How Callie Care Raised a $480K Pre-Seed in 3 Months From 3 Investors

00:25 — Let’s start with the funnel. Could you please tell how many investors did you reach out to?

Igor — I think something around 30 to 40, maybe something like that.

00:44 — And how many first calls did you conduct?

Igor — I think less than 10.

Anna — And how many of them decided to conduct a second-plus meeting?

Igor — It’s difficult to remember, but I think there were three that actually invested.

01:08 — What was the check size range, or probably the average check size?

Igor — The average check was between one and two hundred thousand dollars.

01:30 — How did you find these investors? What channels did you use?

Igor — The people who invested in us — we knew them for at least five years each. They were entrepreneurs from our network. With some of them we worked before; with some of them we were just in one founder community.

Igor — These guys are all high-net-worth individuals, I would say, and they are all tech entrepreneurs. So they have some capital, and I guess some small share of it they invest in high-risk venture projects. I wouldn’t say they’re professional angel investors — they are angel investors, but they invest from time to time.

02:16 — How long did your fundraise take? How much time did you spend on calls, how much on signing the term sheet, and when did you receive the money in the bank?

Igor — Most of the time we spent on outreach and calls, because the final stages of signing documents and getting money were quite fast — the last stages took around a couple of weeks. That was pretty fast. But the first stage took from two to three months, I guess.

Igor — Just because, as usual, you reach someone, you plan a call in a couple of weeks, you reach out once more. So it took some time, but in general it was pretty quick. We were not doing this full time at that moment — we had other things to manage. So maybe it could have been done quicker, with the right focus.

03:29 — What was your runway when you started your fundraising?

Igor — Actually, we had zero money and zero runway, because that was just the beginning of the company. We were testing some small things, so we didn’t have a runway at that moment.

03:46 — So the team was just three of you, or did you have any other employees?

Igor — There are four of us. We also have a head of marketing in the team, with a small percentage of shares. So four of us.

Igor — When we were fundraising, at first we tested some MVP versions of the product. We spent some time researching and crafting the idea of the company, and when we defined what we wanted to build, we started to fundraise.

04:06 — How much time did all these tests take?

Igor — There are two parts to the story. My co-founders Yury and Michil — at the moment when we decided to work all together, for several months they had been doing testing, but on a different kind of project. At first the idea was to build a voice AI assistant for the general population, not especially for a senior population.

Igor — Organically, seniors started to use it, and since we had a close relationship they remembered that I was passionate about this industry. That’s why we sat together and crafted the vision of a new company. After that I think we spent maybe one or two months on small testing, researching and conversations.

05:12 — What was your revenue when you started your fundraising? Did you have any revenue?

Igor — Zero revenue — and actually I think for this stage it’s better than small revenue. Zero is better, I think.

05:29 — Why do you think so?

Igor — In my vision — and I wouldn’t say I’m an expert here — when you have small revenue at early stages you get a lot of questions: why is it so small, why are the numbers low. When you sell the idea of the company and the vision at an early stage, it’s much easier to have zero revenue and just the vision of the team and the idea you want to make.

06:10 — Can you please share the valuation?

Igor — As usual at this stage, we were raising on a SAFE with a $5 million cap.

Anna — Post-money?

Igor — Yes.

06:33 — Would you be willing to share your pitch deck with other founders?

Igor — Yes, for sure. I would say our pitch deck at that time was quite embarrassing, but of course I’m open to share.

Igor — I want to add that, in my opinion, crafting an ideal pitch deck is not very important at this stage. What is much more important is the team, and the general problem you want to solve — whether it’s big enough, whether it’s ambitious enough. But the team is much more important.

Igor — Based on my opinion, why did our investors invest in us? Mainly because of the team, and because they knew us and they knew our experience. The idea was also important, I guess, but it was not the number one reason. And I think it’s totally normal for investors at this stage to make a decision quickly — the probability of a successful investment at this stage is pretty low, so spending a lot of time is just not reasonable.

07:28 — It would be very interesting to know what were the most common reasons investors said no.

Igor — Number one would be the domain itself. Tech products and services for seniors is quite a challenging industry, and there are not a lot of exits in it. So for a professional VC investor it’s a red flag — that’s why conversations with VCs were completely unsuccessful.

Igor — One of our three investors is actually also very passionate about this domain. He believes that we have to build products for the senior population to make them more independent, so he liked the idea.

Igor — The second one would be the team. We didn’t have great experience in the United States, we were not in the United States, and since we are trying to build a business with a huge B2B focus, not being in the United States is again a red flag. Actually, I would agree with that.

08:45 — What are your top fundraising tips for founders?

Igor — The first one is to focus on building and expanding your network. A lot of people invest in other people — that’s pretty obvious — and that should be part of your work as a founder. All of our investors came from our network and knew us for a long time. They saw how we acted, how we went through different types of crises. They knew us as personalities, and I think that’s pretty important.

Igor — The second one is to think twice about whether you need fundraising or not, because obviously that is not the only path to build a business. My other business works without any investments, and it’s fine as well. There are just different models. Many people don’t ask themselves this question, and the venture finance path has a lot of disadvantages, a lot of stress and a lot of pressure.

Igor — And maybe the third one would be: don’t try to chase the maximum sum of money. Just raise enough for your stage — not everyone realises that the more capital you get in the beginning, the higher the share of the company you sell, and cheaply. So raise enough for your current stage.

10:33 — If you had to raise again from scratch, what would you do differently?

Igor — Maybe I would rather fly to the United States for at least several months, if I had enough money and enough time, and try to do my best to raise the pre-seed over there. I think it would be easier than our experience, for very simple reasons: the market is much bigger, and there are many more angel investors over there. So I think it would be a smarter move.

11:17 — What’s one fundraising mistake founders should avoid at all costs?

Igor — The main mistake — which I made myself as well — is overcomplicating things. When you try to build a lot of slides, a lot of data, a lot of complicated thoughts, people are overwhelmed with information. You must be able to explain your idea very briefly and in a way that is easy to understand. So don’t overcomplicate, and don’t build a lot of slides with a lot of data.

12:01 — Do you plan to raise your next round? When do you plan to do this?

Igor — Currently we are starting to work on our seed round — hopefully with your assistance and help as well. That will be a new challenge for us; we’ll see how it goes.

Anna — How much do you plan to close?

Igor — Our current plan is to raise $3 million.