SeedBlink Blog

Editorial written by Ionuț Pătrăhău, Managing Partner & Corporate Development @ SeedBlink. 
In addition to his vast experience in banking, Ionuț Pătrăhău also worked in the medical services field, being former CEO of the private health network Regina Maria and co-founder of the Brain Institute, a neurosurgery center developed in partnership with the Monza Hospital.

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About two years ago, SeedBlink started connecting startups and investors. The initial investors and the ones that followed, were mostly innovation lovers – the so called “early adopters”.

Along its development path, a company needs to be grateful to each and every client & investor, be it the initial ones, or those helping to consolidate the business further.

SeedBlink thanks to you all! It is our turn to support your growth and level your road to success.

How do we do this? In many ways, starting from the negotiations we conduct in order to ensure you get the same conditions as the other investors, then protecting the investor minorities, in effect protecting all SeedBlink investors against potential future problems.

The large majority of the clauses negotiated by our lawyers are indeed designated to guard against downturns. There is however an essential right that transforms our investors in VC level ones, substituting the need of building portfolios with complicated instruments – the type professionals use to maximize their efficiency at portfolio level.

We’re referring here to the follow-on investments those allowing the investors to participate (according to their contractual rights) to subsequent rounds – traditionally organized by a lead VC, when startups are evaluated considerably higher than before.

This is the essential difference between a Crowd Investment platform like SeedBlink, and the typical Equity Crowdfunding ones. With us, the investment does not stop once the investors commit and the contract gets signed.

SeedBlink remains connected to the evolution of the financed startups. Even if we’re joining the boards in only few of them, we make provisions from the start to follow close along their development. Even more important for our investors, we make sure we’ll be part in the next investment round, if the startup is successful.

In official terms, the not-so-visible bonus we prepared for those investing through us, is the preemptive right. This is the one allowing us to participate pro rata in the current financing round of Kinderpedia, according to our stakes in the company and without having our shares diluted.

This is the first lesson learned from VCs: medium and long term money are not made via isolated investments, rather by making follow-on investments in the “rising stars”, pumping up the value of a diversified portfolio.

It’s obvious that a seed or even an A Series round does not guarantee the definite success of a startup; still it is a positive sign, a hope raiser for a positive outcome of the business. The preemptive right guarantees a place at the financiers’ table, a place that is quite hard to get & keep at, as the startup advances along its financing stages.

As our focus is on raising pre-seed and seed rounds, this facilitates the investors to participate in the next rounds with reasonable amounts. Typically, the preemptive rights are granted to the investors who infuse the largest amounts of money in a particular round; SeedBlink leverages this advantage for the small investors too, via the SPV we create.

This is another benefit of being a SeedBlink investor, benefit that was inscribed in all investment contracts but only today become truly remarkable, as the new Kinderpedia round is launched.

Beyond the value increase of the shares, SeedBlink’s investors have today the opportunity to raise the stakes in Kinderpedia’s benefit, but to their own prosperity too.

This represents the beginning of a new development phase for SeedBlink, one in which we see surfacing features we have designed into our system, crowning the hard work behind.

Many thanks again to our investors. We’re proud to be your partners. We’re proud of our achievements together.

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SeedBlink is a full-service investment platform that enables everyday and accredited investors to access curated European tech startups through equity crowdinvesting and angel syndicates.

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