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A Guide to Crafting the Perfect Startup Pitch

Pitch

As an entrepreneur with a unique business idea, your most difficult task is to make others believe in your idea as much as you do. Your knowledge of your business and the passion for its concept reflects in how you pitch your startup. While learning comes from failures, your target should always be to ace your pitch the first time you deliver it. The idea of pitching your business to the experienced investors can be quite daunting. You are standing in front of the people who can look right through you and your words. Any mistakes or misinformation can ruin the opportunity of a successful investment.

If you have watched a few episodes of the Shark Tank, you would know how brutal investors can be with their probing and reprimanding. While their harsh words can be quite painful, the more disappointing part is when you are not able to get the investment you want.

Regardless of all the internal and external forces, favoring and non-favoring odds, it is your perfect pitch that can win the investors over. What you need to focus on is how you can craft the perfect pitch that has the thinnest chances of being turned down by potential investors. Here are the tips that will help.

7 Tips to Craft and Deliver the Most Successful Business Startup Pitch

1)    Keep Your Pitch Short

Do whatever it takes—hire professionals or spend hundreds of hours brainstorming—but come up with a shortened, succinct and most effective version of your pitch. Don’t make your investors yawn. Split your pitch into three to four different phases and transition through them smoothly. For example, split your pitch into four parts that could look like this:

  • Tell the story how it started.
  • Explain clearly what your product/service is.
  • Give out numbers i.e. revenue, sales, profits, losses etc.
  • State the size of the investment you are looking for and explain what the purpose for which you need the said amount.

So, you could give 2 and half minutes to every part and complete your pitch in 10 minutes. Increase the time for the section which you believe needs more attention.

2)    Be VERY Clear about Your Product/Service

One of the biggest mistakes that startup teams make is not being able to explain the idea they are selling. It can often happen when you divide your product/service into multiple sections with each section solving a different problem. If you are not able to explain your product/service clearly, it is an indication of one of the two problems or both: 1) you have not worked on your pitch and 2) you don’t know your service/products very well yourself. As soon as the investors feel lost during your pitch, consider the opportunity lost too.

3)    Know Your Target Market and Product’s Uniqueness

Many entrepreneurs’ pitches have turned into nightmares because of this particular point. It is like an interviewer asking you, “Why should we hire YOU?” There might be many other products similar to yours in the market without you knowing about them. What you have to know is what makes yours unique/different.

You must also know the market you are targeting with your product. Keep in mind that investors are often not interested in products that only target a niche market. Take the example of selling Christmas trees that only sell in the Christmas season—indicates a niche market, a limited product.

4)    Know Your Numbers

If you have not done your homework on your numbers, you have no chance of getting an investor interested in your product. It’s sad but true. In fact, some investors are only interested in numbers as they believe it’s the numbers that tell the real story, not the business owner him/herself. Know your revenues, sales, losses, incomes, etc. Make sure you know your profits and revenues regarding months, quarters and years. If they ask you how much profit you made in last three months, you must come up with an answer immediately.

5)    Be Clear on How You Intend to Spend the Money

This section is where the investors will gauge how trustworthy you are and how good you are as a person in the leading position for your business. Of course, if you want money for your business you must also know where you are going to spend it. A few things that investors are trying to find out by asking “how you are going to spend the money” are as under:

  • You aren’t asking for money just because you haven’t been able to take a paycheck from your business.
  • You are not going to use the money to pay for debts and old investments.
  • You are not going to use the investment money for a business process that will not contribute to business’ growth and expansion.

If your demand for money ends up being for any of the reasons mentioned above, you are likely to be rejected for your investment.

6)    Show Your Passion

Barbara Corcoran, successful businesswoman and investor, says that she looks at the enthusiasm and passion of an entrepreneur for their business. She believes that you cannot fake passion. Whether you are pitching through an online platform or live in front of the investors, your passion can get them interested in your business even if it is not something they have done before.

7)    Choose the Right Platform

In today’s digital world, you can gather funds from investors through an online platform, which is the most popular and successful way for entrepreneurs to gather funds for their start-ups. However, when it comes to choosing the platform, you must pick one that has a reliable network of investors, significant traffic, reputable online image and great exposure for startups. One that fulfills all these requirements and more is Funded. Funded is currently one of the best and most reliable platforms for startups, especially when it comes to angel investors.

Final Word

As a startup, the presence and preparation of your competitors might be intimidating at first, but that’s what you need to change about yourself. Your competitors might have reached to a bigger network of investors, more inventory and better technologies to support their mission, but what can make the difference is your passion and confidence in your startup pitch.

Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Wreno Funded $5M to Leverage New Markets and Technology for Home Evaluation Solution

Home Evaluation

Wreno is a Scottsdale, AZ-based provider of an end-to-end home evaluation and maintenance service platform for iBuyers, REITs, and Prop Tech companies. The company’s platform assisted with ML and computer vision. They are allowing gig-workers to upskill to provide faster and more accurate home estimations and information collection at ranking while optimizing fragmented local trade businesses. Additionally, it offers adjacent repair, maintenance, and renovation services, thereby providing technologies that allow real estate companies to recruit more efficiently and onboard, train, and deploy their own internal home evaluation professionals and vendors at scale.

Wreno was funded $5 million led by Lerer Hippeau with participation from Fifth Wall, Owl Ventures, and NFX, as well as angel investors such as Vikas Choudhary from Porter and Alexey Dubov and Sam Ruben from Mighty Buildings. They plan to employ the new funding to scale into new markets across the US, leverage new technologies, produce new service offerings for customers, and improve the platform’s current machine learning capacities.

Wreno launched in 2021 by Charlotte Schell and Mark Barton, two former Zillow workers with comprehensive experience in business and real estate. The company has operated with some of the country’s largest institutional real estate companies across five states, connecting them with skilled workers and trade partners to help maintain, repair, renovate, and evaluate tens of thousands of homes.

The workforce shortage has resulted in costly delays and unfulfilled projects, representing a significant pain point for institutional homeowners. The company is managing this underserved demand by skilling new labor supply and leveraging machine learning with end-to-end software solutions to deliver more precise home evaluations and data collection at scale. In addition, the platform optimizes fragmented local trade businesses to provide adjacent repair, maintenance, and renovation services.

Isabelle Phelps, Partner at Lerer Hippeau, said the rapidly growing iBuyer, REIT, and proptech markets had constrained by labor. Wreno’s end-to-end platform opens labor supply for those companies while bringing efficiencies and improved customer experience to the market. Wreno upskills gig workers and operates technology to provide quicker and more reasonable measures and services, pulling together the proper mix of software and vendors to support repair and maintenance for businesses at ranking.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Fair Square Medicare Funded $15M to Automate the Healthcare System for Seniors

Healthcare

Fair Square Medicare is a San Diego, CA-based developer of a personalized Medicare guide intended to aggregate healthcare insurance plans. The company’s guide provides programs per the client’s zip code, and the data is directly collected from the Center for Medicare Services (CMS), enabling users to choose the suitable insurance plan per their needs.

Fair Square Medicare was funded $15 million led by Define Ventures with additional participation from Slow Ventures, YCombinator (YC), and angel investors. The new funding intends to scale its platform to become a full-service healthcare navigator for seniors and to be technology-enabled to assist seniors with more parts of their healthcare journey.

Fair Square Medicare concentrates on enlightening instead of selling seniors and using algorithmic intelligence to sort and offer the most-relevant Medicare plans based on their budget and priorities, regardless of commission. Its platform also boasts a web portal that allows users to take advantage of their available benefits.

The company currently helps thousands of seniors navigate available Medicare coverage options. It has retained 94% of its customers yearly, compared to traditional brokerages, which may lose up to half. Fair Square also has a 95 net promoter score, compared to the national brokerage average, which can be as low as 10.

The company plans to launch new services that assist seniors with their healthcare journey. As well as devote resources to rolling out the digital services. Including seeing and scheduling appointments with select providers, setting up annual preventive health and dental benefits, finding the lowest available price on their prescriptions, providing access to digital health services to help them manage chronic conditions, and more.

They also seeking to partner with more healthcare-insurance carriers. It also intends to launch retention offers, giving them insight into what behaviors make members stick around.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Sofy Funded $7.75M to Expand the Testing Platform Capabilities for Mobile Applications

Mobile Applications

Sofy a Seattle, WA-based developer of no-code testing software designed to enable dashboard functionality testing for mobile application development. The company’s software operates artificial intelligence-based trainable robots. To concentrate on iterative applications expansion, manage a portfolio of applications and comprehend how to pile up against the competition. Stimulating mobile application developers to test, deploy and observe execution, dependability, functionality, and user experience.

Sofy was funded $7.75 million led by Voyager Capital with participation from PSL Ventures, GTMFund, Revolution, and other angel investors. The company will use the latest funding to expand the platform’s capabilities to serve web and API functions and its current ability to test mobile applications.

The thirty-five-person startup was co-founded in 2016 by Hamid and Hyder Ali, who spent most of their professions in engineering leadership roles at Microsoft. They are joined by Usman Zubair, another previous Microsoft engineer who created several software companies.

Sofy’s patented tech can run diagnostics on both iOS and Android apps. As a result, developers and quality assurance professionals can test the performance of their mobile applications, create automation, review performance results, and diagnose visual quality and network issues. Moreover, they can do all this without writing a single line of code.

Developers might start at Sofy’s analytics capacities, which attempt to quantify dev performance and productivity. But Hamid launches them as a net good because, in his eyes, they can lead to more rapid release cycles.

Sofy moves head-to-head with companies like BrowserStack, which offers a similar application testing platform. Autify and Waldo also compete in space. However, Sofy will look to stay ahead of the competition with new features, including the capability to test applications for augmented and virtual fact peripherals.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Small Businesses Must Understand What Marketing Means

Small Business Marketing

The success of a small business depends greatly on how effectively it markets itself, its products and its services. The real challenge with marketing is that it is one of the broadest concepts that any businessperson and entrepreneur have to deal with. Every business has its specific marketing needs, and yours does too. If you have a business, you must understand marketing in its depths and the many techniques that will help your business grow and expand. A lot of the business owners believe that having a website and doing some seasonal material marketing is enough for them, but they are wrong.

Marketing has completely changed in the modern times with “digital” being the main focus. A conventional approach towards marketing will not help you achieve the goals you have set for your business.

Understand the Concept of Marketing Mix

Before you start marketing your business, you have to understand the concept of the marketing mix. Marketing mix consists of price, product, promotion, and place. While many other factors have been added to the mix recently, these four Ps remain the strongest ones to date. If you can understand the concept of the marketing mix, you will ensure allocating strict budgets and still getting the best ROIs from your marketing campaigns. You must bear in mind that spending too much on marketing does not mean you will always be successful.

Your successful marketing strategy has to be a mix of the four Ps. Before you start promoting a product, you must know the product is complete and in an acceptable form. Once the product is complete and you want to promote it, you have to make sure you promote it in the right place. You don’t want to be selling air conditioning units to the people of Siberia. Now, even if you created a great product and are promoting it in the right place, you won’t be able to sell it well if you haven’t priced it right.

You understand at this point that you have to pick every “P” of the marketing mix one by one and see if your strategy touches all of them. An important point to remember here is that the concept of the marketing mix is not limited to the “planning” phase of your marketing efforts. Even when you have executed your marketing plans, you have to keep measuring these four factors. If your efforts are not yielding any profits or positive ROIs, look at the four factors and try to find out which one has not been executed properly. Maybe you are promoting the right product at the right place but to the wrong people.

Base Your Marketing on Data

If you don’t know already, the more relevant and popular term than marketing is data-driven marketing among marketers. It is clear now that marketing without data is less effective and less practical in the modern times. Today, you have dozens of different tools to collect data about your target audience. You use these tools because the data you collect gives you deep insight into your market, what your customers want and what puts them off. In the online world, the process of data collection starts from your website. On your website, the data you can collect include the demographics of your visitors, their recent interests, their path to reach your website, etc.

There are other means of collecting data about your customers. The thing is that you will collect data from many different channels and in many different formats. Being able to view this data in one place and taking effective action on it is what the real challenge is. Companies are now looking for solutions to manage their digital marketing campaigns in one place, regardless of the nature of those campaigns. Data-driven marketing also allows you to create more personalized campaigns that are more effective in persuading your customers to use your products/services.

Look at the Right Numbers

One huge mistake that many small business owners make is focusing on the wrong numbers. You might have a great website, a strong marketing strategy and a lot of data to target your efforts in the right direction, but you can’t get any benefits until you look at the right numbers. Looking at the right numbers means that you measure the success of your marketing efforts by keeping up with the most important KPIs (key performance indicators). For you to measure the KPIs, you must set associate goals and targets with your marketing campaigns.

So, when creating a landing page for your product and get a lot of visitors on that page, it does not mean anything to you unless you are measuring some KPIs. In the case of a landing page, your most important KPIs will be the number of visitors, number of converted visitors and the sources from where the visitors are coming. Now, focusing on the wrong number would mean you are looking only at the number of visitors coming to your landing page every day. The number of visitors is only telling you that your marketing efforts have been successful enough to bring the visitors to the landing page. But how does that benefit you in any way if you don’t earn anything from those customers?

That’s where you have to measure the conversion rate. The conversion rate will tell you how much you are making from the visitors that are coming to your landing page. By focusing on conversion rates, you will put more money towards marketing campaigns that are bringing the most potential traffic, i.e., the traffic that’s converting the most.

Now, no matter how benefiting it is to focus on your conversion rates, it is still only one side of the picture. The right numbers here are your acquisition costs. If you spend on every acquired customer is $100 but you are obtaining a value of only $20 from that customer, this type of marketing is not good for you. You always have to look at positive ROI, i.e., your returns on the investments must always be higher than the amount of money you have invested in a marketing campaign.

Conclusion

So, you know at this point that marketing is a profound concept and you have to understand it in its depths to it successfully. Large companies spend millions of dollars every year on just marketing. They must find some value in this activity to spend that much money towards it. On the other hand, small business owners can often ignore the importance of marketing. They are always focusing on short-term progress and return. If they don’t see any significant results quickly, they stop spending on marketing and start looking for faults and shortcomings of their products/services.

It will pay off in the long-term to start using the right marketing tools right from today. Keep in mind that marketing tools are designed to handle different phases of marketing. While some tools help you market your products and services, others are more analytical. Another category is of tools that help simplify the use of both the types of tools. If you are thinking of starting a business or have set the foundation for a startup already, be sure to give marketing the attention that it deserves.  

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Abridge Funded $12.5M to Automate the Medical System and Increasing Patient Satisfaction

Medical

Abridge is a Pittsburgh, PA-based healthcare application developer planned to bring context and knowledge to every medical conversation. The company’s application operates machine learning to offer an audio-based system to record and summarize medical discussions and bring context and meaning to them, enabling users to follow through with the doctors’ recommendations and stay updated.

Abridge was funded $12.5 million led by Wittington Ventures alongside participation from existing investors like Union Square Ventures and UPMC Enterprises. In addition, new investors included Whistler Capital, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio, and other strategic angel investors.

Abridge plans to use the funds to have the structure of a seamless solution and summarize information from any medical conversation, making it easier for systems to reduce provider burnout while also increasing patient satisfaction.

The company founded in 2018, Abridge has offered a consumer-facing app that patients can use to record their medical conversations. Each recording transcribed, powered by AI and machine learning. The app also defines key medical terms for users and highlights the next steps of care based on the provider’s plan for a given patient. 

Dr. Shivdev Rao, CEO, and co-founder of Abridge, said, Abridge is the solution he always wanted for himself, as a physician and a patient. This AI-based service leverages conversations he had with his patients to draft not only his documentation but also the capability to send detailed care plans to them and improve the quality of their care.

Now, the startup is launching an enterprise solution for providers. It can combined with electronic medical records systems and used for telemedicine appointments via an API. Providers can record any medical conversation—whether with a patient or another care team member—and, within minutes, receive a transcript. The AI service also summarizes the most medically relevant information in a doctor’s note format that the provider can verify and input into a medical record. It can also share that summary with the patient.

The goal is to reduce provider burnout and increase patient satisfaction. The platform has been trained on more than 1.5 million medical encounters, the company says, and been used by 2,000 clinicians so far. In addition, Abridge has current and upcoming partnerships and pilots in place with other prominent health systems, including each of the top three hospitals, payers, and pharmacies, as well as a Fortune 5 healthcare company.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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How to Create Future Business through Bitcoin

Bitcoin

Why choose cryptographic techniques?

The most well-known cryptocurrency is called Bitcoin, and it was made for it that created blockchain technology. A bitcoin is a form of money like the U.S. dollar, but it is digital and employs encryption to control the creation of new currency units and to verify the transfer of funds.

Cryptography is used all the time in our everyday lives. For example, we use it to safely send passcodes for shopping online placed above a white complex system. The cryptosystem is also used to store your username and password on bank servers and in email clients. In our Internet – of – things world, cryptography protects all information sent, verifies people and devices, and connects devices.

Security flaws in critical infrastructure can be caused by weak or unrecognized cryptography. In addition, brand equity is eroded because of the public’s interest in publicly disclosed data. Therefore, keeping an eye on how cryptography is deployed and handled in the modern workplace is necessary.

Cryptocurrency types

1. Ethereum (ETH)

2. Tether (USDT)

3. USD Coin (USDC)

4. Binance Coin (BNB)

5. Binance USD (BUSD)

1. Ethereum (ETH) – Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain-based platform that safely sets up a peer-to-peer network that runs and verifies application code, called smart contracts. Intelligent contracts let people do business without a centralized authority they can trust. Utilizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the native Solidity scripting language, developers may create decentralized applications on Ethereum. Competent contract developers who used Ethereum benefit from a vast ecosystem of developer tools and recognized best practices that have developed over time as the protocol has matured.

2. Tether (USDT) – According to the market cap, Tether is the third-largest cryptocurrency. Some economists, including a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve, are concerned about this.

Stablecoins, like Tether, is a relatively new concept. To avoid the high volatility associated with most cryptocurrencies, these digital currencies are linked to tangible assets like the U.S. dollar to maintain a stable value. For sample, Bitcoin beat an all-time high of about $65,000 in April before its value tripled over the following two months.

Tether was made so that it would always be worth one dollar. As a result, although the value of many other cryptocurrencies often changes, the price of Tether is usually equal to $1.

3. USD Coin (USDC) – USD Coin (USDC) is a stable digital currency tied to the U.S. dollar.

USD Coin is a regulated stablecoin that runs on blockchain technology. It was released in 2018 by Centre, a group started by Circle and Coinbase.

Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is tied to another asset, like a fiat currency, a commodity, or even another crypto coin. For example, USD Coin wants to stay at the same value as the U.S. dollar.

Stablecoins like USDC are used differently than cryptos whose prices change, like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH). The only reason for this cryptocurrency is to be a stable store of value, not an asset that, in theory, gets more valuable over time.

4. Binance Coin (BNB) – BNB is a cryptocurrency (token) issued in 2017 by Binance. Between the 26th of June and the 3rd of July, it was published and released for the first time via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) crowdfunding campaign.

The native coin of the BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain, BNB fuels the BNB Chain ecosystem. One of the world’s most widely used utility tokens, BNB may be used in various applications and use cases and traded like any other cryptocurrency.

BNB reduces its entire supply to 100,000,000 BNB via an Auto-Burn method.

5. Binance USD (BUSD) – Binance created the 1/1 USD-backed Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin in collaboration with Paxos, as well as the New York State Department of Financial Services has authorized and controlled it (NYDFS)

Although USDT has enormous trade volumes, it is not fully supported by cash reserves and has run into reputational problems. BUSD, in contrast, has undergone more thorough auditing procedures and operates on numerous blockchains. As a result, both two currencies offer quick transaction speeds and affordable fees.

Positive or negative? The potential benefits of using cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrency’s many benefits

Some firms could benefit from using cryptocurrency. Among the benefits:

1. Many cryptocurrency transactions are rapid and straightforward. Bitcoins can be transferred from one digital wallet to another using a smartphone or computer.

2. For cryptocurrencies to exist, a public ledger known as the blockchain must record every cryptocurrency transaction. There is a way to keep someone from spending coins they don’t possess, manufacturing clones, or canceling transactions. This means there are no transaction costs because there are no intermediaries to deal with. Payments in cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular, especially among large corporations and industries such as fashion and healthcare.

Risks of using cryptocurrencies

There are some downsides to adopting cryptocurrencies for a company:

It is possible to remove your crypto money or lose your virtual wallet. Additionally, websites that allow you to store your cryptocurrency remotely have had thefts.

Some people don’t believe converting “actual” money into Bitcoins is safe because the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins might fluctuate greatly.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) does not supervise the bitcoin market; thus, there are no regulations to safeguard your company.

It may lose value and turn worthless if businesses or customers switch to another cryptocurrency instead of yours or stop utilizing digital currencies altogether.

Exchanges for cryptocurrencies are susceptible to cyberattacks, which might result in a permanent loss of your money. In addition, Bitcoin is vulnerable to fraud. People are frequently duped into making such transactions by scammers using websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

How to Implement Bitcoin into Your Business

Around the world, businesses and diverse brands are beginning to use cryptocurrencies, notably Bitcoin, for transactional and operational needs. Even if its value is unstable, more and more individuals are becoming aware of its benefits. The methods listed here can help you incorporate bitcoin into your operations and start reaping its benefits if you own a business and wish to start accepting it.

What You’ll Need to Get Started

If you want to accept and move any cryptocurrency, you must have the following:

Wallet for Cryptocurrencies

Because cryptocurrency is a form of electronic cash, you’ll also need a digital wallet to store it. There are a variety of cryptocurrencies that you can use to pay for your services. Use a digital currency wallet that can keep many currencies. Banks that accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can also be linked to your cryptocurrency wallet.

The Bitcoin Address

As with all bitcoin wallets, your wallet has a unique built-in address. Numbers and letters make up the code. Wallets for digital currency have a function that allows users to generate Q.R. codes from their digital money. Payouts can be made to this address or Q.R. code by sharing it with others. A transaction can’t be canceled or reversed once it’s been sent because of the technology. Refunds cannot be requested either.

The Secret Code

The digital access to your bitcoin wallet is coded into your private key. Your bitcoin wallet’s private key is also unique; if you lose it, you won’t be able to access it. It is possible to set up an optional password for some wallets. If this is the case, you should keep your private key on a USB flash drive or similar storage device.

The Most Suitable Ways To Use Cryptocurrency in Your Company

1. Paying Your Employees with Cryptocurrency Is One Way to Use Cryptocurrency in Your Business – Paying your employees with cryptocurrencies and then converting them into fiat cash can be done at any time by the business owner. The rate might be frozen depending on an employee’s salary. When converting digital currencies, you can utilize the current market value. Payroll payments to employees might begin on a specific date.

Business owners can help employees decide how much of their earnings they’d like to accept in fiat cash and how much would be in cryptocurrency. Because everyone’s financial situation is unique, it’s preferable if employees have some input on how much they receive. Employees will likely take up to 20% of their wages in bitcoin.

As a business owner, you may also talk to your employees about what kind of cryptocurrency they prefer. Employees’ risks should be considered while considering cryptocurrency. To introduce students to digital money, they can use numerous methods and tools to convert digital currency to fiat currency.

2. Create your Bitcoin Company – Incorporating digital money into your company website is possible because of the variety of alternatives available. If you own a retail shop and accept payments online, you may introduce your clients to a new type of cashless payment by offering bitcoin as a payment option. Such considerations will aid in your search for the best solution for your business.

Pay Manually

Clients can use your public address or Q.R. code to make payments. As a result, the digital currency you purchase will be delivered immediately to your online wallet. Numerous wallets have detailed instructions for those who don’t know how to do this.

Summarize

Investors are reaping the benefits of adopting cryptocurrency since it is money. In addition, businesses are beginning to accept it as an alternative to fiat cash because it has lower transaction fees. In the modern world, there are more options than ever to encourage customers and employees to pay with cryptocurrencies. The gradual transition from cash to digital money will benefit everyone.

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Locket Funded $12.5M to Release New Photo Sharing Interactive Features with Friends and Family

photo

Locket, a Los Angeles, CA-based developer of a mobile-advertising and photo sharing application. The company delivers advertising on users’ lock screens, delivering content whenever they unlock their phones and providing deals, trailers, and opportunities for engaging with commerce sites.

The Locket was funded $12.5 million led by Open AI CEO Sam Altman with participation from Sugar Capital and Costanoa Ventures, and additional strategic investment from Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo and other angel investors. The new funds will fuel continued hiring efforts and product development as the company expands its community and prepares to release a steady flow of new interactive features to strengthen connections with friends and family further.

The app launched by Matt Moss, a former Apple Worldwide Developer Conference student scholarship winner and recent UC Santa Barbara grad. Moss created Locket as a personal side project for his girlfriend to capture and share a natural moment of his day with her. Moss’s friends had questioned if they could use the app with their friends and family, behind which Moss publicly opened Locket on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store momentarily after.

The Locket created to make people feel more intimate with the 10-15 people in their lives that matter the most while delivering a simple release from doomscrolling and algorithmic feeds. The widget lets you add up to 20 people to your home screen. This number is the natural limit for Locket’s core premise of focusing on your closest connections.

Currently, the team consists of three core members. However, they are planning to hire new talents to help continue expanding Locket to lead the social space to strengthen the close relationship. The Locket Team is excited to unveil additional features in the coming months.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Who we are:  Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com

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Business and Start-Up Funding

Business

How to Get Angel Investors Interested: The idea is to have a sound business model that can be demonstrated by a business plan to have merit with goals of actions on how the model will get to point A to B with the funds provided by the angel investor or venture capital.

1: Have a concept, service, or style of doing business that is new or disruptive to the industry. This can be a service product or even an existing one, creating a unique advantage over the competition. If it is something more standard like investing in a flipping house, you can find how you may be unique to other house flippers. If you want an investor for a franchise, you can give work experience or know how to set you on top with location and research invested into the franchise, so it shows it can be a success from the start.

2: Invest in a Business Plan and Pitch Deck. Investors and banks like to see you have some plan to get from point A to B and an exit strategy for the investors’ money. Business Plans can organize your startup or exist by including major elements like Mission Statements, Distribution Channels, Corporate Structure, Marketing Research, and Financial Proformas. Pitch Decks are the visual aid that can paint a picture and a concept flow in a digital format.

3: Don’t price yourself out of the deal, but don’t give in too much. Any Angel Investors know it has to be a win-win. So, spend time wisely getting some model company financial comparisons and values on how the new capital will create a new deal on the business once everything is in place and moving.

4: Chose your platform for getting your pitch out there: You can go with crowdfunding, which can be very effective in some ways. You can raise many investors but also risk not meeting your capital requirements. You can choose a platform with only accredited investors and reach out with a posting and support. This can effectively see profiles available of investors in the industry and reach out directly or through the platform, depending on the forum. This can effectively raise capital from only one source and help provide valuable synergy and even external promotion of your new business.

Planning and patience are essential when pitching an Investor or Venture Capital. Even down markets and economies can be the best time to launch. You may get more interest and less competition as investors are looking to make equity stakes in the following future successes!

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Shypyard Funded $3M for New Product Features to Accelerate Merchant Brands Sales

Brands

Shypyard is a New York City and Taipei-based. The operator of a digital marketing platform intended to offer business planning for modern brands. The company’s platform uses advanced analytics and intelligence to integrate sales and inventory data in one place across every channel and third-party source. In addition, it provides pre-built automation templates for multiple task automation, enabling modern omnichannel brands to grow and face economic uncertainty through better business planning.

The Shypyard was funded $3 million led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, Position Ventures, and other angel investors. The company plans to employ the new funding to hire talent, expand the development of new products and features, and accelerate the onboarding of new customers.

Dan Li established the company in 2021 with Samping Chuang while working at LinkedIn. His younger sister wanted to start an e-commerce business selling jewelry but didn’t know how to do it. So, he went to business school, and as he learned more about the e-commerce market and spoke with others, he shared his sister’s problem.

Tapping into Chuang’s expertise working at a considerable Shopify agency in Japan, they started Shypyard to construct supply chain planning tools, including inventory, supply, demand, and replenishment, to grow brands. So, they reduce the number of consistent stock-outs, inventory tying up cash, and difficulty predicting and forecasting what list to have.

Now, as many upstart brands and entrepreneurs face economic uncertainty – some for the first time in their brands’ history – they must adopt fully-integrated tools like Shypyard for inventory, supply, demand, and replenishment planning.

The Shypyard is democratizing access to planning tools for entrepreneurs because those small businesses also don’t have the professional teams to implement the tools. By targeting that small merchant niche with easy and simple tools.

By delivering merchants factual, integrated planning tools for inventory, supply, demand, and replenishment, Shipyard helps alleviate the most common and costly pain points – consistent stock-outs, too much stock tying up cash, and difficulty predicting and predicting and forecasting, to call a few.

By: K. Tagura

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