A free 6 week programme for SaaS startups raising their pre-seed or seed round
B2B or B2C? Looking to build up that all important MRR, whilst building reducing your CAC and increasing your LTV?
Got a product in the market, or an MVP/proof of concept / beta that's had customers/users interact with it?
Have you raised a F&F round of c.£75k, got MRR of £1k+ or have beta / freemium users who you plan to convert?
We will make a few exceptions to this. Get in touch if you don’t match the requirements, but are building something cool and still think you could benefit from the cohort and add value to the community.
Freemium? Free trials? Benchmarking? Balancing price with limited scope of MVP vs full product? User growth or revenue?
During the first week, we'll dive into common challenges SaaS startups are faced with, and help you determine the best strategy for your startup.
Are you a product-led growth company, or should you build a strong marketing growth engine? Do you need a sales-led go-to-market? Is your growth fuelled by expanding your market share, the market expanding or the product developing/diversifying?
In Week 2 we'll be looking into different strategies you can take to nail your GTM.
In Week 3 we'll cover TAM, SOM and SAM so you can execute your commercial strategy. Which market are you most confident you can win in? When do you say no to opportunities outside your initial GTM? How do you balance longer sales cycles with corporates when you need cash flow?
Week 4 is laser focused on the metric all investors care about; engagement. We'll be hearing from founders and investors about best practices to reduce churn, increase LTV and maximise conversions from free trials, then look at tips on how to get your users doing your marketing for you so they're staying, paying and referring.
In Week 5, we'll focus on your execution of growth plans and what specific levers are right for you. We'll hear about which growth hacks have worked for other SaaS startups, and what hasn't (think referral programmes, upsell campaigns, testimonials, acquisition, PPC campaigns, partner programmes & more).
Week 6 is all about fundraising. How can you stand out in the competitive SaaS startup space? What does 'great' look like to investors in terms of engagement and growth? What is the best way to cut through the noise? How early is too early? What's a fair valuation? We'll answer all these questions, and more (plus - get ready to practice your pitch!).
Session schedule
Mondays @2pm
Wednesdays @2pm
VC Investor at Ascension
Investor
B2B software investor at Octopus
Investor
Partner, Kindred Capital
Investor
Investor at Fuel Ventures
Investor
Founder, SeedLegals
Founder
Founder, Lollipopai.com
ex-COO of Monzo 🦄
Founder
Co-Founder, Memrise
Founder / Investor
Co-Founder, Debite
Founder / Investor
Co-Founder, Second Voice Pro
Domain Expert Commercial Strategy
Our programmes are free and we take no equity, as it is ESSENTIAL to us that we have the best startups join our community, not just the startups who can afford it
Our structure is different. We are making arrangements to support founders financially, so we secure the rights to invest in the startups who go through our programmes via a Warrant. Founders are required to offer us an equity warrant to give Hotbed the right (but not the obligation) to subscribe in cash for shares at the same time you obtain investment in any future round, on the terms set out below.
Our terms are simple, and you'll receive the full Warrant and terms are available here. You'll receive a full copy (via our brilliant partners at SeedLegals) which needs to be signed prior to the start of the programme.
For non-discounted rounds (like a traditional priced-round), we take a 10% discount, and we can invest up to £100k. **
*This is a discount to the subscription price paid by your investors in a particular investment round.
**No investment is guaranteed.
(The equity warrant shall apply for a period of 24 months commencing from the Hotbed Saas programme start date.)
-Rajesh, Founder, REACH
-David Flavin, Founder, PlayerPrifile
-Si Carty, Co-Founder, Amino
-Kufa Matiya, Founder, FutureMatch
-Don Culloty, Founder, Klokbox
-Tim Whiston, Founder, isme|&|co
-Varun Aggarwal, Founder, KnowYourDosh
-Henry Fyson, Co-Founder, humanpeople
-Lucy Hall, Founder, Loanhood
-Oliver Bourne, Founder, WYSPR
-Daniel Hemsley, Founder, The Beagle Button
-Rafael Guper, Co-Founder, UJJI
Why we <3 SeedLegals: Founders in our community love SeedLegals for their knowledgable customer service team who are on-call even on the weekends. Most importantly, everything is incredibly affordable (perfect for early stage startups)!
Amazing for: Legal support of funding rounds, securing you SEIS/EIS advanced assurance, key employee documents, share option schemes, and much, much more.. Learn more>
Why we <3 Zendesk: Zendesk offers a solution to customer ops. As we start and scale our businesses, customer engagement and customer service is more important than ever. With Zendesk for Startups, you can build customer ops using their very generous startup offer, and keep your customers happy and engaged.
Amazing for: Customer ops, building out customer success/service Learn more ->
Why we <3 Debite: Debite offers a superpowered corporate card with built-in instalments providing founders with more flexible access to cash to fuel your growth. Need to pay for equipment, marketing or software? Use Debite to pay upfront, with flexible repayment terms to meet the needs of founders.
We love getting cashback on our purchases, and one founder in our community described his Debite card as "oxygen for [his] business!"
Amazing for: Managing cashflow, buying your team laptops without draining your bank account & getting cashback! Learn more ->