Digital Brain NorDIc
A DealStation Success Story
A DealStation Success Story
Sweden
Location
Growth
Stage
6 weeks
Time to Raise
Together with three business partners Martin Bergqvist took over the business which needed additional financing to accelerate the development of the Brain product portfolio, consisting of the BRAIN.MEDIA service for publishers and the Strategic Audience Map service for brands and advertisers. 150k EUR was raised by combining three fund sources: 50k came from a venture capital company Almi Invest, 50k from local Swedish bank SEB and 50k investment was done by a minority shareholder.
Later, traction started to boom in mid 2020, when Martin Bergqvist and his current business partner realized they needed to take advantage of the opportunity and start scaling. Looking at possible avenues of capitalizing on the interest from the market and after numerous discussions with the Advisory Board, they have decided to fundraise again in early 2021. Instead of raising a larger amount of money, Digital Brain Nordic team decided to take a more strategic route to their fundraise. First, they decided to raise a smaller round of 100k EUR to hire a senior sales expert to leverage all requests and push their key products out to the market. The decision was to focus on validating the product market fit (PMF), while gathering sufficient client feedback to continue actively developing the products. Later, at the end of 2021 they would have a much stronger offering to present to existing and new investors.
Martin Bergqvist and his business partner were both very new to the topic of fundraising but knew they needed to make their investor pitch as professional as possible, mainly if they want to approach investors beyond the “family and friends”. Also, they wanted to move away from only offering a pitch deck.
Luckily, Pepicon DealStation was recommended to them by one of their Advisory Board members. It was the built-in guidance that they needed to get started. It felt intuitive to complete the profile, the investor highlights and then one section of the investment memorandum at a time. All was in one place helping them to create a complete investment proposal which would help them stand out and look credible in the investors’ eyes.
After sharing their pitch via Pepicon DealStation with selected contacts and investors from their network, interest came almost immediately. “People invest in people in the end and nurturing strong relationships is critical when it comes to fundraising and getting investors on board” shared Martin Bergqvist.
In just 6 weeks after opening their round was their round of 100k EUR successfully raised from a combination of existing shareholders, advisory board members and an investment group. Additionally, while fundraising and sharing their plans for scaling the business supported by a larger fundraise in Q4 of 2021, they were able to secure a commitment of 80% for that fundraise aimed at raising an additional 800k-1M EUR.
Such funds will allow them to establish the company not only in Sweden, but across the Nordics and continue developing new products responding to the market needs by new solutions as the cookie-free targeting tech tool. Of course, the Digital Brain Nordic team plans to use Pepicon DealStation for the fundraise at the end of 2021.
It was almost an emotional relief to get a grasp of what the investors really need to make a decision and be convinced.
“Start with making a good fundraising plan – what you want and who do you want on your cap table. Then make sure your offering is attractive and exclusive, offered to the right investors.”
Martin Bergqvist, CEO, Digital Brain Nordic
Digital Brain Nordic is a development company which creates smart “martech” (marketing technology) products that improves the marketing experience for publishers, brands and media agencies. All Digital Brain Nordic solutions are tailored to the needs of both larger and smaller businesses, allowing them to license the data they need for spot-on marketing activities, data they can directly act upon. Not only do they move away from traditional sales of data packages, but they complement all offerings by high-class service provided to their clients as a "marketing one-stop-shop". With its “Brain Media”, a complete data activation platform for publishers, they support publishers in accessing critical data in a more granular, enriched and extended format allowing more precise audience selection for their marketing activities. Additionally, its “Strategic Audience Map” offers advertisers to access niche marketing analytics insights for more accurate target identification, validation and marketing.
