Is Early Venture Capital Dead?

AngelBoard
6 min readJul 21, 2022
NFT, Startup Fundraising

These times of crisis are affecting the success of startups. According to reports, the failure rate of these companies was approximately 90% in 2020. Those investors faced a huge risk of not generating any return on the money spent. As a result, they’ve become more reluctant to invest in any startup.

It was never this difficult for ambitious entrepreneurs and project managers to attract investments. Traditional methods don’t work anymore, just look at this letter from Y Combinator to founders. But that doesn’t mean early venture capital is dead. So, how do you attract investments to get your startup off the ground? The secret lies in identifying new opportunities. That’s what we’ll focus on in this article. So let’s see which fundraising options have more chances to generate funding these days!

Challenges You Face When Using Traditional Investment Methods

You have a brilliant business idea that has huge market potential. That’s a great place to start, but the problem is you lack venture capital. Generating funds isn’t an easy task, especially if you are targeting an angel investor or fund that would secure the majority of the assets you need.

Traditional investment methods require communication with hundreds of potential investors. You’ll work hard to schedule meetings and have someone listen to your project. And even if they do, the odds of investing money into your business are slim. The result — you invested massive time and effort with minimum or non-existing results.

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter could be worth your while. They help generate public attention and attract potential investors. But there are thousands of projects to compete with, which makes it tricky to ensure your investment option is the most attractive. If you are in the crypto business, you could face challenges when presenting a complex idea to investors who might not have sufficient knowledge about the topic.

That’s why you should consider an ECR platform. It focuses on attracting crypto investors and those ready to support promising projects with digital currencies. You don’t have to limit yourself to selling stocks and attracting cash investments. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs have become incredibly popular worldwide, making this an option you shouldn’t underestimate.

ECR Platform As a New Fundraising Method

Startup founder, fundraising

ECR is short for Early-Stage Crypto Fundraising. As the phrase suggests, the aim of an ECR platform is to help ambitious entrepreneurs generate capital for their projects. In today’s world, it’s not enough to have a great idea. You also need to have enough capital to turn that idea into reality and present it to the public. But that means investors should agree that your idea is worth investing money into immediately.

With investors reluctant to invest huge funds, it’s time to try a different strategy. How about relying on an entire community willing to write small checks and support your idea? That’s where AngelBoard comes into play. It facilitates the fast growth of crypto projects that gain the trust of the community.

How an ECR Platform Works

As previously mentioned, ECR is short for an early-stage crypto fundraising platform. It utilizes NFTs, so you can consider it a crossover of Kickstarter and OpenSea.

The entire process is simple and begins with presenting your project to your community. Those who like the idea can purchase the NFTs you created on the platform. That’s how you generate crypto checks to help get your idea up and running.

This platform uses smart contracts for all operations. This ensures that everything stays recorded, and no one can tamper with the data. It’s the safest option for entrepreneurs and investors to work together without the expensive legal fees and complicated paperwork.

Steps for Startup Founders to Start Using an ECR Platform

Most platforms are easy to use and allow projects to be in web2 and web3. You can set an entire company profile in minutes and begin attracting investors. Here’s a detailed explanation of how this ECR platform works for startup founders:

  1. Register an account. The first step involves creating a free account. Once you access it, it’s necessary to make a company profile. The entire process is user-friendly, so you only need to follow instructions.
  2. Generate NFTs. After creating the company’s profile, you can generate NFTs to sell on OpenSea. Each NFT sold generates income that helps jumpstart your project.
  3. Attract the community. You need to present the idea to the community to attract users to buy your NFTs. It’s possible to recommend the network to friends willing to invest in your project. They can register and purchase NFTs to support your business.
  4. Close the Pre Seed Round. After completing this, those who purchased your NFTs would become investors. If your business turns out to be a success, everyone will profit.

What Are the Advantages of Using ECR Platform?

Why would you even consider AngelBoard’s ECR platform? Here are some apparent advantages:

  • An innovative and simple investment method. You can create a profile and begin working on attracting investors quickly. Instead of calling hundreds of investors, you’ll ensure a large audience can see details of your project online. Plus you can raise a new round every month if you want.
  • No need to create a business entity. That means you don’t have to pay registration fees, expensive lawyers, etc. If things take off, it’s a step you should consider, but it’s not necessary for the initial phase.
  • Everyone can be an investor. It only takes small sums to support someone’s project and become an investor via an early-stage crypto fundraising platform.

ECR platforms seem to be like NFT DAOs, but that’s not exactly true. Now, that’s a lot of abbreviations but don’t be confused. You already know what an ECR is, and DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. It can be any online group that utilizes smart contracts to manage its operation. These include adjusting voting and other decision-making rights, etc. NFT DAO simply means these organizations use non-fungible tokens, which can help regulate governance and other group management details.

In DAOs, decision-making is collective. Though AngelBoard’s ECR platform also facilitates community-driven decisions, it uses a centralized governance model for the simple reason that sometimes investor priorities can lead to confrontations and sidetrack your startup. Founders on AngelBoard can always ask their investors for advice on various issues related to the business and invite them for custdevs. Thanks to this model, everyone participates in building a prospering future together.

Final Thoughts

The crypto world is all about innovation. Once digital currencies appeared, the majority were suspicious. But those who adopted the concept early made a wise business decision. It’s not different from AngelBoard’s ECR platform.

From the perspective of an entrepreneur, adopting this concept early means your project would be among the first available on the platform. And if you are an investor, it’ll ensure you identify the best startup ideas and support them in an early phase. That increases the chance of securing a generous profit, which is every investor’s dream. ECR platforms could be the future of investing, so consider jumping on board to utilize the potential of this concept!

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AngelBoard

AngelBoard is an Early Stage Crypto Fundraising platform (ECR). It’s like Kickstarter + OpenSea with an in-platform community. Launching soon. Stay tuned!