{"id":35982,"date":"2023-10-20T14:41:30","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/wattblock-ready-to-power-into-china-after-closing-500000-seed-round-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:41:30","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:41:30","slug":"wattblock-ready-to-power-into-china-after-closing-500000-seed-round-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/wattblock-ready-to-power-into-china-after-closing-500000-seed-round-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Wattblock ready to power into China after closing $500,000 seed round – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Startup founders need to be putting the feelers out with venture capitalists in the early days of seed funding in order to ensure they\u2019re on the radar when it comes to later rounds, WattBlock CEO Brent Clark says.<\/p>\n

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WattBlock has just closed<\/a> a $500,000 seed round from angel investors, but Clark says they were in contact with a number of VCs throughout the process with an eye on the future.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe idea is that even when looking for seed investment you should go to speak with VCs who don\u2019t necessarily do seed investment, but just to get on their radar,\u201d Clark says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt gives comfort to the angels who are investing in the seed round as well. We\u2019re able to tell them we\u2019ve spoken to the VC community and that they\u2019re interested and tracking our progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The seed round kicked off three months ago after WattBlock graduated from the muru-D accelerator program<\/a> and saw the team travel to China, the US and UK.<\/p>\n

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While Clark won\u2019t reveal what valuation the round placed on his startup, he says the angel investors come from across the world and have backgrounds in fund management, high technology and environmental impact.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur strategy, which proved to be successful, was to identify similar companies and then look at the people who had invested in them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA lot of people get mixed up in convertibles and preference shares, but we\u2019ve just kept it simple and stuck to ordinary shares.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Wattblock is an energy efficiency startup that provides a cost-effective way to audit large commercial buildings. It recently launched a project with the City of Sydney aiming to drive down carbon emissions and reduce costs in the city\u2019s residential apartment buildings.<\/p>\n

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The capital injection will be used to complete this project, Clark says, as well as to build the Wattblock team and look at expanding into the China market.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re focused on using the funds to execute on our channel strategy, which is working through strata managers as a channel to residential buildings,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cChina is a longer-term strategy for us. We\u2019re currently doing this project for the City of Sydney, and they\u2019ve arranged a trade mission to Guangzhou in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Want to grow your business with Instagram? <\/i>StartupSmart School can help<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Startup founders need to be putting the feelers out with venture capitalists in the early days of seed funding in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}