The tool for startup investors by startup investors: a how-to

When we started to build this rocket 5 months ago -time flies-, it was crystal clear to us that it wasn’t just all about founders problems, investors have been facing as many challenges as startup founders, only few would make these public. And we built Startupxplore because as Javier Megías, after landing in the business angel world 5 years ago and investing in several startups, acknowledgedly says…

Bluntly put: it’s daunting for investors to know where to invest, how and with whom. It takes time and money in equal amounts. Be no mistaken, despite the mushrooming of events and articles about this, there’s yet a deep layer of opacity on top of us: nobody tells and knows clearly which baskets and which eggs are worth your money. Especially harder when you’re not a venture capital firm.

Do you want to know what’s a perfect match?

A Startup CEO scared of letting down their investors meeting a business angel scared of investing at a stage where all odds are stacked against them, to start with. That’s a fear-based match even Brangelina can’t live up to. Believe us.

As Javier, our CEO and serial business angel, pointed out during the Startupxplore presentation at Plug and Play Berlin last week, investors of all kinds suffer from 4 types of fears:

1. For someone who wants to become an investor but has never invested yet, the main fear is putting their skin in startups that fall through. Helping startups from fizzling is beyond our humanly reach but we can help investors have a deeper knowledge of the existing startups and investment moves of the ecosystem. It’s all about sharing as much info as possible by CEO startups, as well as by investors. And we’re developing the tools to do so. Think of Startupxplore as dashboard with actionable information to assist your gut instinct.
2. For novice investors with some little experience,  the fear is being left out of dealflows. Question here for investors at this stage is how can I get to know which startups should be under my radar? How can I reach the supermodel startups or how can they reach me when there are other investors who have been playing this game longer ? Will I ever move up this ladder?
3. For experienced investors, there’s a common shared feeling: we are getting dealflow, but it’s not the one that matches our investment criteria. A couple of days ago, an investor with a strong background told us that only 1% of the dealflow he gets actually meets the requisites he’s looking for and the sectors he’s interested in.
4. A serial successful investor deals with a different scenario: she wants to fish the supermodels before they even call for evaluation.

Common to all of them is FOMO. Fear of missing out. What if I miss the next big thing and I’m left out? We are building the future of startup and investment tracking.

Now add here venture capital firms fears, such as wasting effort in implementing an agile deal flow and leaving future-gem stones unturned, so again, FOMO symptoms.

Just a couple of weeks after launch, we humbly hit a promising figure of 155 investors present in our community, and that’s just in our launch market, Spain. Following our first post on how to make the most of our community, we’ll show you how to maximize your chances if you’re an investor using Startupxplore.

The technicalities

1. Make your profile sexy: editing your profile is exactly the same for all types of people on our app. No matter if you’re a founder or an investor, or the head of an accelerator. All users on Startupxplore have their own profiles on the one hand, and additionally we have organization pages. I already explained here how to edit a profile, it’s pretty easy. Just click on edit profile and click on the pencil to edit each area/field.
   
2. In your profile, we strongly recommend you to add your investment criteria. This will save you time for future meaningful startup contacts (forthcoming feature) and will make you eligible for co-investment rounds (keep on reading).See Yago Arbeloa‘s profile:
   
3. Add the startups you’re investing. Just like with your investment criteria, don’t keep your portfolio to yourself. Particularly useful for building credibility and a record.
4. In Startupxplore we have business angels and investors on the one hand, and on the other  VC firms. If you run a venture capital firm, register first and create your own profile. Then you can click +New Organization and add your Venture Capital firm. Complete your organization page with as much information as possible.
   
5. Define interests by markets and locations: we are an interest-driven community.
   
   Everything is tagged and everything can be monitored with our livefeeds. Think of manageable radars that allow you to follow just what’s relevant for you. You can add as many interests as you want. And we’re working to release soon a weekly digest that will save you time and effort to track what’s happening. Curated by our own staff. You’ll also soon be able to follow automatically and filter by updates and type of information. This is probably one of the core features to make the most out of your time on Startupxplore.
   

Pro-tips, part I.

With organization pages, you can add updates. What type of information could you share as an update? Think of recent investment, rounds, press coverage. Why would someone be interested in that information? Well, because the past is best way we have to better predict the future.

See what Caixa Capital Risc published:

The updates are shown in our updates section and everyone following your industry and location will get to know what you’re up to. What’s the updates tab? It’s basically a real-time feed showing what’s going on in each industry and/or location.

Why can we help your investment flow?

1. Access deal intelligence.

We are providing features to maximize your matching chances. Investment criteria is, for instance, the way to get a better alignment of interests.

2. Syndicate funding.

Syndicate funding is, to put it simply, co-investment. Where a lead investor sources and supports the investment and opens it to contributing investors, or backers.  The lead investor makes a larger cut of the profits. And the enabling app guarantees the whole process by accrediting investors, and providing a tool that takes all the fuss away. Just a click away.

With syndicate funding, we’re taking investment to a new stage of openness and transparency where professional business angels and VC firms along with crowd investors can participate on the same deals. Due diligence and deal quality are enhanced with proper and faster evaluations.

The leading investor will create, lead and collect carry for a co-invested fund of angel money for a specific startup. For this leading investor the opportunity for a bigger return is higher with co-funding and for the participating investors or backers, the risk of choosing the wrong startup is minimized, it’s smarter for them to follow experienced investors and learn the ropes with them, at the same time. And the startups will raise money more easily.

We are currently testing this investing model with a chosen set of investors, VCs and startups.

If you’re interested and want to apply for this private stage of syndicate funding, do please drop us a line to: info(at)startupxplore.com

3. No monkey business guaranteed.

If you have a strong investment background and you want trustworthy and committed investors around your investments, with Startupxplore you can get to know investors’ tracks and portfolios.

4. Get access to a limitless deal flow that’s relevant to your industry and location interests.

Finding startups to invest is key to an investor methodology. It should be an endless and meaningful stream of startups contacting you to invest. So how would you find them until today? Having someone do that for you, or attending events, visiting accelerators, networking meetups and the long etcetera due diligence takes up.  You can also use existing platforms to find startups. However the focus of this platforms are global, and even though we all envision global, we have to act local. As a matter of fact, most investors don’t tend to invest beyond the legal boundaries and territorial scenario they know. This is what Startupxplore does for you: we are building the largest deal flow based on geolocalization features.

How should I be using Startupxplore?

As stated in our how-to post for startups using Startupxplore, as an investor or VC firm we recommend you to add SXPLR as a routine to your weekly monitoring tools and tactics. We’ll soon share here with you how real investors are using SXPLR. Think of a daily or weekly/monthly routine, depending on whether you want to share an update, or you want to monitor an industry or location.

When real investing opportunities are thin on the ground and real liquidity is hard to find, we want to enable meaningful investment chances for all actors of the startup ecosystem. You’re putting your skin in the game, we’re putting ours too. Make an active and compelling presence on Startupxplore compelling and you’ll get priority access to our syndicate and report features, once ready.

Stay tuned:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/startupxplore.
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/startupxplore.
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Startupxplore-community.
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startupxplore.
• I’m the lonely type: ok, send us an email here.

And if you’re not on our community yet, where have you been all these days? Welcome onboard.

The startup investors tool by startup investors. Let’s make dealflow efficient and transparent.

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