Travelsist: 800K raised in less than 6 months

Veronica Woodruff

Is a California native who lives in Atlanta and always had a passion for traveling. After becoming a mom, she wanted to share her passion with her kids, but quickly became frustrated with the alternatives for parents traveling with young children, so she decided to use her marketing and tech background to solve this problem for herself and other parents with Travelsist.com

Background

Veronica was referred to us by one of our awesome start-up clients. She needed a financial model that truly represented her business model and her vision. She had a financial model previously made that was broken into multiple pieces missing a logical flow. It made it difficult to see the big picture. Veronica received feedback from potential investors and team members who did not understand the model or the numbers. It was truly difficult to envision the business roadmap, goals and milestones. Veronica also had a hard time explaining her business model, because she didn’t have the support or back up needed to do so. So, she reached out to us.

The Result

5 months after we completed her new financial model, Veronica was approved into Techstars with her pitch deck and financial model submitted…

Veronica’s network repeatedly said that her new financial model was “the best they’ve ever seen”.

Travelsist received its first ever VC funding from The Fearless Fund: https://www.tpinsights.com/free-articles/breaking-fearless-fund-invests-250-000-in-black-woman-owned-travel-company

Who we are

01 The Explanation

When we met with Veronica, we started with explaining the purpose of a financial model that every founder must know:
A financial model tells your story!
The flow takes you from your assumptions behind economics that are specific to you.
It must be aligned with your pitch deck and back up your claims
It should clearly represent your business model
It should answer the 5 whys

02 The Goal

Then we determined the goal of the model.

In this case, the number one goal was to raise capital. Veronica also needed to refine her business model and get clarity on her vision.

03 The Deep Dive

We set up 2 60-90 minute deep dive strategy sessions where we covered the following:

Overall business model
Established the total available Market
Identified revenue streams
Demographics of the TAM
KPIs: % of app downloads, client conversion %, churn rate, yearly growth, CAC, LTV
Seasonality of the business
Cost of sales
Inventory needs
Hiring needs and headcounts
Additional expenses needed to support the projected revenues.
Expected capital raises and/or debts

Of course, we didn’t have answers to these points right away. After our discussions, we stepped away and as a team, we ran market research to confirm the TAM, benchmark KPIs and we developed an organized plan.

04 The Financial Model

We then set up the financial model template and it flowed like this:

Assumptions (inputs)
Calculation of each section
Financial statements (projections) per month Analysis
Yearly financials (This is the final presentation that goes into your pitch deck).

This goes without saying that every financial model is unique to every start-up. Because every start-up has its own story and therefore its own assumptions.

Once the first draft was ready, we had our third call with Veronica to validate all bits and pieces of the model and the results. We made reiterations as per her and her team’s feedback and submitted our final version.

We are so proud of Veronica and her team.

The company has raised 800K in 6 months and is now raising its pre-seed round, with a goal of $2 million by the end of the quarter. We will be there along the way to help them achieve this goal.

We will be there along the way to help them achieve this goal. We look forward to seeing many more raises and WINs.

If you are getting ready to be a VC-backed start-up, you will need specialized financial advice and professional financial models. Because Cypher only works with high growth startups, we know how to think outside the box and create models that paint your story with the right numbers. The question is how do you get projections that are realistic enough and still aggressive to interest a VC in investing in you?

Reach out to us to see if it is time to support you in your funding journey.