Landscape - transparency for fundraising founders
by Startacus Admin
New startup, Landscape that is being described as the ‘Glassdoor for Venture Capital’ officially launches, aiming to bring transparency to fundraising founders...
A new review platform for startup founders to discover and find investment opportunities has just been launched. Landscape, provides transparent feedback from entrepreneurs on their experiences with European venture capital firms and accelerators.
Joe Perkins who founded the platform in May 2020, drew on his own experiences raising capital for his educational technology company Coursematch in 2019.
Joe explains: “It was while trying to secure funding for Coursematch that the idea for Landscape struck. We had been pitching to a bunch of investors and I’d been really interested to see how the quality of interaction varied so greatly from each fund. We had one interaction in particular with a London-based fund that ended up being a real time waster, and I remember thinking “I wish I had a mechanism to warn future founders”.
I started exploring the concept of building a Glassdoor for VC, a resource that would empower founders to share their fundraising interactions for the good of the community. More transparency in the ecosystem would not only provide visibility to all founders, but accountability to investors as well. Landscape grew from there, providing a fair, balanced review platform that empowers founders to share experiences.”
The platform reviews are powered by anonymous founders, who score VCs and accelerators they have interacted with throughout their fundraising journey on 12 different score factors.
During the process of leaving a review, founders are asked for more information about themselves, the business, and whether the firm they are reviewing invested in their startup, to provide context whilst remaining anonymous.
Landscape is free for founders to use, but offers a paid subscription for VCs enabling them to unlock premium services. These include replying to reviews, a custom feedback automation, and an insights dashboard that empowers them to see the reasons they are losing marks. The ambition being that they can iterate on their own product, all whilst maintaining anonymity for the founders.
Check Warner, Partner, Ada Ventures & Co-Founder, Diversity VC, commented:
“The VC and accelerator landscape is regularly called out due to bad actors or for not doing enough to be more inclusive. There are some great organisations already working with firms to make things better, but data is incredibly important and founders often feel powerless when raising money in the beginning. Landscape’s platform not only provides much-needed transparency for everyone, levels the field, and means investors will have to take consistent and sustained action rather than provide lip service, or a one-off. Even better - investors will have more insight into how founders perceive them and have the insights they need to improve.”
To date, Landscape has received almost 700 reviews in its beta, with 83 Verified Partners on the platform. The ambition now is to gather further feedback from the community for reviews.
A great idea and one to keep a close eye on, we reckon!
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Published on: 13th October 2020
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