You can try and pitch your seed round exactly the way your investors want you to (in which case you're compared fairly with hundreds of other investment opportunities) or you can hack your seed round and get an unfair advantage. Which would you rather do?

1. How to hack your seed round
Alan Jones
@bigyahu
alan@bluechilli.com

2. Wait, what?

3. “Hack” = insider ways of
achieving your goal not yet widely
distributed

4. • Macworld magazine
• OnAustralia (ninemsn)
• Yahoo! Inc.
• HomeScreen Entertainment
• Bluepulse
• Pollenizer
• Startmate
• Blackbird VC
• BlueChilli
• Bugherd, Chromasun,
OtherLevels, Scriptrock,
Bugcrowd, That Startup Show,
Tzukuri
What do I know?

5. • HomeScreen Entertainment
• Bugherd
• Chromasun
• OtherLevels
• Scriptrock
• Bugcrowd
• That Startup Show
• Tzukuri
My seed round investments

6. BLUECHILLI PORTFOLIO SEED
ROUNDS

7. When
Typically how much in AU,
today
From whom
Your cash Day zero Limitless (you can always
earn more)
Well, duh
Friends and family Unvalidated idea $10-50k People who know you well
and trust you
Seed round Validated prototype or
MVP
$100-750k Experienced individual
investors
Series A Scale acquisition, improve
product, hire team
$750-$3M VCs, Private equity,
business partners, seed
round angels
What is a seed round?

8. • Do you have a brand, landing page and Google
AdWords account?
• Can you demonstrate a basic prototype or
minimum viable product?
• Do you have co-founders?
• Do you know your search volume and cost per
online acquisition?
• Do you know your addressable market
When am I ready to raise a seed round?

9. The seed investor funnel
Positioning
Acquisition
Conversion
Engagement

10. FINDING GOOD SEED
INVESTORS
Step one:

11. • Brings relevant experience
• Up-to-date experience
• Comfortable with uncertainty
• Doesn’t need care and maintenance
• Helps you raise Series A round
What makes a good seed investor?

12. • Media: StartupSmart, SmartCompany, Business
Insider, Slattery’s Watch
• angel.co
• linkedin.com
• Startup incubators and accelerators
• University entrepreneurship programs
• Startup industry events
Where do I look for seed investors?

13. • They attract seed investors looking for new talent
• Run by seed investors
• Guide you to prepare for seed
• Motivate you to get there
• Accelerators are an endorsement to investors
Apply for an incubator/accelerator

14. • Keep applying: persistence counts
• Follow them online
• Attend their events
• Buy alumni a coffee
• Try to buy their mentors a coffee
What if I can’t get in an
incubator/accelerator?

15. • Buy a premium account so you can approach
people directly
• Look for non-employees connected to relevant
startups (ex-employees make seed investors)
• Don’t ask to connect just to be connected, send
InMail instead
• Don’t do anything until your profile is complete
• Play it straight
How do I use LinkedIn?

16. • Don’t do anything until your startup’s profile
page is complete
• Look for investors in relevant startups and
follow them, then approach them a week or
so later
• Look for the followers of relevant startups
as a secondary target
• Find investors in relevant funds
How do I use angel.co?

18. • CRM e.g. Capsule, Podio, Google Docs
• Email marketing e.g. Mailchimp
• Buffer for social media
• Blog your journey with WordPress or Tumblr
Use easy, cheap tools to manage
relationships

19. • Time-poor and secretly like to be
• Too many approaches, not
enough good opportunities
• Summarise, summarise
• More of us follow than lead
• We’re action-oriented
• We have short memories
TL; DR
Hi Alan,
We are [Brand Name] and we are Uber for
Shopping Trolleys.
You invested in [Related Startup] and we want you
to join our $200k seed round as an investor.
We have interest from people you know including
Bardia Housman, Simon Hackett, Jindou Lee and
anticipate closing by end April. Bardia said to speak
to you.
First step is to check out our AngelList profile at
[URL] and Follow us there to get further updates.
I’ll contact you again in 2 weeks to ask if we can
meet to answer your questions.
Full contact details

20. SEED ROUND HACKS
From Startmate and BlueChilli founders

21. • Network; for the purpose of learning, making
friends, and building influence
• Investors talk to each other a lot. Buy people
coffee. If you're shy, learn not to be as shy.
Network your arse off

22. • Talk to founders who have just raised a seed
round (last 12 months) and ask them for coffee
• Go for intro but cold email works incredibly well as
they want to help you
• Ask what they did that worked
• Ask who’s a joker and who’s good
• If it goes well, ask for 1-3 intros
Other founders are your best friends

23. • Raise privately one on one first, before you pitch
to a large group. This way you polish your pitch
and can learn to answer the FAQs.
Don’t enter pitch competitions on day one

24. • Lock in that lead investor to help herd the group,
otherwise it will take much longer.
Don’t enter pitch competitions on day one

25. • Don’t open the round until you have some
commitment. When you open and “your round is
30% full” sounds way better than “we have spoken
to 25 angels and they are all still thinking”
Don’t enter pitch competitions on day one

26. • Have the terms ready and negotiate from there.
• Use StartMate term template to save legal cost.
Don’t negotiate from a blank sheet

27. • Get a sense for the size, frequency and total
portfolio
• Understand whether they’re fully allocated
Where are they at in the cycle?

28. • Ask their permission to add them to your
Mailchimp database
• Ask who else they can introduce you to
How do you wrap up?

29. • We aren’t investing for rational reasons
• Show us how we can help and we will
• More of us follow than lead. Find the leaders
• TL;DR
Remember