Unreasonable Investor Days

Why This Event Exists

It takes a village.
Ultimately, our objective is to get capital moving by making it easier, cheaper, and faster to make a right capital decision and connect with the right people by bringing together all of the key players. It’s an uphill battle that all parties (funders and entrepreneurs) face in finding that “perfect match”. Thus, we find it inefficient to connect funders with our entrepreneurs under the context of “Here are some people who can potentially give you money. Go pitch to them and answer their questions.” Instead, we bring people together under the context of “Together we can all help these entrepreneurs figure our the right type and amount of capital they need, and we can connect them to the right people/organizations to provide capital whether that person is in the room or not!”

Our goals for the event are lofty, but we hope that attendees walk away from this event falling into one the following three categories…

The Following Organizations Will Be Here

Schedule

Investor Days itself is a 1.5 day event (its the green section in the schedule below) that allows you to get home before the weekend starts. You may want to arrive mid-day on Wednesday so you can be in Boulder for the Unreasonable Climax presentations Wednesday evening (these are high-energy TED-style presentations from our entrepreneurs). Your Investor Days Registration includes a ticket to the Climax. Additionally, you may be interested in coming a day early to attend the Funder Boot Camp.

How You Will Spend Your Time

We will work to make this the most valuable few days ever.
We’ll provide you the relevant, imperative information about the ventures weeks and months ahead of time so you can track the ventures leading up to the event (some info will begin as early as March). Additionally we will facilitate introductory phone calls with the entrepreneurs. This way you can spend your time here on more productive things such as:

• We realize a day and a half is a lot: We realize that expecting to to join us for 2 full days is a huge commitment. We also realize how much we hate sitting inside for anything more than a few hours.  These are reasons why we will be sure to have a detailed schedule so you can plug in when you want and jump out when you don’t, as well as why we will have plenty of white space or free time so that you can get other work done (wifi will always be available), and finally why we will make sure it is chalked full of fun (think happy hours, chances to be outside, and things like this).
• Enjoying Boulder: We encourage you and our entrepreneurs to meet over hikes, or tea at a table by the Boulder creek, or at a delicious locally owned coffee shop. We hope this becomes the norm so you can enjoy Boulder while you are here.
• No pitches, but optional damn exciting presentations the night before: Historically our entrepreneurs have given top notch, exciting, inspiring pitches, but the problem is pitches take a long time and they don’t always answer what YOU want to know and don’t allow relationships to form and things to get done. So we’re getting you the information that would be in the pitch ahead of time and instead focusing your time here on relationships, getting important questions answered, diving deep into the business and those leading it. You will have the option to attend the (highly entertaining while informative) Unreasonable Climax Presentations the night before Investor Days for free as a VIP
• Intensive small-group conversations and one on ones: We’ve learned that investment is all about building trusting relationships and want to give investors and entrepreneurs the chance to form meaningful connections both with the business and around it. There will be plenty of time for investors and the entrepreneurs they are interested in getting to know more deeply to engage in meaningful conversation both in small group and one on one scenerios.
• Meeting their team/lead mentor/board: Because getting to know the executive team, board, key partners, and key customers for an entrepreneur is so crucial, the entrepreneurs will be inviting, via Skype or in person, key people in their company (based on the investors interests) for investors to get to know. This provides investors an opportunity to observe whether or not this investment opportunity has the right people on board to successfully grow and scale the venture.
• Syndication: Our goal with Investor Days is to help investors that are present to syndicate deals and co-invest in order to share the risk of investment. Whether or not investors choose to invest in a company that they see at Unreasonable Investor Days or not, this event is a spectacular way to build relationships with the other investors present, which can lead to opportunities to work together into the future, whether it’s in Unreasonable entrepreneurs or not!
• Lawyers present as resources: We’ve learned that the negotiation of term sheets in an investment is arduous, time-consuming and costly. So our team of lawyers will provide term sheet templates in advance as well as negotiate the terms for both sides at Investor Days itself, lowering the barrier to investment. To make this initial investment easier, we also encourage investors to consider traunching investment offers and delivering additional funds on the basis of specific milestones, to hold entrepreneurs accountable. Campbell Law Group will be on hand to finalize up to three deals by the end of the 48 hours (details coming soon!).
• Enjoying “serendipity time”: There will be a generous amount of free and unstructured time to relax and converse with others without pressure, and with food, drinks and fun. Whether enjoying a cocktail at our banquet dinner or while going with an entrepreneur and Unreasonable Angel on a hike, this is a good (and fun) time to make things happen.

We Work With the Ventures to Make Your Life Easier (and Make Things Move Faster)

It is our commander’s intent, our main goal, to select investment ready ventures and make sure these entrepreneurs come prepared, come with answers, and come ready to take on capital.
From February through July we surround these ventures with mentor teams and specific “strike team” resource providers that work closely with them and prepare them to build stronger businesses and be ready for investment. The focus is on building powerful relationships, serving and acquiring customers, baking scalablability into their business models and having a specific plan for scale, building a world-class team, communicating clearly, and measuring and enhancing their impact.

Additionally, the entrepreneurs will understand what typical investors are going to want to see and learn about from them before they will place capital. We will make sure they are prepared for and come with these elements (including answers to main due diligence questions and top-notch pro-forma financial statements), making your due diligence faster and more efficient for you. We will share as much of this with you beforehand as possible.

What Your Tickets Gets You

• The Unreasonable team working for you to identify and connect you to investment opportunities that interest you.
• Meals (all of Thursday, plus Friday through lunch), including an evening reception Thursday night, are on us and will be delicious
• Making it easy for you – you show up and we will make it easy for you to build meaningful, valuable, lasting relationships with our entrepreneurs, the Unreasonable Angels, and all the other attendees.
• A free VIP ticket to the Unreasonable Climax on the evening of Wednesday, July 10th.
• Our Unreasonable guarantee that this is going to be one hell of a good and valuable time or, as they say, your money back.
• Getting stuff done discount – place capital by December 1st and we will refund your ticket.

Traveling to Boulder?

Here are some resources to help you in your travels to Boulder including hotel and airport transport options. Additionally, we are working to try to secure local Boulder community members to host people at their homes (something that is not uncommon in this tight knit community). Why? Our goal is to make this as darn easy and inexpensive on you as possible so you can focus on the important stuff, connecting with Unreasonable Entrepreneurs. More details on that once it is secured.

Location

The majority of the event will take place at Hub Boulder, ATLAS Institute on the CU-Boulder Campus, or CU’s Law School thanks to Silicon Flatirons. We must give special thanks to these folks for graciously providing the space to make this event happen. Without them, we really don’t know how we could bring together such an Unreasonable group of people.

Join Us

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Click here to get signed up!

Help Us Pack the Room with the “Right People”

We’ve had some great people from great organizations sign up already, but we need your help to mobilize all of the right people to be in the room at our funder events. Click here for easy to use marketing materials that fit how you connect with your community.

Results From 2012 and Changes for 2013

In 2012 we saw a lot of successes. Attendees loved the amount of open time and the flexibility of the structure (given attendee feedback, we changed some things on the spot!). They also loved the diversity of their peers – from family foundations, to angels, to large impact investors. Most importantly, we saw each entrepreneur walk away with an average of 9 people excited to stay in contact with and follow up with each venture after the event. Some entrepreneurs have since secured rounds that are nearly 100% funded by people at Investor Days. Others say they have found board members and capital-focused advisors who have helped guide them through this process and connect them to people who have eventually funded them.

At the same time, there were some things that we and attendees think could have been done better. Mainly, that is in identifying leads, clearly defining rolls and organizing the steps and people after Investor Days. They would have loved to have seen Unreasonable take more of a lead roll in this. This is something that we plan to vastly improve in 2013!