The team from Tripalocal (Source: muru-D Facebook page)
There are plenty of different ways to measure startup success across customers, investors, partnerships or distribution agreements. So which one should you aim for?
Last night we hosted Demo Night for our second class of muru-Ds startups, which is their moment to shout loud and proud about the progress they’ve made during the program. Unsurprisingly it’s been a rollercoaster six months for the businesses. They’ve travelled to China, worked with more than 200 phenomenal mentors, completed hundreds of pitches, consumed gallons of coffee (maybe a few beers too), and had many, many late nights.
But all that hard work has definitely been worth it. The amazing statistic I’m so pleased to share is that every single one of our startups has paying customers already. You heard correctly! That’s a 100% success rate.
While getting customers to love you and building up that pipeline is super important – there are a whole heap of other things to measure and manage too.
We can see this in the diverse range of achievements that the Class#2 teams have chalked up during their muru-D experience:
● Six have international customers
● Four have signed international distribution agreements
● Two have already closed their seed funding rounds
And to top this all off, every single team has secured advisory boards that will help them take their startup to its’ next stage of growth.
Demo Night gave each startup the opportunity to impress investors and attract further capital. But some did not wait. Tripalocal has already closed its seed round and vClass is already onto its Series A round, which is set to close in a matter of days. In my experience, to start and close a funding round before the end of an accelerator program is very rare, so a huge congratulations to both teams.
I also want to celebrate the extraordinary growth of Disrupt Surfboards who used Demo Night to announce the launch of their UK operation in July and FanFuel, a pioneering innovation in sports sponsorship, which has signed up Telstra for a paid trial of its technology.
There really is so much to celebrate, we’re all so proud of the achievements of muru-D Class#1, which set the bar extremely high, and we’re thrilled to say that Class#2 have absolutely nailed it.
It’s not just our startups who’ve been busy scaling their businesses either, as we’ve been busy growing muru-D too. With our attention firmly turned towards operating in a truly global marketplace, last week we launched muru-D in Singapore where we’re setting up office with our friends at Ooyala – another fantastic tech business success story. We also recently announced a partnership with The Icehouse in New Zealand. Our vision is to help connect the dots across the region, connecting our startups to the best mentors, investors and growth markets – even more rocket fuel for their businesses!
There are too many people to thank for all this awesomeness, clearly none of it would have been possible without my amazing team or without my fabulous co-founder Charlotte Yarkoni. I do want to take a few moments to thank the #GodFounder of muru-D, David Thodey. Building a program like this takes vision, passion and belief, thanks David for all your support, I know we’ll see you at muru-D very often.
Do you know more on this story or have a tip of your own? Raising capital or launching a startup? Let us know. Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
