I periodically publish news about investing in another startup. Many of my colleagues, investors, and surely startup founders often have questions like: “How are investment decisions made? How thoroughly are startups analyzed? What is the procedure for review and decision-making?” I believe these questions are of interest to many, so I’ve decided to openly share how we operate.
Firstly, all applications go through our “sales funnel” (activat.kz website, my social media pages, and my company’s pages), and initially come directly to me.
At the first stage, I ask all startup founders to submit their presentation using my template. Projects that are outside my scope of interest or simply don’t catch my attention are filtered out at this stage.
At the second stage, startups that I find interesting are invited to a first meeting. My task during this meeting is to build a psychological profile of the founders and assess their competencies.
The third stage involves presenting the project to the investment committee of my company, “Activat.” In the investment committee, I have gathered what I consider to be excellent specialists in the key competencies for startups: marketers, product experts, and financial analysts.
The fourth stage entails a thorough internal review of the project by these specialists.
A week later, we reconvene at the investment committee together with the startup founders. Each specialist presents their conclusions about the project within their domain. We intentionally invite the startup founders to this session so they can provide their comments on the specialists’ conclusions. This protects us from misinterpretations and incorrect decisions.
Following this, we make a final decision on whether to proceed with investing in the project.
Currently, my investment strategy focuses on risk minimization and covering a maximum number of projects. Therefore, even if a project receives a positive evaluation from my investment committee, I prefer not to invest in it alone. I choose to share risks and profits with other investors. Thus, I present such projects for consideration to the Investors’ Club. At the same time, I do not recommend projects to fellow club members in which I do not invest myself.
I hope my explanation will help other investors organize their work and give potential startup founders insights into how to better prepare to work with my company, “Activat.”
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