money well spent

Hey there,

Welcome to the new people on the list - as a reminder, I am Dragos from Project Arrow, where we guide founders with what to do and who to talk to in order to get funded and accelerate their startups.

This week we talk about money well spent.

When you’re building a startup, the money is usually tight - every cent matters.

The thinking for spending it usually goes that it is best to invest the most in things that will get you to win ASAP, and avoid wasting resources that are not impactful in a visible way.

However.

Great founders also know that good ideas deserve unlimited budgets. Well, it has to make financial sense, of course - there’s nuggets you may find expensive initially but upon looking into it properly, you realise it can impact your startup work in a meaningful way.

How much you spend is far less important than how you spend it. If you spend $$ on things with a good chance of success, you will forget how much you spent. You may ponder it in your head whether it’s worth it or not - you should - but the ultimate test should be the answer to the question: ‘do I get a competitive advantage out of this?’ The opposite is also valid - spend even just a bit on something that you could never really win at, and you are wasting time and money.

This doesn’t mean you have to get it right every time. You have to make bets that don’t work. But good startup work is evaluated by whether they are making or losing money well - ‘well’ being defined as on things that you really truly believe you can win at. And when you build a startup, you have to give yourself every chance, even though sometimes it doesn’t work out.

It’s one of the reasons for which we think that joining Project Arrow is a no-brainer for smart founders. It’s not only the joining fee - that’s symbolic and keeps you accountable (if it’d be free, you would value it as such, wouldn’t you?). But, more importantly, it’s also the work and efforts you need to put in after joining. Your success really depends on your work, progress and improvement, our job is to help you as much as possible in the best professional manner. If you value honest feedback and you put in the work, you will probably appreciate what we do at Project Arrow. Give it a try!

Community

Startups recently seeded
If you want a full list of interesting startup raises from all over Europe, you can go check Monday CET. Below a selection of the more interesting ones:

🇩🇪 DGTAL - AI platform that enables fully automated claims management by leveraging the power of unstructured data analytics (Hamburg)
🇮🇹 Focoos AI - AI engine that autonomously creates and trains deep learning applications (Turin)
🇸🇪 Fxity - treasury management tool that automates manual and time-consuming FX, rates and liquidity tasks (Stockholm)
🇬🇧 Koios - platform using voice-driven AI algorithms to offer personality insights (London)
🇩🇪 Küchenheld - digital service for kitchen planning and design (Hamburg)
🇮🇸 ​Sundra​ - AI used to automate video post-production for events (Reykjavík)

Did you just raise funding for your startup? Hit reply and we’ll feature it here.

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