Bionic Colabs Monthly Update

"Colabs" celebrates our commitment to experimentation and the power of collaboration (read more here)

As our community grows so does our network leverage and our offerings. We’re excited to empower our founders by introducing a curated repository of who’s raising that will allow us to drive more discovery and connectivity. Up next we’re building out our community’s hiring database and community resources ??.

??TLDR

• Community Chats: Fundraising trends with Carta
• Founders Series: Volume 4 is out with Aabesh De of Flora fresh off of their Shark Tank deal
• Featured Fundraise: Debbie’s seed round is open fresh off of launching key partnerships with Community Financial Credit Union & CUNA
• Collaborative on the Move: Scout launches SEP IRAs on their platform, ?Fitcopilot.ai is now live automating gym onboarding, Fractionaljobs.io?hit 2,000 signups in just one month.
• Accelerant: Kirk Fernandes is the founder of Merit breaks down his keys to mentorship

??Community Chat

Peter Walker, head of insights?Carta, helped us learn from the past early stage fundraising trends and help get founders ready for what to expect as the market continues to evolve. See the full write up and chat here.

• 85% of pre-seed funding is flowing through SAFEs
• Founders need to watch out for excessive dilution in rolling SAFE rounds
• Rounds are coming together slower, on average 2.5 years between rounds, make your funds last longer
• Bridge rounds are becoming more pervasive along with down rounds
• Build a fundamentally strong business, but do not forget, VCs want to see growth

?? Our next community chat?registration is LIVE ??

We're excited to welcome Malcolm Lewis to share his playbook on how to nail your pitch deck. With his approach he's helped founder raise over $300M from angels, VCs, and institutional investors.

Let's bring your vision to life and secure the bag - sign up today!

???Founders Series

This month we have a special Founders Series with Aabesh De founder of Flora fresh off of Shark Tank (watch the episode here)! After nabbing a deal with Lori they quickly sold out of their Flora Pod - hitting record sales. He’s a dynamic and passionate founder leading the charge by building the Chewy of plants and is growing like a weed; 300k total users who've added over 1M plants and a vibrant App Store rating of 4.7.

“[As a founder] I'm much more resilient, and much more grateful for the simple things.”

?? Read the full chat here! ??

??Featured Fundraise

Debbie is on an absolute tear launching their third customer, Community Financial Credit Union, in Michigan($1B AUM) and are now partnering with CUNA Strategic Services as their distribution partner in the Credit Union industry.

They are the first rewards marketplace for debt payoff and savings, where users earn cash for improving their financial lives. We partner with credit unions to help them better engage with young members, increase wallet share, and acquire new members through our exclusive marketplace.

??Seed Round Now Open??

??Collaborative on the Move

We thought the record times set at the NFL combine were impressive but then we saw these massive wins from a few of our community members.

?? Future value of money gt; present value

Scout launched SEP IRAs on their platform which gives them the ability to provide their student athletes up to a $66,000 tax deduction immediately.?This provided immediate value gained trust immediately which was evident as they onboarded Mississippi State Football program!

???Scout’s seed round is closing soon??

?? A performance boost is coming to a gym near you

Fitcopilot.ai has just launched in 2 locations and 9 on the way. They’re building a B2B SaaS for gyms to automate their member engagement process with AI, starting with workout programming customized to both the member AND the gym. Their free workout builder is available for testing here.

??Raising a seed round now??

??Expert talent is flocking to this start up

Fractionaljobs.io?hit 2,000 signups this week, a month after launch???. They’re building the job board for fractional leaders and the companies looking to hire them.

?? Accelerant

Kirk Fernandes is the founder of Merit, a plug-play tech hiring network that uses mentorship signals to find great candidates.

What is mentorship? Mentorship is simply using your network to grow your career. There are two variables to the equation:

?? Mentorship = size & diversity of network * how you maximize it

How can you increase the size and diversity of your network?

By meeting new people, obviously. But this is hard and takes time. Thankfully some tools and gambits do this for you. Go to events, and shared spaces or join communities. Some products introduce you to new people with minimal effort. Merit is one of them.

How you can maximize your network?

Some tools and products can help you get better at this too.

• Being a “good” mentee: By asking good questions, following up, and sharing progress with the people who help you.
• Being a “good” mentor: By listening, sharing perspectives and stories, and asking questions to help people debug their problems.

Mentorship is something you never stop doing, no matter your stage, industry, or role. So invest early and it compounds.