The Entrepreneur's First Look at Venture Bonsai

This blog post is a shortened version of our new White Paper for Entrepreneurs, which is available here.

If you would rather see in person what Venture Bonsai can do for your company, then go to www.VentureBonsai.com and sign up!

About us

Venture Bonsai is a growth ecosystem that allows entrepreneurs to get traction and to manage an investment round. Our platform enables entrepreneurs to get feedback on their product in the community, build trust with the potential investors, as well as attract investors when running an investment round.

We give you the platform to offer shares of your company to a wide variety of sources. This means anyone from Angels and VC’s to your family and customers can invest in your company and receive equity in return.

Our key features include a simple way to see who your friends have met and trust, so it’s easier to trust who you’re doing business with. On Venture Bonsai it’s also easy keep investors updated to your progress by posting your company’s updates to everyone’s Dashboard. And if you have a question about your startup, you can pose it to our community using the Knowledge tab.

Adding your Company

We recommend you join Venture Bonsai early while developing your product so you can give the investment ecosystem updates to your product and start talking to investors early.

The two key sections of your company’s Venture Bonsai profile are the Product page and Investment Room. The Product page is just one part of your public profile. On that page you describe your product or service, and really focus investors’ attention with Pictures, PDF, and Video.

Your private Investment Room is the section of your profile that opens up to the people you invite when you begin an investment round. This is the area where you really advertise your round, privately show your financial details, and can securely answer all of your investors’ questions.  Here, investors can also view your official documents, such as the Shareholders’ Agreement.

Preparing for the Financing Round

When preparing for a round, we make it easy to invite your network so they can invest in your company!

Preparing for the round also means taking care of your business plan and required legal documents. We makes this process easier by offering free legal documents designed to be acceptable to both entrepreneurs and investors. It is also possible to use your own documents, or a VC’s documents you prefer.

During this stage we recommend for companies to complete an optional Company Health Check. It’s a standardized process that verifies a company’s standing by an independent lawyer.  It’s a step that we recommend because it helps the funding process run smoother by reducing uncertainty.

Running the Round

When you officially launch your funding round, you, the entrepreneur, have control over who can see your private Investment Round page. Therefore you have control over who can review your private documents. Here you can also communicate with your potential investors securely, and discuss the round numbers and financial details.

When investors commit to investing in your company, they will electronically sign the necessary paperwork and receive instructions to transfer their money into an Escrow account. Here, their money will be held securely until the round is completed. If the round does not meet its threshold by the end of the time period, all money will be returned back to the investors.

Sign up for Venture Bonsai!