Matt Ober: Raising Capital Right Now Is Hard & Not Getting Easier

Matt Ober, General Partner at Social Leverage will be speaking at the upcoming Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards. Mark Nov. 13 on your calendar for the must-attend gathering in the fintech industry!

This is a tough environment. You have to really want to start a company and you better be passionate about what you are building to thrive and survive. Raising capital is hard and not getting any easier.

As I prepare to go to NYC in November for the Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards, I am thinking about the current investment environment and the panel I will be speaking on: “Insiders on Capital Raising and Scaling: Strategies, Tips, and Examples.”

We invest in seed stage fintech and enterprise SaaS companies. We tell startups that they need to think about staying lean. Don’t expect to be able to raise another round of capital after your seed round. Be cautious about who you have on your cap table. Remember that not every company needs to be a unicorn to be a successful outcome. Building a company is a marathon, if you aren’t ready for a 10-year journey, you may want to rethink starting a company. In many cases this environment has been great for investors as we find passionate entrepreneurs who understand the scarcity of capital available and are eager to build real businesses. 

In most cases, we tell founders to figure out how to get to profitability. We are not in a grow-at-all-costs environment. Find customers early and design the product with their feedback. Sales, Sales, Sales- that is what will keep the company moving in the right direction. Technical debt happens and it’s something that’s unavoidable- live with it and deal with it down the road. 

Hiring is key. Hire great talent, and retain great talent. Know your team and make sure they know you. Don’t settle when it comes to building a team with the right culture and the right team members. Hire people smarter than yourself who fill gaps where you don’t have expertise.

Have a clean, concise, easy-to-understand deck. Practice your pitch. Have an answer to why your company is investable. Why is it VC investable? Make sure you understand the competitive landscape. Understand what other companies in the industry have raised. Where have they had successes or failures?

Have a vision of where the product will be in the next few years. What is the ultimate goal? Understand the goals of your investors. Are they the right fit or are they looking for a different type of company to invest in? Do they provide you value outside of just providing capital? Are they an expert in your industry or able to help you really accelerate a part of your business i.e. go to market, engineering, hiring, etc? 

As I think about the upcoming event and the panel, I think of some of the successful companies we have invested in recently and over the last few years and what makes them stand out. I look forward to sharing examples and talking more broadly about the current investment environment and specifically the seed stage venture space where our team at Social Leverage invests.
Matt Ober, General Partner at Social Leverage will be speaking at the upcoming Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards. Mark Nov. 13 on your calendar for the must-attend gathering in the fintech industry!

Matt is a General Partner at Social Leverage. Matt was most recently the Chief Data Scientist at Third Point where he built the data science, analytics, risk and technology platform used to enhance the firm’s investment capabilities in equity, structured credit, venture capital and cryptocurrency. Prior to joining Third Point, Matt was the Head of Data Strategy at WorldQuant and part of the WorldQuant Ventures founding team focused on private investments in fintech, data, and technology companies. Matt built out the entire data process within WorldQuant with employees spread out across the world, leveraging thousands of data vendors while also building an in-house web harvesting team. As an active angel investor for over 10 years, Matt brings his data and analytics expertise to each company with whom he partners. Matt holds a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation and sits on the board of governors for his alma mater, California State University Chico.