Why choose us?
Startup founders come to us because of:
Fundraising without any support is super inefficient
Our support in getting you a good deal
Our international approach
Our honest and pragmatic way of working
Our large network of trusted relations within the early stage investor community
We have built strong relations with the right people built over many years.
Our database has thousands of investors and we know and constantly update their investment criteria. On your own you are unlikely to find the right partner; cold mailing in general does not work in early stage financing and can even be counterproductive.
Early stage financing is extremely based on trust and on introductions.
We put ourselves in the shoes of the investor and can look at your deal with the investor mindset. We have obtained a 90% success rate in the last 3 years in finding the right investor(s) for our clients.
Fundraising without any support is super inefficient
Fundraising is a tough process that takes a lot of your valuable time. There is a big opportunity cost of wanting to do all of this yourself.
Focus on your business while we do the legwork to get you the funding your business deserves.
Our support in getting you a good deal
Our international approach
Our honest and pragmatic way of working
We are complimentary to your own relations and do not require any exclusivity. You always remain in control of your funding round. We like it if you have already partially funded your round yourself.
We are quite confident that the investors we talk to are not within the network you have already approached but will always clarify things before we start.
If we cannot help you and for example crowdfunding is a better option or you are not ready yet for fundraising, we will tell you.
Our strong reputation with investors
We have built an excellent image within the early-stage investor community due to the high quality of the investment opportunities we can source and offer.
- We are fully aware that investors are often flooded with second-tier investment proposals that are not within their investment parameters or which are not investment-ready.
- We avoid this by being highly selective and rigorous before accepting mandates. Our pre-vetting process ensures that we only show opportunities that are truly interesting from an investor point of view and in line with their specific investment thesis.
Are you an investor? Finwise offers investors a privileged access to selective investment opportunities; we guarantee to show you deal flow that you do not see elsewhere and that has passed our rigid pre-vetting criteria
Testimonials
We have worked with Finwise both for our seed and our Pre-Series A and we were very pleased with the smooth process and quality of the leads. Finwise brought in the right investors for us, ranging from angels, a VC and a Corp VC. We look forward to continuing our excellent relationship.
We worked with Finwise for our 15m£ Series A we closed in April 22 and have been pleased with the quality of investors they introduced to us, ranging from angels, angel investors and family offices, complementing our VCs
We worked with Finwise for the Seed Round we closed in 2020 and were very pleased with the quality of the investors they brought us and their support during the negotiations
We worked with Finwise for our 2m$ Pre-series A and were impressed with the quality of the potential investors (angels, family offices, VCs…) they brought us. They made a lot of effort in really understanding our business model and we also gained many valuable business relations
We worked with Finwise for our seed round and have been very pleased with the quality of potential investors they brought us. It resulted in closing a transaction with a Belgian private investor group which has operational expertise and synergies with our activity which is a real added value for our company
As far as your selection of projects is concerned, I think they each time have that ‘special touch’. Your feeling for this is extremely strong in that regard! (original in Dutch: Wat jouw selectie van projecten betreft, vind ik dat ze keer op keer toch wel een bijzondere ‘special touch’ hebben. Je aanvoelen hiervoor is in die optiek ontzettend sterk!)
I needed to free up some funds. As I know that early stage investments are traditionally very illiquid, I was pleasantly surprised that Finwise was able to find a buyer for a small angel investment in a Deep Tech scale-up I had made a few years ago
FAQ
What are the benefits of working with an advisor like you?
The benefits of using one is the higher efficiency, reduction in time, connections to the right people and the valuable know how we can bring you.
Startup entrepreneurs almost universally agree that raising money for their startup is one of the biggest challenges and problems they face. It is indeed often stressful, frustrating, time-consuming and it distracts founders from keeping the focus on product development or sales. And don’t forget investors usually have a lot more experience in this than you in this.
We can provide structure to an otherwise opaque process, create time pressure when appropriate and take the heat off negotiations providing more space for founders to negotiate better terms.
We act as your best ambassadors selling you the right way to the right investor. Different investors have different criteria and you need to push the right button for the right investor.
We can’t promise you the process is ever going to be quick and easy, but our expertise and connections will put you in a far stronger position to optimize and maximize the whole process towards a good closing.
I have my own contacts. Do you need exclusivity?
In contrast to traditional M&A, we believe that exclusive agreements are not necessary and not to the benefit to a startup.
We are confident that our network is complimentary to yours.
Do I remain in control of the funding round?
As CEO you will still be leading the round. After initial introductions have been made, we don’t need to be present at each meeting unless you want us to. We don’t put our logo on each of your documents.
We are however available to support you during the entire process, can highlight what are sensitive topics for investors, can suggest possible solutions to get to fair deal terms etc.
How much time does a fundraising take?
It generally varies between 3 and 9 months with an average of 6 months from start to finish. You should always have a sufficient runway (12 months) before starting a fundraising, investors do not like to be used to bridge a runway gap and it can put you in a difficult negotiation position.
How much do I raise?
You should always raise with a specific exact amount which can defend as necessary to reach a specific milestone in the road map and for which the use of funds can be clearly demonstrated. You can always oversubscribe and raise more funds in case of strong interest.
How do you work?
We do warm introductions/referrals to people you have no easy access to based on existing relationships & trust painstakingly built over a long period. We don’t do mass-emailing.
Fundraising for startups/scaleups is an extremely relationship-driven process based on trust. It is a fact that 80% of investment deals happen through referrals.
Founders often try a spray and pray approach but not only is this ineffective, but it also reduces any potential goodwill. And it’s unlikely to the big names in the newspaper that will fund your business.
What does it cost?
Other than a symbolic administration fee for onboarding and analysis, we believe that paying a set fee or monthly fee as is customary in M&A is not appropriate for early stage fundraising.
If we accept to work with you, we are convinced you are “investable” and our success is aligned with yours.
The success fee % depends on the amount, stage of your startup and our assessment of the difficulty level of successfully funding you. Contact us for more detail.
What is your onboarding process?
While you rightly are selective in who you work with, we also carefully chose our clients.
Due to our business model based on result, we need to be very selective and carefully choose the companies we work with. We need to ask you the questions an investor is likely to ask you and analyse your investment opportunity through the investor’s eyes.
We constantly source the best startups so that our deal flow is of very high level in order to maintain the high trust level we enjoy by investors.
Do you advise on valuation?
We can give you our personal opinion based on our market knowledge but valuation for early-stage companies is rather art than science and you cannot use the parameters used for valuation of mature companies.
There are certain tools and methods for early stage valuation, but recent comparable transactions are in general the best guideline. Keep in mind that valuations differ between US, UK and Continental Europe due to the difference in depth of the ecosystem.
A good guideline is to keep dilution to 20-30% per round.
Did you know?
… that less than 1% of deals result in investment.
… that the average Angel Investor sees around 10 pitch decks a week, but makes only two investments per year? This means if you’re currently pitching for funding, yours could be just one of 520 pitches, and only two would seal the deal!