Described as the “Robinhood for fundraising”, Prague-based Bound has freshly launched to enable founders and entrepreneurs to find and review investors from around the world that will add real value to their business.
While it’s thought that a mismatch between startups and investment partners is a cause of startup failure, Bound is aiming to rebalance the world of VC towards entrepreneurs. The platform enables founders to slash the process of researching and selecting a VC partner from months to hours by combining the world’s most comprehensive free, searchable database of venture capital firms with the biggest library of verified reviews from founders themselves.
The company’s mission is to connect founders with VCs that can contribute real knowledge and expertise to their startup and bring much-needed transparency to the VC market, helping entrepreneurs find the investment that will turn dreams into reality.
Bound also celebrates and spotlights the best venture capital firms in the market, while enabling them to find founders who are the perfect fit for their funds and ensuring they deliver better returns for their investors for lower fees.
Pavel Síma came up with the idea for Bound after his own experience of navigating the VC world, finding it in need of a change.
“Entrepreneurs are at a huge disadvantage when trying to find a VC partner, and this imbalance is hurting both founders and investors,” said Šíma. “Right now, VC firms hold all the cards – and that leads to bad relationships, bad deals, and failed startups. They have more of everything: more money, experience, lawyers and, most importantly, more time. Founders, especially first-time entrepreneurs, have none of these; they don’t know how to go looking for investors, let alone how to find ones that will support their startup and take them to IPO. It’s a process that takes months, at a time when they have a thousand other urgent priorities.”
Bound aims to connect founders with the right VC on terms of equality and transparency. By submitting detailed reviews of VC firms, mapped against more than 16 different categories – including experience and expertise, clarity of investment process, due diligence, speed, and professionalism – better relationships can be made, making for better outcomes for all involved.
Founders can also leave simple, public ‘star’ ratings, so other founders can get an at-a-glance view of potential funders, or dive deeper to discover which ones have the knowledge and experience that can take their business to the next level. Bound will also spotlight the best-reviewed VCs, helping to set new standards for best practices within the industry.
Síma continued: “First-time founders quickly learn that raising money is the easy part. Selecting the wrong investor is not just a huge waste of time and effort, it can actively hurt your chance of success. But when you have incredibly rich data, with all the different VC signals in one place, and combine it with user reviews, we are rebalancing the market towards founders, making them more likely to succeed in the long run.”
