Staying true to our mission of empowering founders with the tools and resources to grow their business, the TOP100 has been our most popular programme since its inception in 2014. Run annually at Echelon Asia Summit, the programme serves to democratise fundraising for startup founders — by giving startups the opportunity to succeed based on their kickass business.
However, despite Echelon enabling founders to condense months of investor outreach into 2 days, we have come to acknowledge that fundraising is a continuous and long-term effort in which 2 days simply isn’t sufficient. As a result, in September 2019, our team embarked on a 6-month long customer development exercise to discover how we can best connect Costartups with relevant financiers year-round.
This journey has led us to e27 Pro, a membership programme dedicated to giving people access to what’s essentially an Echelon experience — providing insights, networking platforms, and access to necessary tools for business growth — on a year-round basis, where e27 Connect is one of our most prominent features. Curious about e27 Pro? Find out more here.
Connecting the tech ecosystem
With that, e27 will be launching e27 Connect Online — a programme exclusive to our Pro members that will bring together hundreds of active startup financiers and startups across APAC. Investors looking to deploy capital in early-stage startups may click here to apply for a spot in e27 Connect.
If you are still reading this, I’d like to think that you are either a founder that can relate to the pains of fundraising, and would like to learn more about how e27’s position as an ecosystem builder can ease your fundraising process. Below are key reasons why e27 Connect is a game-changer for startups looking to get connected with startup financiers across APAC.
Let us do the dirty work for you!
Funding is an extremely crucial factor for many founders, and we have seen many debates on whether fundraising should be a core competency of any startup founder. However, whenever we bring up the topic of fundraising to founders, we are met with heavy sighs. This is very unfortunate because despite being extremely important for many founders, many lack the expertise and connections to be efficient in their fundraising journey.
Not only is fundraising tedious, but it is extremely time-consuming and distracts founders from focusing on product development or driving business. Founders spend months trying to connect with investors, or even worse, prospecting potential investors on Linkedin, Google, or Conference Agendas.
This is where we are able to help. Let e27 do the dirty work for you, as we bring together 160 active startup financiers this April, with information on each investor for you to examine, navigate through, and connect with based on relevance to your business.
We ensure that investors actively opt into each session of e27 Connect to guarantee that they are actively looking to source for startups to deploy capital.
Kick-start your investor relations with e27
Have we already mentioned how fundraising is an extremely relationship-driven process? It often takes most startups months from meeting that investor for the first time, to securing the capital injection. While no one will be able to promise to shorten the investment cycle, e27’s role as an ecosystem builder will enable us to provide you the warm handshakes through a neutral party, to enable you to jump right into business.
At the end of the day, we feel that fundraising should not be a priority for startups especially so that they can focus on developing their products and services. However, we acknowledge that it is essential for many founders to elevate their business to the next level. As a result, we want to ensure that when that time comes for you to fundraise, we will be able to help.
At the end of the day, fundraising absolutely sucks, but we can help make your journey slightly less painful with e27 Connect. Join e27 Connect today.
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