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WOCCON Summit

The WOCCON Summit is an invitation-only conference that brings together entrepreneurs, allies, and thought leaders to explore ways to help women of color advance on the grow-scale-exit trajectory. The Summit will share stories about the unique entrepreneurial journey of women of color, facilitate honest conversations about allyship, and propose solutions that can lead to systemic change.

While a growing number of Black and Latinx women-led startups crossing the $1MM threshold, the majority of Black and Latinx women-led startups raise significantly less than the average funded startup. For those who have not raised over $1MM, the median seed round raised by Black women founders is $125,000 and the median seed round raised by Latinx women founders is $200,000. As of 2020, the national median seed round funding for a startup is $2.5M. Source: ProjectDiane2020

Your Startup Guru is thrilled to attend the WOCCON Summit and committed to creating a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem. Capital constraint remains a defining problem for the majority of Women of Color entrepreneurs. As our post, What Angel Investors Prefer discusses, there are considerable pre-money valuation and round size discrepancies when it comes to the various demographics of entrepreneurs. This highlights a disturbing flaw in the angel investment community.

Emerging Young Entrepreneurs

Your Startup Guru Managing Director, Joon Hong, recently had the opportunity to advise the 2022 cohort in the Emerging Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) program on their pitch decks.

The National Minority Supplier Development Council’s Emerging Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) program is a year-long program uniquely designed to provide the next generation of minority entrepreneur participants ages 19-35 with support to enhance their growing business. Business owners will receive guidance from corporate sponsors, MBEs, and additional stakeholders. EYE will utilize an interactive pre and post-conference curriculum along with five days of hands-on training and practical application. Participants are provided the skills, tools, and strategies to start or grow their innovative businesses.

About NMSDC’s Emerging Young Entrepreneurs Program

Founded in 1972, the National Minority Supplier Development Council Inc.® (NMSDC®) is the longest-operating business growth engine for the broadest group of systematically excluded communities of color (Asian-Indian, Asian-Pacific, Black, Hispanic, and Native American)and our impact goes far beyond supply chain. It’s about upward mobility for the emerging majority of Americans, an equal shot at participating in the American experiment of free-market capitalism and entrepreneurship. Our work is about correcting the unequal access to wealth-building opportunities.

Launch and Grow Your Business

Pitch decks are a fantastic document to raise capital for your business. Contact us today to get started on your pitch deck.

SBIR Seed Funding

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) is investing up to $2 million in seed funding, aka America’s Seed Fund. America’s Seed Fund is a program within the National Science Foundation and housed within the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. This congressionally mandated program aims to foster innovation and help create businesses and jobs in all areas of the United States, and small businesses funded by our program have since gone on to tremendous success, changing industries, and helping people and the planet. Click here for more information.

Contact us today to get started on your pitch deck.

What Angel Investors Prefer

Not all industries get the same attention, and there is a pattern to what angel investors prefer. For example, according to a recent report based on an analysis of 2,492 transactions across 2,444 companies, all completed in 2019, angel investors are more likely to prefer certain industries and deal structure types (e.g., convertible notes).

Selected portions from the report below:

Industry

The 2019 data revealed a first-time decline in the information technology/software segment as a percentage of total transactions relative to other investment segments (2019/2018) — 29% of the investments (2019) were in information tech, compared with 38.6% (2018). Yet Information Technology still remains the dominant segment for angels.

Angel Investors Prefer: Consumer Products / Services sector saw significant growth, up from 18.2% (2018) to 25.75%.

If Healthcare and Biotech were combined, they would comprise 21% (2019) of transactions versus 18% (2018). We added Biotech as a discreet sector to track in 2019, but for comparison sake, you can observe that even without Biotech, the Healthcare segment continues to be a major category for angels.

We also noted an increase in Financial Services’ Fin Tech in 2019, which was too small in 2018 to warrant its own category. In 2019 companies in this sector participated in 3.55% of all transactions. The Energy sector also rose to over 3%, with a few related Environmental companies included.

And for this year, we found enough companies to warrant adding Ag Tech (1.2%) as a separate category and clearly growing. While Info Tech and Software is still the leading category for angel investing, but by a much smaller margin than in the past, we also acknowledge that Info Tech / Software is often a necessary core component of many other sector investments.

Deal Structure Type

While we continue to see the use of SAFE notes, they are a minor percentage of all Seed transactions at 4.7%. The primary structures were 51% Convertible Notes and almost 41% Priced Preferred. SAFE’s are not reported in our data as frequently as we hear them discussed amongst early-stage entrepreneurs.

Series A transactions were (as expected) Preferred Stock 86% of the time, with 12% standard Convertible Notes associated with a Series A, typically a bridge to Series A, but distinctly beyond the Seed stage.

We did find SAFEs were most frequently used in Mid-Atlantic Region at 12%. The Mid-Atlantic use of SAFEs may be heavily influenced by US Federal DOE, NSF, NIH, and other grant money, which does not permit debt as a liability while grant funds are in use; hence early-stage companies who do not wish to price their round are opting for SAFE notes.

California was #2 in SAFE usage at 10%, influenced by California incubators and possibly by science companies vying for Federal grant funds.


There are considerable pre-money valuation and round size discrepancies when it comes to the various demographics of entrepreneurs. This highlights a disturbing flaw in the angel investment community, but that goes beyond the scope of this blog post.

Launch and Grow Your Business

Your Startup Guru fundraises for clients from a broad spectrum of industries, including restaurants, SaaS, fintech, and more. Capital ranges from $10,000 to over $10 million have been found.

We have solutions for you even if your industry is not what angel investors prefer because capital is sourced from private equity, banks, economic development authorities, grants, and more.

Contact us today for your fundraising needs.

Non-profit Grant Proposal – Tutor At Desk

Non-profit Grant Proposal - Tutor At Desk logo

Your Startup Guru created a grant proposal and informational deck for educational non-profit Tutor At Desk. The grant funds will be used to help raise additional capital for its operations.

Grant proposals and informational decks for grant applications for non-profits are similar to regular business proposals (and plans) and pitch decks. One of the main difference is grant-makers are interested in how their mission is furthered by the applicant instead of what the investor’s ROI will be.

About Tutor At Desk

Tutor At Desk is a promising nonprofit that provides free computer programming classes and loaner laptops to anyone that wants to take one (or more) of their many courses including HTML5, JavaScript, Python, app development, and more

Launch and Grow Your Non-Profit

Let us help you launch your non-profit. Contact us and let’s get to work on your grant proposal!

Skincare Company Business Plan

Skincare company Osys Naturals came to Your Startup Guru in need of a business plan
OSYS®Naturals

Skincare company OSYS®Naturals came to Your Startup Guru in need of a business plan. Through our business plan and fundraising services, OSYS was able to secure the capital necessary to grow their company.

OSYS Naturals offers a fantastic line of skin care solutions for razor burn, razor bumps, ingrown hair, and skin irritations. The unique natural ingredients in OSYS Naturals were specifically chosen and formulated for their healing, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-infectious, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiseptic, antiviral, astringent, analgesic, and tissue regenerative properties.

Contact us today for your startup needs.

Landscaping Business Plan

Landscaping Business Plan for Your Startup Guru client Dream Pools & Landscaping and Super 10 Trucking

Your Startup Guru created a landscaping business plan that allowed the owners to request $1.8 million in expansion capital for Dream Pools and their other startup Super 10 Trucking.

Their situation required a 1-week delivery period while also mixing in complex financial projections that included the assets of his pool construction business with his trucking business.

In the end, the plan was delivered, and the owners are now able to grow their businesses.

Launch and Grow Your Business

Contact us today to order your landscaping business plan.

A great episode from a great podcast

Peloton - Your Startup Guru

NPR’s How I Built This is a fantastic podcast that brings the stories behind some of the world’s best-known companies. How I Built This interviews innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists about the movements they built.

Peloton co-founder:  John Foley

In this episode, they interview John Foley, one of the co-founders of Peloton; the fitness and media company that you’ve probably seen commercials for.

In the interview, they greatly undervalued John Foley’s network and experience but nonetheless, this episode touched on several relevant topics my clients often face.  I picked this episode because it was a little more in-depth and enlightening than other episodes in that Foley he talks about:

  • having the discussion with this wife about moving in with her parents if the company fails,
  • how everyone is similarly able including Harvard MBAs,
  • the CEO being the janitor when starting out; something I discussed in a previous post about bootstrapping
  • how VCs are not very adventurous,
  • how Peloton is only recently profitable after 7 years

There are also great questions asked by interviewer that touches on market trends such as arcades no longer thriving due to user experience-to-price dynamics (i.e. video game consoles vs arcades due to quality of experience), penetration/awareness strategy which led to their distribution model given that malls are making an industry correction, and lastly the trademark question: “How much of this was because of your intelligence and hard work, and how much of this was just luck?”

FYI, I always discuss market and industry trends, launch and penetration strategy, as well as bootstrapping in all my business plans.

The entire podcast can be heard here

Recruiting Service Strategy Consulting

Staffing and recruiting service PMG Employment Solutions came to Your Startup Guru for help targeting companies to acquire. We provided corporate valuations and strategy analyses to help PMG make the best choice for their expansion.

PMG Employment Solutions is a full staffing and recruiting service dedicated to finding qualified workers for employers. They specialize in providing potential employees for permanent, part-time, seasonal and temporary positions with companies in manufacturing, service industries, construction, and agriculture.

Contact us for help with your recruiting service business.

Health and Beauty Pitch Deck

Beauty and Personal Care Pitch Deck Zion Health

Zion Health is a health and beauty products manufacturer in need of a pitch deck. We created a tailor-made pitch deck in about two weeks that was used to raise capital for the next stage of their operations.

About Zion Health

Zion Health makes a wide variety of natural health and beauty products based on clay. Zion Health is an expanding natural health company specializing in the healing powers of Kanwa Clay Minerals. The company founder is an avid believer and user of natural healing remedies and discovered certain types of clay contain a powerful combination of minerals that can heal many different ailments of the body with few side effects.

Launch and Grow Your Business

Contact us today to get started on your health and beauty pitch deck.

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