I am in my first round of funding and about to close it.
Background: We are working on the project since 1 1/2 years, 4 founders - living in different cities
Status: Prototype - ready for launch approx. may 2012
We have 2 offers from angel investors:
1) 10% - 140.000 EUR
Really good Angel, has perfect network and experience in our field of business
2) 3% - 42.000 EUR
Is a privat person - medium network and expertise - more "dumb" money
Our expenses for the next 12 months are at least 115.000 EUR
If we would move together and live in a appartment together in berlin, it would be 133.000 EUR
We plan to launch in may 2012 in cooperation with some of our clients for beta testing (no revnues).
We plan to make our first buck in october 2012.
Questions:
1) Whats a good way to calculate the amount of money needed - e.g. expenses of X months + ??%
2) What should be the end of our current runaway and current goal to raise the next round - launching? revenue? growth?
3) is it very negative to have small angels invest in you with just 3% shares for further funding rounds?
4) Is living together worth the money? (2000 EUR/month)
Thank you very much for your opinion!
More money will always help. Revenue will appear and grow more slowly than you hope.
There's no reasonable way to calculate expenses because to do so, you need to accurately predict how your team & business will develop for the next 18 months, which can't really be done.
Just take whatever you can get on reasonable terms and move on with building the company.