February 3, 2022

7 Steps To Get Funded By Helios VC

Just 2 months in and Helios has begun conversations with dozens of startups who are looking for guidance and/or investment.

Some founders are already making big moves to bring their product to market while others are working on big ideas and ready to develop their business plan.

Helios is being structured as a VC Fund, meaning that we will manage investor capital to achieve maximum return for investors by allocating capital to the most promising startups (including a mix of equity and crypto token investments). This is a very different role within the ecosystem than a crowdfunding or grants platform such as pomelo.io.

Our focus is on the bottom line: “Can this project make enough money as reliably as possible to achieve the expected return on investment?”

This means our due diligence process needs to be sufficiently detailed for all concerned. We want to see founders succeed, and we have an obligation to investors to ensure that we can profitably return their investment.

To help founders as much as possible, we are running the Helios Incubator Light program. Although space is limited for each season (or ‘wave’) of the program, we will run these as often as we have qualified startups to participate.

Below are 7 steps that will help founders bring the best possible investment pitch to Helios to help us all accelerate towards a web3 future.

Apply via heliosrising.com/founder, including a brief yet informative introduction to your project. Submissions that include a pitch deck or business plan summary will be prioritized for initial meetings.

This pitch deck or business summary does not need to be extensively detailed at this point, but do make it good enough to communicate the business idea clearly (and succinctly) to help get the ball rolling.

A 15-minute initial meeting to agree clear next steps for what Helios will need from you in our evaluation process.

We will give initial feedback along with suggestions or requests for further information to help us all move in the direction of investability for your project.

Based on conversations to date that we have had with founders, the typical next steps may include gathering more details on:

(a) your business model (revenue plan, costs and go-to-market strategy) and

(b) market / customer validation (evidence of how you know there is market demand for exactly what you aim to do).

Once you have gathered details as discussed in our initial chat, we will most likely agree on updating your pitch deck or providing a detailed summary document (which we help with) to best represent the market opportunity. This will be based on various criteria that our Investment Team will be looking for when it comes time for you to present your pitch.

If the summary in Step 3 is clear, we will then have a 30 minute conversation to discuss what you are presenting so far. We will aim to identify gaps in the pitch and correspond back and forth until these are filled in.

For eligible projects (a clear business model and demonstrable market potential) you may be invited to join the next Helios Incubator Program. See heliosrising.com/helios-incubator

Present your pitch to members of the Helios Investment Team including Q&A and agree on next steps (such as responding with follow-up details, conducting additional market research, or perhaps setting up further meetings with other members of your team).

For projects that Helios Investment Team becomes interested to invest in, we then begin a back and forth due diligence process to deep dive into all of the nitty-gritty details as required to satisfy investor criteria.

Areas of due diligence include technical, legal, market, team, and more.

Agree on terms, Helios transfers funds, and we welcome you to the Helios company portfolio with additional support including an Accelerator program for growth, partner networking, and Board support.

Agree on terms and complete the funding process. We welcome you as Helios Rising portfolio company.

We bring a lot of value to Helios Portfolio Companies through support, access to C-level expertise, and Board-level mentorship. We encourage partner networking and encourage attending our Growth Accelerator program.

Our process will evolve around the requirements of founders throughout the evolving web3 smart-contract ecosystem — with focus on EOS, Telos, FIO, Proton, UX, Chintai, WAX, and Ultra. This may include working with blockchains to run hackathon events or additional developer training programs. There is no shortage of ideas, and we look forward to working with everyone in our expanding ecosystem, one step at a time towards the brilliance of a web3 global economy.

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