Deal Abstract
Team is building a competitor to RAD Technologies. What's interesting is this company is taking 50% of ad spend.
Financials (VRB)
Question | Notes |
---|---|
1. Fundraising Target? | $300000 |
2. Fundraised So Far? | $290458 |
3. Pre-Money Valuation? | $5500000 |
4. Previous Year's Annual Revenue | $4030 |
5. Previous Year's Annual Net Income (+ Profitable, - Burning Cash) | ~$-176668 |
The 6 Calacanis Characteristics ("Sow Passion, Not easy mediocrity", or S2 P6 N18)
Criteria | Yes/No |
---|---|
1. A startup that is based in SV? | False: Los Angeles, CA |
2. Has at least 2 founders? | True: Two |
3. Has product in the market? | True: Essentially an agency/job board for influencers to make content |
4. 6 months of continuous user growth or 6 months of revenue? | True: Allegedly $93k in revenue second half of 2020, aiming for 1.3m in 2021 |
5. Notable investors? | False: No one I recognize |
6. Post-funding, will have 18 months of runway? | True: Done now |
The 7 Thiel Questions (Every Time Man Profits, Don't Dismiss Serendipity)
Question | Score | Notes |
---|---|---|
1. Engineering? | 2 | Not seeing 10x better |
2. Timing? | 2 | I have seen several of these including RAD and Insense, so makes sense |
3. Monopoly? | 1 | See competition above |
4. People? | 2 | Team seems lovely but no obvious wins in influencer marketing |
5. Distribution? | 2 | Fine, selling B2B |
6. Durability? | 1 | Starting to suspect these influencer networks have the multihoming problem e.g. not much defensible |
7. Secret? | 2 | A nice UI/UX will allow this business to charge 50% of all ad spend for influencer content marketing |
What has to go right for the startup to return money on investment:
1. Business model has to scale well; 2. Keep building two-sided marketplace; 3. Eventually be able to compete with the SocialNatives of the world
What the Risks Are
1. Influencer marketing blah blah; 2. What's defensible? Why is talent staying on this platform?; 3. Cannibalizing nature of social media marketing
Bonus Muhan's Notes
Looking forward to asking founders my questions
Updates
This is where I’ll post updates about the company. This way all my notes from offering to post-offering updates will be on one page.
Review these deal memos every time the startup raises a new round
Test if original thesis still applies
Notice trends in how you think
So, did I invest?
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