B2C: SEKK • fundmeup

Use case

‘Samen Een Korte Keten’ (SEKK) is a B2C firm that strives to bridge the gap between farmer and consumer. SEKK sells high quality fresh products and has strong ‘community elements’. Firstly, the company positively impacts people, farmers, the environment and animals. Secondly, customers make a serious commitment to consume SEKK’s products (as buying meat in the supermarket is always easier than buying it online) – therefore they are already engaged. Lastly, SEKK’s webshop sells at a minimum basket size of €64,-; this also requires customers to make a relatively large commitment. However, SEKK had already started its community-driven finance campaign before acquiring fundmeup’s services. This is not optimal, as we always prefer to have complete ownership from the very start in order to build the required momentum for a successful fundraising campaign. Nevertheless, we have achieved great success with SEKK in a meaningful collaboration.

Kick-off

In the kick-off session with SEKK, we have dealt with the vital things such as; core-proposition, investor target groups and investor journeys. In addition to that, we have decided on the practical (not less important) side of things, such as: Assessing the team and deciding on who takes ownership for what. A clear framework fosters strong collaboration.

Fundamentals

In this stage we are – with any client – basically checking the boxes. Creating the content which is needed to achieve success: Pitch decks, financials, landing pages, documentation for financial authorities, etc. In this phase, we extracted all necessary information from SEKK’s founders and molded it into alluring fundraising material.

Campaigning

Normally, we are inclined to creating the ‘community momentum’ before the investment funnel opens. But, in SEKK’s case it was already open. Nevertheless, we have managed to create momentum on several occasions by creating attention in Dutch media, engaging current investors and sharing new developments of SEKK (the last part was easy as SEKK is rapidly evolving in a great scale-up). In addition to growth capital and stronger community relations, SEKK also needed active people involved to help them with marketing and brand-building. Therefore, we have also acquired some informal investors to actively join the company. (We would like to highlight here that being part of the team and dynamically changing course in order to reach your goals is one of our strengths).

After service

Similar to a group of investors who own stock in a publicly traded company, SEKK’s investors appreciate quarterly updates on finances, strategic plans etc. Engaging a community after the funding round is as important as engaging a community before the funding round.