Founders Fireside: Pre-Seed Fundraising

Join us for Founders Fireside, a new series focused on fundraising education and honest conversations for founders who are growing companies in Michigan and want to learn about angel and venture capital investment and how to prepare.

We’ll be talking about the pre-seed stage for startup companies (that are often pre-revenue) and how to navigate the fundraising challenges at this stage. This session aims to save entrepreneurs valuable time and energy by explaining how investors evaluate startups – including their market, product, team, and go-to-market strategy – and the importance of understanding and refining those elements. Founders will learn about the groundwork they need to do to prepare for a potential fundraise and will have the opportunity to ask questions about the process.

If you’re a founder working on an innovative technology you want to take to market and scale and believe you’ll need to raise outside capital, this is the session for you! You won’t be pitching to VCs here, but we welcome your questions. This event is intended to be a safe space to ask questions, learn from others, share your experiences, and let your guard down, so bring your questions and ask away!

About the Presenters:

Mike Flanagan is Vice President of Capital Programs at Ann Arbor SPARK and Managing Director at the Michigan Angel Fund (MAF). Mike manages SPARK’s portfolio of early-stage technology investments and evaluates new opportunities to invest in and grown the Ann Arbor tech sector.

Margarita Hernandez is Vice President of Entrepreneurial Services at Ann Arbor SPARK, and as a former founder and serial entrepreneur from the MedTech industry, will be advocating and moderating the panel from the founder-side of the table.

Founders Fireside is an educational series brought to you by Ann Arbor SPARK.