Overview

• We pride ourselves in our ability to be quick, thorough, and transparent through our process. We can offer a term sheet within four weeks of our initial meeting, or sooner if required
• Dynamo Ventures is a pre-seed and seed stage fund that invests up to $1.25M at pre-seed and up to $2.5M at seed, which is typically between a half and two-thirds of the total investment round. We do reserve a portion of our fund for follow-on.
• We lead investments given our ownership target of 12-15% before a Series A. For investments outside North America, we prefer to invest alongside a local investor who can help bring an understanding of culture, language, and standards of conducting business

Inbound Requests

We answer qualified inbound requests via our personal emails or our collective email, [email protected].

We will review the opportunity internally and a member of the team will reach out to schedule a call or notify you that we have decided to pass on the opportunity with some high-level feedback within a week of the original inbound inquiry. 

Once you have a first call scheduled with a member of our team,  it will follow the process outlined below in “Outbound Efforts.”

Outbound Efforts

As an industry-focused fund, we have a strong understanding of the subject matter and what we are interested in investing in. As such, Dynamo Ventures has an active outreach process that all members of the team participate in.

The first step is an introductory call where the primary objective is to better understand what you are building and the stage of your business. The timing can be “hit or miss” but we try to begin a relationship early.

Call notes from that introductory call are circulated and discussed between all members of the team, including the Partners, based upon our knowledge of the market and the potential opportunity. We will let you know within a week whether we would like to continue conversations about your fundraising plans or not.  If we would like to proceed, we will introduce you to one of our Partners to set up a call roughly one week after your first call.

If we decide to pass on the opportunity, we will notify you within a week and provide some high-level feedback. We clearly have limited knowledge of your startup at this stage and so can only provide a limited amount of feedback.

After the opportunity has been passed to a Partner it will follow the process outlined below in “Qualified Introductions.”

Qualified Introductions

We consider an inbound opportunity from a known party as a qualified referral.  There are effectively five steps that we take after we receive one:

1. The referral opportunity is reviewed by a team member to ascertain whether it falls within the scope of the fund and is likely to be something we would consider for investment.  If the answer is positive, we will ask for an intro and aim to speak to the startup within a week of the referral
2. Following the initial call, the notes are circulated and discussed with at least one Partner.  If we choose to proceed, a Partner call will be scheduled within 10 days of your introductory call
3. Again, new call notes from the Partner are socialized with the remaining members of the firm. If we choose to proceed, we will begin to prepare an “Opportunity Analysis” after the second Partner call.  This document collates all the materials associated with the startup and research/diligence we have undertaken about the sector.  We may ask for data-room access, if available, and undertake commercial due diligence
4. If we remain positive on the opportunity after all the team members have spoken to the startup, we will continue to “dig-in” further and undertake further due diligence including calls with personal references, third parties within our network, and potentially other team members.

All of our work comes together as a draft investment memo and term sheet that is presented to all the Partners for final discussion and approval.  If the investment is approved, the term sheet is issued to the startup. It is our aim to offer a term sheet within four weeks of our initial meeting, or sooner if required. If we decide to pass on the opportunity at any stage above, we will notify you within a week of the previous contact and provide feedback as to our reasons for rejection.

Notes

1. There are certain periods of the year we might operate slower because of travel or volume of opportunities under review
2. Deep tech opportunities generally take us longer to process, this is not a lack of interest but part of our on-ramp and diligence on the subject matter

Continue Reading

Part 1: What We Invest In
Part 3: How We Support