Insights from +500 projects applying at PyratzLabs #1 - The Typical Candidate

All along your entrepreneurial journey, you have probably dealt with many different players within the startup & crypto ecosystem: Business Angels, Incubators, Accelerators, VCs, and so on …

Whether you’re already an entrepreneur or an aspiring one, you have probably come across the same observation: this environment is very opaque and makes it quite difficult to understand industry standards or each player’s expectations.

Should I have a brilliant MVP? A brand new website? A hundred-page long whitepaper? Should I have a complete founding team? Are they interested in this topic? Should I pivot to “The next new thing”?

These are unanswered questions, yet very important for entrepreneurs to focus on the right things or for the aspiring ones to start their journey.

In this first article, we’ll deeply dive into the PyratzLabs’ deal flow to address some of these concerns, unpacking over 500 projects we have analyzed in the past 12 months.

Spoiler Alert: You’re all welcome to apply to PyratzLabs!

‍

The typical candidate

By breaking down our deal flow over the last 2 years, I realized there is no typical nor ideal candidate for a potential deal. The most straightforward way to comprehensively view the candidates is to look at their development phase when applying.

As shown above, almost 2 out of 3 projects are developing or fine-tuning their MVP when applying to our programs. 22,4% are building early traction upon their MVP with their first clients, partners, and revenues while 9,4% of the projects have already found their product market fit and are currently in the growth phase. We consider the remaining projects, labeled “Others”, as specific cases or mostly pre-MVP projects still focused on market research, prototyping, and financial modeling, …

With the customizable Accelerator Program being our flagship offer to startups, it’s not surprising that approximately 82% of our deal flow is made up of companies with live MVP or early traction. Indeed, this program is meant to assist these companies with critical pain points they may encounter after having developed their product such as financial & tokenomics strategy, marketing efforts to enhance visibility and growth, HR, accounting or other administrative hurdles, etc.

As a sign of the majority being projects developing their MVP and/or pushing it to the market, the growth & marketing strategy is the most common difficulty that startups face, with 82,8% of our deal flow looking for help in this field. Company setup & legal support, often overlooked by the founders focused on growth and fundraising, is also a common problem as 39,6% of the projects need help with this.

The third most represented companies within our deal flow, accounting for approximately 1/5 of all applications, are more confirmed startups with track records poised to scale their operations. While PyratzLabs has an important focus on the early stage, we can also tackle this kind of startup issue, especially through high-level strategic advisory or different network opportunities (Fundraising, Partnerships, …)

Last but not least, pre-MVP projects are also an important part of the deal flow as we have a strong focus on helping from scratch talented founders to realize their ideas thanks to the Studio program. This program is meant for PyratzLabs to act as a real cofounder of these projects which explains why up to 13% of the projects don’t have a website, 11% don’t even have a pitch deck, and 63,8% don’t present a whitepaper when applying.

While we can step in as co-founders, 65% of the founders already have cofounders, ranging from a team of 2 cofounders (55,2%), 3 cofounders (31,7%), 4 cofounders (7,7%), and even more (5,4%). On a side note, we ask for information on the personalities of these founders based on the MBTI personality test, and it turns out half of them (54,05%) are born leaders recognized as “Protagonist” while 10,81% are recognized as Directors and 5,41% as Architects. Surprisingly, merely 3% of the appliers are recognized as entrepreneurs by the MBTI test!

The need for financing

Before any other concerns we have explored above, financing is the main reason founders seek acceleration from PyratzLabs or help from any other player in the industry, as 93 % of the projects applying are looking for an investment. Most of the candidates (67,9%) didn’t raise any capital, and 32,1% have already raised funds, which doesn’t seem to be a lot but coincides logically with the fact that more than 89% of the MVPs from our candidates are developed internally and therefore self-financed. Almost every founder that raised funds got funded by love-money and/or business angels, while 12,8% have concluded a seed round and 2,8% a Serie A.

A wide & open range of opportunities

In conclusion, we are actively looking into a wide range of opportunities regardless of strict conditions such as the size of the company, its development phase, the founding team size, and so on. It allows us to have a global perspective on the market and the ability to observe multiple teams pitching the same “idea”, compare their approach to the problem and detect their unfair advantages.

Some metrics and characteristics matter however and help to have a greater assessment within our screening process: for example, it is empirical evidence that startups have way more chances to succeed if the company is led by a team of co-founders with complementary skills, experiences, and expertise rather than a solo-founder.

The next article will explore the screening process following these applications, how they may turn into deals, and what it says about the current market.

Meanwhile, don’t hesitate to take your shot!

👉 Click here to apply for Pyratz Accelerator.

👉 Click here to apply for Pyratz Founders' Hunt.

👉 Click here to book a call for Pyratz Corporate Studio Program.

‍