Having successfully raised capital for startups, Mbulelo Mpofana, co-founder of InvestSure and Charles Savage, CEO of the Purple Group, shares their advice on how to raise capital.
Advice from Charles Savage, CEO of the Purple Group
“You’ve got to do the dress rehearsal over and over again. It’s like anything in life, if you do it once you will be poor at it, if you do it twice you might be average, if you do it repeatedly you will get better at it.” Additionally Savage recommends continuously pitching your business in front of people. Practice is key and results in more confidence.
“Sometimes it feels like you are standing at the robot asking for money. It’s that hard. It’s that, that in turn opens you up.” He admits he does not enjoy raising money but it gets easier the more you do it and the more you understand the market you are raising money from.
Get on that stage! Start by pitching to your friends and family where you feel safe and also where you will get criticism from. When you feel ready and your pitch deck is spot on, then begin pitching to venture capitalists and private equity firms. You will get no’s and yes’s. Don’t get disgruntled at your first no. Understand why they said no and come back stronger.
Advice from Mbulelo Mpofana, Co-founder of InvestSure
We approached a large international reinsurer and pitched our idea. They backed the idea, supported our concept and gave us funds to explore the idea of InvestSure. Two years later we still have a partnership with them. This partnership has opened doors for us and provided a form of credibility to venture capitalists when we pitched to them and this resulted in us successfully raising over R10m for our startup.
We sat down for a virtual Q&A session with Mbulelo and Charles to discuss:
– How COVID-19 is affecting them,
– Where they see their businesses in 2 years from now,
– How to raise capital for a startup and more.
WATCH the full video here
