How can you help?
In a recent call with some DQventures investors, we explained two types of introduction that we always welcome. This post aims to widen the net.
If you know of anyone who matches one of the following descriptions, we would be delighted to hear from you… or them. Our people are easy to find on Linkedin, so please reach out with a message.
Potential “professionals-turned-founders”
DQventures partners exclusively with experienced professionals to cofound new business ventures before those professionals leave their job. The most fitting description for what we do is “venture builder” or “venture studio”, although we believe we are the first business of our kind.
We look for founders and ideas that are still pre-company.
The ideas for the businesses we start always come from our cofounders, not from us. Our cofounders typically know a sector inside-out. Usually they have identified a problem, and have already designed the solution. They also know the key players, and often have pre-validated buyers waiting in the wings. But that’s as far as they’ve got.
What’s stopping them, in most cases, is the nervousness of leaving a well-paid job, mid-career, to leap into the unknown.
This is where we help. While our founders provide the idea and “unfair advantage”, we provide expertise in starting companies. Collectively we’ve started dozens of businesses, raised millions of dollars of venture capital, been through multiple types of buyout, and enjoyed exits of up to almost $100m. We use that experience to find out whether anyone will pay for the idea, build the first version of the business, and win the first customers – everything our cofounders need to be able to resign from that well-paying job with confidence.
We don’t write cheques. What we invest is team time, up to a thousand hours of it, and we take 20% of the company once it has landed its first paying customer and we incorporate together. Until that point the founder owns everything, the idea included. The businesses we build fund themselves from revenue, so the founder’s salary is the runway and money is rarely the thing that’s missing.
Finally, once the company has five paying customers and a repeatable way of winning more, we change our focus. Once our founders have resigned and joined the business full-time, we transition from cofounders to advisors. Our goal is to stay involved throughout the lifetime of the business (and we can add value all the way to a sale, and beyond), but we aim to do this as observers and supporters, while our cofounders take centre-stage.
International partners for DQventures
DQventures is constantly on the lookout for international partners, who can help us scale our reach into new markets. Although the business is incorporated in Singapore, our team is spread across the world and everything we do is remote. Our initial focus markets were Southeast Asia, Australia, and the UK, because these were the markets we knew best. As we expand, however, our goal is to appoint regional partners around the globe. This will deepen and broaden our expertise, give our portfolio companies access to new markets, and enable us to launch businesses with founders all over the world. Our international partners will leverage our IP, network, and reputation to help professionals in their locations to make the transition from employee to startup founder. We expect most partners to be ex-founders who have several years’ experience investing in early-stage technology businesses. They will know what it takes to turn an idea into a funded business (zero to one), and will help us turn DQventures into a truly global business.
If one of the above sounds like you, or someone you know, we’d love to hear from you. Drop one of our founders, Arjun, Oliver, or James, a note on LinkedIn, and please click the “subscribe” button to sign up for our quarterly updates.
Thanks.
Image credits
– Climbing image by Image by Mohamed Hassan. – Professional quitting his job by Nicola Barts. – Global network image by Sumanley.
