Opportunity & risk
As with all opportunities in life, there is a measure of risk. This is our opportunity to invite our friends, family, and professional network to make a small monetary investment and join us for this journey.
And likewise, this is your risk and opportunity to be part of something different, exciting, forward-looking, global, and maybe also financially rewarding.
The history
Since summer 2018, the team, myself, and Yuri, have been working intensely on this business.
20 Thousand Leagues (20kL) has finished its early technical prototype, verified its value with our user base that such solutions were in demand, we’ve seen almost a hundred thousand visitors (96k) to our website so far, and we have raised 150,000 USD of external funding, as well as invested our own money.
All of those efforts culminated in December 2019 when we launched a successful, early version of our first software. It came branded, designed, and promoted using social media. As a result we’ve seen our baby, Nemo, downloaded by more than 4,000 users.
And to top it off, we’ve had lots of investor interests (15+), mostly from large institutional investors and venture capitals.
Unfortunately, most have found our seed round too early for them to invest into, Importantly, however, was the fact that most of them have also explicitly made it clear that they are interested in investing into a later round of financing(Series A).
20 Thousand Leagues is gifted by its access to this type of capital partners, mostly so by virtue of its CFO, Yuri, who’s been working in corporate finance for 15 years. Please, read his letter further below.
Letter of Intent (to invest)
The business does have an interested investor.
Short-term, the business needs to close its seed round, and fortunately, we have found a seed round investor. Furthermore, the seed round is fully covered by this investor and they’ve detailed their interest in a Letter of Intent (LOI). This round of financing will bring the company to break-even, or at the very least, its series A investment round.
Our challenge, however, is that this interested party has a Due Diligence process that will take time before they can make funds available. They estimate that financing can be unlocked by September 2020.
Why is the company asking for money?
Therefore, 20 Thousand Leagues needs to find a small amount of investment to carry the business over. Thus, the period from now and until it can close this seed round, we have a pre-seed round so we can keep the lights on and the doors open, so to speak.
This is why we’re going out to friends, family, and our professional network. This type of pre-seed investment is relevant to the company now, while the company is in-between financing, and will most likely not be made available later.
About the business
20 Thousand Leagues has assembled a great team of smart people across skills ranging from technology, finance, product development, and design.
- The CEO, and founder, has 8 years of executive leadership experience and has built and delivered both successful IT services and industry-leading user-centric software products to European and Asian markets.
- The technology team consists of 3 people with senior software skills and top-of-its class user experience, and are experts and leaders in their own right.
- The marketing team has a great combination of technical and creative copy talent with both experience and love of the industry, which is why our social media strategy has gone as well as it has on a limited budget.
- The chief financial officer (CFO) has extensive executive management experience, 15 years of experience with global financial markets and as a result, has taken 2 companies from privately listed companies and to publicly-traded companies on both London Stock Exchange and Moscow.
Risk/ reward
At this point, I should caution before investing in 20 Thousand Leagues (as I would with any startup). Anybody putting money into a startup business, no matter how much you love, like, or believe in its product, technology, team or the people behind the business: The money you’re investing is a lottery ticket! Pure and simple. You might see a healthy return years down the road.
It is, however, likely that you’ll lose the money. Statistics show that only 5% of startups survive their first 12 months.
Therefore, to sum up:
- The company has a Letter of Intent from a committed investor, but needs bridge financing.
- The business exists in an emerging and rapidly growing market.
- 20 Thousand Leagues has already built and deployed part of its Nemo software, which has been installed by 4,000 users and counting.
- 20kL has the right mix of skill sets: It is a senior team and with a track record of success.
- Consider investing if you’d like to own shares in an advanced software and eLearning business.
- Ask yourself if you like the idea of a lottery ticket and can afford to lose the investment.
The above is a lot to read and take in. We thus moved other details to PDFs available in the sections below.
All the best,
