Case Study: Atom Limbs - The world’s first mind-controlled bionic arm.
WeFunder launches 30+ Y Combinator startups in one day | A new VC Human Capital Survey shows why Equity Crowdfunding is so important to Black, Hispanic, and Female Founders
What may seem too sci-fi at first glance, is actually a mind-controlled bionic arm for amputees, quadriplegics, and military veterans. CEO Tyler Hayes and his team are building mind-controlled, bionic limbs to restore physical mobility.
This arm, called the “Atom Touch,” is controlled by a person’s thoughts. The arm “hears” the thoughts through the person’s skin, which become nerve signals in the muscles. As a result, the arm moves naturally, as if it were real.
They spent the last 15 years prototyping the arm, conducted 20 trials by amputees and quadriplegics, and conducted tests with military and teleoperations. Oh, and they closed $1.8 million+ from 2,000+ investors this past February on WeFunder.
What is most impressive about Atom Limbs successful offering is not the $120 million grant from DARPA, nor Hayes’ previous sale of Bebo to Amazon as a co-founder, or the team’s 40+ years of experience from John Hopkins, Apple, IDEO, Intel, NASA and more. They did it the same way every founder should regardless of the stage they are at.
Hayes gathered early commitments from his network of $200k. After garnering commitments, he kept them updated with the launch date and when the campaign went live, emailed them again. This is important because many people who may want to invest in you from your own network may have missed the first email, or even second.
Atom Limbs had a presence on each major social media network and did not play favorites. The message went out on each of the platforms via posts, ads, and stories. Hayes asked his friend’s and followers to engage in the posts, share, and increase activity.
He didn’t forget his personal network. In addition to the general updates and emails to all investors, he also treated his personal network, many who invested early on as a separate group and sent them an additional email keeping them updated. Many became additional investors.
Hayes tapped into angel networks, newsletters, blogs, and other channels to get in front of a wider audience.
Their social pages and website all had a top banner that would send potential investor to their campaign page. (Keeping this updated every few days with your new total is a great tip!)
There’s a game plan that has worked that has played a part in almost every successful campaign, and despite the backstory of Atom Limbs, they executed it and saw the results. Every founder needs to do the same.
Running a company and taking on a crowdfunding campaign is a tall task. One or the other often suffers. Using a crowdfunding agency if feasible is often a good choice. Our company, Arora Project helped Atom Limbs with much of the bullet points above, however whether you go at this alone or not, there is a system that works, stick to it.
There are 34 Y Combinator Startups Live Now On WeFunder
Wait, what is Y Combinator? Good question.
Y Combinator is a startup “accelerator” that invests $125,000 in exchange for 7% equity. If accepted, you join a bi-annual cohort of 120 companies for a 3-month intensive program. Odds of acceptance are grim: over 10,000 companies apply. Some previous companies that you made have heard of that are alumni of YC include Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, and Reddit.
Typically, investments in YC companies are a closed-door, insider-only opportunity. But 36 YC companies are breaking out of the status quo of privately raising from rich people – they’re raising from the crowd, from anyone. This is a significant step towards democratizing startup investing.
During the 3-month program, you do 3 things: talk to users, write code, and exercise. There are also weekly dinners with speakers like Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg. You are kept “on track” through weekly office hours with overqualified mentors like Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Dalton Caldwell, and Paul Buchheit. The experience is unforgettable, and companies benefit through rapid product maturation and growth.
The value of YC doesn’t end after the program. It’s like a family. YC companies identify themselves with “YC” and the year they graduated the number of the class graduated. Alumni support each other by becoming early adopters and paying customers.
YC companies have a massive amount of resources and support compared to most startups. Y-Combinator sees more successful exits because they pick out the crème de la crème, enlist celebrity entrepreneurs as mentors, and provide ongoing support from their network.
The significance of this collaboration is big as now everyone has a chance to invest early on in the top startups in the country.
Wefunder itself is a Y Combinator alumni (old log above). I found this article from 2013 on TechCrunch.
A new VC Human Capital Survey shows why Equity Crowdfunding is so important to Black, Hispanic, and Female founders.
The third edition of this survey collected information from 378 VC firms (a significant increase from 203 firms) on their talent management practices and the demographics of nearly 5,000 employees.
Female employees comprised 23% of investment professional positions (up from 21% in 2018 and 15% in 2016), and 16% of investment partners (up from 14% in 2018 and 11% in 2016).
Black employees comprised 4% of the overall workforce, the same percentage as in 2018. The percentage of investment partner positions held by Black employees was 3%, unchanged from the prior survey. Black employees comprised 3% of investment professionals who originate deals.
Asian/Pacific Islander employees comprised 18% of the overall workforce (compared with 17% in 2018), 19% of investment professionals (compared with 17% in 2018).
Hispanic employees reported to be 7%, up from 5% in 2018, and Hispanic employees comprised 4% of investment partners, a slight increase from 3% in the prior survey. However, Hispanic representation among investment professionals declined from 5% in 2018 to 4%.
White employees comprised 72% of the overall workforce and also 72% of investment professional positions, compared with 76% in both instances in 2018.
VC investors are an important source of capital that founders and startups look to unlock, and increased diversity at firms is likely to lead to a more diverse group of founders receiving venture funding. Although US venture capital investments quadrupled over the past 10 years, there has not been a similar increase in the proportion of VC funding going to startups with women or racial and ethnic minority founders. One analysis found that only 1% of VC-backed founders are Black, and fewer than 2% are Hispanic.
Yet, startups with racially and ethnically diverse founding teams and executive teams have been found to have better performance, generating greater multiples on acquisitions and IPOs compared with white-only teams—30% higher for diverse founding teams and 64% higher for diverse executive teams in one study. A separate study found that startups with women on their founding teams are likely to exit at least one year faster than other firms.
With crowdfunding, founders are appealing to their community as well as the general crowd which may or may not include members of their race, color, sex, or religion. As long as you meet a certain number of requirements set by the funding portal of choice, you can raise funds from the crowd.
Up Next: Equity Crowdfunding Explained. Reg CF, Reg D, Reg A+ - What’s the difference?