deadlines:
SproutBox - March 1
i/o Ventures - March 1
YCombinator - March 3
Startl - March 15
Tech Wildcatters - March 19
Techstars, Boulder - March 22
Dreamit Ventures - March 22
Betaspring - March 22
*Thanks to David Weisburd for showing me the link
Provides a great outline in short order. Also see Part I of this series: Elevator Pitch
This is a thorough, yet brief post on how to raise money from Angels and other seed investors. It gives very tangible advice. If you’re in this stage of your startup (which we are at Pocket Tales), you can start using this information immediately.
ExactTarget continues to be Indianapolis’ premier darling. Even the location of their offices on Monument Circle, the heart of downtown, is the perfect analogy for the position they hold in the Indianapolis tech community.
As much as I look up to and try to emulate ExactTarget, I think too often their success is used as proof that the Indianapolis startup community is thriving.
As this Indianapolis Business Journal article jokes, the Indianapolis tech community didn’t get ExactTarget back in 2000: “They couldn’t even raise $1 million,” recalled Kidd, now a senior vice president at Indianapolis-based Walker Research, who admits to scratching his head at just what the entrepreneurs were proposing to do back then.”
What I wonder is, has this mentality really changed? If ExactTarget started today, and email marketing was just as much a new concept as it was back in 2000, would it have an easier time getting funded?
There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about Indianapolis, but the vitality of a startup community is proven by the accomplishments of…well, startups. ExactTarget hasn’t been a startup for 9 years.
In startup hotbeds like Silicon Valley, Boston, and even New York it’s common for law firms to work out special arrangements with startups who generally have little cash (usually that’s why they need a law firm in the first place, to raise cash). These law firms are willing to defer payment until the cash is raised or even accept equity as payment.
Law firms in Indianapolis are also familiar with special arrangements for startups.
At Pocket Tales, we’ve looked to Nick Mathioudakis from Baker & Daniels for help, but I’ve also seen Barnes & Thornburg, Alerding Castor, and to a lesser extent Ice Miller (although right now they have a case study for a startup on their homepage), hanging around the Indianapolis startup scene.
This is great for the startup but obviously there’s something in it for the law firm too. Assuming they continue to survive, startups generally require a lot of legal work and a successful startup can be a big revenue source for law firms. Mint Founder Aaron Patzer estimated legal costs of $10,000 - $50,000/ month not including special events like incorporation and additional rounds of fundraising.
What if you’re not quite ready to seek professional legal advice?
You can help yourself.
SproutBox is a new type of investment firm. It’s in the same vein as Y Combinator, TechStars, DreamIt Ventures, etc. but it has its own twist. Like the others, SproutBox asks you to relocate to their headquarters (in this instance in Bloomington, IN) and then gives you just enough money to live for 3 - 6 months. The difference is, SproutBox uses its team of 10 coders, designers, and marketers to build or extend your product. For this, they take a bigger percentage of the company than the other new wave investment firms, but if you’re an idea stage company without a technical lead (like Pocket Tales was) it’s worth it. The alternative is putting together your own team of great coders and that’s just hard, risky, and costly in terms of equity (if you don’t have cash, what else are you going to pay them with?)
Pocket Tales was invited to finalist day to present to roughly 15 people on SproutBox’s advisory board which included investors and community leaders. We weren’t selected but we came away with a ton of confidence, a great new network, and some great memories, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the whole process.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the MAN who is actually IN THE ARENA, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt, CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC, “The Man in the Arena”
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