I'm in Berlin, Germany. Which VCs should I contact to raise the first funding round?

I'm both an active angel investor and entrepreneur who has recently raised capital. I'll start with what is standard in Silicon Valley and then apply various multiples and discounts where relevant. For an angel or early seed round, the current going rate is $3m-$5m pre-money via a capped note or priced round. Priced Rounds typically most often use the "Series Seed" docs and Convertible Notes typically are 18-24 month terms with a 15% discount. I don't mean to be argumentative but Marco is incorrect that valuation can be avoided by a capped note. And in general, there is no way to avoid setting a valuation except via an uncapped note, which is almost unheard of. Setting your cap and discount will have a significant impact on your cap structure, the same (and in some cases) worse than a priced round. This $3m - $5m range is what I'd call current market value in the valley for "ideation-stage" capital. This is that there is a team in place, typically some form of MVP and in some cases some very basic market data supporting the general thesis of the raise. In the other market I'm familiar with (Canada), the range for the same stage of capital is $1m - $3 with most being in between $1m and $2m and most preferring priced rounds over notes. These rounds rarely have a real lead since the raise is typically $500k or less, so if you price it reasonably, most (good) angels will accept the terms as is. The low and high end of the ranges are discounted and pushed by the credibility presented most often by the team (done it before, worked for a notable company, had some relevant success) or strong evidence of the thesis being correct. It's also the Founder's option to price the round at the top end of reasonable or provide what you might consider a discount, depending on the kind of investors you are courting. So while this is what I'm seeing as "current market conditions" there is price elasticity in any market. The best way you know if you've priced it right, is if people are buying. Any angel investor should be able to give you a conditional answer after the first meeting (subject to playing with the product, reading terms, meeting the rest of the team). Any angel investor in ideation stage capital who can't give you a yes, no or subject-to yes in the first meeting is not worth pursuing IMO. Any investor who can't close within 3 meetings or conversations won't close (9 times out of 10). Happy to talk to you about the specifics of where you're at, what might help you improve your odds and generally get you closer to the point where you're ready to raise.

I actually created a list when I was raising capital for my startup. Hope it is of use, I visited at least 1/2 of them so happy to give any directions on how to approach them. http://blog.tareasplus.com/100-fondos-de-capital-de-riesgo-en-silicon-valley/ Happy to jump on a call :)

Yes, I did exactly that a few years back. A friend of mien and I launched a site with minimal functionality that was really just a landing page. We offered the opportunity to pre-buy a year's subscription to the service by allowing users to set their own pricing. Within the first 24 hours of the site going live, we had enough paying customers to validate the business and inform our iterative development cycle. Ultimately, we decided it wasn't a big enough business for either of us to get really excited about but it proves that it can be done. I also did that in my current business with a landing page that generated literally thousands of leads and hundreds of very qualified customers, which resulted in paid pilot contracts before the software was fully built. Build something that people actually *need* and you'd be surprised at what they're willing to do to get early access to it. Happy to talk about it in a call in more detail

In my experience, the longer sales cycle requires more attention. The metrics will be unique to your business, but you can't go wrong with these: Marketing & Sales Metrics Look at metrics that will help you scale and project growth, and then accelerate opportunity to close velocity #s and conversion rates of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of MQLs to sales qualified leads (SQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of SQLs to opportunities #s, time, and conversion rates of opportunities to sales Customer Success Metrics An ARR SaaS business may have a guaranteed 12 month customer lifespan, but that doesn't guarantee the customer actually uses the product and won't churn at renewal time. Measuring product usage will help you discover patterns that cause churn, increase the perceived value of the product, and improve the customer experience. Financial Metrics Each Reporting Period (I'd recommend monthly) look at Values & Rate of Change Customer Acquisition Cost Average Value of a Customer look at Values, % of total, & Rate of Change Revenue from New Subscriptions Revenue from Renewal Subscriptions At the early stage, businesses will see new Subscriptions significantly outpace renewals. As the business matures, the % of total ARR from New Subscriptions will begin to decline, assuming churn rates are good.

Hi. I'm a Business Intelligence consultant with most of my customers being call centers. There are definitely guidelines you can apply but it will be based on several factors. Your question references ratios, which I assume means you would like to know how many agents per customer. That number will vary greatly depending on a number of other factors including: -what is your ASA target (Average speed of answer)? -what percentage of calls should meet the ASA? -are their penalties below a certain threshold (if less than 80% of calls meet ASA in 24 hours, for example) -how long are calls waiting when they don't meet ASA? -what is the call distribution by day of week, time of day and holiday v. non-holiday. -what is the average call duration? -what is the % of calls requiring escalation or call back versus calls resolved on first contact? To simplify it though, the two most important (IMO) will be call volume and your target for ASA (assuming you aren't answering then putting them back on hold, etc). To simplify though, the top 3 are: ASA, Call length and call volume. Regardless of the size of customer base. A good reporting system that combines live metrics and daily/weekly/monthly analysis will help a great deal. Feel free to set up a call if you'd like to talk about this in more detail.