Blake Berg, founder of StockSwap opens up on his recent $100k pre-seed round.
Fundraising is all about speed. The faster you move, the more chances to close the round. Blake Berg is a master of building momentum. He made 35+ calls in <2 weeks to raise $100k pre-seed for his startup.
Blake is building StockSwap, a fantasy stock investing game. I think it’s probably the most fun and safe way to learn about trading or level up your skills.
Round details
- Company name: StockSwap
- Round size: $100,000
- Stage: Pre-seed
- Date: September 2022
How long did it take you to raise the round?
6 fulltime weeks of focused fundraising
- 1 week to tweak the deck
- 1 week to build the target list of investors
- 2 weeks of outreach and pitching
- 2 weeks to close the round
How many investors did you talk to?
239 investors in my CRM. Warm intros to 10, cold emailed 50+. Converted into 35 calls. Only took 1 fund to raise the whole round.
What tools did you use?
- Crunchbase to find investors (mostly locally in St. Louis)
- LinkedIn and personal connections to find intros.
- Hunter to find investor emails
- Excel to track progress
- DropBox to send due diligence docs
What was the hardest thing in your fundraising?
- Some firms have longer due diligence processes than others resulting in a lot of waiting around.
- Not enough warm intros, lots of cold emails. Timing wasn’t great because of the summer market, so response rates were low.
Fundraising advice/hacks for founders?
Many pitches to advisors/friendlies before investor pitches. Attending funding panels and being aggressive with your approach afterward to fund managers.
Support
Indeed, brilliant execution can beat bad timing and market downturn. Thanks for reading!
Follow Blake on LinkedIn. Also, check out StockSwap to level up your trading skills.
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P.S: Blake spent one week building the target list of investors, Shizune can do it for you in <30 seconds. Check it out:
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P.S.2: If you have questions for me or Blake, join us on Twitter:
2 weeks, 50 cold emails, 10 intros, 35 calls.
— Pavel Gvay (@PavelGvay) October 21, 2022
This is how Blake Berg, the founder of StockSwap, raised a $100k pre-seed round.
👇 More secrets in the full interview: pic.twitter.com/g4NWOi7GE2
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