We are Thomas and David. We co-found the EdTech-Startup Elever.ch.
This program is about how not to follow a hallucination.
Get traction and convince investors with early stage sales volumes. Early sales volume brings you in a better position for negotiations with investors or internal budget owners. And it lifts your project to the next level.
Imagine how much time you have to spend to organize funding. Either inside a company as an intrapreneur or out in the wild from investors as entrepreneur? 6 months? Do you know why it takes that long? Because investors have the choice between equally risky and potential projects to invest in. They can take their time and thoroughly discuss with everyone. Every investor does it like that. Right?
To cope with the requirements of potential investors very often one of the founders is fully blocked with fund raising.
Why don’t you use this 6 months to organize money from customers? I promise you, sales volume generated with new customers shortens the time needed to organize funding from 6 months to one month! Why? Because you stick out. Investors normally don’t see this kind of traction during the early phase. This is your unique differentiator! You think it’s your technology, product or idea? Unfortunately it’s not. A good story coupled with sales volume is the differentiator. Also don’t believe the rumors that it’s all about the team. All this is only an issue if you don’t have paying customers and are building Luftschlösser.
The best thing about this approach is: you might even not be needing the investor’s money.
Now you might say, “Hold on, I need that money from investors to develop the product…”. That’s not working. In most cases you have to demo a product before investors allocate their money to your project. You can as well sell this first product! We will teach you how to start and when the right time to start selling is.
To acquire the skill of early stage selling is priceless.
This workshop helps you to get started. It also connects you with bright minds who have brilliant ideas, master cool technologies or a difficult skill.
Develop the skill of early stage selling and get an extra life in the startup game. Trust me. This is so valuable for the future success and cash flow of your project that we don’t dare to charge for it.
But how about this deal: David and I are currently building Elever.ch a platform for new education.
David is developing the product and I am selling it. We have been running without external investments since the beginning of 2015. We will share how we did that, what we’ve learned and where we are standing right now. You get insights about our customer base, tricks, pitfalls and the so called unfair advantages. We have both been involved in other startup projects and will share all our dirty little secrets.
We are really busy with building our services and delighting customer. But we are not rich (yet :-)) and are still struggling with the cash flow. On the other hand we feel it is too important not to teach it and to help others develop that skill.
The pricing model we have in mind is this: we hope to generate some extra runway with the renumeration for this course. Hence in exchange of our time invested for the preparing, execution and follow up we would charge 2 times of what customers normally pay us + location, meals and materials. This sums up to approx. 9’500 CHF. We target 10-15 participants. That means the price range has to be between 640 CHF and 950 CHF. Hence our proposal: depending on your possibilities, you pay something between 600 and 1’200 CHF? First come first serve. 20 seats are available.
If you want to learn how to get early customers, how to sell in an early phase and feel comfortable with the “deal” please check the curriculum of the course and buy your ticket here. We are grateful for the appreciation and the little extra runway you are giving us in exchange for our time investment.