New $55M Fund to Help More Founders
+ Application Deadline is in 2 Weeks, How to Grow Your Startup, New Online Events
New Year, Same Goal: With More Resources to Help More Founders
Over the past 2.5 years, we've run 5 batches, invested in 65+ companies and 120+ founders (the total value of Iterative companies is now worth $1.2 billion) - and it feels like we're just getting started.
Recently, we closed a US $55M Fund II, and we're ready to put that fund to work. With more resources, we can help more founders in Southeast Asia - here are a few ways we plan to do so.
Larger Batches – We’ve always wanted to invest in more founders. With this fund, an internal team to support it and an exponential increase in applications, we can now do so.
Invest in Community – Although the Iterative Community is already vibrant, we want to take a more active role in bringing our community together.
More Programs – We had 10x the number of startups sign up for our Fundraising Bootcamp than we were able to accommodate. Our upcoming Validation Program has had so many sign ups that we had to change the format to accommodate more people. These programs give us the opportunity to work more deeply with founders outside of the program. We’re excited to work with more of you.
If you're working on something, regardless of how early or late, we encourage you to apply for the Winter 2023 batch. It starts Monday, 6 Feb, and the application deadline is Friday, 20 January. Applying before then guarantees that we'll review your application before the start of the new batch.
Applications that come after the deadline will still be accepted (we're always open!), but we can't guarantee we'll get to them in time. We'll do our best.
Ideas from Iterative
Brian Ma on Building SEA's Founder Ecosystem
Brian Ma was recently on BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast with Jeremy Au, where he shared more on…
Why we spend more time aligning with founders during the interview process - “We want to make sure we're fairly aligned with founders on what they're going to do within a three-month period to make sure that (1) it will be trajectory-changing, and (2) we know where to be helpful. This tends to give us good insights into how a founder executes.”
Myths on SEA founders - “A myth that comes to mind is ‘everything's a copycat’. But when you're in the region, you'll find that a lot of founders actually have deep insights on cultural differences.”
Why it's important to have a strong founder ecosystem - “A lot of people who haven't been founders don't realise that when you're a founder, it's an extremely lonely journey. You're rejected 99% of the time, and most of the feedback given to you is probably wrong. What people need isn't more people telling them what to do, but a very supportive ecosystem of other founders who have also failed, telling them what they did wrong, and how they would do it later on. That's the ecosystem we're trying to build.”
Watch the video podcast here.
How to Grow Your Startup (AMA with Hsu Ken Ooi)
We did a Substack AMA with Hsu Ken a few months back, where we got founders to ask him questions on startup growth. There were some great questions from founders (thank you!), and we decided to compile it in an article to help more people.
"What's the difference between good and bad growth? Is there a bad growth?"
Hsu Ken: Rather than good or bad, maybe I'll say more or less valuable growth.
There's certainly some types of growth doesn't retain. Typically that's doing something gimmicky to get people to sign up but they don't really care about what you're doing.
The other type of less valuable growth is expensive paid marketing that isn't really teaching you anything. I like paid marketing if you're early and trying to learn about your users or if you're later stage and can do it cost effectively (CAC > LTV or at least close)
"In the early stages, should startups prioritize growth over profitability? Which of the two do investors value more when evaluating a startup (if in case, growth and profitability cannot be achieved at the same time)?"
Hsu Ken: Generally, it's about growth. Investors care about (1) whether people want what you're building then (2) if you can build a successful business on top of it. If you don't have (1) then (2) is moot. It's rare (I can't think of a case) to see a product people really want but are unable to build a business on top of it.
"What is the right balance between rapid growth and strong unit economics as an early stage startup?"
Hsu Ken: Depends on how early stage the startup is, how rapid and how strong the unit economics. Assuming that you're very early stage, I wouldn't worry too much about the unit economics if you have good ideas on how you'd improve them if you needed too. The biggest risk to early stage startups is do people want what you're building? Unit economics is the question that comes after that which is can you make a business out of what you're building? The 2nd question is only interesting if the 1st question is true.
Obvious caveats are don't have such bad economics that it (1) invalidates your growth and (2) causes your company to die. Don't die!
Read the rest of the article here.
Join Our Upcoming Online Events
With the next batch starting soon, we're running a two-part series of online events to help founders understand more about the Iterative program.
Part 1: What Happens in the Iterative Program?
Founders often ask us how the Iterative program works - what do they go through in the three months program, how do Iterative partners help, what kind of transformation does a company go through, etc.
To help, we're hosting an online event to break it all down. Hsu Ken will be sharing what happens in the Iterative program, as well as what we've learned from running 5 batches over the past 2.5 years.
If you're curious how the Iterative program works, join us today.
Part 2: Getting Into Iterative
We've reviewed over 500+ applications for Winter 2023 batch alone - what makes an application stand out for us? On the flip side, what are the common mistakes we often see in applications?
It can be taxing to raise money for your startup, so we want to share more on what we're looking for when making investments and shed some light on best application practices.
Sign up for the livestream event here.
Welcoming More Companies to Iterative
Two new companies are joining Iterative's next batch, and we'd like to welcome them here:
Civils.ai
Founders: Stevan Lukic, Mirko Vairo
Civils.ai is a SaaS solution that maps spatial and geological data of cities around the world and makes designing construction projects easier for Civil Engineers. It aims to become the Google Maps of the underground.
Why Civils.ai joined us: “The challenge for us in the next six months is growing our product as fast as possible. We want someone near us that have done this before, and having the Iterative team's support is great.”
Why we're excited: “Before any construction project starts, lots of work goes into making sure projects are feasible. Feasibility engineers have to use multiple tools and collect data from dozens of digital/non-digital sources before even beginning to analyse a particular site. We think there’s a gap here to warrant a premium software solution and are excited in particular with Stevan and the team’s in-depth understanding of the user pain points.”
BuildBear
Founders: Dipesh Sukhani, Emmanuel Antony
BuildBear is a platform for testing dApps at scale. It provides users with their own private testnet to test their smart contracts and dApps, which can be forked from any EVM chain. It also provides a Faucet, Explorer, and RPC for testing purposes. BuildBear aims to be building an ecosystem for testing dApps at scale for the entire team.
Why BuildBear joined us: “During one of our calls with Brian Ma, we went in with a problem and a proposed solution. He made us look at the problem from a completely different angle that we never considered. That was the tipping point for us. There is so much to learn, and it taught us to think from a different perspective. It's rare to find yourselves in blunt, straightforward and effective calls. We also did our due diligence on Iterative, and everyone just gave fantastic reviews.”
Why we're excited: “Every piece of software requires testing. While we have largely sufficient tooling for software testing for Web 2.0, Web 3.0 testing infrastructure is still nascent, with most developers using open source or self built solutions. BuildBear is laser-focused on testing infrastructure after having struggled though it themselves and provide a customised node to allow developers to test at scale and ship products faster. Anything that makes development easier is worth building in our books.”
Correction: Under 'How to Grow Your Startup (AMA With Hsu Ken Ooi)', there's an error in this sentence: "I like paid marketing if you're early and trying to learn about your users or if you're later stage and can do it cost effectively (CAC > LTV or at least close)."
It should be 'LTV > CAC or at least close.' We've edited it in the original blog post and the Substack AMA here > https://iterative.substack.com/p/ama-on-how-to-grow-your-startup/comments.
Thank you @Dexter for pointing it out!