What is focal?
Since its founding in 2020, Focal has built the world’s largest startup demo day, attracting thousands of pre-seed to Series A stage applicants and thousands of investors from around the world. Demo Days are held virtually twice a year, usually in May and October.
Focal is rewriting the venture funding rulebook by focusing on collaboration over competition. At the heart of our service is a partnership model in which 250 leading VC funds support his Focal in promoting each Demo Day and voting on applicants in exchange for access to applying companies.
For founders, this means they can find the best and most relevant investors for funding, all in one place, while open application forms allow founders to choose who they know, rather than who they know. It means you can get funding based on merit. Broadly speaking, we are addressing this disruption by making the venture funding process dramatically more efficient and meritocratic.
To date, more than 8,000 companies have applied to Focal and 122 companies have participated in Demo Day. More to the point, it’s working. Former finalists have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and many breakout companies include: scan.com, jude and honest mobile. He has also so far enabled Focal participants to invest personally in 10 of his companies at Focal through special purpose vehicles.
We continue to build Focal beyond our flagship Demo Day, with the ultimate goal of making the fundraising process as smooth as possible. Earlier this year, we launched Focal Deploy, a new demo day format for VC funds to pitch to limited partners. We received applications from a whopping 245 VC funds and partnered with over 110 excellent limited partners. Focal Deploy is set to return in 2025 and we look forward to watching it continue to grow.
Recently, we built and launched The Focal Community, a platform for our former finalists. Our more than 100 past alumni can now request introductions to investors and other alumni founders if they wish, as well as receive offers from sponsors and other partners. We believe Focal will be primarily a platform business at some point in the not-too-distant future, and we look forward to talking more about this in the near future. The problem we’re trying to solve (broken funding processes) is simply huge, and we think there’s a lot we can do.
How does Demo Day work?
It’s so easy!Startups can apply in less than 5 minutes our application form. Applications will then be reviewed by his Focal team and his 250 VC partners, and 20-30 companies will be selected to participate in the demo day. When reviewing your application, our partner VCs will let us know if they would like to be referred to any company. At that point, we will ask you if you would like to speak to that investor.
Finalists will then need to put together a video pitch for Demo Day. The Demo Day itself will be followed by a live Q&A with one of our partner VCs after the pitch, and finalists will also be invited to an afterparty with partner VCs and sponsors.
Important dates in your diary:
- Monday 8th April 9am (BST) – Application window opens
- Wednesday 24 April 9am BST – Application window closes
- May 16th 2:00pm – 5:00pm – Demo Day
If you want to watch it, you can register here. Demo Day will begin with a brief introduction, followed by a panel discussion. This time he will be joined by two former Focal finalists (peony with jude josh (From Honest Mobile). This will be followed by a pitch and finally his one-on-one discussion between each founder and their partner VC. Multiple of these sessions run simultaneously, so you can choose which conversations you want to watch.
We have a few things to announce for S24.
First of all, we are really happy to be teaming up again. HSBC Innovation Banking, google cloud, Karuta and B.D.O.!We are also looking forward to welcoming you. fuel supply and coolie! We’re also excited to see more top VC funds on board, including Frontline Ventures, Kindred Capital, and Cavalry Ventures.
Finally, we would like to recognize outstanding founders and startups who were not able to participate in Demo Day. After all, only about 1% of applicants make it to Demo Day, leaving a huge number of good companies missing out. We are here to announce the Focal Top 100. His 100 applicants with the most VC votes. If you’re investing in early-stage startups, this is a list you can’t miss.
Whether you’re a founder, an investor, or just someone interested in seeing some of the world’s most exciting early-stage startups, we look forward to seeing you at Demo Day on May 16th.
Issie James is Deputy Director. Focal.
