The Flowlie Times #54
Investor Pipelines, reasons investors passed on you, ESOPs, Q1 2024 venture overview, and more
Welcome to The Flowlie Times!
NEW: Investor Pipeline
Are you a founder currently fundraising? If so, our new feature is right for you.
Introducing Flowlie’s 1st release towards the Investor Relationship Manager - investor pipelines. You can now keep track of your fundraising process in an organized and fully customizable way, helping you close your round faster!
Articles we enjoyed:
1️⃣ 22 Reasons Your Investor Might Have Passed On You (According To 4 Leading VCs) - this is not your basic “no product-market fit” list of reasons and it is worth reading to understand the potential pitfalls you may be falling into. Have you considered:
Your customer references are sinking the ship
Your metrics are unclear or misleading
They’ve been burned before
You come across as un-coachable
2️⃣ Here is an informative guide to startup ownership. Learn about typical ownership across rounds, dilution, employee stock options pool size, and distribution. This is the best resource we found on the topic and want to share it with you!
3️⃣ Fresh off the press, Carta’s State of Private Markets: Q1 2024 is out now. Not much great news, so don’t get excited, but at least you will be informed of where the markets are at today.
4️⃣ Canva hits it out of the park again with their update focused on companies - big and small. Key features include a redesigned editor, Canva Enterprise for large organizations, interactive Canva Courses, specialized Work Kits, and streamlined Bulk Create. This is a masterclass in embedding AI into existing products to make them even more valuable.
Podcast highlight
Joe Orji, founder and CEO of Trustcrow joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss their latest $550K Pre-Seed Round, his lessons from real estate, and why international focus can be a competitive advantage.
Have a great week,
Mike from Flowlie