VGA helps create value and establish meaningful partnerships
We offer expertise in all major aspects of building a successful business - from defining strategy and analyzing competitors to developing an MVP and raising capital, to name a few.
Our Services for Startups
Fundraising
We help prepare pitch decks, find investors, negotiate better deals
- Significant time investment: Fundraising absorbs a huge portion of the founders’ time that is taken away from building products and serving customers
- Hard to break the defence: VCs are more inclined to consider startups based on personal recommendations, so going direct lowers the chances for success
- Need to know your audience: Finding VCs that are relevant to your funding round and tech vertical requires experience so that the right information is delivered in the right way
- VC decision making is not obvious: First-time founders have limited awareness of VC expectations, standard protocols, and negotiation strategies, and thus risk making mistakes that can easily be avoided.
- We help you prepare a structured and professionally designed pitch deck
- We open doors to VCs, angels, and syndicated deals through our vast professional network in the US and globally
- We help you do the pre-work and reach out to the most relevant VCs
- We help administer successful crowdfunding campaigns, including (i) reward based (aka kickstart model), (ii) donation based (aka gofundme model), (iii) peer-to-peer lending (aka lending club model), (iv) regulated and unregulated Token Generating Events (TGEs) and Security Token Offering (STO)
- We guide you through the fundraising process and help negotiate favorable term sheet conditions
- Money in your bank account
- VC-ready pitch deck
- Fundraising plan and calendar
- Long-list and short-list of relevant VCs and angel investors
- Mentorship to grow your confidence across the deal stages
- Optional: Financial model of your business
Competitor Analysis
We conduct primary research and draw insights from the leading competitor analysis tools to create competitor dashboards that support strategy formulation and inform defensive moves
- The lack of competitive context in your strategic decision-making erodes differentiation and hampers your ability to pull ahead of competitors
- You are vaguely aware of how your business, product, and growth metrics stack up against those of competitors
- You are unsure how to fend off competitors and create barriers to prevent them from getting traction and becoming viable customer alternatives
- You analyze competitor strategies and tactical maneuvers and use findings to make informed strategic, product, and organizational decisions
- You use benchmarking to compare your key metrics with the top rivals. You identify gaps and take initiatives to drive improvements and maximize value
- You turn data into actionable insights to help create artificial barriers to entry that prevent new competitors from entering
You get a report or presentation that includes the following key elements (project scope may vary per project):
- Company Analysis: Investors, advisers, fundraising history, key personalities, strength of management, key employees, core-competences etc.
- Competitor Opportunities, Threats, and Trends Analysis: contains insights for an efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, and monitoring
- Competitor Product Strategy Analysis: Features and design, patents and licenses, R&D strengths, targeting, positioning, pricing, traction, user reviews, user surveys, first-hand product feedback, etc.
- Competitor Digital Marketing Analysis: Web mentions, SEO and keywords, social media, content and PR, paid search, advertising, email marketing activities, etc.
Financial modeling
We create a startup financial model that helps you tell a compelling story to investors, better understand cash needs, and to determine your venture’s burn-rate
- The lack of clear financial projections limits your ability to get VC funding
- You are unsure how to value your startup and negotiate its valuation
- Investors may question your ability to manage cash in an organized way
- You are struggling to manage cash flow and predict cash gaps
- Financial model: You have a clear financial model of your business to:
- determine the valuation of your venture
- use financial projections to tell a compelling story
- negotiate a better deal with VCs or angels
- manage cash flow in a structured way
- Excel financial model that includes:
- Historical trend analysis
- Description of key assumptions
- 1-Y and 3-Y Profit and Loss projection
- Cash flow projections
- Valuation
- Project Readout/ Presentation
- Optional: Coaching and assistance in monthly/ quarterly/ and annual budgeting
- Optional: Temporary CFO function
Strategy for startups, scale ups
We work hand-in-hand with startup founders (or investors) to define their visions, create and validate product strategies, design business models, and achieve product-market fit.
We help scaleups (or their investors) leverage customer, supplier, and competitive insights to boost value creation, achieve efficiencies, and scale operation.
We help mature companies (or their investors) revitalize their products, tech upgrade them, and extend their life cycles.
- You have big hairy audacious goals for your venture but are unsure of how to translate them into an effective vision
- You are uncertain if the problem you are trying to solve is a real problem, let alone its size, frequency, and intensity
- You lack a fully-formulated product strategy that does not contain untested initial guesses related to your product, target customers, distribution channels, etc.
- You are vaguely aware about what business models dominate in your industry; You haven't designed the key elements of your business model
- You are unsure what product features and attributes to prioritize for your MVP and/ or later product iterations
- You have a “wandering” product roadmap, which causes your team to go off track
- You haven't defined your North Star and other business and product metrics to measure the value your create and track incremental improvements
- You have doubts whether you’ve achieved a product-market fit
- You unsure what activities to prioritize and how to build the company so that it can cope with the growth
- You’ve translated your business goals and ambitions into an effective vision
- You’ve developed the initial hypothesis of product, customers, market, distribution, etc.
- You have a 100-day plan of action for your customer development and product development activities, including the scope of MVP
- You’ve validated the customer problem and identified your target market
- You understand your type of product innovation (Core, Adjacent, or Disruptive) and know how to manage the product depending on the innovation and market type
- You have a solid understanding of your business model and the levers you have to optimize its key elements, namely:
- What customer problems/ pains/ needs does your product solve?
- What solutions are available to the customer when he or she is facing the problem and what market type you are operating in?
- What unique value does your product deliver relative to the competition?
- Who are we solving the problem for?
- What are the key attributes of your customer persona?
- How to interact and build relationships with your customers?
- How you built your customer journey map?
- How to communicate your value proposition to users?
- What is the geographical concentration of your customers?
- How to reach them through on-line and off-line channels?
- What activities to undertake in achieving the value proposition for the customer?
- How to distribute your products/ services?
- What assets and resources are required to build, operate, and scale your company?
- What external companies/suppliers/parties might you need to achieve your key activities and deliver value to customers?
- How to make money from your product
- How much does it cost to run my company’s operation?
- You have a 6 to 18-month roadmap and clear business goals that you focus on each step
- You can track your North Star and other business and product metrics and optimize them for success
Value Proposition:
Customer segments:
Customer relationships:
Channels:
Key activities:
Key resources:
Key partners:
High level financial model with revenue streams and cost structure:
- You have a strategic plan that includes:
- Customer and market analysis
- Business Model Canvas or Extended Product Vision Board
- 6 to 18-month out product roadmap
- Business and product metric dashboard
- High level financial model with revenue streams and cost structure:
- You have a 100 day plan of action
- Project Readout/ Presentation
- Optional: Coaching and assistance in monthly/ quarterly/ and annual budgeting
- Optional: Temporary CFO function
Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in 45 days
We help launch software products quickly, based on your idea, with a small budget. We support founders in collecting the maximum amount of validated learning about customers and the target markets to improve on an idea or iterate on a product.
- Developing a final product before testing users’ response to an MVP is an expensive gamble
- As a non-technical founder, you have a handful of practical options to develop your MVP, each of which has its cons as detailed below:
- learning to code - time consuming,
- finding a technical Co-Founder - can be very time consuming,
- hiring a developer or a team of developers locally - can be expensive,
- engaging with an agency or outstaffing provider - can be very expensive,
- finding a freelancer on Upwork and Fiverr - can be frustrating
- You may lack practical experience in defining user flows, building and prioritizing an MVP backlog, and testing relevant hypotheses
- You have a working product with a core functionality that is enough to deliver the intended user value in ~ 45 days
- You have a curated list of practical reads to help validate your idea with early customers, i.e. collect their feedback, observe how they use the product, and test problem hypothesis
- Consultation/ training on an MVP concept, goals for MVP testing, and practical tips about hypothesis formulation and tools/ ways for testing
- Post-implementation review on possible ways to refine the idea/ product based on the feedback from users and the results of hypothesis testing
- A working product with a core functionality that delivers its intended value in ~ 45 days
- Pre-set up Google Analytics and a heatmap tool of your choice to gather analytics
- 5 hours of free consultations are included
Hire a dedicated developer or a team of developers in Ukraine
We help companies hire and manage dedicated software developers, building teams of software developers, or even establishing development centers in Ukraine
- As a non-technical founder, you have a handful of practical options to develop your product, each of which has its limitations:
- learning to code - time consuming,
- finding a technical Co-Founder - can be very time consuming,
- hiring a developer or a team of developers locally - can be expensive,
- engaging with an agency or outstaffing provider - can be very expensive,
- finding a freelancer or Upwork and Fiverr - can be frustrating
- We save you time and effort by hiring and maintaining your software development team, which is fully at your disposal
- You save over 30% on IT talent compared to your local alternatives
- You get professional recommendations on the optimal way to architect your products and select a future oriented technological stack
- We make the communication with your team easy by:
- employing agile project management and tools, like Jira
- offering identical cultural and work ethic
- being in a convenient time zone
- Dedicated individual software developer or self- managed product development team delivered to you on an outstaffing basis
- Local office and HR support services for your extended team
Applications for grants and accelerators
We craft a compelling story to help early stage startups to get into the world’s best accelerators and incubators.
- Accelerators and incubators abound and you are unsure of which one is worth the effort
- You do not know how to prepare an application to make it stand out and increase your chances for admission
- Accelerators may be open to healthy negotiation and founders need guidance on how to improve their negotiating position and get a better term sheet
- We assist you with picking an accelerator that gives you access to the most relevant network, mentors, markets and exposure to investors
- We guide you through the process and help prepare a clear and convincing application
- We make sure that the terms you settle on are in line with your long-term interests and goals
- You don’t give out equity for perks and goodies that you don't need
- Strategy and tactics to engage with you target accelerators
- Well thought through application prepared and submitted in just 2 days
- Coaching and mentorship throughout the application process, interview preparation process, and on matters related to the future equity agreements
- Optional: curated application video and demo video
Thank You!
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