I recently had a chance to talk to the company’s co-founder and CEO, Eric Jackson. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: How does the system work? What are the benefits?
A: CapLinked is a collaborative platform for making business transactions simple and secure. While Fortune 500 companies have the option of using expensive virtual data room services such as Intralinks, startups and other middle-to-lower-market companies haven't had an affordable platform designed to help them manage transactions. That's where CapLinked comes in.
Users can create a private workspace for their capital raise, asset sale or M&A deal, and upload documents related to the transaction. Permission levels can be assigned to all of the documents, making it easy to control who sees what. Personalized invitations can then be sent out to prospective investors, advisers, key employees and other people collaborating with you on the deal. The workspace owner can post updates as developments unfold, and can monitor who has logged in to view the workspace.
CapLinked members can also network with other users on our platform.
Q: What do you recommend to improve the odds of getting funded? What are some of the mistakes made when using your system?
A: If you're using CapLinked to manage your capita raise, first of all be sure to share your workspace. You can upload your contacts into your CapLinked address book, which makes it easy to send out invitations to your contacts to view your deal. Don't spam everyone you know, but do make sure to send a workspace invitation with a personalized message to your prospective investors.
You should also make sure you're inviting other significant contacts who can give you their comments on the deal and perhaps recommend potential investors. Besides your company's advisers, key employees, board members and attorneys, think about people who you've worked with in the past, or mentors and other people who you respect. It's always valuable to get their advice, and sometimes advisers turn into investors.
Q: As seen with Facebook and Zynga, it's been tough for hot tech companies lately. Are you seeing an impact?
A: There definitely seems to be some wariness about social networking sites in the media, but it's too early to see if the drops in the stock prices of these publicly traded companies will impact private companies' ability to raise capital or alter valuations.
While it's unrelated to seed funding, one area where we'll likely see an impact is on secondary markets. The prices commanded for Facebook, Zynga and other hot companies before their IPOs was obviously inflated by the very limited supply. Look for retail investors to be a little more cautious on these exchanges in the future.
Tom Taulli is the author of the upcoming book How to Create the Next Facebook: Seeing Your Startup Through, from Idea to IPO.
