Looking For Funding? First, Understand What Funders Look For

Are investors interested in ideas? Traction? The team? The founders? They’re interested in all that and more, say VCs Keet van Zyl and Clive Butkow.

- Nadine Todd

Put two venture capitalists and an entrepreneur (who pitched her business to almost every VC in South Africa before securing corporate funding) in a room, and you’ll hear the truth about funding: What investors look for, the realities for business owners looking for funding, and what you can do to increase your chances of securing funding — or better yet, build a great business without it.

In June, the Matt Brown Show hosted a series of events, called Secrets of Scale at the MESH Club, focusing on what it takes to scale a business. Matt’s panellists included Clive Butkow, ex-COO at Accenture and CEO of Kalon Ventures, a tech-focused VC firm; Keet van Zyl, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Knife Capital, and Benji Coetzee, founder and CEO of tech startup EmptyTrips. To add a twist to events, both Keet and Clive chose not to invest in Benji’s business when she was on the funding trail, even though they believe strongly in both her and her idea.

Here’s what we learnt from their experiences, insights and advice for local business owners.

1 FUNDERS BACK THE JOCKEY, NOT THE HORSE

This is a truth that Benji has experienced first-hand. “After months of trying to find an investor, I decided that VCs don’t know what they want,” she says. “The ladder of proof just keeps getting longer — big white space, addressable market, an MVP (minimum viable product), traction, first users — there’s a long checklist and you just need to keep ticking those boxes. Great concept, great team, we love it, keep going. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that.”