//English version below//
With the founding of a tech startup, from the very beginning everything revolves around the question: How do I finance myself for the next 3 months or the next year? How do I build a motivated team and develop a product that solves customer problems? For many, the focus is on external investment. Venture capitalists and business angels make it possible to support visions financially at an early stage and to accelerate growth.
Guaranteed success through investment?
This growth strategy is fueled by daily headlines about the latest funding rounds from other (mostly U.S.) tech startups.But why do companies get so much media attention because of venture capital? An investment is a vote of confidence from a respected business expert and a signal of the company's future, explains TechCrunch's Tiffany Spencer.
But an investment alone and the resulting growth are no guarantee for success. More important is a sustainable business case, which Alex Lazarow, Forbes confirms in his learnings as a VC. Last but not least, three out of four startups fail despite VC funding(Nanoglobals 2021).
Success through own sales
MailChimp shows how things can be done differently. The online marketing platform has not raised any venture capital since its founding in 2001. After almost 20 years of organic growth, the company was acquired by Intuit for $12 billion.
The financing model without external venture capitalists is known as bootstrapping. The particular challenge here is to generate revenues in the early stages of product development while minimizing ongoing costs.
Our VC experience
We at anny also started talking to potential investors early on in order to accelerate growth with the help of venture capital. However, it is often difficult for venture capitalists or business angels from outside the industry to understand the concrete pains of the customers, so the business case has to be proven by numbers and traction.
The search for venture capital can also be an intensive task that can quickly tie up founders' time without taking the product any further. You have to expect to talk to at least one VC for every 50,000€ of venture capital you want to raise. That means, for example, to secure 1M€, at least 20 x contacts have to be made, 20 x pitches have to be prepared and held, 20 x financial figures have to be disclosed and valuations have to be discussed.
Sustainable vs. rapid growth
A major opportunity offered by debt capital is rapid growth and thus the acquisition of new market shares. However, this is offset by the risk of creating too large fixed cost blocks too early, e.g. through personnel and rent. If the product does not yet generate organic sales at this point, one is dependent on follow-up financing.
In addition, investors often focus on pure growth (e.g., absolute user numbers) instead of sustainable growth (e.g., high revenue per user with high customer retention). This can change the orientation of the startup, so that too fast non-sustainable growth must also be financed externally in the long term.
anny-way
For these reasons, we initially paused our active search for venture capital and focused on organic financing last year. Through early and close contact with our customers, we generated the feedback, insights and revenue that enabled us to develop a unique booking platform. Independently, we moved step by step closer to our vision: Making shared resources and services easily bookable!
Now we can proudly announce that in less than a year we have organically achieved a turnover of over 500k€ with a six-figure profit and only a low three-figure customer base.
With our sustainable business model as a foundation and proven customer traction, we are well equipped for a (VC-backed) rapid growth phase in the future.
Our success factors
Reaching this milestone was only possible with a highly motivated team that firmly believes in the product and the vision of anny\. At the same time, we have always involved our customers in the development of the product in order to finance the development on the one hand and to maintain proximity to the market on the other.
Another critical success factor is the agility of product development. This has enabled us not only to respond to customers at short notice, but also to quickly solve new market challenges.
Lean Startup vs. B2B
As a startup, you are often confronted with agile methods and the agile manifesto for product development. A key component of this is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The idea behind this is to validate one's product with the customer as early as possible in order to collect feedback and ensure that a problem is solved in the market. In doing so, many startups rely on incomplete software with many gaps, manageable UX and occurring errors.
But what if the solution to the problem is acute? This is especially the case in the business-to-business (B2B) business. Since the product is used within a business process relevant to the other company, the functionality is critical and an MVP is usually not sufficient.
Specifically, let's assume that we rent out a meeting room externally. The underlying resource management does not allow any errors, otherwise double booking could occur. Even more critical can be seen the billing and payment processing automated by anny, where any error would mean financial losses or extra work for business customers.
With anny we used agile development methods while maintaining stability, security, user-friendliness and scalability of the product, so that customers could rely on the solution of their problem from the beginning. As a result, over 10k bookings are now processed daily with an automatically scaling infrastructure as the backbone of the anny platform.
About anny
The cloud-based platform from anny digitizes and simplifies booking, capacity and resource management. In the process, anny can be used across all industries and configured individually for every requirement. With anny, we aim to create an overarching marketplace for shared resources that revolutionizes the booking of rooms, services, equipment, and much more.
- Founded April 2020
- HQ: Aachen
- 10+ employees
- 150+ satisfied customers and clients
- > 1.5 M. Bookings after one year of use
Tech startup anny bootstrapped six-figure funding one year after founding
With the founding of a tech startup from the very beginning, everything revolves around the question: How do I fund myself for the next 3 months or the next year? How do I build a motivated team and develop a product that solves customer problems? For many, the focus is on external investors. Venture capitalists and business angels allow to support visions financially at an early stage and to accelerate growth.
Guaranteed success through investment?
This growth strategy is fueled by daily headlines about the latest financing rounds of other (mostly U.S.) tech startups. But why do companies get so much media attention because of venture capital? An investment is a vote of confidence from a respected business expert and a signal of the company's future, TechCrunch's Tiffany Spencer explains.
But an investment alone and the resulting growth do not guarantee success. More important is a sustainable business case, which Alex Lazarow, Forbes confirms in his learnings as a VC. Last but not least, three out of four startups fail despite VC funding(Nanoglobals 2021).
Success through own sales
MailChimp shows how things can be done differently. The online marketing platform has not raised any venture capital since its founding in 2001. After almost 20 years of organic growth, the company was acquired by Intuit for $12 billion. The financing model without external venture capitalists is called bootstrapping. The particular challenge is to generate revenue in the early stages of product development while minimizing ongoing costs.
Our VC experience
We at anny have also started early to talk to potential investors to accelerate growth with the help of venture capital. However, it is often difficult for venture capitalists or business angels unfamiliar with the industry to relate to the specific pains of customers, so the business case must be proven through numbers and traction.
The search for venture capital can also be an intensive task, which can quickly tie up founders' time without taking the product any further. You have to expect to talk to at least one VC for every 50,000€ of venture capital you want to raise. That means, for example, to raise 1M€, at least 20 x contacts have to be made, 20 x pitches have to be prepared and held, 20 x financial figures have to be disclosed and valuations have to be discussed.
Sustainable vs. fast growth
A great opportunity through venture capital is the fast growth and thus the acquisition of new market shares. On the other hand, there is the risk of creating too large fixed cost blocks too early, e.g. through personnel and rent. If the product does not yet generate organic sales at this point, one is dependent on follow-up financing.
Furthermore, investors often focus on pure growth (e.g. absolute user numbers) instead of sustainable growth (e.g. high revenue per user with high customer retention). This can change the direction of the startup so that too fast non-sustainable growth has to be financed externally even in the long run.
anny-way
For these reasons, we initially paused the active search for venture capital and focused on organic financing last year. Through early and close contact with our customers, we generated the feedback, insights, and revenues that enabled us to develop a unique booking platform. Independently, we moved step by step closer to our vision: Making shared resources and services easily bookable!
Now we can proudly announce that in less than a year we have organically generated a revenue of over 500k€ with a six-figure profit and a low three-figure customer base.
With our sustainable business model as the foundation and proven customer traction, we are well prepared for a (VC-backed) rapid growth phase in the future.
Our success factors
Reaching this milestone was only possible with a highly motivated team that strongly believes in the product and the vision of anny. At the same time, we have always involved our customers in the development of the product to finance the development on the one hand and to maintain closeness to the market on the other.
Another critical success factor is the agility of product development. This has allowed us to not only respond to customers at short notice but also to quickly solve new market challenges.
Lean startup vs. B2B
As a startup, you are often confronted with agile methods and the agile manifesto for product development. A key component of this is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The idea behind this is to validate one's product with the customer as early as possible in order to collect feedback and ensure that a problem is solved in the market. In doing so, many startups rely on incomplete software, inconvenient UX, and bugs that occur.
However, what if the solution to the problem is crucial? This is especially the case in business-to-business (B2B) services. Since the product is used within a business process relevant to the other company, the functionality is critical and an MVP is usually not sufficient.
Specifically, let's assume that we rent a meeting room externally. The underlying resource management does not allow for errors, otherwise, conflicting bookings could occur. Even more critical can be seen anny's automated invoicing and payment processing, where any error would mean financial losses or extra work for business customers.
At anny, we used agile development methods while maintaining stability, security, user-friendliness, and scalability of the product, so that customers could rely on the solution to their problem from the beginning. As a result, over 10k bookings are now processed daily with an automatically scaling infrastructure as the backbone of the anny platform.
About anny
anny's cloud-based platform digitizes and simplifies booking, capacity, and resource management. anny can be used across all industries and configured individually for every requirement. With anny, we strive to create a global marketplace for shared resources that revolutionizes the booking of rooms, services, equipment, and much more.
- Founded April 2020
- HQ: Aachen, Germany
- 10+ employees
- 150+ satisfied customers and clients
- 1.5 million bookings after one year of operation
