For Founders

The Emergence Secret Playbook

Open Source Tools & Templates for Enterprise Entrepreneurs

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At Emergence, we invest in people who change the way the world works. Fortunately, the people we partner with have been very successful at fundraising the capital they need to achieve their missions. In fact, across Emergence’s last three funds, our startups have raised over $2.1 billion across 58 rounds of financing following our initial investment. Of course, we cannot take full credit for this amazing track record. Ultimately, we credit our founders and their teams who work hard every day to build iconic companies.

Our team at Emergence is proud to support each and every one of the companies in our portfolio and fundraising is one of the core areas where we can help the most. Over the years, we created a set of tools to help our portfolio companies prepare, execute and close a fundraising process - we call it the Secret Playbook. Today, we’re making it a little less secret, by sharing our fundraising philosophy and open sourcing the tools and templates that our companies leverage.

Introducing the Enterprise Fundraising CRM

To help enterprise software entrepreneurs save time and create their target investor lists in one centralized place, we’ve created an open source tool called the Enterprise Fundraising CRM. As longtime investors in the enterprise software industry, we know the community inside and out. The Enterprise Fundraising CRM is a detailed directory of active enterprise software investors of all sizes, from VCs to individual investors, sortable by stage, size, focus, and geography.

To keep things simple, we’ve hosted the Enterprise Fundraising CRM in a straightforward Google Doc. To use it in your own Google Drive, simply open the link below, click File, and then select “Make a Copy.” You’ll find additional directions on the first page of the Sheet.

Please help us continue to improve this resource by adding new investors and providing feedback.

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Get started here → Enterprise Fundraising CRM

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Perfect Your Pitch Deck

Once you have a target investor list in place, it’s time to polish your pitch deck to perfection. The importance of your pitch deck can’t be overstated as it is perhaps the single most important touchpoint you’ll have with your potential investors, and the first impression you give of yourself, your team, and your product.

To help our entrepreneurs get started on incorporating these tips into their own pitch decks, we have created an open source template for creating Series A and Series B enterprise pitch decks. We’ve made it in a simple Google Slides format that you can copy and use by clicking the link below.

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Get started here → Pitch Deck Template

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Frame Your Data

Supporting your fundraising pitch with data is both an art and a science. You want to frame your data with charts and graphs that tell a compelling story rather than simply dump raw data in the hands of investors.

To help, we’ve created the basic charts and graphs investors want to see in a data deck. As with all of our Secret Playbook tools, you can simply copy the Google Sheet or download the Excel version and start building with your own data.

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Get started here:

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Sail Through Diligence

To help you navigate diligence smoothly, we’ve put together a kit of several different templates.

VC Diligence Request List: Covers the basic items every VC firm will request when they begin diligence.

Reference Template: Ready to fill in and use to collaborate with the investors who are conducting reference checks.

Legal and Financial Diligence Request List: Outlines all the legal, business, and financial information you might need to provide in the legal diligence phase.

Leverage, Contribute & Share

We know how hard it is to scale a startup and fundraising is a necessary evil for most hyper-growth startups. Over the last 15 years, the Emergence team has helped close 100s of rounds of financing. We’re sharing our Secret Playbook that we’ve perfected because we want to help even more enterprise startups reach their full potential.

Please help us continue to make these tools and templates better by contributing your feedback, suggestions, and questions. You can email me directly at joe@emcap.com or tweet @thejoefloyd.

If you find these tools and templates helpful, please share them with your network.

Thank you!