Good morning, fellow founder! 👋

Welcome to another edition of FounderForge. Your Europe-focused startup digest - just because we do things a little differently here! 🇺🇸 👀

If you missed our last issue, you can still read it at the link below! 👇

Today's topics are all about New Year's resolutions:

• The Rise of Micro-Angels: Small Cheque, Big Impact 🪙

• Founders Plan and Reflect: YearCompass 💫

📊 Data Dive: Small Cheque, Big Impact

Where do you think founders get their first money from? 🤑

Other founders.

About 75% of all first rounds are from angel investors.

While over 50% of angel investors are or have been founders themselves.

Founders support other founders. It's as simple as that. ☝️

Now you might think: "As soon as I sell my company for billions, I will start investing in startups. Right now I am too broke!". 😤

However, today (thanks in large part to tools like Roundtable or Bunch), anyone can start investing in startups - even with just a few €1.000.

The truth is that most angel tickets are rather small - and it takes a village to build a full round. 🏗️

In the US, the average pre-seed cheque is around $25.000 - and small cheques make up between 60-40% of the total round.

While investing in startups with smaller cheques has been a thing in the US for some time now (thanks in part to Angellist), the average in Europe is still a little higher, as angel investors tend to take €50.000 as their first ticket.

However, €1.000 is possible and people are already doing it! 🤘

And make no mistake, small cheques do make a difference.

On the one hand, an investor ideally brings more to the table than just money. #valueadd 🥲

And a €5.000 cheque can go a loooooooooooooooong way.

Freshpaint launched its funding round during COVID's general funding slump.

In the end, $5.000 brought them a solid $700.000 in funding - not bad, not bad at all.

Let's make this a thing

The investment benefits not only the recipient but also the giver.

Beyond the potential return, you…

• Get access to the people in your startup's cap table (network +1)

• Get access to REAL data that helps you compare numbers

• Get access to monthly updates to see how other startups operate

…AND SO MUCH MORE! 👏

Repeat after me: founders support founders. 🧑‍🏫

Let's start taking risks together for our comrades. 🫡

Ultimately, this will have a ripple effect for everyone involved.

2024 is the year of the founder investor. The year YOU become one too. 🚀

🛠 Founder's Toolkit: Plan and Reflect

Being a founder is INTESE. 🤕

On the one hand, a year feels like 10 and on the other, it's over in a day.

Two things the best founders do to stay on top of their game are

• They reflect. A LOT. 💭

• They manifest their goals. 🎯

And the beginning of the year is probably the best time to do this (today still counts!).

Like everything in life (and especially meetings), this should follow a structured process.

A tool often used by founders is the YearCompass.

And because we are FounderForge and we ❤️ Notion, we have wrapped it up in a neat template for you. 👇

Make sure you kick ass this year and, most importantly, have fun!

🔗 Founder's Library: Curated Resources

A collection of random reads that the FounderForge team enjoyed.

• Growth Lessons From June, Figma, Miro, Pinecone, Pleo and More by Kyle Poyar

• OpenAI Is Looking For New Funding by Financial Review

• How We Got Our First 100 Customers by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri

• New Business Ideas For 2024 by Andreas Klinger (might this be your year to start something new?)

• An Interactive Guide To Building an Early-Stage Deck by the M13 Team (there are still too many bad decks out there).

😂 Meme of the Fortnight

We hope you enjoy your Vision Quest (annual review and planning)! 🌪️

🤔 Your Thoughts on Today's Edition

• 🔥 It was great!

• 😒 Meh - it was okay.

• 👎 Not interesting to me.

That's all for now!

If you find this newsletter valuable, share it with a friend!

Cheers,
The Founders Blacksmith 👋

Issue #9 | 11. January 2024