Description
Are you based in Southern California and raising a Seed or Series A round of funding ($1M to 4M+) in the next 6 to 12 months? The SoCal Venture Pipeline program selects SoCal entrepreneurs raising institutional funding and directly introduces them to capital providers from our deep nationwide relationship network.
We take no fees, equity or compensation from startups. The program is generously underwritten by Banc of California, as well as Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, KPPB LLP, and HCVT. When you’re fabulously successful, we will brag about you.
Why are we doing this? We are committed to ensuring that entrepreneurs from all backgrounds and SoCal communities have access to capital and opportunity. The SVP program’s primary goal is to fix the access gap that is holding back entrepreneurs in need of additional capital who don’t currently have access to the right network of investors to help them continue to grow and thrive. We are also giving nationwide investors access to the unparalleled innovation network within SoCal — the value goes both ways!
Eligibility
Who should apply?
We’re looking for companies that are gearing up to raise their first round of institutional funding within the next 6 to 12 months. All industry verticals within tech are included (life sciences fields may be added at a later date).
Below are some general indicators that may suggest your company is ready for Seed or Series A funding (which we are defining as +$1M for Seed and +$4M for Series A):
Seed:
- Have ideally raised at least $250K through angel funding and/or friends and family
- If not, product in market and demonstrated customer traction and potentially early revenue generation
- Proof of Value Proposition: Annual Run Rate (ARR) sales of $100K or more (ideally) and/or at least 100 customer discovery interviews
- Dedicated team of 2 or more
- Have articulated a compelling market opportunity and identified target customer segments, and early customer validation (e.g. pilots, etc.), for example
- MVP built and in use by customers
- Proof of a growing customer prospect pipeline
- Identified Key Performance Indicators
- Raising institutional seed capital of $1M or more with a scalable business model and a Series A raise planned in next 12-24 months.
- Based in Southern California
Series A:
- Have raised $500K angel or seed investment
- Dedicated team of 5 or more
- Product in the market
- Demonstrated accelerating market traction (e.g. revenue, customers, or users)
- Annual Run Rate (ARR) sales of $2M or more (ideally)
- What makes you the winner in this market?
- Raising institutional Series A capital of $4M or more
- Based in Southern California
Founders: Here’s a helpful guide we wrote to explain the different funding stages to help you determine which round you should be raising.
What are the key criteria you consider for selection?There is no “grading system” or rubric. We believe it’s both art and science. Do you need to have key metrics? Of course, but every company is different: different industries, markets, stage of development, and management. We do our best to try and select companies across multiple verticals that we believe will be interesting to VCs in our network.
What an Applicant can Obtain
What can a company expect from the SVP program and what do we expect from Companies?
We want to get to know you and better understand your business so that we can find the right investors/partners/supporters for you and your team. There will be a round of first meetings and then regular touch points during the fundraising process.
