Nomi co-founder Cory-Capasso

Corey Capasso, founder of Nomi co-founder Cory Capasso, recently wrote in the US tech blog Business Insider, describing how the company raised 3 million dollars in just 13 days.

The following is the full text of this article:

While most of you were watching the 34 street Miracle on vacation (Miracle on 34th St), my buddies and I were busy raising money. In just 13 days, we raised 3 million dollars. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it?

From the first meeting to the completion of the funding round, the formal process did take only 13 days, but the facts were much more complicated. Laying the groundwork for fund-raising requires years of hard work, long-term relationships and even a lot of luck. Here's how we got the money out of the way, and what we did to fund it.

-Build a good relationship with your team: Surround yourself with co-founder and advisors who can complement your expertise and not just on paper. Every co-founder of Nomi has been making money for investors, and we have created 6 start-ups and successfully sold 4 of them. The three of us have so far been working to develop CRM (Customer relationship Management) solutions, and unite around a simple dream: if the retailer does not know that their customers are all over the network, mobile and store channels, then the relationship management part of CRM can not achieve very good performance. Nomi will help retailers integrate these channels into existing CRM solutions. To complement our team experience, we have employed strategic advisers, including some of the most prominent people in the retail industry: Benetton U.S.A, Loehmann and bonobos chief executives.

--to build a successful model: Mark Schuster, a venture capitalist at GRP Partnership, likes to say, "I invest in a line, not a point." "He means that it takes time to build a relationship of trust with an investor that takes years to build." Nomi's first investment meeting may have been held a day last December, but each co-founder has spent years building relationships with venture capitalists such as Bill Trenchad (Bill trenchard) and Chris Flaric (Chris fralic). In fact, the early venture capital company, first Round, almost invested in my previous corporate Spinback, which was later acquired by Buddymedia, a social media marketing service company. Another Nomi investor is a partner of Greycroft partners at Venture Capital, Ian Sigalow, a board member of Buddy Media. As these investors have been conducting due diligence in their previous experience, they have been prepared to act quickly when the opportunity to invest in Nomi emerges.

Let customers sell your products: the era of a business plan has ended, and the cost of developing a minimum viable version of the software has fallen to a historically low level, and corporate culture has reached unprecedented levels of acceptance of early-stage technology solutions. Before the first investment conference, we were doing more than just producing a prototype product; Before that, we had signed contracts with 20 clients and received a letter of intent from the largest retailer in the United States.

--Find a "catalyst": After receiving a signed letter of intent from one of the largest potential customers, we have started arranging an investor meeting. This contract proves that our products are feasible and can arouse the interest of investors. It may be equally important that the contract provides us with enough revenue to finance the company so that we do not need to seek immediate investment.

--Products to meet market trends: after getting in touch with investors, one important thing is to keep your product in line with a hot major trend. We know that the whole channel (Omni-channel) is a trend-compliant subject, but we can't even anticipate how fast the market will move forward. For all retailers, a full channel strategy for 2013 years is what they are prepared to do, making our company attractive to investors. But people want what they can't have, so they can get in touch only if you're not asking for money from investors. We started to get in touch with venture capital companies after we had gained market attachment and attracted a strong interest from angel investors. In our negotiations with investors, we have an important advantage over the fact that we have a senior team, existing customers and other investment options.

It is not easy to follow these recommendations, it will take years to accumulate, not a few days. But you have to believe that if I can do it, so can you.