12.17.2014
VentureFund.io, a new early stage venture capital fund comprised of diverse group of serial entrepreneurs and investors who love building startups, today announced the introduction of Traction API™, a data-driven platform that frees founders from the requirement of pitching investors by letting their app’s data tell their story. VentureFund.io’s Traction API and accompanying dashboard provides entrepreneurs with the insights, guidance, and tools needed to better understand and increase the value of their early stage startup as they pursue product/market fit and demonstrate growth traction (i.e., qualitative evidence of customer demand).
VentureFund.io’s Traction API(TM) and accompanying platform provides early stage startup founders with free insights, guidance, and tools to better understand and drive the traction that’s needed to attract investment. VentureFund.io is a traction-focused software platform and early stage venture capital fund lead by a diverse group of serial entrepreneurs and investors who love building startups.
While funding has always been essential for success, the explosion of high-growth startups has created tremendous competition for venture capital. ‘Unicorn’ startups such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, and WhatsApp, which became billion dollar businesses in years versus decades, have made it clear that early traction is a key indicator of future success. As a result, angel and venture investors have come to expect traction before committing significant capital.
“Today, the name of the game for startups is traction. Most startups don’t fail because they weren’t successful at building a product, they fail because they aren’t successful at gaining traction, and growing users and revenues,” said Clarence Wooten, co-founder and managing partner of VentureFund.io. “As serial entrepreneurs and growth hackers, we leverage each startup’s data to provide founders with actionable insights and growth tips that help them accelerate their journey to traction while also providing a path to funding so that they’re free to focus on growing their business, not pitching it.”
Access to this early traction data helps VentureFund.io identify startups with exceptional growth prospects. “It’s a win-win. We aim to be helpful to all founders regardless of location, gender or background by providing growth tips and insights via the VentureFund.io dashboard that accompanies the Traction API™. Should a startup gain significant traction, we will more than likely pitch them,” said Wooten.
Startups are under no obligation to accept funding from VentureFund.io and use of Traction API™ will always be free.
“Our goal is to build a trusted relationship by assisting all founders with achieving the growth they need for their startup to demonstrate and realize its potential. In exchange, we hope to be the startup’s first institutional investor should their early traction, team and market data indicate significant potential.”
Build a Trusted Relationship Through Data
#Startups – Let your data do your pitching. Signup for VentureFund.io’s Free Traction API™ at http://www.venturefund.io – Gain traction. Get funded.
Entrepreneurs gain access to:
KPI Dashboard: While getting traction is always a grind, the Traction API is built to be helpful from the moment startup founders have built their app by helping entrepreneurs focus on the key performance indicators that matter most in their sector; providing actionable insights and recommendations based around 5 metric areas that define traction. Areas include user: acquisition, activation, revenue, retention and referral metrics.
Real-Time Valuation: Through analysis of startup traction, team and external market data, VentureFund.io’s algorithm approximates a “back-of-the-envelope” valuation of each startup, updating valuation as traction grows. Our valuation algorithm takes into account the startups growth data, team data as well as various external market factors.
Peer Benchmarking: Traction API provides anonymous peer benchmarking for startups to understand how their growth stacks up to similar startups in their sector, a valuable tool to evaluate current success, shape expectations and motivate increased growth.
Potential Funding: By connecting their web or mobile app to the Traction API, in addition to providing dashboard-based tools, insights and growth tips to help entrepreneurs measure and improve traction, through their data, entrepreneurs enable VentureFund.io’s partners to monitor their progress in real-time building a relationship for possible investment. VentureFund.io considers investment once entrepreneurs have a product in the market and have started to generate traction.
Privacy: The only people who will be able to view individual company data are authorized company designees and the partners at VentureFund.io unless entrepreneurs expressly provide permission to share this information with a third party in connection with a financing or evaluation of their startup.
venturefund.io
