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How a startup can get money from investors in Silicon Valley

For seed-stage startups looking for the first investment from $100,000-300,000 to a million, the best way to get investment is to invite accredited investors to dinner.An accredited investor in the United States is someone who has an income of $250,000 a year and has been accredited to confirm that he can invest. Or an investor with a fortune of a million dollars or more.

Dinner with investors

There are special people who organize such dinners.

The funder shows his project to the adviser and signs a service contract with him to organize a dinner at some restaurant in a four- or five-star hotel. The dinner costs $10,000 for 25 investors. Two weeks are spent on preparations. The projector and the equipment are all from the organizers. The funders pay for the speech in English and for the slides to be shown to the CEO in advance.

The funder pays for the dinner and gets 30-40 minutes to present his idea. Afterwards he will have a list of investors who were at the event, because each of them writes his name, phone number and email address when he comes to the restaurant.

At the end of the evening there are two ways things can go:

the startup gets a check right away because they are private investors, not foundations.

the startup doesn’t get any money, but gets a list of reasons why investors refused to invest in it. And also an opportunity to engage the investor, to squeeze him out, to get his expertise by talking to him on the phone. 

Many companies make a huge mistake. They spend five years sawing out a product, then quietly and quietly say, “Look, I have something here. I can show you.” All this is done in the utmost secrecy, so nobody finds out anything and doesn’t steal the idea. And then the project fails. 

The feedback of 25 investors can save a startup several years of work.

Founder Institute

The CryptoFunds Adviser we talked to on the trip advised all startups that plan to come to America to take the Founder Institute. The institute program is designed for 3 months and costs a little: $3.5k + 2.5% of the company value.

When you sign the contract, the institute administrators suggest that you study at the Moscow branch first. Do not agree. In San Francisco and Palo Alto, the coolest mentors are, for example, Phil Libin of Evernote. After the training, they can write recommendations, which will be useful for work and for permanent visas. This is very serious support.

The Funder Institute helps prepare your project to meet with real clients and investors. The idea you come up with is one thing; the idea you come up with is another; the company you then build is another.

How an investor chooses a startup to invest in

Before raising an investment in the Valley or anywhere else, it’s important to understand which fund to go to. All funds are specialized. One invests only in cryptocurrency, and not even all of it, but only in new blockchain protocols, for example. There are those who invest only in BioTech or MedTech. This needs to be clearly understood. Knowing who to go to and with which project, it is much easier to get money.

An adviser who helps startups find suitable investors told us that he has 16 points that help quickly determine whether a funder will run away with investor money or not. After passing the first filter? The startup goes to the fund’s analyst, who has another 76 points. He evaluates the project’s prospects for investment.

The three main points are:

  1. How real and global is the problem the startup is solving. It’s not something that’s just scratched out of thin air, but is real. Often the problem is already solved, but the solution is either crooked or too expensive. 
  2. What kind of solution does the startup offer? 
  3. Who will do it? What kind of team? The startup team has to be really stellar. Crypto projects also look at whether the problem the startup is solving needs blockchain. Because most projects don’t need it at all. 

How Russian startups are treated

There is a twofold attitude toward Russians. On the one hand Russians are dudes who can run away with money. There were a lot of stories and scandals like that. On the other hand, Russians are crazy hackers who can do the impossible. No one will invest in a Russian company. In an American company with Russian backers, they will.

It is better to assemble an international team, so that it includes people who have already worked on some famous projects.

If you used to own a hot-dog stand, then most likely your next business will also be at the level of a hot-dog stand. If you have people on your team who have built a franchise chain selling hot dogs on a global level, you will be given money, because you have experts who know how to work with that money.A funder may not be able to do something himself, but there must be a person on his team who has the skills.

Where to go for a startup

For an investor, money is a building material. For example, you’re a builder. Can you build? Have you built before? If you haven’t built anything before, you should go through incubators. And show investors a concrete path: here’s what was, here’s what we passed the incubator, here’s what became. Crypto-projects and venture capital are worth going into when you have something to show.

You can go to a funder-institute from scratch. Although gas pedals also have their own conditions. For example, you have to come to YCombinator with something real: a minimum viable product, test users, possibly revenue. There have been cases where YC has taken on a project just because it has a cool team, but this is more of an exception.

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