Make it is a Belgium-based tech startup studio that offers financial and technical resources to help launch, build, and grow a tech startup from the idea-stage to Series A. It has joined forces with BeAngels to create Make it Capital I – an investment fund dedicated to idea-stage tech startups.
The new pilot fund’s aim is to boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem by allocating financial and technical resources to founders with a potentially valuable idea, but without adequate resources to bring it to life.
According to the company, BeAngels network was created to address two problems: (a) help young startups that are facing funding and support difficulties, as well as (b) provide investors with an organised and structured network to facilitate their investments in the real economy.
About Make It
Make it was created by 3 IT engineers – Sanawar Syed Azor Ali, Alexis Bedoret, and Nicolas Bernier. Freshly graduated from Brussels-based university, they had the opportunity to go to New York and work in a mobile apps development company.
After developing dozens of apps and exploring NYC’s startup ecosystem, they returned to Belgium and bootstrapped their own software development agency.
The company’s vision is to have a positive impact on society by building as many valuable startups as possible all over the world. To make this happen, Make It collaborates with investors and incubators to have an impact on the ecosystem and create valuable startups.
According to Make it, there are two problems…
For founders
According to the company, many good early-stage startups do not have access to the necessary financial and technical resources to bring their idea to life. Also, it believes, there are technical and commercial risks involved for these founders to raise funding at such an early stage. Therefore, it’s not viable for the startup studio (Make it) to work on all of these projects by soaking up 100% of the risk.
For Investors
As for investors and business angels, many are frustrated by not finding enough high-quality tech startups to invest in. “And because there is more capital available, then, there are good startup investments, this results in an increase in prices that makes these early-stage projects less attractive for them,” says the company.
Solution provided by Make it
To address these two problems of founders and investors, Make it has launched Make it Capital I. This new initiative will enable entrepreneurs to create a new deal flow for investors who are keen to invest early in promising tech startups.
A total of ten projects will be pre-selected across Belgium and supported through the €200k pilot fund.
If this pilot is a success, it will be followed by a more capitalised iteration to invest in new ideas in addition to meeting their future financing needs, claims the company.
Must have revenue-generating business ideas within 4 months
The founders of the 10 selected projects will each receive €20K in funding and will join Make it startup studio, to leverage their specialised skills: entrepreneurship, design, mobile and web app development, digital marketing, among others.
Make it’s objective is to bring these 10 projects to a level of maturity sufficient to raise pre-seed financing round, backed by a strong business case. According to the company, “To this end, we will use our executional capabilities in order to rapidly get these projects to market, validate their main assumptions, and start generating revenue.”
Once a project is validated and “investors ready”, BeAngels can then offer access to its funding ecosystem to invest in its growth in addition to the financial contribution from Make it Capital I.
If this first structured pre-seed/seed funding round is successfully achieved, Make it Capital I will acquire 8% equity in the startup in return for its initial investment.
Selection criteria for Make it Capital I:
- The idea should be “market-driven” and not “product-driven”
- The solution needs to have a digital/tech component. Whether in the product itself or in its distribution
- The business model can be scalable
- The project has an international scope
- Should start generating revenue in less than 6 months
- You’re ready to focus on solving the problem you have identified
The whole selection process takes about 2 to 4 weeks.
Image credit: Make it