{"id":43454,"date":"2023-10-20T15:28:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/how-a-two-month-old-startup-raised-over-200000-in-30-days-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:28:42","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:28:42","slug":"how-a-two-month-old-startup-raised-over-200000-in-30-days-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/how-a-two-month-old-startup-raised-over-200000-in-30-days-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"How a two-month old startup raised over $200,000 in 30 days – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Sydney on-demand photography startup has raised more than $200,000 in seed funding in less than a month, only 60 days since it was founded.<\/p>\n

Snappr, a two-sided marketplace for professional photography services, hit its goal of $200,000 quickly and is set to close a seed funding round of \u201cwell over double\u201d that aim, co-founder Matt Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took us aback a bit,\u201d Schiller tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the fundraising round we thought we\u2019d do a little family and friends round early on. We didn\u2019t end up getting any family and friends but we did get some bigger investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin just 30 days a lot of people were really sold on the vision. Before we knew it we had a very sizable round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passion and a fragmented market<\/h3>\n

The Snappr platform allows users to book professional, pre-vetted photographers on-demand, with the startup taking a 20% cut from all transactions.<\/p>\n

Schiller says he and co-founder Ed Kearney have had the idea for Snappr floating around for a while and decided to act on it when the workload for their other startup, GownTown, became more manageable.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming interest from investors is down to the co-founders\u2019 passion and the potentially lucrative market that it\u2019s operating in, Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn-demand stuff has now reached a tipping point in large parts thanks to Uber,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really starting to become ubiquitous \u2013 your mum and dad use Uber, not just your friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd sometimes getting photography services is more painful than getting a cab. It\u2019s such a fragmented market and there\u2019s no existing system or marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says all of the investors he pitched to were well aware of the problems in booking a photographer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who came on in this round were all people who had experienced this pain point,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think at any point in the last month did we have to explain the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 60-day path to success<\/h3>\n

Snappr\u2019s early success and rapid growth also comes down to its lean approach and quick approach to market, Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built most of the MVP in the first week, that was one of the most intense weeks of my life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe launched on the Friday of the first week and over the weekend we started having some customers flow through from word-of-mouth around the office and on Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the second week, the team turned its attention to the other side of the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shifted gears to recruiting photographers,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe posted on job ad and didn\u2019t spend a cent and we got 500 professional photographers applying to be on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

The entrepreneur says this is proof that the lean approach works, and founders shouldn\u2019t wait until they have the perfect product before presenting it to consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re big believers in the lean startup principle,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got all these grand plans in the world as far as feature lists for the eventual platform, and the great thing now is that you need to make compromises to do it quickly.<\/p>\n

“We probably have 80% of the platform we want in the two weeks and that hasn\u2019t stopped us from getting customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestors don\u2019t want to necessarily see the perfect platform. They don\u2019t want you to have been sitting in a dark corner for 6-12 months cutting code and not getting a single customer. As long as they see you\u2019ve got the vision for that and a first-week answer to a problem they\u2019ll find that much more encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laying the groundwork<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s also crucial to establish personal relationships with potential investors long before actually opening a funding round.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t start thinking about who the investors might be on the day you plan to start the round,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want investors more than anything else to be someone that trusts you and someone you think of as trusted advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the investors that came on board are people I\u2019ve known and have been talking to for a long time. You need to be tapping into people who you have existing professional relationships\u201d<\/p>\n

The founders are now looking to close the seed round after securing enough to tide them over to a larger Series A round in the first half of next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to balance that against not giving away too much equity in the early stage, and we\u2019ve found a nice sweet spot there,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter and <\/em>LinkedIn<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sydney on-demand photography startup has raised more than $200,000 in seed funding in less than a month, only 60<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59788,"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\/43454"}],"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=43454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}