CooAch GROUP

Fundraising before DEALSTATION

Cooach’s fundraising journey started in a classical way, combining three common fund sources. First bootstrapping the company by the founders and sweat equity to reduce the operating costs. Secondly, bringing in additional funding from “Family, Fools and Friends” (FFF) in order to cover the costs of digital development. And thirdly, getting initial revenue from first clients offering Cooach to validate and shape its offering and proving its product-market fit.

Already in the early fundraising days Carl-Fredrik Morander, the Founder and CEO of Cooach, recalls the importance and power of building strong relationships across all stakeholders – from the FFF, to clients or investors – making it fairly “easy” to secure financing for Cooach and its growth going forward.
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Raising funds with DEALSTATION

Driven by the vision to expand its services to clients in the whole Pan-European area, Cooach realized it is time for their first larger fundraise. The leadership team discussed a variety of options from getting support from a corporate finance firm to an official listing, but concluded a selection of few strategic investors would serve the company the best. While evaluating the alternatives, Pepicon DealStation was recommended to the CFO, fulfilling the key requirements: A structured and professional way to pitch their investment opportunity combined with an investor network to optionally open the offering to.

A decision was made to split the fundraise with Pepicon DealStation into two rounds. First, to raise a smaller round of 250k-300k EUR immediately in May 2021, building relationships and trust with the investors. And to raise a larger round of approximately 1.5M EUR later in the second half of 2021.

It didn’t take long to grasp how to work with Pepicon DealStation. The CEO, CFO and Chairman of the Board found it easy, together with the built-in guidance, to create a professional and visually appealing pitch and to complete the interactive memorandum. For the investor pitching part, Cooach’s team figured out they can get a much greater investor sign-up rate if they nurture the shortlisted investors outside of Pepicon DealStation before they send them such personalized invitations. The investor tracking statistics were often used before investor meetings to judge how familiar the investor is with their offering and to prepare for such investor meetings – offering much greater transparency.

Reactions from investors did vary, mentioned Carl-Fredrik Morander. “Some asked for a PDF of our memorandum, some really enjoyed the format in Pepicon DealStation saying they haven’t seen such professional pitch before” he shared.

In just 7 weeks, Cooach raised its initial round of 250k EUR from 8 investors. Moreover, already during this smaller fundraise, they gained a lot of interest in their next larger round planned for the end of the year. Also, Cooach enjoys the flexibility they get with regards to crafting their fundraising strategy. They plan to rebuild their investment memorandum, perfecting their materials and pitch. All while continuing talks with existing and new potential investors onboarding them continuously to their digital offering in Pepicon DealStation.