Getting Ready for Venture and Scale: Moving from Idea to Highly- Valuable Company

USAID Economic Security Program and Bank of Georgia are sponsoring an intensive for startups who want to learn how to move from start to scale, and what they need to have ready for successful funding and growth.

The event is hosted by Startup Grind Tbilisi, Catapult VC, and US Market Access Center and will occur at Stamba Hotel from 15:00-18:00 PM on June 15th.

The workshop is targeted to serious startups getting ready to fundraise for growth but is also open to earlier-stage founders who want to learn and set their sights high.

For a startup, raising venture capital funds is not the end but the beginning of your work. At each stage of fundraising you are committing to your investors to get to a next level of success and value. Understanding these stages and the view of VCs is important to align goals and convert venture investment into value.

WIth the financial downturn raising capital will become harder than in recent years. Join 3 top Silicon Valley investors with over 50 years of combined experience who have supported startups through the “highs and lows” of market cycles to learn what you need to be Venture-Ready to both raise funding and be ready to grow value.

The event will be open to extensive participant questions and discussion and is a highly-valuable opportunity for founders who want to grow great companies.

Topics will include:

Learning the Venture Alphabet (Panel and Discussion)

What you need to show at different stages of venture-fundraising:

Seed round, the signal that there is some interesting opportunity and that the team can deliver

A-round, what were results from seed funding, is there a model which can be scaled with investment

B-round, is the model proven and capital-efficient

C+ rounds to exit - what do acquirers look for when they buy companies, what is required to be a candidate for going public

From Start-up to Scale-up Lecture with Bill Reichert

How does your startup need to change to scale up? The problems you were solving at first give eway to a new set of problems which determine your growth and valuation.

Starting with the End in Mind

Different exit paths, how they bear thought early-on in a startup’s life.

What acquirers look for and why/why not to IPO

VC AMA -

What questions do you have about the fundraising process and venture readiness

Networking-

Final networking time among participants and speakers

The event will feature 3 top venture capitalists from Silicon Valley visiting Georgia under the program of Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency:

Jonathan Tower - Managing Partner @ Catapult VC, a top-tier Silicon Valley VC fund. At Catapult VC, they have distinguished themselves in backing very high-scale startups early. 23 of their early investments later became valued at a billion dollars or more each. This includes Jet.com (IPO, $3B), Dollar Shave club (IPO $1B) and 20 more.

Bill Reichert - Partner @ Pegasus Tech Ventures. Bill was the co-founder of Garage Technology Ventures (acquired by Pegasus Tech Ventures), with Guy Kawasaki. He himself founded 4 technology startups, out of which two went public in IPOs. He now is a Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures.

Marvin Liao - Partner @ Diaspora Ventures, Partner Gamegroove Capital, and Bad Ideas Fund. Marvin served as Partner at 500 Startups for 6 years where he created their flagship accelerator in San Francisco and invested in over 400 early-stage deals.