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It doesn't take long, but you'll need to go through a few basic background checks to prove identity and that you understand the risks of investing.
Most of the time those are easily and quickly done, but for some people who lack a driving licence, passport or other accepted photo ID it can take longer.
The background checks are triggered by either putting money in your account, or making an investment. It's possible to wait until we launch before being subject to them but then the risk that we'll be done before you finish your background checks exists... so just load some money (£10) will do it, into your account in advance.
When it comes to investing you can basically invest without the money being loaded, but then load it up shortly afterwards.
All make sense?
1) Register, you still have time.
2) Load some small amount into there in advance to trigger the background checks.If I've got this wrong, Seedrs will jump into the thread and correct me (they are reading this).
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I am dithering about whether to double down in this round or not. (i.e un-dilute).
I suppose it comes down to whether I think the chances of success have improved since initial investment in sufficient proportion. For the market, who did not know David or lfgss during the first round, it obviously has. But for me, I am not sure the proportional increase in confidence is the same. (No negative connotation here, more a positive note on initial confidence).
So, David, do you think that microcosm is in a position now, that it wasn't in at the start, that justifies further investment?
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So, David, do you think that microcosm is in a position now, that it wasn't in at the start, that justifies further investment?
Yeah, in a big way.
The biggest difference is that Matt and I have now worked under the pressures of start-up life together, and can feel the trust and work ethic between us.
Most start-ups fail because the founders make it self-destruct. Co-founder issues make up the largest % of cited reasons for failure from almost every tech incubator and accelerator. We felt confident anyway, but we were untested in these conditions. That we now have no issues or cause for concern between us, that I trust Matt 100% and he trusts me in return, means that we are able to work in the interest of the company and set aside the damaging effect of acting in selfish short-term interest. It's probably the biggest factor. We've obliterated the biggest risk we have, which is ourselves.
Beyond that, when we raised last time we had a vision, an idea, and some notion of how it could be done. We also had LFGSS, and that was about the sum of it.
Today we have proven the concept can be built, we've laid a solid foundation of the technical platform, we've built a good network around us of other founders and advisors, we've got a customer pipeline and are doing CRM for almost our communications.
We've taken just over half of the original funding and done all that... to have launched the prototype, to have customers on-board or lined up, to have people actively providing feedback, to be hiring.
That is a hell of a lot on a very small amount of seed investment.
What we have not achieved on the original investment, and what we are looking to achieve on this round of investment, is the product to market fit.
One of the VCs we spoke to, Rob Kniaz of Hoxton Ventures, gave some great advice to us. He wanted us to focus on getting that product to market proof by showing that we can attract and migrate users of a given forum software to us. His view is that you need to be 10x cheaper and 10x better, and that whilst cheaper was easy to prove, better is harder... that an indicator of that is when a forum using something like vBulletin or Vanilla, and that isn't already known to us, chooses to migrate to us, then we can have an increased certainty that we are hitting the 10x better thing.
We had this choice to go for VC funding with what we have, and attempt to start selling a prototype and iterate to a better product whilst trying to grow... to grab at, but potentially screw up, some of the opportunities that opened to us... or to go for further seed funding and attempt to conclusively prove the product to market fit whilst spending very little, and then push for VC money once we have traction. We are basically doing the latter.
If we are brutal with ourselves (and we are, vanity metrics and ego aren't things that help us succeed), then we know that the opportunities we have are not as strong as we could hope them to be, because even though we've done so well so far we've not yet conclusively proven the market. If we had proven the market, then the opportunities we have would have converted to customers already. But seriously... the product is nice, but it's under-featured, the product looks beautiful, but it's clunky to use, the product works great on mobile, but site admins cannot manage permissions or fight spam.
We've done a hell of a lot with very little money and very little time, and we have increased the value of the company greatly in the process and built a solid start to things. But we're not kidding ourselves, we've got a lot more to do before we can say we've got a sure thing, a hell of a lot more to do. We have dramatically improved our position, and we're in a really great place that many other founders are envious of... our goal for this next year is to get that product to market fit nailed.
To answer the question, are we in a position now that we weren't at that start, that justifies further investment?
Yes, I believe we are.
When you invested before, the risk associated to your investment was very high that we were going to fuck it up. The default state of any startup remains death, and it takes a lot to bring a company into the world that has a good chance of living and making a return. Now, with the progress we've made the risk to your investment has moved away from very high and is now just high... when we've nailed the product to market fit we hope for the risk to be so-so, and after that comes the maniacal laughing and nervous giggling.
We are in a great place, but we need to get this market proof done, the product more fully fleshed out, and for that we need to go a bit longer without revenue, and need the extra hands helping us with the development. That's ultimately what the investment is for, to improve the odds even further, to create higher value sooner.
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Am off on hols soon so might be harder to get online so just wondered if there is an ETA on the next funding round?
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^Sound, thanks! I'll be back for the existing investors launch. Worries over.
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Current schedule:
29th/30th July: Shoot and edit videoSo, do you need some backing dancers?
Who's crib will this be shot at - I can do weekdays if it's in London. -
organises reach around for hippy's national champ jersey
Fixed.
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Current schedule:
29th/30th July: Shoot and edit video
1st August: Edit pitch text and submit video and text for verification and fact-checking
8th August: Launch to existing investors
22nd August: Launch publiclyDoes that mean existing investors have a two week window in which to either maintain their current level of investment or increase it?
I ask as I'll be on holiday on the 8th and might not have internet access until the 11th and I don't want to miss out.
Thanks.
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althougn there's nothing binding you to do this vb, do you have analysis of present and future performance, like s curves for resourcing, expenditure, risk/issue management?
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We do actually, in the pitch deck, we have a 5 year forecast of cost and revenue.
We're re-working the text of the listing in the latter part of this week, and I have to talk with Seedrs about what we can put in the listing. That old chestnut about how we phrase things, how we verify statements, etc.
The numbers in the pitch deck are realistic and achievable goals given our knowledge and experience. But they aren't givens, and nor are they an outlandish stretch... it's the "this should be possible given X, Y and Z".
We also maintain a risk log spreadsheet, but it's very dull reading, just the few big risks or anything that looks likely to become an issue.
Happy to share both, but give us the middle of this week to structure it.
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So, given that the first round took just over 15 hours for £50k, you need to get under 7 hours for the next £100k to beat 22 hours for the whole £150k to stay as fastest funded...
No pressure - ;)
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About
Microcosm - 2nd Seedrs crowd-funding round
Posted by
@Velocio
You are the second person who has said this, for the £100k round, it's going to be hard to split it any other way because we are using the SEIS stuff.
We could issue additional equity to non-UK residents, but to date we effectively have a single shareholder which is Seedrs, I'm a bit hesitant to break that as it might be a deterrence to be producing our own terms and not have nailed everything (drag along rights, etc). Unless you are proposing to invest some significant figure, the legal fees in nailing the paperwork outside of the Seedrs structure is going to be costly.
The difference here though, is you actually do have a UK address still. Is it not possible to use that?