095. One Thing To Optimize For When Choosing Investors feat. Dama, CEO @ Manatee
Sometimes your choice is between taking any money and running out of money. In those cases you can't be selective. But if you can optimize for one thing with you investors, optimize for trust. Why? Hear Dama's summary of how the trust of her lead investor turned a funding round around.
About Manatee
Dama Dipayana is the CEO & Co-Founder of Manatee. Manatee is a family-first, virtual mental health clinic, designed for kids living in the modern world. We’ve put our heads together to create the best mental health care for families.
About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech, logistics, and marketplace businesses. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.
About Rich Maloy
Rich’s mission is to rebuild the American dream through entrepreneurship. He believes technology gives all people the opportunity to grow, learn and earn. He is a Managing Partner at SpringTime Ventures and the host of the VC Minute podcast. With prior careers in finance and sales, he's been focused on the startup ecosystem for over a dozen years. He's a father of two young children and loves sci-fi, skiing, and video games.
This is going back to how important it's to select your investors.And oftentimes you don't have a choice,like you just take the money that you can get,I think that's also the reality of fundraising.I love it when people talk about like,oh,I'll be really selective.And you're like,well,if it's like dying or like taking this check,I'll take this check.So that's also the reality.I think the number one thing,if you can optimize for one thing,just optimize for trust.Are you gonna trust your investors to come through?I think that's really important and that really is what ultimately saved us,otherwise,like our company may not survive,but our lead investor of our last round said you have a lot of growth.We really believe in you.We're just gonna open up the safe or convertible note and we're gonna lead it.And we're gonna get our investors to put money in so at least like you have more runway.And you have a fighting chance of making this thing work because there's something there.You're growing.We really believe in it.It's fascinating cuz once our lead investor was in and I was like,all right,now we just need to fill out the round.I actually had like a hundred percent conversion rate maybe not a hundred percent.After that I spoke maybe to five funds and like four of them invested.Where like before I speak to like30funds and they're like,maybe I get one.Maybe.What changed is obviously there's a lead investor,but I think most importantly I really,I think you changed your mindset where I was very much like take it or leave it.This is a really good opportunity.I don't need,you'd like to have you,but I don't need you.And I think that kinda like changes to power dynamic.
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