Hey startup ecosystem, we’re glad to announce that we have joined forces with BeAngels to create Make it Capital I: The first investment vehicle fully dedicated to idea-stage tech startups.

The mission of this new pilot fund is to boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem by allocating financial and technical resources to founders with a potentially valuable idea, but without adequate resources to bring it to life. Since this initiative is a world’s first in the tech ecosystem, it is probably worth a blog post to explain why we created it 🙌

The problem we solve for founders

At Make it, we meet around 300 founders every year. Many of them appear to be addressing real market problems and are therefore certainly worth testing. However, the majority do not have access to the necessary financial and technical resources to bring their idea to life.

As passionate entrepreneurs, this causes a lot of frustration because it’s impossible for our startup studio to work on all of these projects 100% at risk. And it’s virtually impossible for these founders to raise funding at such an early stage because of the associated technical and commercial risk.

“You’re too early.” Heard that one before? It’s the frustration-inducing investor response that early-stage founders hear on repeat as they seek to raise initial funding.

The problem we solve for investors

As for investors and business angels, many are frustrated by not finding enough high-quality tech startups to invest in. And because there is more capital available than there are good startup investments, this results in an increase in « prices » that makes these early-stage projects less attractive for them.

Our Solution: Investing in ideas

To address these two problems, we created Make it Capital I. This new initiative will enable entrepreneurs to bring their project to life while creating new deal flow for investors keen to invest early in promising tech startups. A total of ten projects will be pre-selected across Belgium and supported through the pilot.

Making idea-stage investment possible and profitable for investors

As « professional startup builders », it’s our job to be the best in execution, and to de-risk a project as effectively as possible before investing further substantial resources into development and growth.

This is a prerequisite when investing in startups at this nascent stage, which, when successful, achieves higher returns than investing in more mature companies in later stages of development.

10 pioneers have joined the €200k pilot fund, including François van Uffelen (ex-Babelway) and Yves Caprara (ex-Prayon). If this pilot is a success, it will be followed by a significantly more capitalized iteration that should allow us to invest in new ideas in addition to meeting their future financing needs.

Four months to turn the idea into a revenue-generating business

The founders of the 10 selected projects will each receive €20k in funding and join our startup studio, leveraging a variety of specialized skills: entrepreneurship, design, mobile and web app development, digital marketing – in short, everything needed to build and grow a startup.

The objective is to bring these 10 projects to a level of maturity sufficient to raise a pre-seed financing round backed by a strong business case. To this end, we will use our executional capabilities in order to rapidly get these projects to market, validate their main assumptions, and start generating revenue.

Once a project is validated and “investors ready”, BeAngels can then offer access to its funding ecosystem to invest in its growth in addition to the financial contribution from Make it Capital I. If this first structured pre-seed/seed funding round is successfully achieved, Make it Capital I will acquire 8% equity in the startup in return of its initial investment.

Founders, is this something for you?

If you've made it this far, you are probably wondering what the selection criteria are to be eligible for Make it Capital I. So here they are:

▶ The idea has to originate from a problem you identified by observing the world. In other words, it has to be "market-driven" and not "product-driven".

▶ The solution needs to have a digital/tech component. Whether in the product itself or in its distribution.

▶ The Business Model can be scalable.

▶ The project has an international scope.

▶ We can start generating revenue in less than 6 months.

▶ You're ready to roll up your sleeves and focus on solving the problem you have identified.

The whole selection process is very smooth and takes no more than 2 to 4 weeks 👌

Apply now, spread the news!

👉 Applications are now open on https://makeit-studio.com/we-invest-in-ideas 👈

If you know of any talented, driven founders who might be a great fit for this new fund, please help spread the news.

Dream & Do ✌️