Andy Bruckschloegl is the CEO of Rtye, a B2B SaaS website analysis platform that businesses and agencies use to optimize for user experience.
In January 2021, they raised a €6.5M Series A from Octopus Development Capital, which is a part of the Software Investment Team at Octopus Ventures.
..We shared the same values, and had a common understanding of the market and the general business growth strategy..
Andy Bruckschloegl
During this episode of Deconstructing the Raise, we asked Andy about why he chose to work with Octopus Ventures, the challenges they faced closing the deal, and what they would do differently next time.
You should listen to the full episode for better context of the conversation but here are 3 really great takeaways..
Meeting their Investors
Interestingly, Andy met Octopus’s software investment team at the first ever SaaStock Remote in June ‘20. It was great to hear one (of the many) fundraising success stories that have come out of SaaStock events!
But, it shows that fundraising can take time. In Ryte’s case, 6 months had passed between their first conversation and signing a term sheet. This included 3 months of daily work to actually close the deal.
On this, Andy mentions that “fundraising isn’t about scaling anyway, it’s about building a good relationship”.
Building The Dream Deal Team
At Ryte, they created “The Deal Team” to leverage all expertise and knowledge in the team. While fundraising is usually a Founder driven activity, at Ryte the entire exec team had a hand in crossing that finish line. Delegated tasks included deck building, legal and information gathering.
There are a few key items that investors look at when assessing an investment opportunity.. such as growth rates, TAM, the vision, the founding team etc.
In Ryte’s case, Octopus took a deep dive into the total market opportunity and the company’s growth rates to identify their scaling opportunity.
Andy described this as “..with a good cost efficient set up, then if we put money on this system or machine, then it will grow a lot”.
Its better to be asked questions directly
Ryte used a two-deck approach. Deck 1 was a teaser with 18 slides and Deck 2 was a very comprehensive deck of 90 slides.
Thinking back, the advice is wouldn’t be to use Deck 2 again.
He cites the problem is giving out too much information starves you of the opportunity to address concerns and questions personally.
Andy mentioned that “it’s much better to answer questions directly and to strengthen the relationship during this conversation. That happened finally by accident with Octopus.”
Fundraising for your SaaS is a nuanced process and one that is changing all the time as the market matures.
Saying that, there’s a lot of value in learning from those that have done it before.
Listen to the full episode here.
#1 Deconstructing Ryte's €6.5M Series A