Rogan and I hosted our first Open-Office Hours last Thursday here at PROfounders. This “open-beta” project was designed to give any startup entrepreneur a chance to talk about their business – no agenda, no “screening of plans”, no “warm intro” needed….
I will let the individuals who attended give their own thoughts about whether it was valuable, but from our perspective it was a great success. So much so, that we are definitely going to be doing this regularly!
A quick review:
12 slots for companies, but sadly 3 no-shows
5 of the 9 companies are actually raising money in the near-term, the other 4 just wanted to talk about their ideas
For those raising capital, the median raise was £500k with one company wanting €2m and one wanting £75k
7 of the 9 companies were based in the greater London area, but we had guests from Dublin and Birmingham
The average number of employees in the companies: 2; of the active companies, 7 of 8 were hosted on Amazon Web Services
Rogan and I owe 15 introductory emails following the meetings; these are connecting the companies to potential angel investors, potential customers; and potential employees
And, most importantly, we have a few companies that we can track and get to know better…