Nov 05,2024 Nov 05,2024
Venture Advisory, Venture Capital Advisory, Funding Support for Early-Stage Companies - StartupGuru

Venture Advisory for Early-Stage Companies

November '24 applications are open

We accelerate & invest in growth companies

StartupGuru Venture Advisory is an industry leading support channel for early stage growth companies. With our support ecosystem, you will be able to take your company to the next level of growth by identifying and meeting the required KPIs and eventually raise the necessary capital.

JOIN 500+ STARTUPS & COUNTING

OUR STARTUPS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN

  • Fortune
  • Forbes
  • Entrepreneur
  • The Guardian
  • Financial Times
  • TechCrunch
  • Daily Mail
$3.7 million in startup funding (Seed/Pre Series A), 34 deals, 18 months
Over $1 billion in lifetime valuation of portfolio companies

From MVP to POC to Seed Money!

I first reached out to StartupGuru for our startup. The team was great in their guidance on all our challenges we had in a very pro manner. After four months of development, we had a working MVP that we used as a POC to raise our first round of seed money.

David Mortellaro

David Mortellaro
Co-Founder & CTO

StartupGuru truly stands by their work

StartupGuru provides excellent value, tremendous expertise, and truly stands by their work. They have treated me like family, bending over backward to help me launch the exact app I envision, all with my limited tech knowledge. They are responsive and creative, and act as though they are part of my company. We wouldn’t have got our startup launched and funded without StartupGuru.

Robert Strauss

Robert Strauss
Founder & CEO

Proud to be in their list of enabled and thriving startups

Contacting StartupGuru early and working with them to crystalize your project from conception to execution is an absolute must. I am proud to be included in their list of enabled and thriving startups. A special thanks to the entire team who never quit because a concept is hard to implement.

Thoriso Mashego

Thoriso Mashego
Founder

Product-Market-Fit in record time.

They provided spectacular guidance that attracted more users, helping our startup to get our product-market-fit in a record time we didn’t think was possible. The workflow was effective, and the team went the extra mile to provide expert tips.

Monday Killo

Monday Killo
Founder

Soft launch and early users in 16 weeks!

StartupGuru enabled us to do a soft launch and get users within 16 weeks. We received incredible feedback from external stakeholders, as evident in the massive downloads and sign-ups. The amazing results we produced will help secure the ongoing funding round.

Danny Mooka

Danny Mooka
Founder & CEO

The focus of StartupGuru on developing a MSP over an MVP is unique. In addition to that, StartupGuru is accessible to entrepreneurs at all stages of their startup, making it the perfect place for me to learn about taking my startup further as well as learning about my past mistakes.

Dr. Sukhpreet Patel
Entrepreneur from Mumbai, India

I like knowing that I would be partnering with a company that has relative experience and success in helping startups. My goal would be that we build an app that is ready for market, that proves the concept of the company and that we have raised the funding to scale and turn the idea into a full fledged business.

Andre Killion
Founder from Florida, USA

StartupGuru commits mentorship for the first-time startup founder who is committed and focused. Looking for seed funding with lot of guidance to take our idea to the next level.

Dhaivat Ajwaliya
Founder, Jurycircle, India

I loved the fact that StartupGuru is tailored towards non-technical founders. We need it. Together I feel we can change the way the next billion will look at relationships.

Rajeet Parekh
Founder

Believe me all the details you mentioned why start ups are failing & how they are doing app development by investing as low as $5k , and that's what is exactly happening with me now. I think , by having the experience tech & marketing support we can definitely build a powerful app that will help us have traction.

Jay Dave
Founder

I have always seen Startup guru and Kunal Pandya giving guidance to early stage Entrepreneurs. We are building something to change the Travel Tech industry and with the team and guidance of Startup guru we can accomplish this goal.

Arvind Bhawnani
Founder & CEO

I liked the concept of helping non technical Founders to build their startup here. I myself is a non tech Founder who is looking for to develop a tech platform and have no idea how to do so. If startup guru could help me with that, it will be a great start for my startup.

Ashish Sharma
Founder

Believing the founder and his vision is the most important aspect when we talk about investors or any other stakeholders in our startup. StartupGuru team acts as startup enablers that helps keeping strong motivation for all types of founders whether they are technical/non-technical and upholds their will to persevere with all ups and downs..

Sidhant Gupta
Founder & CEO

Your handholding process for non technical founders to build a tech start up is powerful and unique.

Seshadri Vangala
Co-Founder

I loved the approach of simplifying the complex. I was perplexed for few days to initiate my idea. I hope StartupGuru will help me to make my vision a reality.

Nisha Kulkarni
Founder

OYO Rooms
OYO Rooms
$10 billion+ in valuation,
one of our earliest portfolio startups
Fractal Analytics
Fractal Analytics
$1 billion in valuation
Dized, Playmore Games
Dized, Playmore Games
€5+ million in valuation
StepOut.fi
StepOut.fi
€1 million in funding
GEMS Education
GEMS Education, UAE
Indiabulls Ltd
Indiabulls Ltd
Kranzle GmbH
Kranzle GmbH
Solvay AB
Solvay AB
$108K

Average Seed Funding

$3.7 Million

Recent Fundraising

50+

Startups Supported

10X

Faster Time-to-Market

Global network with investors & startup ecosystem players

  • TiE Angels
  • Band of Angels
  • New York Angels
  • EBAN
  • Silicon Valley Forum
  • US Angel Investors
  • Business Sweden
  • Business Finland
  • Golden Seeds
  • Angels Den
  • Cambridge Angels
  • FiBAN
  • Irish Angels
  • Mumbai Angels

Reject the Amateur Coaches - Learn from the Gurus who've been there, done that!

Learn from the masters themselves! StartupGuru is all about practical, actionable and to-the-point know-how and you can’t learn this just by reading some articles, books or watching videos from someone who has never experienced starting a products company or investing.

Last thing you want to get into, as a budding entrepreneur, is to learn how to startup from someone who is selling you a book or a course on starting up and that’s the only startup experience s/he has! Duh! o-). Learn more

We have brought in industry leaders who have either started successful companies themselves, raised funding or are investors who are actively involved into startup investments across different sectors and regions.

These industry veterans have built companies with million dollar plus revenues, have raised millions in funding or are actively investing into startups.

Learn the nuances of starting up quickly in 2024 with MSP product launch, traction and early funding from the ecosystem players themselves. StartupGuru arranges regular guest sessions from these gurus as part of this program.

WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE

StartupGuru Venture Advisory is for you if...

You are confused about the vision

You have a great product and have managed to build and run it thus far, but now you feel lost about the next steps. You feel clueless or confused about the alignment between your current situation and your vision for the company. You feel the growth is stagnated.

You’re ready to commit and focus

We may not be the right choice for you if you are thinking that we will do all the heavy lifting for you. We will have our proven guidance, but you will lead from the front.

You want experts on board

You know that building your startup on your own is hard. You understand that you want an expert team on board who come in with years of enterprising, entrepreneurship and fundraising experience.


FIND YOUR FIT

Incubator

Incubator - for Idea stage startups (Pre-Seed)


Go for our startup incubator cum accelerator program if you are at the idea, concept or prototype stage. If you are non-technical, first time founder. You haven't raised external capital before for this startup in particular.

Venture Advisory

Venture Advisory - for growth companies/scale ups (Seed, Pre Series A)


Go for venture advisory if you have built your product/MVP and have some traction. Or if you are a non-digital company, you already have some revenues, users/customers. You may or may not have raised external capital for this startup, but DON'T have any VC or PE on board already. Also, you should NOT have more than 5 external investors on board.

HOW IT WORKS

Our Unique 4 Stage Program will take your company to the next level of growth & funding

For the last 16 years we've been helping companies go from ideas to launch and getting funded. We understand what benchmarks are required given the kind of capital you want to raise. What KPIs are required and what should be your blue ocean strategy. We've perfected our process and system through boots on the ground work, with the help of global investors and experts.

1BENCHMARKING

Bechmark your metrics against the best-in-class.

Know your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) required to be able to raise the capital that you need for your next level of growth.

The Wrong Way

If you are bootstrapped or have FFF (friends & family) funding into your company, there is a possibility that you either don't know your KPIs or have the wrong parameters and data. Anyone who tells you that you don't need this is lying. Investors evaluate your company's worth primarily through this mechanism - benchmarking.

Now, you are probably early stage, so comparing you with the best in the industry, or with your #1 competitor would be meaningless. And often you get clueless as to then what is the right method.

The Wrong Result

Approaching investors without the right KPIs would get you no calls and results.

You will have to dig deep into your data, if at all you have sufficient data and traction, and come up with the right metrics and numbers.

If you don't have sufficient data, again this can be a chicken and egg problem. And quite often, this is a time consuming task.

And before you figure it out on your own, you've likely spent tens of thousands of your own money with little to show.

The Guru Way

We benchmark you against your own vision while still considering your industry or sector's average. What metrics are necessary for you given your company's stage and its business model.

It can be as simple as learning the right DAUs, MAUs (Monthly Active Users), MRR/ARR (Monthly/Annual Recurring Revenue), User Retention/Return Ratio, CAC v/s LTV to some advanced KPIs such as knowing the user stickiness, user footprint across your sections/pages/verticals, channelizing your funnel with KPIs etc.

The Guru Result

Because we work on all but only the necessary KPIs that investors are interested in, given your business model and sector, you will know exactly where you stand comparing with where you should be, considering the asking capital needs.

2GAP ANALYSIS

Where you are and where you should be, before you can fundraise.

Knowing your KPIs with the right values is one thing, interpreting them while benchmarking them against your vision is another. Our team knows what exactly the investors are looking for and what numbers are required that would give them confidence.

The Wrong Way

Most founders often get this wrong. They interpret the KPIs in a way that is not understood by most investors today, or that is not the way to interpret for their industry.

If they get it right somehow, they benchmark it against the wrong subjects/peers and hence get the wrong gap analysis.

The Wrong Result

This can be disastrous as the results can then lead the founders to then spend their valuable time and money filling the gaps that were irrelevant for their growth and fundraising.

The Guru Way

Once our team collects the benchmarking data and understands the KPIs, we analyze and interpret them to understand the gaps between the current performance and the benchmarked targets.

The gaps can be in terms of a product or feature that is over-built or is poorly built. In some cases, we can also identify missing opportunities that are in demand but not yet built.

The gaps can be in terms of wrong/improper problem-solution-fit and product-market-fit, poor customer/user engagement, weak channel utilization, poor market penetration, wrong customer segment, misinterpration of ideal v/s target users, among others.

The Guru Result

Now you will know exactly what has been at the root cause of your stagnated growth. What needs to be fixed before you are ready for your fundraising.

This discovery is the key to your success through the next stages.

3SMART Goals

Planning & goal setting for the fundraise.

Most founders run their startup traditionally with very little room for error, with any slip up totally derailing their launch or killing their runway. Our approach maximizes easy to implement strategies and targets hyper specific growth targets to attract your ideal investors.

The Wrong Way

There are a million strategies founders could implement, which traditionally has caused analysis paralysis. Growth is stagnated due to multiple reasons - not having enough users, irrelevant KPIs, unrealistic goals, lack of funding to support the desired growth, wrong marketing strategies and implementation, wrong sales funnel, wrong founder-problem-fit and the list keeps growing. With so much to focus on, a founder doesn't really know which method will be the most cost efficient and will drive results.

GTM experts naturally will emphasize on what they are selling and this further creates a decision trauma.

This left founders trying a million things, desperately searching for people to use their app, struggling to maximize revenue, achieve milestones - all of this without any proper goal setting. And who knows it in the first place? Who/what do they trust?

Additionally, founders also aren’t sure what benchmarks to hit to even know what 'success' looked like. Do they need $5K in revenue to impress an investor, or $50K? 1K users or 100K? 20% MoM growth or 15%? Wrong KPIs, wrong goal alignment = struggle.

The Wrong Result

Founders are left praying, wishing, and hoping that they are implementing the right goals and strategies to grow their startup, as well as doing their best to gain some semblance of success, even though they really didn't know what 'success' was measured by.

This led founders to go weeks, months, or years going after user growth, lost in a sea of 'shiny new tactics' because there was no end goal in sight.

The Guru Way

We decided to take a 'top-down' approach to defining what success looks like for a startup's journey from one to ten.

We went and spoke with hundreds of investors to determine what numbers a startup needed to hit to gain their attention and their funding.

This led to the SMART goal setting, which is unique for every startup. Based on the benchmarking results, the company can establish specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for improvement. Achieving these goals (aligned with the target KPIs) would allow them to go into investor meetings with confidence knowing they hit the numbers an early stage investor needed to consider funding them.

The Guru Result

Our founders are able to utilize data-drive strategies with the help of our growth team, along with specific goals for user growth.

They now have a better understanding of the user footprint and the kind of stickiness their solution/platform has.

Instead of going into the SMART Goal phase not knowing what success looks like, they have exact numbers and specific tactics they can aim for, with the confidence to know that as soon as they hit those numbers that investors will be clamoring for their attention, instead of the other way around.

4FUNDING

Raise funding on your own terms.

Once we've helped you achieve your SMART Goals, you'll need funding to scale up quickly and efficiently. Our funding team will help you raise $200K to $1M to do just that.

The Wrong Way

Raising funding is hard, and most founders aren't able to do it. Traditionally founders would rely on unrealistic advice like…

- Raising seed money from FFF (friends, family or fools)

- Sign up for all the shiny and costly pitch competition

- Most competitions are overly competitive (even AirBNB lost tons of pitches)

- Participate in startup events all across the globe to network and connect with strangers you wouldn’t like otherwise

- Approach random strange investors on LinkedIn and end up getting demotivated after no response.

- Get a loan or line of credit

- Banks don't lend to new businesses. Period.

The Wrong Result

This unrealistic approach doesn't work anymore. That's why only less than 2% of all startups raise funding, and the ones who do it takes over 12 months to get it! 12 months is a lifetime for most startups in their early stage – how do you know you will even survive until that time!? By then most startups die in their infancy.

The Guru Way

At it's core, raising funding is just a sales and marketing process. The only difference between it and selling a $10/month subscription or a $1K product is that you're trying to sell someone on giving you a $25K+ check. That's it.

BUT most entrepreneurs don't know how to do high ticket sales. Prospecting, targeting, cold email and LinkedIn outreach. Touch points, what to say, how to say it, how to negotiate, how to structure an offer, etc. is something most founders don’t have a clue about.

That's what we do for the founders we work with. Once you start treating your fundraising stage like a sales and marketing issue, it all comes down to a numbers game.

And we being a player on both sides of the table (founders as well as being investors ourselves in over a dozen companies), we know how these cards are played.

The Guru Result

Our founders are able to consistently book investor meetings through our network as well as by utilizing the outbound sales and marketing techniques we teach and help them implement. Then raising funding becomes a numbers game.

This combined with some select investor meetings from our network guarantees you achieve your fundraising goal in the shortest time possible at this stage.

- 100 targeted investors

- 20 responses

- 5 meetings booked

- 2 term sheets

- $100K in funding

Need to raise more? Just rinse and repeat.

THE OUTCOME

This all results in your validated, scalable & funded startup.

A proven, validated startup

We help ensure you're expanding your effort, energy, and resources into an idea that has the highest chance of success in your market by using data driven principles.

Know where you are

Our research team works with you to understand what KPIs are measured for your sector, what numbers are required for your fundraising target, and find out where you are compared to that.

Accelerate growth

Using the SMART Goals methodology, our GTM team guides you through the process of user acquisition, channel creation, user engagement etc. to achieve the required target for an accelerated growth.

$200K to $1M in seed funding

Our startups know exactly where and how to secure funding, and get the help of our funding team to get follow-on funding from investors with a goal of a $200K to $1M seed round.

Our program is designed for YOU

Handholding

Most of the activities that we talk about are researched, implemented and managed by our team alongside the founders. We act as your partners, and not just as an advisor.

One-on-one support

This isn't some group accelerator or incubator where you're just a logo or number. You'll actively work alongside our team to get things done with step-by-step actionable program and guidance.

Active community

Our entrepreneurs help and support each other in our active community, weekly (virtual) meetups, and group pitch events.

Demo Day & Investor Networking

Specially designed demo day with targeted investors for startups in our program. We have investors lined up to work with the startups who go through our program because they know what we do works.

$ $100,000+ in startup savings

Our founders also get over $100K+ in discounts from our amazing partners

Clerky
Clerky
$5000 discount
Stripe
Stripe
NO FEES ON $20K
Brex
Brex
80K POINTS
AWS
AWS
$5000 CREDITS
Hubspot
Hubspot
90% DISCOUNT
Zendesk
Zendesk
6 MONTHS FREE
Vouch
Vouch
25% OFF
Dialpad
Dialpad
10 FREE LINES
Ripling
Ripling
6 MONTHS FREE
Gust
Gust
25% DISCOUNT
Google Cloud
Google Cloud
$5000 CREDITS
Apollo
3 MONTHS FREE

Ambitious non-technical founder?
Apply and talk to one of our Venture Advisors.

Start Your Application
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