The Art of Startup Fundraising. Alejandro Cremades
and outside the way we are, the way we think, and the way we execute via the services of their company, Legacy Transformational Consulting.
I could not forget my two brothers-in-law, Evan and Zack Prive. Evan has shown me how to get out of my comfort zone by target shooting in the deserts of Nevada. Zack interned with us over the course of 2014 and was very helpful.
Carmen Posadas has given me great advice through the process of putting together this book. Her wealth of knowledge and experience as a successful author has provided a wonderful guidance in this journey. I still remember the dinner at a restaurant in Madrid in which Carmen encouraged me to move forward with writing this book, and for that I am very thankful.
Moreover, I would like to thank all the people who have been involved with Onevest since its inception, including employees, advisors, and investors. They have been always there to provide great feedback and I am very proud of everything that we have been able to build together as a team since we started this journey back in 2011.
I would like to especially thank the Onevest team and our former colleagues: Carol Lee, Carles Capell, Shahab Kaviani, Nathaniel Cotanch, May Sun, Drew Butler, Erica Duignan, Sonny Tulyaganov, Cristian Gonzalez, Jacobo Tarragon, Ben Center, Dasha Sukovatitsyn, Jeffrey Fidelman, Brooks Swinnerton, Kasia Whiteis, Israel Villanueva, Tiffany Tam, Mike Hughes, Cena Crane, Lisa Lovallo, Jonathan Block, Greg Kuwaye, Michael Whitehouse, Tim Houghten, Kammy Wood, and Culin Tate.
Thank you Barry Shereck, for being a rockstar CFO and for spending countless hours and weekends figuring out “where the bacon is” from a business perspective. You have been truly a gift and a great addition to the board and the team. I will forever treasure those long weekends that we spent at your house figuring things out.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge Onevest's board members: Ted Vucurevich, Javier Santiso, and Benjamin Coppel; and our advisors: Sangeet Choudhary, Anyndya Ghoose, and Barbara Corcoran. They have played a critical role in making Onevest what it is today.
Thank you all. I am very privileged and lucky to have you in my life.
1
EVERYTHING STARTED WITH ONEVEST
With the encouragement of my PARENTS, Bernardo Cremades and Leticia Roman, I moved to the United States from Spain with my brother Bernardo on August 13, 2008, after obtaining my law degree in Spain.
My brother is without a doubt my very best friend. On that day, after picking up our luggage and getting into a taxi, we were both completely wowed as we gazed through the windows on our way to Manhattan from the airport, while the driver, Luigi, told us his life story with a thick Italian accent.
Initially, the plan was for me to earn my masters in International Business and Trade Law at Fordham Law School and then practice law as an attorney. I had a great time at Fordham, even though some of my classmates were old enough to be my parents. They all called me Junior.
Three months before my graduation from Fordham, I received a great offer from the respected law firm King & Spalding. The partner who hired me was Edward Kehoe. Our first meeting was over breakfast at the Metropolitan Club. Ed is now a good friend, and he attended my wedding.
I still remember my first day at the firm. It was like a Hollywood movie. At only 23 years old, I had my own secretary and my name on the entrance to my own office. It was completely surreal.
After three years at King & Spalding representing major corporations in high-profile, billion-dollar investment arbitration cases, I discovered my true calling. It all started when I attended my first New York Tech Meetup with my good friend Luis Jose Scull. At the time, Luis was working for a hedge fund and sourcing tech startups as investors.
One thing really surprised me as I immersed myself in the New York tech scene, and that was how difficult it was for entrepreneurs to access capital. When I researched cases like Pandora (rejected over 300 times before securing their first significant round of financing), I knew there was a big gap in the market. There was something missing and I wanted to find out what it was and fill that gap.
At the time of this discovery phase, I was dating the woman who is now my wife, Tanya Prive. Choosing her as my life partner is the best decision I have ever made. We talked about what I wanted to do to help others looking for capital, and I convinced her to invest all our savings in Onevest and launch a platform that would connect entrepreneurs with investors, and from that point on, the rest was history.
Everything started at Tanya's apartment on 27th Street and 6th Avenue in New York City. We had a little studio where we would invite at least five interns a day to join us in building the product, and they worked with a team of engineers that we had assembled in Belarus (Eastern Europe). After four months of interns claiming they were our cousins, the building management figured out that something was up and invited us to leave.
We then rented an office space, raised a seed round, and started to hire top talent. After one year of development, we were able to launch the platform to the public on November 23, 2011. A few months later, the platform was mentioned by TIME as one of the best crowdfunding platforms in the world. It was listed as one of the top-10 digital tools for entrepreneurs by Forbes, and we were named one of the hottest startups to watch by Business Insider. I also had the honor of being ranked number one on Vanity Fair's list of “30 under 30” for 2014, and I was included on the “Top 30 under 30” list in Entrepreneur Magazine (Spanish version).
The press attention was crazy to me, but what kept me moving was the opportunity to make a real difference. Cutting the noise is one of the hardest things that entrepreneurs have to master in order to focus on what really counts, which is the execution of business strategy.
In the early days it was not easy. We had to fight to provide financing. The JOBS Act (which we will discuss later on in this book) was still not in the picture, and the word crowdfunding had not yet been coined. At one point in the process we visited the White House and testified before the U.S. House of Representatives regarding the importance of financing small businesses in the United States.
Everything started to happen at the same time. To our surprise, we were suddenly riding an amazing wave, forming with the passing of the JOBS Act in April of 2012. For the first time in history startups would be allowed to advertise the fact that they were raising money; before the JOBS Act this kind of promotion was completely forbidden. (Prior to that legislation, it was labeled as general solicitation.) Previously, the search for funds was more a word-of-mouth kind of activity. If you did not know anyone in Silicon Valley, it was a real struggle to find capital.
At the end of 2013, a company called CoFoundersLab.com came to raise financing on Onevest, and lit up a light bulb in my mind. I realized that a fundraising platform like the one that Onevest was operating at that moment was really playing a small game. The bigger game was to build an ecosystem around Onevest, where we would empower entrepreneurs and investors, from formation to financing.
As a result of that realization, the conversations began with Shahab Kaviani, the cofounder of CoFoundersLab.com, and we ended up announcing an M&A transaction to bring CoFoundersLab under Onevest in July 2014.
Currently, CoFoundersLab is the largest matchmaking service for entrepreneurs. It's a way for entrepreneurs to meet their cofounders and advisors. We are partners with some of the major startup hubs in America, and we are onboarding thousands of entrepreneur registrations on a monthly basis.
Other products under the umbrella of Onevest include, most recently, 1000 Angels, which is the first digital, invitation-only network for a select group of angel investors. It is a curated community of ultra high-net-worth individuals that come together to invest in startup companies.
After seeing hundreds of businesses formed and financed through the ecosystem of Onevest, I felt it was time to share what I'd learned and help entrepreneurs on their journeys in fundraising – especially after our most recent round of financing, in which we'd increased our total amount raised to over $5 million. We self-crowdfunded our Series A in a matter of weeks and established a record. I literally did not move from my desk. The result