Printify, Inc., headquartered in Riga, Latvia, announced the successful closing of a $45 Million Series A financing led by Index Ventures, H&M Group and Virgin Group in September 2021. 

How did they leverage Brad’s knowledge, experience and networks?

Aery Advisors’ founder Brad Furber has been working with the co-founders of Printify since they graduated in late 2016 from the San Francisco 500 Startups accelerator, and returned to their native Latvia to launch and grow their print on demand business.  Over the past several years, Brad has acted on behalf of Printify in many different capacities, including as mentor, strategic litigation manager, term sheet negotiator and general startup advisor and coach.

Why do top founders and CEOs around the world use a coach when fundraising?

A coach helps founders and CEOs make more effective and informed decisions. By helping to make sense of the information shared, coaches can save you a lot of time by providing clarity on the next steps. Being a founder or CEO can be extremely isolating and stressful so imagine you have someone who will help you think through complex problems and processes, including retaining and managing competent and cost-effective IP, corporate and securities lawyers, designing and negotiating venture finance deal structures, and assembling and extracting value from advisory boards.

Printify’s recent milestone reveals the blueprint that is followed by many successful founders on the journey of venture finance. The earlier you engage a coach, the better your company’s chances of meeting and exceeding your goals and objectives.

Why did Printify use a venture finance advisor?

As a founder, you may have taken advice from your accountant, family friend, CFO or lead investor when fundraising for your startup. Whilst getting investors to bet on you, and your dream is probably one of the hardest things you will ever have to do in business, is there any advantage to using a venture finance advisor?

Yes, In the case of Printify, Brad’s role as an advisor involved helping to consider and negotiate competing term sheets from several top ranked VC firms.  Once the lead investor was selected, Brad's role shifted to running a sophisticated request for proposal (RFP) process among a half dozen top-ranked U.S. corporate and securities law firms to convert the previously negotiated and signed Series A term sheet into definitive agreements generating gross proceeds of $45,000,000.  Working closely with Printify’s CEO, CFO and in-house counsel, Brad co-created the RFP, invited leading lawyers/law firms to participate in the RFP, short-listed the final three firms, and interviewed and selecting the new lead counsel to not only close the Series A financing in the short-run, but also to advise the company during the critical next stages of growth globally, including a potential IPO.

As an advisor to Printify, Brad also worked with two other existing angel investors to organize a special purpose vehicle (SPV), called Printify Angels LLC or “PAL” for short, to participate in the Series A financing by raising $1.4 Million from seventeen sophisticated angel investors from USA, Netherlands, Nordics, Baltics and Switzerland, who would not have been able to invest in the oversubscribed round without the benefit of PAL’s pro rata rights.  PAL has already held meetings with Printify’s CEO and CFO, with a view towards identifying opportunities for the PAL investor syndicate to bring strategic value to Printify’s ambitious global scale-up plans.

It is clear that having a venture finance advisor in your team will increase your chances of securing the funding you need from your ideal investors, exponentially. Don’t just take it from us, here is what the founder and CEO of Printify had to say:

“I think the most expensive thing in business is the mistakes you make... in terms of the direction of where you want to bring the company, and the time you waste in going the wrong direction or focusing on the wrong thing.

Having the possibility to have the advice from somebody who has been there and done that before is incredibly valuable.”

JAMES BERDIGANS, FOUNDER & CEO PRINTIFY

If you are a founder or CEO who is currently in the process of raising outside funding for your business (be it in the pre-seed, seed, Series A or later growth equity stage), and you are wondering whether you might benefit from strategic advice and coaching by someone who’s “been there and done that” many times...someone who is also, truly, on your side of the table, then you need to take the next step.

Book a free discovery call, where one of our advisors will review your current state, your desired future state, and provide options on how Aery Advisors can help you and your venture meet and exceed your venture finance goals and objectives.