Aleberry Tidbits

We’re stoked for another fantastic nomination by the DC tech community!

This one is up for user nominations, and we’d love to get some votes!

Please vote for Aleberry here: 

If you are heading to Baltimore Innovation Week next week, come check out Gira Desai Wieczorek on the Start. Fund. Grow Panel alongside:

Moss Amer (Maryland Venture Fund), Julia Spicer (Mid-Atlantic Venture Association), & David Wise (University System of Maryland)! #tech#womenintech #fundraising

Get your super cool, limited edition Aleberry shirt benefiting RPM’s Harvey efforts tomorrow!

The first set of shirts will be available at The Jack C. Alexander Building on Friday, Sept. 15, from 11:30 am til 6 pm for $20. All proceeds go to Rescued Pets Movements and saving puppies & kittens.

Thanks to Black Swan Printing for doing such a kickass job with our designs (cool video of our designs placed onto shirts below)!

So stoked to announce that we are officially winners of DC Inno’s 50 on Fire award in the DESIGN category! 

Looking at this dope list, it’s an honor to be named with amazing companies like Revolution Ventures, Cava, humble ventures, The Washington Post, and SO MANY OTHERS!

Check out the full list here: https://www.americaninno.com/dc/introducing-the-2017-50-on-fire-winners/

It’s been a rough couple weeks for Aleberry. 

Houston not only raised our founders, but introduced Aleberry to the world of tech, startups & fundraising. Needless to say, our hearts are broken as we watch our hometown & loved ones suffer and start to rebuild the city for the next few years.

We’ve been working with one of our favorite causes, Rescued Pets Movement, to do everything we can as they help the city’s animals.

If you’re looking for some cool swag, check out this shirt (RPM link will be updated shortly)! Proceeds will go towards RPM’s Harvey relief efforts. If you’re interested, leave a message below & we’ll get the store over to you as soon as it’s available!

Lastly, Houston - we want to give you guys a MAJOR shoutout for your level of compassion & resiliency. Houston is showing the world what true American values look like. 

Aleberry was nominated for DC Inno’s 2017 50 on Fire!

Gira Desai Wieczorek will be speaking at DC Startup Week on creating pitch decks & other fundraising considerations. We’ll be covering top-level content, fundraising strategy, and general design considerations.

Startup Week DC is for companies & entrepreneurs of all stages! Whether you are new to the tech world, only raised Family & Friends, or want to brush up on your deck content - come attend our session. And it’s FREE!

Grateful for the fantastic organizers at DC Startup Week for putting on this great event.

Aleberry just finished the design & development of The Nature Conservancy: Migratory Blueways project (a grant-based project aimed to identify migratory “blueways” in the Gulf of Mexico & beyond to preserve marine species & improve the health of large marine ecosystems).

The Nature Conservancy is based in DC but the Migratory Blueways team is in Houston, TX! TNC is a great organization; we’re fortunate to work on such a cool project with them.

Learn more about their project at: http://migratoryblueways.org/

Obviously, we’ve been living in D.C. for the last few months. Which is long enough for our lifestyles to transform, and for new struggles to be identified.

Today we’re releasing what we hope to be a tool for ourselves & the rest of The District against one struggle in particular: taking our dogs with us when we’re chilling.

So far we have had to deal with not only our own lack of knowledge, but also the lack of updated information pertaining to the dog-friendliness of most eating/drinking/hanging establishments.

We just want to know what is nearby (since we’re on foot), and if they are legit dog friendly (or is it just a single picnic table “patio” on a sidewalk)?

District of Dog aims to provide folks in The District a way to help each other out with this info. Separated into official & unofficial neighborhoods, each contains a list of user-submitted dog friendly-establishments, with information regarding the Food / Drinks / WiFi situation and most importantly, a photo of a / my / your dog actually chilling in said location.

We’re still working out a few kinks and only have a handful of submissions available at launch, but a dog-verified database is the goal here.

We need our D.C. constituents’ help; show us where you hang with your dog!

This weekend, Women Who Code​ DC is hosting a hackathon for women, by women! Gira Desai Wieczorek will be speaking Saturday on pitching & fundraising considerations. Sign up & get your company the started!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/startup-hackathon-tickets-34197053307

We’ve got big news: Aleberry is headed to the East Coast!

On March 1st, we officially open our second office in Washington, D.C. We’re excited to be closer to our NYC / DC / Boston clients and make a positive impact in their tech communities.

2016 was a busy year for tech and Aleberry. We had the opportunity to work with impressive tech companies changing the world, and we saw growth in both funding & startups in the East Coast.

More than anything, we believe in now. Now is the time for the tech community to step up & make a positive impact on the world. What better place to fight the good fight than our nation’s capital?

The USDS lives by the motto: “Decisions are made by those who show up.” We couldn’t agree more.

As an entrepreneur, you may receive a term sheet that lists the various financial investing terms outlined by an investor. Of course exceptional lawyers are crucial; however, you may sometimes find yourself in a negotiation situation by yourself and understanding the term sheet is pivotal. This 53-minute video, uploaded by Stanford Graduate School of Business, highlights the key points of an example negotiation between a VC and an entrepreneur.

Negotiations are not usually just a one-time conversation. Instead, negotiations are usually developed through multiple conversations through emails, dinners, as well as more formal meetings. The term sheet has a few points of interest that is recommended to touch base on during a negotiation. Here are just a few examples from the video:

Determining company board structure (Who will fill the CEO and board seat positions?)

Defining what founders are in the Closing Documents, and if they are fully-employed in the company (VCs watch out for the fact that statistically, most companies have one co-founder that leaves within a year)

Familiarizing oneself with the Drag-Along Agreement (forces stockholder to vote in favor of company sale if certain level of directors approve of the transaction)

Additionally, something else that will likely come up during negotiations is the discussion of a cliff and vesting (ownership). A cliff is when the entrepreneur has passed a certain point of their vesting schedule, when all of their stock options to that point has become vested. For instance, a typical employee from the Silicon Valley receives a 4-year vesting schedule and a 1-year cliff. This means that after Year One, the employee will be rewarded with 25% of their stock options, while the other 75% will “vest” over a 3-year period on a monthly basis.

Valuation is another key point of negotiation. Many entrepreneurs wonder about how successful they will be if they ask the VC to go back and get a higher evaluation. The answer is simply that different firms work in different ways. Some VCs are posed to sign the deal once their term sheets are out, whereas for others, a term sheet may only mark as the beginning or middle of their entire process. Furthermore, if there is a single VC in a deal, the standard for it would be to own 25-30% of the startup. If there are two VCs in a deal, it’s standard for each VC to take approximately 20% ownership.

f you're looking for an internship in the startup/ VC fundraising industry, we've got some great experience to pour on you. (3-6 months, unpaid, credit for school, opportunity to apply at end of term) 

Aleberry is hiring! Apply online. 

We’ve been squatting on this URL for over a year. Finally turned it into our first Aleberry Side-Op. More ops coming soon.

Enjoy!

Good advice in bullet-form for our clients from Andrew Romans of Rubicon Venture Capital.

Loose summary: 

Warm Intro + Do Your Research (obviously, but you’d be surprised how many times we have to reiterate this)

How Introduced

Current Funding & Investors

Traction & Revenue

Stage & Milestones

Ask

Location

UPDATE JUNE 3, 2016: We got some awesome responses to our talk. We’ve converted it into a scroll-able site: Perceived Legitimacy in your Fundraising Strategy.

Aleberry's recent talk on the concept of Perceived Legitimacy during the fundraising process. The deck focuses on the importance of design to look the part & deck variations. This presentation accompanied other talks on specific pitch deck content.​​

Slides available for download!