How One Tweet Got My Startup Funded

March 29, 2016 by Truelancer

My name is Dipesh Garg (@dipesh008) and I am an entrepreneur who recently got his startup funded. Many of you might have already heard of Truelancer (www.truelancer.com), the largest marketplace for freelancers in Asia.

Well, we are all set to go big and give freelancers the best possible solutions that they need. This required a lot of effort, incessant hustling and yes, angel investments!

If you are in the startup space, you must be consistent with the fact that when it comes to investments, they don’t come in easy. With all the buzz about new startups getting millions of dollars in funding every day, there has been a perception on the rise that raising funds is easy as India and the world are bullish on its startup ecosystem.

However, let me get back to my tale. It’s not a fairy tale, but yes, it involves that one special tweet which led to Truelancer’s funding in no time.

Looking for investors, we have a curated list. List of 100 Angel Investors in India

Launched in Sep 2014, Truelancer is an On Demand Curated Freelance Marketplace and has 250,000+ Freelancers. We help Businesses & Individual Hire Skilled Freelance Talent (Developers, Designers, App Developers, Content Writers, Digital Marketing Experts, Virtual Assistants etc), using Freelancers Business can save upto 50% in Cost.

Freelancers get an opportunity to get work from clients around the work and today someone sitting in remote town can earn $1000 – $4000 / month working remotely.

It had been a year since our official launch and we were doing really well in our target markets i.e. Asia & USA.

But as for any business, you have to escalate in order to grow. To find that scale one needs investment. That is where investors come in. In the world of startups, investments are of prime importance as they help you in reaching desired targets in an unconventional time frame. We soon realized that it was time for us to bring that extra capital in and expand our operations.

We came across a solution: SEED FUNDING

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Soon we came across another reality. Seed funding wasn’t easy to get. We kept on hustling, from investor to investor. We managed to get into a Startup Incubator and receive guidance from our now Advisor & Investor Aditya Dev Sood (Startup Tunnel) (@adityadevsood).

Somehow for a month or so, investments still decided to elude us but that was about to change!

I, along with my team sat down for a brainstorming session regarding the change in approach and strategy, and that was when Twitter came up. In the course of the next 24 hours, I sent some tweets to Investors whom I found on a list –

The List was titled: Top Angel Investors on Twitter

One of the tweets I sent was to Raghu Vohra (@BlackstoneVC) from a US-based investment firm – Blackstone Valley Group.

To my pleasant surprise, I received an instant reply as you can see in the above screenshot.

He seemed pretty interested in our developments and told me to send him a direct message. Soon conversations began where me, Raghu and Aditya (our mentor) were heavily involved. Pitch presentations were shared and a couple of phone calls done.

What was next? Well, something good. Blackstone Valley Group funded us!

Read – Truelancer Raises Seed Funding from group of Investors from USA & India

Why I share this story with you guys is about something deeper, not just bagging investments. You see, it takes a lot of effort but most of the times these efforts pay off in an instant or so it may seem. I am not telling you to go and shoot tweets at every potential investor you find! No.

Instead, the importance here should be given to your idea and no stone should be left unturned. If you have a product or an idea, which is bang on, everything else will follow. You just have to keep making the effort.

As far as Truelancer and I are concerned, we have been escalating and diversifying our operations ever since. Soon, we will launch Truelancer Mobile App and cater to an even larger number of freelancers who are willing to live their adventures and earn out of it.

So keep hustling, keep making the effort. As I keep saying:

“Your Network is your net worth”

Must Read Ramadhan Omar - Kicked Start as a Beginner Freelancer.

Work here encompasses every possible effort you make. Therefore, don’t stop. Live your dream!

Team Truelancer