How to raise $1.2 million for your Web3 startup: Smoothie case study

Grab your weekly Web3 growth insights

Epic Web3

Dec 12, 2022

GM, Web3 buddy 🖖

This is Epic Web3 Newsletter — your weekly dose of actionable insights from the major Web3 experts.

Every Monday at 10 AM (WET) we take your products TO THE MOON 🚀

🎉 The first week of the Epic Web3 Summit is over — how was it?

Last week we hosted 3 days of powerful keynote speeches & AMA-sessions packed with:

Go-to-market case studies for Web3 products;
Best practices for raising funds & getting a Web3 startup investment ready;
Effective strategies to promote Web3 products and build successful partnerships.

How was it exactly? Reviews we’ve got speak more than anything:

Happy to receive such a feedback but happier to say that the EW3 Summit is not over!

We’re entering the second week of the event — come join us to meet experts from Talent Protocol, Balancer, OneRare, Web3 Academy & other amazing speakers.

Apply the promo code EPICWEB3SUMMIT to enjoy 20% OFF!

Join with 20% OFF

Just to give you more info, here’s our epic agenda that awaits you this Wednesday:

12:00 — Frugal Marketing: how to grow without a budget (Filipe Macedo, CMO & Co-founder at Talent Protocol)

12:30 — Secret topic (James Rowdy, Co-founder & Head of Partnerships at NFT MELB)

13:00 — How to survive during the crypto winter (Sergey Kuznetsov, Co-founder & CPO at INXY.io)

13:30 — How to build DEXs with a user experience of a centralized exchange? (Aayushi Jain, Founder & COO at ZeroSwap)

14:00 — How we turned our audience into a tokenized community that helps us build products (Kyle Reidhead, Co-founder of Impact Digital Marketing & Web3 Academy)

More insights to learn from! Don’t miss out & join the Epic Web3 Summit until it’s too late.

I'm in!

🧞‍♂️ How to raise over $1 million and supercharge your Web3 startup? Community Insights on preparing for a pre-seed fundraising.

Epic Web3 Genie is here 👋

I’m in charge of collecting insights from the Web3 community and bringing it to you. Being a magical creature myself, I love people who can do magic — especially those who know how to grow Web3 products from scratch. Come say “gm” on Twitter 😉

This time I’m happy to share Smoothie’s story and tell you how they raised $1.2 million in just three months!

Smoothie is a discover-to-earn awards platform designed for Web3-based projects. How does it work?

Each week, founders post the Web3 products they're building, and Smoothie’s users upvote for their favorite ones. The top projects become the winners and receive award NFTs, and active upvoters get Smoothie’s proof-of-discovery reputation metric, or ‘points’.

In its latest seed funding (September 2022) Smoothie raised over $1.2 million — what a result! Matt Kim, the co-founder, shared at Epic Web3 Summit what lessons they learned during the fundraising journey. Here’s a few of them:

1️⃣ Move fast

It took Smoothie 3 months to raise funds.

Don’t spend too much time on fundraising, because at the end of the day you need to get back to what’s important — product building.

2️⃣ Perfect your 1-liner

Make your position statement as easy as possible for investors to get it, and spend less time explaining the product and why they should invest in it.

Example in a single sentence: Smoothie is a discover-to-earn awards platform for Web3 products.

3️⃣ Use accelerators

Accelerators can be a good way to fast-track your learning and connections.

But if you decide to do this, start the process 3-4 months before you actually need the funds, and not later.

Editor’s note: Check the post by Akshay Jain (a Web3 investor) with a curated list of top accelerators in Web3.

4️⃣ Batch your calls

Create a calendly link just for fundraising and batch all of your calls into a 2 or 3-week window.

Put all of your investors' calls into that period to not drag on the fundraising process. Otherwise, the process might last for several months and you won’t move fast.

5️⃣ Use DocSend to send pitch decks

What you benefit from using it:

— You can edit your pitch deck after you’ve sent it.

— You have control who has access to it.

— You can see who read or shared it.

6️⃣ Use different channels for pitching

Depending on your stage and industry, it’ll be a numbers game. You can find investors via:

— Coinlist Seed (apply to their demo day program for crypto startups);

— Newsletter (make an announcement about your aim to fundraise);

— Referrals (find key people who’re willing to help share your pitch deck);

— Cold outreach (use Twitter DMs, email, LinkedIn, etc.). Check this thread to find useful tips for cold outreach.

7️⃣ Be prepared for rejections

For Smoothie, they had a lot of people interested in exit opportunities only — those investors didn’t mention strategy or support at all. Some investors will never get how brilliant your product idea is, even if you’re the next unicorn.

Expect to fail in your first few pitches, learn and get better.

Hint: You can start with angels, as they have fewer processes and can make faster decisions. Use this to create early momentum in the raise, and then talk to the big funds.

These are just some of the highlights that Matt covered during the Epic Web3 Summit. And if you wanna get all the 19 tips for Web3 startup fundraising, grab your chance and watch the full video.

Watch now

P.S. You can watch it via Epic Web3 membership or just join our summit — all the recordings will be available if you choose a ticket that includes them!