Tommie’s Fundraising Journey
Tommie Edwards is the Co-Founder of TECH1M, a recruitment automation and skills assessment platform that helps businesses attract, evaluate and hire quality candidates, allowing their users to hire exactly as they want to, in one platform.
The problem: small businesses often have to hire quickly but they end up having long, painful recruitment process that are split across several platforms. From sifting through applications to running interviews, collecting feedback and running assessments, it can all feel like a chore. And, what’s worse is, the majority of platforms that solve this issue are for enterprise businesses, which completely price out the small and medium businesses that need this solution the most.
The solution: TECH1M is a recruitment intelligence platform that leverages AI ad data analytics so they can find, hire and evaluate candidates from across the world.
Tommie is a 3x founder, who bootstrapped her first two ventures before kick-starting TECH1M and becoming Angel and VC backed and going through a series of accelerator programs to develop their business strategy and close their round. Today, and we’re discussing the ins and outs of their round on the latest episode of The Raise.
In this episode, we cover:
[01:04] Tommie's background and why she started TECH1M
[06:40] What did you learn from your experience of bootstrapping twice?
[09:50] How did you manage the pressure of bootstrapping?
[14:55] How did you find TechStars and do you recommend other Founders go down that path?
[24:48] What does the process look like for some of these accelerators?
[30:46] What differences did you notice when speaking to US and UK investors?
[36:15] Did the SEIS/EIS scheme help you to close the raise faster?
[40:25] What challenges did you face as you were raising this time round and how did you tackle them?
[48:22] I f you could go back and do it again, would you do anything differently?
Some takeaways:
For Founders raising 💰
The right accelerators can be instrumental in building your start-up and preparing for fundraising. Do your research and apply for different accelerators that can play a role in supporting the different arears of the business that need to be developed (e.g. sales, SEISS, fundraising, venture backed). If you meet 4-5 of the criteria, complete the application and see what happens from there.
Be prepared to pitch at any moment in time. Translating your mission and vision in a couple of minutes is everything. You never know who you will meet in passing, so take the time to work on your pitch and test it on others.
Understand the market that you are raising in. UK and US investors operate in a very different way. UK and European investors tend to be more risk averse. US investors expect you to be confident (on the line of arrogance, but not crossing it) to gain their confidence. On the other hand, UK investors prefer founders that present themselves more humbly. Bear this in mind when you're speaking to investors from different parts of the world. Evaluations in the US are more founder friendly vs those in the UK that are typically fixed (e.g. £2.5m for pre-seed).
For aspiring founders 🤩
Stress and teary days or nights are a normal part of the journey when you're a Founder. You are not the only one who experiences this or feels that way. If you need help during those times, reach out to your founder community and ask for it. While friends and family may mean well, there's a chance that they won't quite understand the pressures that you're experiencing.
There is a time to be heads down and deep in the doing for your business, and there is a time to be heads up and networking with others to make sure you balance the two.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Overcast, and YouTube.
Where to find Tommie Edwards:
Where to find Jade Buffong:
• LinkedIn | Newsletter
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