After the general assembly of the Belgian Idlegcy NV, we needed just a week to raise funds for its reanimation. There are two reasons for this: our network is expanding, and the reanimation offering is really tempting. 

Our network is expanding

Every ImpactBuilder in Europe is empowered to bring in clients and introduce investors to one of our projects. Since our team is growing, our network is growing too. In several countries, and specifically in Estonia, we now have dedicated business network activators who focus on the introductions, and that pays off. We quickly had 20 people interested for Idlegcy, and one week later 5 signed in.

The offering is tempting

After the first stage of the reanimation process, we make “an offer they can’t refuse” for the original shareholders and leaders. That’s why they allow us to clean up the cap table, and take the lead in the dying company. In this case we converted all of the original shareholders into a convertible loan, so the cap table is 100% clean. Since we have to offer the same conditions to new financers, the deal was extremely appealing.

But it is not without risk 

Financing a startup is never without risk – and so is the reanimation of a dying startup. We work in 4 stages towards a thriving business, and if we fail to find a new market niche and build a pilot for their most urgent pain, then both the original and the new investors loose their money. That’s why we checked the market and the VCs for their appetite, and we witnessed a lot of positive vibes in the Latitude 59 conference in Tallinn.

How we mitigate the risk

We also believe we can make a difference. Both our reanimation process and the team are a substantial asset here. We are now going to detail the market demand, before we start to build a prototype or design a service. We aim at getting a promise to buy, so we can build on demand. And, the team is probably the biggest difference. A startup cannot afford the top team that we are able to bring into place.

That’s why we believe that we can get better results, while we offer the same risk premium as most startups do. Sounds “too good to be true?” … well, it did not surprise us that we got a lot of questions.

Here is an overview of the most important ones … 

Q&A

• Why don’t you invest €5000 yourself? Because this is not the only project we are working on. And, we are confronted with a conflict of interest, as we are also having the mandate to rebuild the company.
• Is the 25x offer guaranteed? No. The real return of investing €5000 cash is between €0 and €125.000 of shares, which then can be sold or have to be kept as shares depending on the conditions we get from of the new investment firm.
• Did the original investors add money too? Some did, some did not. When a company is dying, it is normal that some early-stage investors have lost trust and are not eager to spend more money after several years of failure.
• Why do you think you can get an almost dead company back on its feet? Well, we don’t follow the classic startup rules of trying and failing and re-pivoting. We first ask clients, and then we build an app or define a service that fits their needs.
• How will you find the clients? Our international network is a huge benefit as we have contacts in the top of Europe, that most startups don’t get access to. And we attract specific co-creators with experience and a great network in the industry.
• Why is your team different? We have a top team of “old” people who have the experience and the perseverance to make a big change. And, they know they will leave the company when it’s back on its feet. It’s a different breed of leaders to make growth happen.
• Have you got other projects? Yes, every month, we have new projects coming in the venture studio of ImpactBuilders. Not all projects are reanimations. We also do repivots, and we build companies from scratch.

Interested in the venture studio?