As Paul Graham wrote a few months ago, fundraising can be incredibly distracting to a founder. It often takes months of pitching, re-pitchin...
As Paul Graham wrote a few months ago, fundraising can be incredibly distracting to a founder. It often takes months of pitching, re-pitching and paperwork to finally get your money in the bank. Kima Ventures is hoping to change this at the seed level with a new program. The seed stage investment firm, is debuting a new venture called Kima15, via which startups will be able to apply to get funding online, via AngelList, and get an answer and funding within 15 days.
On AngelList, startups can apply (here) for an investment structured as a fixed offer of $150,000 of funding for 15% of the company. Kima says it is using fixed, founder-friendly terms (based on the Seedsummit documents) and will make an investment decision within 5 days of receiving an application. The investment itself will close at warp speed, with funding reaching the company's bank account, within only 15 days. To make the process even more transparent, Kima has published a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Kima15, clearly defining the process, terms and value that they bring to the company as investors.
Kima Co-founder Jeremie Berrebi explains that the distraction of fundraising was the reason why the firm, which has invested in over 200 startups over the past few years, created Kima15. Similar to the way 500 Startups and Rock Health have their applications managed via AngelList, any interested startups for Kima15 can apply via the service that matches startups with investors
AngelList founder Naval Ravikant says that offering an SLA is unique to most VCs, and that an actual VC firm is using AngelList for applications/deal flow. It's sort of a hybrid model between the structured application process and early cash of Accelerators, with a seed fund attached. It will be interesting to see if other VCs/seed stage firms follow suit.
Kima Ventures plans to make more than 100 seed investments in the next 12 months, and at least 50 of which will be using the fixed Kima15 offer. The firm continues to make 2 new investments every week, making it one of the more active angel investors in the world.
Kima Ventures has also added two new team members–Michel Sassano joins from Orange and Wooga and Vincent Jacobs joins from Seedcamp and Smarkets.
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