FAQ

Our process is pretty straightforward:

1. Introductory meeting – The objective of this meeting is to have a conversation about your business and explore how we can work together. If we met you through an accelerator, we will share feedback on your presentation.
2. Screening interviews or meeting – We ask companies to deliver a 8- to 10-minute presentation followed by 5 minute Q&A.
3. Member meeting – Varkain will hand select members or associates we feel are qualified to assess the company. Each company will have an opportunity to pitch members individuvally or, in some cases, as a group.
4. Due Diligence – We target to complete due diligence and provide an investment decision within 6 weeks, but have been known to pull the trigger sooner.

We make hard decisions after

We work with numerous accelerators and university incubators who regularly expose us to quality deal-flow. We also actively search for deals across a number of channels, even scouring Kickstarter to find companies like UpCart. We also take referrals from our partner companies seriously.

We typically prefer to see companies with a working MVP and some level of traction before taking a meeting or considering a Seed investment. However, under special circumstances, we will take meetings and fund ideas during the concept stage. Companies in university incubators are typically referred or vetted through a pitch review.

We don’t see a tangible difference between angel, seed and pre-seed investment. We’ve done all three and our behavior as investors has always been the same — very supportive. Founders’ needs are the same early on and most of the companies we invest in are made up of a couple of people wearing many hats. So, even if you don’t think you’re ready, we are big fans of entrepreneurship and always like to get to know inspired founders.

We are not LPs with any accelerators, but we have made investments in numerous companies via accelerators. Our closest relationship is with Quake Capital based in New York.

We request either an executive summary or a pitch deck, preferably in PDF format.

If we execute NDAs and are actively in due diligence, absolutely.

We believe timely feedback is imperative for startups. If we like your business and deal, we will let you know soon. If we don’t like your deal, we will also communicate that to you along with a brief explanation of why we are passing. We know that time is critical to any startup and we respect that.

We typically look at deal-flow in SaaS, mobile technology and hardware technology. We also tend to fund deals in seed and early series A, but have followed on in subsequent rounds with numerous companies.

Very active, but we try to stay out of our companies’ way. We always offer to help or advise but do not demand it. However, we try not to invest in companies that are not willing to collaborate when struggling.

Almost always. It is rare that we would not expect a company to share their pitch and rehearse their pitch with us prior to raising in later rounds.

Yes. Besides the fact that we may follow on in your next round, we always try to help our partner companies raise money from a trusted network that we feel could be an asset to the companies we back.

While an answer based on ROI like 2.5x or 10x is typically how startups expect us to answer, we typically won’t know for 3-5 years if everything goes smooth. The truth is we may not know how a company succeeds for 5-10 years, so we initially base our investment success by companies that are sustainable, successfully disrupting their industry, and how the company and Varkain have grown as partners.

Depending on the stage of a business or our affinity to an offering, we have invested as little as $25K and as much as $700K as an initial investment.

We like to participate as angel or seed investors, but are not opposed to later rounds.

Probably not. While we know people who are active Series B or C investors, we are early stage investors.

Yes, we regularly follow on with our partner companies when we are seeing proper execution of the business with the right metrics.

We typically invest with other high net worth individuals either in the Palm Beach Investment Research Group (PBIRG) or funds/accelerators like High Street Partners, Quake Capital, Boomstartup and Kickstart Seed Fund.

This answer gets complicated depending on the goals of the business, but a short answer is 3-5 years either in the form of a dividend or an exit.