The lovely thing about building something is not just that you get to build something you care about but also, if you are paying attention, you get to learn what to build next and how to do it better.
And we’ve been paying attention.
What we have learnt in over 2 years of helping startups reach investors and through the amazing feedback we receive is that there are those who need more than the others from the same service – from startups requesting data rooms, to investors wanting a tool to manage their pipeline.
I’m delighted to say that as a direct response to these requests we are launching a range of enhanced features that the whole community can access when they need them, start-ups and investors. For those members using our existing service, nothing will change, those service will continue to be free to use for everyone.
So today, I am pleased to announce that Decksender will be offering ‘Enhanced Access’. These enhanced Decksender features supercharge the matching process and allow increased rates of numbers of decks that can be sent.
What does this enable us to do?
What is not changing?
Our mission – to democratise access to funding remains solid and unchanged.
We got into this to help startups everywhere, this means removing barriers. We believe that by maintaining the service levels we have and simply adding more value and specific tools for specific user needs, we can keep this mission on track. This means the vast majority of service levels, features and tools that all new and existing non-paying users on the platform have enjoyed , they will continue to enjoy.
All startups still have access to all the investors on the platform with some reasonable limits to how many they can send to in a batch. So for example, if they select 500 investors to send to – on the standard , free service they will only be able to send to 100 a month.
All decks still get reviewed and feedback.
All decks will continue to be reviewed on upload and feedback sent out where there is some. The slight changes to manage capacity is that standard users may have to wait up to 72 hours for their decks to be reviewed.
Investors will still get decks in their inboxes
The whole point was to send decks to investors – that remains unchanged.
What will Enhanced Access mean for Startups?
So lets be super-clear – startups will still continue to find investors and send decks to them as before on Decksender with at least the same success rates and minimal effort as ever. Including:
With Enhanced Access, start-ups will be able to access a whole bunch of new features and service levels that make their campaign faster, more focused and less work on their part – because lets face it, building a startup is hard enough. We believe if startups are committed, we owe it to them to support them with better tools and service levels. Enhanced Access benefits include:
What will Enhanced Access cost startups?
One of the key learnings from working with startups using Decksender is recognising that fundraising is a campaign – not an indefinitely ongoing ‘as-a-Service’ activity. So we offer ‘Enhanced Access’ for durations rather than as a rolling subscription. Startups can opt to buy ‘Enhanced Access’ packs for their account and enjoy the enhanced benefits for that duration.
We offer 1-month, 6 months and 12 month packs. As you can imagine, this gets cheaper the longer the duration. Startups can stack packs that will run consecutively.
What will Enhanced Access mean for Investors?
Investors also get some focused tools and features that we have learned are exceptional value adds to their work. The standard features and service levels they currently enjoy include:
With Enhanced Access, they will be able to maximise the value they can get from Decksender with tools to save them both their time and rocket propel their productivity. The investors lot is to filter the the signal from the noise and do it whilst still offering value to the decks and startups that they aren’t currently interested it. It is a hard role that we believe we can significantly improve with both tech and commitment.
The Enhanced Access for investors brings significant benefits including:
What will Enhanced Access cost investors?
We offer a standard SaaS subscription for investors with monthly (£99.99) and yearly (£999.99 ) commitments – again the pricing reflects built in discounts for longer periods. But we believe (and our test investors helped validate this) that we have the sweet spot of features that will deliver significant improvements in effectiveness to investors.
All services will continue to get the love
We will continue to evolve Decksender – making it much more focused on the outcomes startups and investors are seeking and improving the offering for both standard and enhanced access.
Some of the near time improvements:
– A Crowdfunding prep track for Startups – to find cornerstone investors and a managed journey through our Crowdfunding partners Crowdcube.
– Support for Startup Advisors or anyone raising for multiple startups – features that make this so much easier.
– Audiences – helping both startups and investors grow purposeful audiences they can engage with.