As a B2B SaaS founder, Gilded CEO Gil Hildebrand knows that his company’s path to community ownership is a bit different than that taken by B2C businesses. But since launching the $GFi portal just over a year ago, he’s clearly seen how that path provides multiple benefits.
“Being in the crypto industry, we know how the token model incentivizes adoption, participation, community. As a SaaS, though, using a token as a protocol doesn’t really make sense. So we felt there was a great opportunity, in this world where tokens incentivize community, but there was a gap because of the type of business we run. Fairmint let us bridge that gap.”
Fairmint lets Gilded bridge that gap, crossing the best practices of web2 with the powerful tech of web3. By opening the company’s equity story to community ownership, Gilded is now growing thanks to a laser-focus on shipping a great product, all while being supported by an ever-widening group of investors.
Within the Gilded community, Gil noticed that there are a few recurring investor profiles of people wanting to align themselves with the company’s long-term success via the $GFi token.
Gil sees fresh excitement coming from the opening the possibility of investing to more people. In addition to more experienced angels, with Fairmint’s investment platform making the investment process simple and fluid, new angels are springing up.
“Those new angels, they immediately love the Rolling SAFE. I’ve had multiple people tell me how great it is to be able to login to the Fairmint platform and see the company valuation and what their stake is worth today.”
Some investors simply show up, with a Slack notification signaling their arrival in Gilded’s on-chain cap table. For Gil, these are some of the most gratifying investments.
“It’s someone we’ve never met, probably never will meet. They might be overseas, might not. And they put in $1000. Who knows how they heard about us, whether social media, our website, whatever. But they see our mission and believe in it. And they’re awesome, because they jump right in, they want to come along for the ride.”
It’s rare for an early-stage startup to create partnerships that include equity investments. For Gilded, though, it’s become a common result of business meetings.
“With a traditional SAFE model, I wouldn’t go to our customers and say, ‘Hey, if you want to, you can invest.’ With Fairmint’s tech, though, it’s amazing how well it works. We’ve closed six-figure investments with customers, really aligning our companies for the future.”
One particular challenge facing founders in the B2B space is when a customer wants a specific feature to be built. In the old paradigm, negotiating a price can be difficult, since having the feature benefits the company over the long term and thus the customer doesn’t want to pay much for its development.
But with community ownership, what was long a sticking point becomes a win-win.
“We had a customer who wanted a feature, so we did the specs and figured out how much it would cost. That usually leads to a tough conversation, because the customer doesn’t want to necessarily pay a lot, since we’d then also be able to sell the feature to other customers afterwards. But with the Rolling SAFE, we were able to quickly agree on them paying for the whole thing, with the cash coming in as an investment in Gilded.”
These different types of Rolling SAFE participants bring a new kind of momentum to Gilded in discussions with VCs.
The money raised lets the team focus on the product rather than fundraising, which is always a plus when it comes to boosting business KPIs. And the always-on Rolling SAFE gives them a new resource for leveraging one of the biggest features of traditional venture capital: FOMO.
“As soon as our seed round came together, we had lots of investors who wanted to get in. At some point, there’s just no room left. Before, that interest — and money — gets left behind. Now, we just tell those investors that the round’s closed, but that they can log on to Fairmint and invest through our Rolling SAFE. And it works.”
