Having already built previous companies with his co-founders in a startup studio format, Sedale Turbovsky knows the importance of having all of a startup’s stakeholders pulling in the same direction.
Today, though, there are new options for developing a new business. And so not long after launching their new venture, OpenGrants, Sedale was googling how to best align the company’s community with its fundraising efforts.
Aligning their community was a key goal:
“Whether the funds are public or private, we want to design a new system to bring transparency, equity, accessibility to this resource. It only makes sense to have the same inclusive approach to building our own company.”
In the search results for rolling fundraising, Sedale came across the Fairmint website. He could already see that it was just what he’d been looking for: stakeholder-focused, a complete web3 equity management SaaS, the ability to natively issue equity on-chain and reward community members as they add value to the company… He signed up immediately.
Just a few days later, OpenGrants closed a fundraising round with Boost VC. And funnily enough, while at the Boost Basement at Draper University in San Mateo, Sedale heard that two of the people there tapping away at their computers were Fairmint’s founders, Thibauld and Joris.
Sedale laughs at the memory. “I was like, ‘Oh, you guys are Fairmint? I wanted to talk to you!’”
That conversation led to a working relationship that has kept moving forward. And it’s been a profitable one: OpenGrants allocated a portion of their equity to a rolling SAFE, used Fairmint to set everything up, connected the community investment widget on their website to let their community know they could invest, and got things rolling.
With the offering launched, they’ve been able to let key members of their ecosystem invest, and that experience has given them clear ideas on how to bring in even more. The company has also used the offering to allocate a slice of equity to stakeholder compensation, which will let them further align their community of independent grant consultants.
Sedale says taking this community approach has been a help with both users and professional investors. As just one example, funds that normally write larger checks in a Series A or B round have invested in OpenGrants to become part of the community.
This has led to what Sedale calls “almost a paywall approach to metrics and growth: if people want to follow along with how we’re doing, they put in a check to get involved.” Building those capital-based relationships earlier gets them engaged conversations with top investors before most early-stage companies.
The benefits are seen on the marketing side as well. By communicating the fact that it is an open equity company tapping into community capital, OpenGrants clearly shows its commitment to everyone involved in the company’s growth. And having the $GRANT ticker symbol for their token doesn’t hurt when it comes to writing engaging copy.
“It lets us lean into our community narrative, showing we’re not just talk. We can show that from the beginning, we’re building something with them, all those people who identify with our mission. There’s no better way to prove that than having the community investment widget for $GRANT on our website.”
They’ve also found that proving their commitment to the community has other positive impacts, such as getting feedback in their customer discovery efforts.
“We do lots of surveys, NPS, and it’s a lot easier to get people to respond when they feel like they’re really aligned with the company’s success. We want them to help us build, and they know it.”
Asked if he had any takeaways for founders, Sedale nodded:
“Community capital is authentic, and as soon as you say what you’re doing, it’s so obvious to people. As a founder, that gives you a really cool feeling.”
