5 Funding options to raise capital for your Startup - pktapps

Every startup needs working capital and capital to get that boost start. Not all startup has the leverage of having the capital funds that are required. And that is the reason why most of the startups fail during their first year of establishment. We understand this need for financing your startup and that is the reason we have created a comprehensive list of the ways you can get funding for your startup.

1) Venture Capital

Venture Capital or VC’s are the high-end individuals or corporates or other groups who invest in the startups. The VC’s generally have huge funding capabilities and they look out for high ROI or huge potentials. Make sure if you apply for the VC you should have the project file & project vision and financial plan ready for the project. VC’s normally take equity in the startups, you might want to take that into consideration.

Funding rounds led by VC investment can be huge. The biggest Australian capital round last year saw HR startup Deputy (https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news-analysis/inside-111-million-deal-hr-startup-deputy-biggest-aussie-series-b/) raise $111 million in a round led by Silicon Valley VC IVP.So far in 2019, we have seen some more modest deals, with the Internet of Things startup GoFar (https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news-analysis/sydney-startup-gofar-1-3-million/) raising $1.3 million; software startup Curious Thing securing $1.5 million in seed funding; and, Kiwi edtech startup Kami completing a $1.4 million raise led by Aussie VC Right Click Capital.

2) Crowd Funding & Equity crowdfunding

Equity crowdfunding legislation was given the green light in Australia in March 2017, allowing individuals to invest small amounts into companies for small amounts of equity.
Many of the startups are opting-in for the equity funding and they consider it to be a good alternative, but you might want to take into consideration getting your startup into a private company might come with some complications at the same time this is a great way of allowing your customer to be part of your journey.

Last year, cinema ticket startup Choovie embarked on a campaign to raise $700,000, with founder and chief Sonya Stephen saying the idea was “to get our fabulously loyal customers to become shareholders".
In 2016, Melbourne headphone startup Nura completed the most successful Australian Kickstarter campaign ever, securing $2.5 million from almost 8,000 backers.
Now, Nura is a fully-fledged and well-funding the startup, raising $21 million in an oversubscribed Series A round in November last year.
In 2017, Aussie product design startup Orbitkey ran four campaigns on Kickstarter, raising a total of $1.5 million for its flagship keyring product designed to make it easier to carry multiple keys at once.
We would recommend you to approach https://readyfundgo.com/ as they are expert people in helping you to get those funds across and help your startup with the required fundings.

3) Government Grants

Australian Government is supporting the startups by proving various grants to boost their morale and provide with motivation to start something exciting. The Entrepreneurs’ Programme, which replaced Commercialisation Australia and the Innovation and Investment Fund in 2014, aims to help businesses increase productivity and competitiveness with funding and access to a national network of private-sector advisers and facilitators.
CSIRO Kick-Start: Startups and SMEs keen to partner with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in research activities can get up to $50,000 in matched funding to help them further develop and grow their business. Kick-Start is a relatively new initiative, which started in early 2017. It aims to further drive Australia’s innovation output by supporting local startups “on their way to becoming Australian success stories".
Austrade Landing Pad: This initiative aims to give Australian startups a leg-up in the global market by immersing them in one of five world-class innovation hubs. Startups accepted into Landing Pads in Singapore, Berlin, Shanghai, Tel Aviv or San Francisco benefit from an on-the-ground presence in these markets plus access to their networks, talent, mentors, and investors.

Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF): The Biomedical Translation Fund (BTF) was established by the federal government as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda in December 2016, and was fuelled with $250 million of Commonwealth capital and an additional $250 million of a private sector capital. Currently, the fund is managed by three fund managers, including one from startup VC fund OneVentures. So far, 10 investments have been made through the BTF, including a $7.5 million investment in MedTech startup Global Kinetics in April this year. The largest, and most recent, investment was $22 million in Certa Therapeutics on June 5.

4) IPO & ICO’s

Well, generally speaking, IPO & ICO’s are the very traditional way of getting the funds and there are many challenges back & forth for the same. Especially in ICO’s, there have been facing trust issues as there are many Ponzi ICO’s which were launched around 2017. But there are still people investing in IPO’s and ICO’s.
You should be although very careful with the IPO’s and ICO’s. There are many restrictions on marketing aspects of the ICO’s by social media sites & Google as well.

5) Angel investment, Business Loans and Funding From Business Incubators & Accelerators:

Angel investors are typically high-net-worth individuals with particular expertise or interest in a specific industry or technology, looking to make an investment in it. Often, they will be keen to contribute to the startup’s success with skills, knowledge, and contacts. Some startups will rely on just one angel, but often once one reputable backer is on board, more support comes flooding in. Equally, there are several angel groups such as the Sydney Angels and women-focused network Scale Investors.
You could apply for small business loans if you are looking to raise a small amount of investment initially just to launch your MVP. Another option is to get funding from the Business Incubators & Accelerators. Early-stage businesses can consider Incubator and Accelerator programs as a funding option. Found in almost every major city, these programs assist hundreds of startup businesses every year.
These programs normally run for 4-8 months and require a time commitment from the business owners. You will also be able to make good connections with mentors, investors and other fellow startups using this platform.
You could approach Voyager Ventures & apply there as funding as they are the guys we would recommend you if you are looking for funding your startup.

7 Things to consider before creating an app - PKTApps

As you are reading this article, you have somewhere made up your mind to mold your app idea into reality, that’s a very good start. Now that you have made up your mind for the app development, let’s give you heads up on top 7 things to consider before sailing into the app development ship. Let’s start,

1) Brainstorm your app idea

Brainstorming is the critical phase of the app idea nurturing? This might be expressing your idea in the most optimum manner and getting ready for that positive & negative feedback.

It’s equally important & critical to work on negative feedback as well. As they would be out future app users and we must respect their opinions, although it would be difficult for us to decide whether to embrace those feedbacks or to ignore them.
I would suggest having kind of small meetup with users belonging to a different industry to test & validate your idea, That would be helpful for our next point as well which is Market research. I would be inviting the users from different sections including but not limited to People belonging to different age groups, from different technical expertise groups & different industries.

2) Market research

Market research, well this is the term you would be hearing a lot during your initial and the pre-launch phase of the app. So what is market research? Well, the market research is analyzing & understanding of the trends of the industry in which you are planning to launch your apps. There would be many factors dependent on the market research which you should take into consideration and are as under:

• Competitors analysis
• Defining the most precious functionality involved in achieving the solution or features you will be
• provided in your app.
• Revenue growth over some time.
• Cost involved
• Profit to Risk ratio

Although there would be way more parameter involved in market research than which I have mentioned above, I would recommend doing this initial research and spend more resources here than realizing at the end that the investment was not worth the risk or it has too high competition or surviving in this market is a big challenge.

3) Explore your target audience

Defining the Target Audience would be helpful and would be equally challenging. This would help you in many things at your app development stage starting from the UI/UX development to the marketing stage. If the app having females as their target audience the color schemes to be designed and app UX to be defined would be easy and would create a positive & pleasant experience for the end users.

When you want to market out your apps if you have the target audience with you than you could define your digital marketing platform easily. These days the Facebook Advert campaign lets you decide your target audience based on gender, age, interest, and demographics. Be very careful about deciding this & pay your full attention during exploring the target audience phase.

4) Choose technology stack

Technology stack, that sounds techie word, well it is techie word. But you would have to dig deeper while taking this decision. There would be 3 major factors for the app development stack :

-Deciding amongst Native Apps / Hybrid App Development

Well, if your app does not have many dependencies on hardware things like a beacon or your app does not need that GPU power like games you could select with the Hybrid app development.
But if budget permits you and you have those hardware requirements or you want to have 100% optimized performance you should go with native app development.

-Backend as OpenSource or Microsoft Technologies

You must be wondering why is this guy throwing those technical jargons in front of me, well let me simplify things, You could select OpenSource technology to developer your backend/frontend app with which is free of license fees which might help you lower your budgets but there might be some pros & corns for the same.
On other hands the Microsoft & Other paid license technology will bring heavy license fees & stability & reliability along with them. So its completely up to you to decide.

-Language Selection for the development of Mobile Apps 

I would recommend you to explore out all list of languages which are in trends right now, list down their pros & cons and then you should have a matrix to help you out alongside to take the decision, just keep in mind the long term goals & community support while making the decisions.

5) Build marketing strategies & pre-launch buzz

Marketing strategies would completely depend on the budget and the app segment that you’re into. If you have a good budget you might want to go out for both Digital Marketing & Offline marketing mediums. However, if you want to stick with Digital Marketing, I would recommend going with ROI (Return On Investment) based model than going with Branding model. Initially, you would want to see the returns on the money you are spending than just to go fro branding of the app.

Pre-Launch Buzz is very popular these days, you could create a series of questions and then reveal your app as an answer to those questions, but believe I, that kind of marketing requires greater complex planning & execution skills with handsome budgets.

6) Analyse & plan your dependencies

So once you have your app ready than you might want to see your dependencies and the persons/platforms on which you rely to get help for any of the crisis.
It’s better to discover them at this early staged and it’s time to crack some good deals with them, mostly you would rely on the Development Team, Server Management Team, and Marketing teams. But the development team would be the most important team you would be relying on and you might want to have the quick responsive & flexible team to support you during your launch & after launch requirements to work on those play store feedbacks & comments.

7) Start working on Phase 2 feature list & Phase 2 planning.

If you have just launched your app Its probably the time you don’t want to look at the phase 2 document in back of your mind but this is the time where you would be getting new competitors there would be people planning to replicate your app with more innovative features. Let’s recall the race between Orkut & Facebook. The company which keeps up the pace & plans ahead of time wins always.
I hope this will give you enough things to think over before you jump into the ship of app owners. Have awesome App Development experience Feel free to reach out to me for any queries/questions on hello@pkktapps.com or reach us out at https://pktapps.com. We would be happy to help.