The odds of fundraising are often determined long before a company starts to fundraise.

And the needle moving factors are decided upon when the company is not as focused on fundraising.

We take a look at three companies that raised further funding in 2024 following our first round with them.

1. fileAI (formerly bluesheets), the world’s only horizontal file processing agent and AI workflow automation company. The company raised a US$6.5M Series A round in January.
2. AwanTunai, a globally recognized leader in supply chain financing focused on Indonesia’s FMCG space (worth US$300B in flows). AwanTunai’s latest round we shared was a US$60M debt round led by Accial Capital in December, following a US$27.5M equity and debt round in March.
3. Konvy, a leading online beauty ecommerce platform in Southeast Asia’s beauty destination for global brands. Konvy’s latest round we shared was a US$11M Series A round in January.

While very different businesses, there are shared features of their growth journey that we believe have contributed to their ability to continue fundraising in today’s environment

(1) Take the time if it means finding more meaningful traction rather than chasing numbers for sake of having nice graphs to show.

It takes time to develop a strong enough product / core technology and distribution that unlocks sustainable scale for the business.

From a fundraising perspective, traction is ultimately the proof that the company can live to the expectations of future value, and ensuring it is rooted in the company’s advantages and capabilities is fundamental.

Konvy built its market leadership and key relationships with global beauty brands over several years, before even deciding

AwanTunai iterated through many products before landing on downstream supply chain financing for FMCG and took time to build their own proprietary ERP product

(2) Be the king of a high value trade rather than a jack of all trades.

Rather than spreading growth thin across multiple products and business lines, these companies focused on developing world class expertise in a specific value proposition they saw meaningful enough to scale

This expertise brings depth into the company’s growth story and illustrates how traction is not just a lucky strike for the company, but born out of concrete capabilities / assets that can lead to further growth down the road

AwanTunai focused on bringing in data science talent from across the globe to develop their proprietary risk engine, which they have won patents for and recognition in spaces like the UN and Davos

fileAI focused on developing their file processing technology to cater to a wide variety of use cases and industries, rather than building an end-to-end AI-driven ERP or finance OS (for instance) from scratch. This has enabled customers to more quickly onboard their services, and also enables cross-selling within multinationals and conglomerates (again across use cases)

(3) Where the money is going needs to match how the company is going to get there.

Communicate a clear purpose for fundraising that bridges existing company capabilities with investor value-add and growth expectations.

In a challenging fundraising environment, fundraising is often has to go beyond pure cash transactions.

Investors are often looking to make the most out of their investment spend, especially those coming from a strategic perspective.

Beyond the proof of growth, there needs to be a concrete purpose to the round (defensive or offensive, the latter being the more favorable position from which to raise).

This purpose has to be communicated clearly and set the expectations for the kind of value growth the investors are looking at in an investment. It could even take the form of a win-win scenario for strategic investments (e.g., the strategic investor gains access to more specialized products or services).

Konvy leveraged a follow-on round to enter the Philippines as a second market, finding a partner in the investment arm of a local retail group along with Alibaba (behind Lazada).

fileAI leveraged their Series A round earlier in the year to develop deeper expertise in their AI technology and ultimately rebranded their company to match their expertise in file processing. This has set the stage for their exploration of opportunities across APAC.

What is clear across these patterns in the growth stories of these companies is that a venture-backed startup is always fundraising, even when they aren’t. The decisions made beyond pitch decks and investor relations are more definitive in impacting the outcomes of a funding round, and often already determined months before the company opens up a round (in some cases, the round itself is in response to these decisions).