At pre-seed we like to lead your round and will set the terms. We can bring in other angels at this stage if you need additional capital to get you off the ground. At seed stage, we look to another investor to lead the round and will naturally follow their terms.
We lead your pre-seed round with an investment depending on the project, usually in exchange for an ownership stake.
We've broken down all the stages of our pre-seed investment process, so you can see exactly how it works. From initial submission, we'll aim to get back to you within a couple of weeks if we are interested in taking you through to the next round of our investment process.
We are generally the first capital into the majority of our companies to date. These companies have ranged from prototype to pre-launch to launch and even post revenue. We appreciate different businesses are at different stages when they learn about us. But from the point you have a prototype (pre-revenue) through to when you have early revenue, we are happy to learn more about what you do and consider you for investment. If you think you are at a point in the business at which xxx’s platform of support can really help you step up your plans, then it’s likely the time we should invest. This is really our sweet spot for providing rocket fuel for startups on their journey ahead.
For pre-seed (where we usually lead the round), we like to use documents based largely on the standard spacelb terms that we helped co-ordinate with the help of many other investors in the eco-system.
Successful companies, in our experience, come in many different shapes and sizes, but have a few attributes in common at the early stage. These include: the quality of the founding team, how well they’ve considered their customer, the market size of their opportunity and their customers’ challenges, how this represents itself in the product they’ve created, and lastly how much funding is required to really demonstrate product market fit. The better articulated the above points are, the more comfort we feel in whether we can deliver value to the founding team.
We are sector agnostic in our approach and focus on backing world-class founders creating valuable, tech businesses for sufficiently large addressable markets. We want you to be solving big problems for big markets. We aren’t afraid to take risks so you shouldn’t be afraid to be ambitious and far reaching.
Raising additional capital for growth is one of the key concerns founders have at the early stage of their businesses. At spacelb we appreciate that the process of raising more growth funds can be a draining due to the opaqueness of communications from new investors, the web of relationships necessary to navigate, the time it takes to raise, and the negotiation of terms that best align interests with existing and future shareholders. Our time and commitment to founders is to maximize choice for them while reducing all of the above in order to fast-track the whole process. As part of our platform offering, we expose you to meet the right people and have a solid understanding of the investment landscape to identify who the right future partners for your startup will be.
The best way for us to be able to help you is to have access to the same level of information and conversations as your other investors. In that spirit, we do not take board seats but generally like to take a Board Observer role. Typically we would maintain this role until at least the next round of funding.
Yes. We do follow on in the subsequent rounds of existing portfolio companies. Usually we can follow-on in up to two rounds after our initial spacelb investment.
spacelb runs two four-month programs per year, starting in January and June.
Xxx gives you a chance to grow your business with the help of our operating partners and mentors. All this support can’t make your company successful; that’s your job. But we are with you every step of the way, aligning you with our dream team of experts to help with your many challenges–product, functional or industry-related. We have assembled the most experienced group of entrepreneurial experts in Lebanon, all of whom are on deck to help solve every type of operating and strategic problem startups encounter. As entrepreneurs with decades of experience in business, technology and early-stage venture capital; we have successfully founded, built, run, sold and financed businesses.
Investing in each company depends on the project. We invest in the company directly and the founders decide how to use the funds. In addition to this financial investment, our companies are immersed in our mentor-driven program, in the words of a well-known ad, is priceless. We also provide four months’ free office space, free hosting credits with several major cloud providers, legal, finance, accounting and other business services.
While we leave ourselves open to great entrepreneurs with transformative ideas, we have some general guidelines around company focus. Xxx companies are technology companies, or companies with a significant technology component, since those are the companies we can help the most. We look for companies best able to take full advantage of Lebanon opportunity as a starting point to successfully enter the market for their product, service or application. Most spacelb companies will be software or software-related in some way, and may be either B-to-B or B-to-C-focused. Our interests are as diverse as your ideas: Internet, Mobile, FinTech, Payments, SaaS, E-Commerce, Health Tech, Education, Real Estate, Logistics, IoT, Ad Tech, Local, Media, Marketing, and many more. We are looking to you to wow us with anything Internet and software-related that you think is cool. We consider all the business questions around the product business concept and market size. In the end, we want to know if yours is a great team and the right team for your product and business.
Yes. We are unable to invest in non-profit organizations.
We have no specific stage requirements, but most companies will have assembled a team and developed an initial product. Many have early customers and revenue. We don’t reject companies just for being earlier than that, but we need to see the team has made a real commitment to the company and a clear vision for its future.
No. It’s your company. That said, our bias is for two to four person teams, which is based on our experience for the optimal combination of “small enough to move quickly but large enough for idea sharing.”
The IT industry offers a sea of options, from platforms, programming languages, methodologies, technologies, tools, and more. IT consulting services are important because they play a vital role in businesses by covering the management, implementation, deployment, and maintenance of an IT infrastructure. IT industry offers a sea of options, from platforms, programming languages, methodologies, technologies, tools, and more.
We have a strong preference for technical cofounders. While we don’t require startups to have engineering founders, we are looking for companies that can make substantial progress on their product during the course of our four-month program. Companies with at least one technical co-founder are better able to implement at least some product changes and improvements without hiring additional resources.
That would be outside of our standard practice, as the chemistry of a team is critical. Throwing together a business person and an engineer during an spacelb program without knowing if they are able to work well together doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.
Yes. Your key leadership team should make a full-time commitment to your startup. Building a company requires intense focus and your full attention.
Absolutely. We are looking for the most promising business ideas, and we know those come from all over. For accepted founders, we do expect some in-person participation during the four-month program, depending on the evolving COVID-19 situation. The health and safety of your team and ours is paramount and we will be closely monitoring.
Yes! We are looking for promising business ideas to serve and disrupt a diverse cross section of industries. Whether you’re based in Santiago, London, Mumbai — or anywhere else, we encourage you to apply. For accepted founders, we do expect some in-person participation during the four-month program, depending on the evolving COVID-19 situation.
No, we do not reimburse any interview-related travel expenses.
Our coming program might be either in-person or remote. For accepted founders, we do expect some in-person participation during the four-month program, depending on the evolving COVID-19 situation.
Yes, we accept companies that have already raised funding.
Although some startups don’t require funding as their primary need, all spacelb companies will receive funding as part of their acceptance into the program. We are investors and want all the startups in the Accelerator to have the same basic relationship with us
We like nothing more than in investing in our alumni as they grow. We don’t lead or price rounds but we do look forward to following-on once your seed round is put together.
We don’t. We hear too many ideas and see too many pitches to sign NDAs. That said, we are committed to respecting the confidentiality of the information you submit to us during the application process and will not share it outside of the spacelb team. We know how hard you work on your ideas.
