Fundraising For Sagoon

The Sagoon Presentation: Washington DC

The Sagoon Presentation: Washington DC

A Sagoon Sunday In DC
Trip To Washington DC For Sagoon
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सगुन को महत्व

A Sagoon Sunday In DC

After over a decade I was back in Washington DC on Sunday. And it is not even far: I live in New York City. It was a trip made for Sagoon. (सगुनको महत्त्व)

Unlike NYC, Washington DC obviously is a city that sleeps. I arrived in the wee hours of morning and it felt like I had the entire city just for me. I walked around. I spent a few hours at The National Mall (my favorite "mall" in America since I have never been big on shopping) taking in The White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol. For the first time I took the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument. It was a mini version of a trip to the top of the Empire State Building. DC is small and compact and nice.

There was not time to go for long walks in the city like I had wanted, or the trips inside the biggest museums in the world. I had really wanted to go to the Martin Luther King Memorial. But I only got to see it from the top of the Washington Monument.

After noon I got picked up by the Washington Monument by a nephew of Kabindra Sitaula. It was a family lunch at Kabinji's place, half an hour drive away. It was a large gathering of his extended family. I needled him by asking if he had any relatives left back in Nepal!

The 3 PM event is what I was in town for. One by one the crowd gathered. And the presentations began. During Govinda Giri's presentation I saw so much love from among the seed investors in Sagoon, that was a major energy boost to me when it was my turn to speak. I felt like I blew it out of the water.

My job was to reassure these early investors that round 2 fundraising will very likely happen since I was the man in charge. All I needed was a rapidly growing active user base. And they should perhaps go ahead and put some more money in and be done with the first round already. The server budget going up is precisely what we want, precisely what we have been working for. Open up the flood gates already.

Govinda, Kabin and I had dinner together later at a Chinese place. And then Kabinji dropped me off at Union Station for my overnight trip back to New York City. I realized I must have become a local in NYC after all these years because I kept looking for those food carts on the roadside (in DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia) for a quick soda, but they did not exist!

The money is not in until the checks have been issued and cashed, and so the public announcement will be made when it will be made, but I think yesterday was a wonderful day for the final push to get done with round one already!

सगुनको पहिलो र दोस्रो राउंड बीच फरक

सगुन सँग सम्बन्ध

केही घण्टा अगाडि कोलोराडो बाट एक जना साथीले कॉल गर्नु भो। "तपाईंले सगुनको fundraising मा रोल खेल्ने कुरा रै छ, मलाई पनि ५ हजार हाल्न मन लाग्यो" भनेर भन्नु भो।

सगुनका दुई जना फाउंडर हरुसँग म सम्पर्कमा छु। वहाँ हरुले आंट गरेकै हो। मान्नु पर्छ। मेरो आफ्नै एउटा pre launch tech startup छ। त्यसैले हामीलाई एकले अर्काको कुरा बुझ्न सजिलो हुन्छ। सगुन अहिले राउंड १ मै छ। 350K fundraising गरिसकेको, 150K गर्ने प्रयासमा रहेको अवस्था छ।

मैले सगुनको राउंड २ fundraising मा lead role लिने कुरामा हाम्रो छलफल भइ राखेको छ। निर्णय शायद त्यसै किसिमको हुन्छ होला।

तर मैले साथीलाई भनें ---- तपाइँ राउंड २ मा आउन पाउनु हुन्न। क़ानूनले नै दिँदैन। राउंड २ मा venture capitalist हरु, लाइसेंस प्राप्त एंजेल इन्वेस्टर हरु मात्र हो आउन पाउने।

आउने भए राउंड १ मा आउनुस् भनेर मैले भनें र गोविन्द गिरी र कवीन्द्र सिटौला सँग मैले संपर्क गराई दिएँ टेक्स्ट मेसेज मार्फ़त।

सगुन का १००,००० user छन --- त्यो early stage मा धेरै हो।

Sagoon: Nepali Tech StartUp: Presentation At Chautari

DC Comics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Friday evening I was at the presentation at the Chautari Restaurant by Sagoon that seemed to have some founders from the Nepali community in DC and a team in Delhi. Accumulating 100,000 users is very promising. I would like to know how many of them are active users. How many log in monthly? Weekly? Daily?

VCs will tell you, at 50,000 users you become interesting to them. And user base is everything. As long as you have a fast growing user base, you are in a good shape.

Twitter was launched in mid 2006. But I only discovered it in early 2009. I was not using it. But its user base kept growing. And then it really grew in 2009 and 2010.

So I hope Sagoon's user base grows rapidly, and I am proven wrong. But I also felt like there were no fundamentally new features. And it was not necessarily trying to cater to the local market in Nepal. Darshan Rauniyar caused a lot of excitement in the Nepali community across America. But he got very few votes in his primary election and was out. In the process he still paved the way for future Nepali aspirants for political office. But internal excitement is apparently not enough.

I don't want Sagoon to be the Darshan Rauniyar of Nepali tech entrepreneurship.

But I am impressed with their registered base of 100,000. I am impressed they decided to take the plunge. Risk taking is a big deal. I am impressed they have taken the risk. Sticking your neck out is not easy to do.

I hope they grow their use base to 500,000 and beyond. I hope they go on to raise money from professional investors, because it is about time.

I was impressed with how many people in the room were willing to possibly invest, if not a lot then at least a few thousand dollars each.

They have a working prototype and 100,000 users. That's a lot to have. They said they have already raised 350K, and they were in town to raise 150K.

Anjan Shrestha asked if there was an anti-dilution clause to protect this first round of investors. The roundabout answer was, no there wasn't. The question was echoed by half a dozen other people.

You can give 25% of the company to round 1 investors and have no anti-dilution clause. Or you can give 5% and have an anti-dilution clause. I will take that 5% any day. I have known of many successful tech startups where the round 1 investors saw little to no growth of their money.

I have a pre lanch tech startup, an Augmented Reality Mobile Game. I know Anjan Shrestha harbors tech startup ambitions. There are several routes to moving forward. Some quick routes bring in professional angel investors pretty fast.

For Nepali tech startups, it is a very good idea to have the Indian community in mind. Indians are some top names in tech and investing as well.

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