Our Approach

How to contact us?

Initially, the best way to contact us is by email. You should expect to hear back from us within five to ten working days after first contacting us. Your contact with us should set out your funding needs and idealy include a full business plan with an executive summary as a separate attachment. We do not sign NDAs before receiving full business plans for unsolicited approaches. For more information on how to contact us see the approaching us section of our web site.

What we expect in our first meeting?

For our first meeting with you, you will most likely meet with one of us, but occasionally one or more of the team may join. Prior to our first meeting, please send us any presentations or documentation that you plan to present so that we can prepare for a productive meeting. Our preference is for plans that are concise with an absolute maximum of twelve (ideally fewer) presentation slides which cover the essentials: product, market, business model, team, competition, product roadmap, technology, business development, amount and use of funds, and a 5 year financial forecast. While documentation is important, the focus of our initial interaction is in discussing the key issues facing your business and your strategies in dealing with them.

What happens after our first meeting?

If our initial meeting is promising, we will request visibility of your detailed financial projections and any other relevant material that would be helpful to us. We will also likely want to have some follow up meetings with the team seeking our investment support to explore the key issues in more detail. If our initial discussions go well, we will want to conduct preliminary due diligence, which may include interviews with key management, reference calls with partners and customers, so that we can attempt to validate our interest in investing and reach broad deal terms to be validated with final due diligence.

What to expect in final due diligence?

If we agree after several meetings and weeks of getting to know each other that we have common ground on broad deal terms, we will likely engage in a more detailed due diligence process that may include additional personal reference calls. legal and accounting audit (if relevant), and the drafting of final legal documentation.

How we decide to invest?

As part of finalizing the due diligence process, our four member investment committee needs to unanimously support a decision to invest.

How long does the entire process take?

The ‘getting to know’ period can take anything up to a year. From when we decide to make a proposal to completion of due diligence typically takes six to eight weeks, but may take longer.

What happens post investment?

In practically all cases, our investment includes a right to appoint a a director to the board. We actively partner with our companies and engage with them a regularly so that board meetings are only one of many touch points between us. Our support for our companies can take many forms, including in facilitating introductions to customers, recruiting key employees or board members and advising on key issues facing the business.

100 Day Plan

At the beginning of each investment we design, in complete collaboration with our portfolio company’s executive team, a “100 Day Plan” that highlights in detail the key projects and initiatives that the Dawn team will support so that we help our companies get off to fast start in effectively deploying the capital we have invested.