How Baltic Ventures is driving success for regional founders using SeedLegals
Baltic Ventures is an accelerator supporting game-changing regional startups. Find out how they help their founders get...
Reducing complexity was a key aim of using SeedLegals to raise this entrepreneur’s latest funding round. SeedLegals helped close a £180k round in just over 1 week and saved Propflo thousands in legal fees.
The elevator pitch 🚀
Propflo is an Experian-like service that aids property transactions by giving people more information about properties and prospective buyers and sellers.
The company was founded by serial entrepreneur Luke Loveridge following his own experience of having property transactions fall through at the last minute due to unforeseen issues. Propflo was founded in 2021 to address this problem.
The challenge: Streamlining the fundraising process 👌
Raising funding is one of the most important aspects of a founder’s job, but it can be complex and time consuming.
“I used a solicitor to handle the legal side of things when I first raised funding for my previous business,” says Luke. “It was far more complex than it should have been. Files were stored in various folders on Google Drive and everything had to be updated manually. It was easy to lose track of things and make mistakes.”
So when his first business raised its next round of funding, Luke looked for a more streamlined solution.
“We came across SeedLegals and decided to give it a go. Things became so much easier. Everything was in one place, documents were automatically updated, and I didn’t have to send emails back and forth with the solicitor. When it came to raising funding for Propflo, I knew I could trust SeedLegals to get it right.”
SeedLegals follows an intuitive step-by step process within the funding round, showing you easily what is next to go out, and the status of your documents - who it has and hasn’t been shared with, and who has signed.
How SeedLegals helped 🌱
1. Online accessibility
Founders are often travelling, so SeedLegals is designed to make sure everything is easily accessible for you to manage on the go.
“I expect to be able to do everything easily online from my phone. With a solicitor, I had to scroll through emails and search for things on Google Drive. But with SeedLegals, I can easily access everything from anywhere at any time,” says Luke.
Best of all, SeedLegals is clear and easy to use.
“Everything’s so self-explanatory, I can get on and do things myself without having to send an email and wait for a reply. It saves a lot of time and gives me the confidence to show investors certain things when I’m with them.”
Using SeedLegals, you can share your live documents, highlighting with the comparison tool what has changed, as well as easily showing the cap table and dilution scenarios.
2. Help’s always on hand
Whether you have a specific question or just need a simple refresher, our team’s always on hand to help.
“Although I’d used SeedLegals before, it was a while since I last raised funding,” says Luke. “So I needed my memory refreshed on certain things. Fortunately, SeedLegals has a great customer service team and I was back on track and feeling confident very quickly.”
And because your time is valuable, we make sure that we respond as quickly as possible – our experts are always on hand via the chat, typically replying within 5-10 minutes.
“I think what really sets SeedLegals apart – other than the platform itself – is how responsible the support and account management teams are. When I reach out, there’s always a very quick and good quality response. That’s what keeps me with SeedLegals.”
3. Flexible fundraising
Each business will have its own unique requirements around when and how much funding to raise.
“SeedLegals does things in a way that allows you to raise funding in bursts,” says Luke. “Because the documentation and things like cap tables are really easy to update, it doesn’t matter if you want to raise your next round just a few months after the last one.”
This can be especially helpful if you’re not sure when the next round of funding might be.
“We’ll likely start to raise another round this Autumn or Winter to accelerate growth, but it really depends on hitting certain goals as we currently have plenty of runway. Thankfully, SeedLegals gives us the flexibility to decide based on the needs of the business at the time.”
The impact: Setting the foundations for launch 🧱
Propflo secured funding of £180k and closed its round in just 9 days, thanks to SeedLegals. And now they’re ready to make an impact on a giant industry.
“A lack of trust and transparency costs property buyers and sellers over £1 billion a year,” says Luke. “This funding is helping us address that issue. It’s given us a big boost just as we gear up for launching in what’s a very competitive space.”
Of course, an experienced entrepreneur like Luke knows that launching is just the beginning.
“The platform is currently invite-only for selected homeowners before we open up further in Autumn and Winter. But there’s still a lot we need to do to learn and optimise after launch, like understanding how users interact with the platform at scale and improving their experience. We’re already hiring across product and tech to make sure we build on our momentum.”
And what of the future?
“I feel confident,” says Luke. “Things are going well so far, and we’re now well set up for the next funding round. It’s reassuring to know that SeedLegals will be there to smooth out the process for our next raise.”
Luke and team are hard at work preparing for the next fundraise, which will kick off at the end of September 2022. Reach out to Luke at [email protected] to find out more about his next steps.
Check out their website here 👉 https://propflo.co.uk/
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