I founded an vertical-focused enterprise startup. We signed a few huge customers in the space on a build-and-beta basis, and that led to industry awards and a full pipeline of leads and signed contracts for installation (SaaS pricing with small implementation fee).
We've done it with a ridiculously small team, however. And it's become impossible to handle the dev and deployment, support and training, security reviews, feature requests, etc. So we are looking at options.
We've been approached by a few large companies in the industry regarding acquisition. It looks like we could sell for $12-14M. Kind of exciting, but also well under the value that's possible (which would probably be something north of $400M in our industry alone, with the possibility to move laterally).
The alternative is to raise money. We've put together a solid deck and model (I think), but the local venture capital scene is not great (think $1M+ ARR).
We think this is a product ripe for SV firms, but those critical "warm introductions" are elusive. We just don't have the network. Only 4% of my cold emails have even been opened (yes, we track it).
It's crazy to me that our industry is jumping up and down for our product, we've got offers to buy the company, but we can't raise a seed. I've failed hard here. I'm open for advice.
We've done it with a ridiculously small team, however. And it's become impossible to handle the dev and deployment, support and training, security reviews, feature requests, etc. So we are looking at options.
We've been approached by a few large companies in the industry regarding acquisition. It looks like we could sell for $12-14M. Kind of exciting, but also well under the value that's possible (which would probably be something north of $400M in our industry alone, with the possibility to move laterally).
The alternative is to raise money. We've put together a solid deck and model (I think), but the local venture capital scene is not great (think $1M+ ARR).
We think this is a product ripe for SV firms, but those critical "warm introductions" are elusive. We just don't have the network. Only 4% of my cold emails have even been opened (yes, we track it).
It's crazy to me that our industry is jumping up and down for our product, we've got offers to buy the company, but we can't raise a seed. I've failed hard here. I'm open for advice.