In the current climate, some people had wondered if crowd-sourced funding would work and whether founders could still pull a crowd.

There’s no doubt equity crowdfunding has many benefits from PR and headlines to sales spikes and new customer acquisition, to creating a new community of brand ambassadors through investors – and of course, quick access to funds to execute on growth plans for startups.

But given the wider economic conditions, the question remained – were crowds still ready to invest?

Our Cow co-founders Bianca Tarrant and Dave McGiveron decided the timing was right.

They committed to a second crowd-sourced funding campaign, turning to Birchal this time to help turn their paddock-to-plate meat subscription service into an ultimate online farmers market in 2023.

With more than $100k pledged in the first 15 minutes of the offer opening, $1 million within the first day of the campaign, it was clear herding the crowd was not an issue. In fact, they broke the record for campaign webinar registrations, and the charge of 1149 investors drove the raise to $2.1 million.

So, what gave these veterans of equity crowdfunding the confidence to go ahead, and what does it really take on the Road to the Raise, to ensure success?

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"It was an honour to help the Our Cow team make their second CSF offer on Birchal. They have achieved truly stunning business performance over the last 12 months, and amassed an army of passionate fans (now investors) who want to see them succeed and achieve their vision.

To raise a multi-million dollar campaign, and double your valuation in the current environment is no mean feat. It's a true testament to the Our Cow team and the passionate support of their investors."

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MATT VITALE – BIRCHAL CO-FOUNDER & CEO

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Q&A SERIES WITH

Bianca Tarrant

OUR COW CO-FOUNDER & CEO

What prompted the raise?

We're on a strong growth trajectory and we wanted to be able to bring some more funds in to continue on the growth path. We had a really successful crowdfund before and it was really nice to be able to bring so many of our customers and farmers into the business and on the journey with us. We wanted to be able to provide new customers and new farmers the opportunity to jump on board again as well.

Why choose crowd investment over other capital raising options?

To build out our community. We wanted to be able to give customers and farmers some ownership in our business, and feel like they're part of the community. It's such a good form of marketing as well. Now we have 2000 people that are singing our praise everywhere they go!

Were you nervous about raising in the current climate, and what gave you the certainty to move forward?

It was certainly something that we talked about, especially with the current climate and everything that's been going on. But we backed our business. We're in the business of feeding people, which is an essential service. People can go without a T-shirt or a candle, but they can't go without food. We were confident with our valuation, as we’re at three times recurring revenue, and we were confident with the growth of the company.

What were the biggest challenges of the raise?

Following up with people is always a challenge. You've got a lot of people that express interest, so just continuously following up with them and keeping them warm, to get them over the line. So, we were just working with our team and our customer service guys to really make people feel reassured at the investment they were making.

What would you most attribute the success of your raise to?

I think it's got a lot to do with the community and the way that we positioned ourselves and our offer.  We're a company with a face and we've got a really strong brand and got a strong reason ‘why’. Our business is already fairly well set in stone and we've got the revenue to show for that. The product is already out in market, and we've already got quite a successful business, so it's just about getting people to jump on board with us.

Other than funding, what benefits are there to CSF?

We have thousands of investors, and those people are never going to buy meat anywhere else now they're customers for life with Our Cow. So it really brings a strong sense of community to the business as well. I think the way that you structure the deal can be quite founder friendly as well.

What are your top tips for other startups on the road to the raise?

• Get a good solicitor that can help you do the share agreement, make sure your constitution is right. We were lucky that we did a lot of groundwork in the first raise, so this raise was easier. was a little bit easier.
• Talk with Birchal, to understand everything you need right from the very start. So you've got the clear goals and the KPIs that you need to meet to get the raise completed and all the boxes ticked because there's a lot of legalities that come with crowdsourced funding. Make sure you've got everything, all your T's crossed and your I's dotted.
• It's great to have a PR agency engaged a before the major event, so they've got time to put out a few articles prior to you being in the media about the raise. We had the Voly acquisition and a few other things that we had PR on before the raise came into play. PR is something that you can't just turn on and expect to work tomorrow. So I'd suggest engaging a PR firm bit before you actually go live with your raise.
• We use video a lot in our business, we've been down the path of paying a lot of money for videos. But the video that we did [for our raise] was Dave and I with a tripod on our farm and we recorded it on my iPhone and we sent it to some of the guys on our team and they did the overlay with other footage that we had from the past. If you don't have a big budget, it doesn't need to be expensive.

What is the plan for the money you’ve raised and how will it help you execute on your growth plans?

We've already started implementing a lot of the things on our plan that we said we wanted to do when the funds came in. We’ve signed a lease on our Sydney facility. That'll put us into motion for our faster, same day delivery sooner than we had expected. We've got machinery arriving next week that we said we were going to invest in. We've put a deposit on some other machinery that will arrive in a few months time. We're already looking at warehouses in other capital cities as well. We've built out our executive team, so there's actually news coming out shortly about that and what our new executive team looks like. It’s a star studded amazing team that we've built.

You changed to raise with Birchal this time, what were the biggest differences between this and your last raise?

I've had lots of people reach out to me and ask me how the experience was with Birchal because they're considering doing a raise or they look exploring their options and I couldn't speak highly enough of the Birchal team and what they did for us. Loved Birchal! It just made the whole process a complete breeze. Everyone was fantastic to deal with. It was just a very smooth, very easy process.