Techcelerate’s offer to Founding Teams of Tech Companies?

Since we restarted last year, Techcelerate continues to evolve and refine our value proposition. Everything we do is done with the sole aim of helping Tech Companies succeed. Everything else is secondary. Additionally, we want to help others in our ecosystem from Partners to Investors achieve their own growth objectives.

 

 

We are currently working with 14 Tech Companies, 11 Partners and 8 Specialists. I’m hungry to end the year with 25 tech companies, which gives us sufficient influence to build the Techcelerate Angel Network.

 

 

Founders: Your Return at Exit

For most Tech Founders, survival remains the number one priority. Once initial traction is achieved, growth becomes the next most important priority. Exit is the last thing on their minds. Some operate without a salary until the business can afford it. Even when it can, you are most likely to still take a lower salary. The real payday arrives at the Exit if properly planned. We want to help you manage your investment rounds so when you reach that eventual Exit, your payday would be sizeable. Too many people have made very little or in some cases nothing at their Exit, even how high the Exit was, e.g. Fanduel.

Secondly, we want to reduce the wastage in setting up and growing your tech company. We want to help you make fewer mistakes and become operationally efficient. We want to help remove internal and external barriers, find ways to accelerate your growth and increase your success rate.

Whilst not conclusive, our current thinking leads us to

 

Size of Success (Payday) = Trajectory + Momentum + Vigour + Reality Check + Cap Table

 

Let me explain this further:

1. Trajectory: Are you building a 10 million company or a 100 million company? And what’s your time period? How many rounds of investment would you need, if external capital is a serious option?
2. Momentum: What are you doing to ensure setbacks are minimised and fatal errors are avoided whilst maintaining high morale and higher speed of execution?
3. Vigour (aka Big Balls): How grand is your vision and the level of determination? How aligned is your execution to this vision? Do you have the skills and the team to get to the next stage and keep moving forward? Or have you exhausted your skillset and want an early Exit?
4. Cap Table: What stake have you got left? What are you doing to avoid a down-round? Have your investors and the Board got you trapped? Is a pre-pack the only way out? Attempting to raise another round from weakness will rarely lead to a positive outcome.

 

Reality Check = Product + Market + Customers (Sales and Metrics) + Team

 

Not ignoring:

1. Sound strategy, a greater understanding of the competition and positioning.
2. Continuously learning about the problem you are solving.
3. Capital adequacy at market acceptable valuations. Avoid down-rounds.
4. Capital efficiency to manage the burn-rate.

 

Techcelerate Process

You would join us under one of our annual membership plans. We then try to understand where you are in your journey and try to help you initially with the most pressing issues, which could range from fixing broken products to developing your MVP to restructuring.

We deliver these services via the use of my knowledge and experience, as well as the knowledge and experiences of our Partners and Specialists.

 

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Under the membership plans, you are entitled to call me anytime using your channel of choice (email, phone, text, WhatsApp and Slack), attend our events and workshops.

 

 

We organise two types of Workshops, progress review meetups under closed doors and workshops run by our partners with me. So far we have held 5 workshops, these being:

1. Stages of a tech company
2. Startup financials
3. Cap Tables
4. Startup Sales and getting your first £1 m revenue
5. Startup legals

 

Workshops and meetups together with our Slack and WhatsApp groups are great ways to share knowledge and experiences. We learn as much from our 14 tech companies as well as from our Partners and Specialists.

There is significant trust among everyone involved. We are all aligned for your success. Without your success, Techcelerate has no chance of achieving success ourselves.

 

How Techcelerate generate revenues

When you join, we charge a small annual fee. Other than the knowledge share events (events and workshops) and communication channels, our Partners and Specialists charge for the services they deliver, from which we earn a commission. We also undertake business development activities as well as fundraising on a commission basis.

You can also hire me for a day or two a month or to deliver a mini-project, e.g. valuation. We will soon publish various services Techcelerate and its Partners and Specialists can offer.

 

Fundraising and Acquisitions

We have disclosed our pricing for fundraising. For smaller rounds, we would charge an upfront fee for Investment Readiness and shortlisting of investors to meet your specific requirements. For larger rounds, we would charge a monthly retainer. For both types, we charge a success fee when we raise investment for you. This is our Payday! We will accelerate the development of Techcelerate Angel Network as we get closer to 25 Tech Company Members.

For acquisitions, we would charge a monthly retainer and commission. We have started engaging with a number of companies to join us under our M&A Plan (acquirer-side).

 

Have we got our model right?

We are learning every day and adapting to market demand. We now have 14 Tech Companies, 11 Partners and 8 Specialists. We need to hit a certain annual revenue threshold in order for me to de-risk our own business. Having built tech companies and non-tech businesses before, I’m at least on a 5-year journey myself.  A sustainable business cannot be built overnight.

 

 

Having started memberships and partnerships at the end of Feb 2019, I believe we have a foundation which is being built on trust. Time will tell whether the second coming of Techcelerate (since May 2018) could be as effective as the first Techcelerate (2006 to 2013).