First-time founder Madison Long shares her secrets on raising a $1.2M pre-seed round for her startup.
Going from knowing nothing about fundraising to a $1.2M pre-seed in 10 months sounds like a dream? Not for an unstoppable first-time founders Madison Long and Simone May.
Madison and Simone are building Clutch, the digital marketplace elevating emerging brands' digital marketing by connecting them to next-gen creators. If you were waiting for a sign to start getting thousands of leads from TikTok, this is it.
Round details
- Company name: Clutch
- Round size: $1,200,000
- Stage: Pre-seed
- Date: August 2022
How long did it take you to raise the round?
10 months
- 3 months in an accelerator to learn the ins and outs and develop solid pitch
- 3 months of active raising
- 4 months of pitch competitions
How many investors did you talk to?
Warm intros to 50 investors, cold DM’d / emailed / submitted to 25-30 investors and programs, 18 angels, 3 institutional investors.
What tools did you use?
- Paperstreet to send investor updates, and stay in touch
- DocSend to send deck
- Calendly to schedule investor meetings
- Twitter to make cold intros
What was the hardest thing in your fundraising?
- Timing, ideally we would have closed earlier if I was more aware on how to run a tight fundraising process
- Trusting our gut even when receiving feedback from hundreds of investors, knowing what to take and what to leave
Fundraising advice/hacks for founders?
Pitch competitions may seem intimidating, time consuming, or difficult, but doing them has massively increased our brand awareness, partnership opportunities, and of course, investment capital.
Support
Thanks for reading!
Follow Madison on Twitter and LinkedIn. Also, check out Clutch to learn how to grow your startup with creators.
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P.S: To raise $1.2M, Madison contacted 100+ investors from her niche. Shizune can find the most active investors in your industry and stage in <30 seconds.
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P.S.2: Have questions for Madison or me? Jump into the discussion on Twitter:
Myth: first-time founders don’t know how to fundraise.
— Pavel Gvay (@PavelGvay) October 13, 2022
Reality: Madison Long raises $1.2M pre-seed round for her first startup.
👇 How? @madisonl0ng from @thatsclutch_com shared a ton of insights in my interview. pic.twitter.com/02rQ03NzJG
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