Game-changing financial model for a fintech app

£3M Late Seed fundraise led by top-tier UK funds

The Opportunity

Our client has tapped into the lucrative and rapidly growing niche of influencer marketing. Their easy-to-use app allows creators and agencies to receive instant payouts from brands while simultaneously building the credit history on the backend. This has the effect of democratizing access to financing for creators.

As the first in the UK, the client received signs of solid product market fit from prominent creators and brands and generated interest from investors, eventually leading them into a scaling chapter.

They turned to us for advice on growth strategy, as well as requesting that we design an actionable financial model reflecting their go-to-market vision and provide an understanding of how much funds were needed to execute on that strategy.

The challenge

  • Lack of expertise. Given the early stage of development, the founders’ limited business experience, and their lack of resources (i.e., finance and go-to-market functions), the company’s business model showed significant flaws; specifically, financial planning and growth strategy were disconnected from each other. As a result, there was no visibility or control on how to scale next
  • Time shortage. The looming recession and deteriorating market environment started affecting investors’ choices. Since venture capital supply and valuations were starting to shrink, the client had to secure funding fast
  • Low investor conversions. Despite initial interest from investors, there were still issues securing the amount offunding needed. One of the reasons was the low conversion rates stemming from the outreach carried out by the client. Waveup was faced with the challenge of figuring this out and determining the next steps

How we helped

Finally, we have added a strong emotional element to the deck. By highlighting client’s strong and loving community, testimonials, and user stories, we were able to quickly build investors’ trust – ultimately providing the client with a strong competitive edge of dozens of other similar pitches.

Connecting the dots

  • Starting from the top, we decomposed the founder’s vision into a feasible go-to-market plan and scalable monetisation engine, ensuring that all the necessary key fundamentals were in place to leverage early success into a sustainable and profitable business
  • Based on the client’s ICPs, our team implemented a comprehensive customer acquisition strategy, highlighting key marketing and sales channels, as well as their respective conversions (achieved through a thorough benchmark analysis). This allowed them to understand the resources needed to hit growth targets
  • After the customer acquisition magnet was forged, we moved on to the monetisation mechanism and its respective costs. We worked tirelessly, completing multi-layer revenue streams, detailed cohort analyses, and COGS & OPEX breakdowns; ultimately, we built a powerful decision-making tool and established a solid foundation for further scaling

Dynamic and insightful dashboards

  • The client lacked an understanding of what KPIs to set and track inconsideration of their segment, their business, and its growth model. The Waveup team stepped in to help frame key financial, operational, and capital efficiency metrics. Such metrics provided a critical visibility of their business performance
  • As a result, all the principal metrics were portrayed in an easily digestible way,helping investors understand and evaluate their business with much less effort. This logical clarity led to higher response rates and increased conversions

Considering the macro-environment

  • Given the shrinking appetites of investors in light of the looming recession, we needed to make sure that the growth is capital efficient enough to secure a spot for the client at the top of investors’ scoreboards. Hence, we tailored the investment model to make sure the business hits critical capital efficiency metrics such as burn multiple, the magic number, and CAC payback
  • As a result, we arrived at a realistic cash flow gap that needed to be financed to make sure the runway is stretched to the acceptable maximum, thus keeping the business afloat in the deteriorating VC environment

The outcome

Ultimately, we arrived at an actionable and flexible financial model designed to power the company’s decision-making processes, drive growth, and establish trust with investors. The outcome featured the following vital characteristics:

  • Go-to-market vision was reflected
  • Advanced retention and churn cohort analysis
  • Dynamic dashboards
  • Ease of use
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2 weeks

the project was completed from start to finish within

£3M

was raised in the late seed round, led by top-notch UK VCs