We felt quite upset this January as we lost a lot of time and energy in this failed deal. It was obvious that we had to start from the very beginning. That’s why we did our best to draw right conclusions from this lesson. Our February trip to Silicon Valley helped us a lot in that: we met and talked with a lots of business angels & VCs understanding their goals and needs. And as well interviewed fellow entrepreneurs who have already successfully raised some investments asking to share their experience with us.

So, on the start of the raising new round, first thing that we did was settling our targets:

• convertible notes
• valuation cap — $2 mln
• total sum for the round — $200k

Second decision was to focus on business angels and leave funds for the next time :)

Our already investor SmartHub confirmed that they will participate in the new round no matter what. That was a great deal to us as it gave much needed confidence to all our team. They not only agreed on our terms but even more — they managed to get on board a number of private investors thus making their total check even bigger.

We did usual stuff: prepared our new investment deck, started contacts search and negotiated with a number of possible investors.

One of the meetings helped us close the deal. Few years ago I was lucky to get acquinted with Victor Savyuk — one of the founders of legendary Russian game console Dendy. When we met him first time this year and told about AppFollow, he honestly said: “I like the idea, really, but I won’t invest in you”.

But somehow we managed to gain his interest. He appreciated what we had achived within one year. After few more meetings, Victor agreed to join the deal. He as well mentors us on strategy and sales.

At the end of May we finalized all the documents and signed term sheet with Victor and SmartHub.