Digitising Venture Financing to Make it Quicker, Simpler and More Accessible

Digitising venture financing

We launch on Product Hunt today, taking Caena to a global audience

Venture capital is unarguable an industry stuck in the past. Which is an oxymoron given how innovation in other industries from retail banking to healthcare have been funded by venture capital.

When we founded Caena, it was based on the belief that equitable access to capital is the key to freedom for entrepreneurs. However, for far too long, access to capital isn’t fair. The privileged have access to tools, information and actual capital that the average entrepreneur does not have access to.

Over the past two years and with the support of our scrappy but incredible awesome team, we have built tools that digitise the venture financing process thereby creating a more level playing field. Today, we launch on Product Hunt, taking Caena to a global audience. With this launch, we are keen to get our tools in the hands of investors and founders to help them simplify the process and make it less painful for everyone.

One insight that motivated our unique approach — focusing on both investors and startups is that both sets of stakeholders are frustrated by the current process.

For Investors: Do More with Less

Our value proposition to investors is to improve the efficiency of their processes. From deal sourcing all the way till they exit the investments.

  • Deal sourcing & filtering: investors often have to wade through 100 applications to end up with one investment. Caena greatly simplifies this process by consolidating and filtering inbound applications based on investment thesis
  • Deal evaluation:
  • ** Current: founder hires consultant to build model >> weeks later sends to investor >> investor spends days auditing model >> provides feedback (or gives up if model is too complex)
  • ** With Caena: founder DIYs model >> next day sends to investor >> investor reviews on dashboard and sends instant feedback
  • This is just one example of how we are rethinking discreet workflows within venture financing
  • Portfolio management: investors require updates from startups but these come in wildly different formats. We are standardising regular updates making it easier for founders to keep investors up to date and for investors to consolidate reports for decision making and onward reporting to LPs.

For Startups: Save Time & Money

It’s difficult to instantly recall another group of people who are as hard pressed for time AND money as early-stage founders. Our tools save you both.

  • Financial modelling: 9 out of 10 of the founders we’ve spoken to over the past two years find financial analysis the hardest part of running their businesses. With Caena, founders can generate financial projections, charts and metrics in as little as 30 minutes. This is even more important now that investors are focused on unit economics. If you are not raising it’s also as important to have your metrics to hand for decision making
  • Investor matching: the odds of raising capital (especially for first-time founders) are extremely high. Founders need to reach out to as many as 150 investors to find one that invests. We are working to improve the odds with our matching tool
  • ** Automated teasers: create teasers and get visibility to investors
  • ** Investor prospecting: identify investors most likely to invest in your business
  • ** Visibility to investors: investors are searching for opportunities on Caena.

By offering tools to investors and making their processes simpler, founders benefit greatly. Conversely, by providing tools to help founders with fundraising, investors benefit from the improved efficiency. We have built Caena for the average (unprivileged founder) and this is reflected in our pricing. Founders can start off for free and premium subscriptions start at £10 per month. As part of our launch, we are making our tools even more affordable. Use discount code CaenaLAUNCH25 at checkout. Offer valid for a limited period only.

Today is just one step in the process and we know we have a long way to go. As a bootstrapped startup, what you see today has been achieved with the scarcest of resources. We cannot do it alone and need your help. Support our ProductHunt launch, subscribe to our packages and more importantly give us feedback

In this article: