Techboard is investigating adding to our dataset something that we think might be really valuable to founders, advisers and investors and would love your input.
One of the most often asked questions by founders preparing to raise capital is “how much equity should I give away” or “what is my company worth”. Another key question is “who would invest in an opportunity like mine”. Doing research on either or both of those questions can take a lot of time and Techboard is investigating adding a service to save founders time and money as well as to help them get a fair deal when they seek investment.
We already make our funding data available to paying subscribers but it is not really set up to make it easy for founders to help put together their list of potential investors to approach and it doesn’t he;p at all on the deal pricing front. We are investigating address these issues.
Background
Since 2017 Techboard has been collecting details of investments into Australian Startups and Tech Companies (we also collect info about other funding events as well). We are the only funding data provider with a focus on Australia and as a result we have the most comprehensive dataset available. Our focus has been on tracking who put what where, ie: which investors placed how much money in what company. We have collected this from publicly available sources including announcements made on Techboard’s announcements platform and from deals that are reported to us. Â
There is a key dataset of publicly available data that we have yet to tap... held by the Australian Security and Investments Commission (ASIC). For a fee anyone, yes anyone, can find out who invested in a company and in many cases can also work out the valuation given to the company by incoming investors... how the deal was priced. This is taken from the form 484s that must be lodged with ASIC by companies within 1 month of receiving investment. Doing these searches can also reveal the identity of investors that may not have been disclosedwhen the company announced its investment.Â
We think this might be a great opportunity to enable us to provide better insights into who is investing and in what, and at what cost. Undertaking this research is time consuming and expensive. If we initiate this service we can spread those costs across many customers making it this useful data much more accessible.
Why would we add this service?
Techboard was established to help grow the startup and tech ecosystem. Our data has helped StartupAus with its last two Crossroads Report. Our data has also been referenced in reports by Startup Genome, StartupWA, Austrade and others. Our data is also used and referenced by many government bodies around Australia from all three levels of government in four different jurisdictions who are mostly interested in monitoring the ecosystems.
We want to get closer to and more useful for founders, to save them time and money in the capital raising process. We can do this by helping them better identify potential investors but also to enable them to better prepare for capital raising.Â
Is there a Downside?
We do understand that there could potentially be a downside to taking this approach which is that the service could reveal publicly available but not very accessible data that companies and investors would prefer to keep quiet.
What could the service look like?
We would anticipate providing access via a webapp that can provide access to pricing and investor data on investments that match a profile entered in the app. We could also provide enterprise level access to the data as we currently do with our funding data.
So why might I be interested?
Entrepreneurs - One of the most often asked questions by anyone seeking to get investment is “how much equity should I give away” or “what is my company worth”. This service would enable us to deliver data that can provide critically valuable information to inform key decisions facing any founder seeking to raise capital. Just imagine if you could get a report on similar companies in your sector that have raised in the recent past with details of not only what they raised, who their investors were and how the deal was priced.
Advisors - Don’t limit your advice to deals you have inside knowledge of, reduce the work involved in tracking down comparable investments. We know better than anyone which companies have raised in which sector and from whom. With this new service we will be able to identify more of the investors and reveal more of the inside mechanics of the deals.Â
Investors - If we implement this service we will have much more useful information about private investments available that could help inform your own investment decisions
We would love to have your feedback on this proposed service and would appreciate it if you could complete the survey below.
