Revolutionising investor relations: Floww’s dynamic Data Room
Raising capital is hard and telling your company’s story to capture investors is integral to this. Floww founder and CEO Martijn de Wever shares how scaling companies can use Floww’s innovative enhancement to virtual Data Rooms to ease the challenge of telling your company’s story.
From outdated to dynamic Data Rooms
Floww founder Martijn de Wever says:
“Traditionally the Data Room is a folder of files that people dump into for a prospective investor to do due diligence on your company. But we wanted to take this concept a bit further and allow a more digestible kind of storytelling.”
In addition to the traditional VDR enabling secure file sharing with approved parties, Floww’s Data Room helps create an interactive narrative around a company’s journey to capture investor interest. De Wever stresses that, “It’s not only about files and text but combining these with visual assets, interactive charts and ‘callouts’ in a drag-and-drop ‘feed’. The Floww Data Room is not only dynamic to use and edit but also helps you articulate the dynamism of your business – bringing your equity story to life.”
Highlighting critical information
One of the key advantages of Floww’s dynamic Data Room is its ability to highlight critical information, ensuring that crucial data doesn’t get lost in a sea of information. As de Wever points out, “You can provide context around key aspects of your business, add call out numbers to highlight the most salient numbers and points for prospective investors to focus on.”
Addressing common VDR frustrations
The dynamic nature of the Data Room also addresses a common frustration with traditional VDRs. De Wever notes that not only do they “pack a lot of things that you don’t need” but the “usability just isn’t there”. With Floww’s dynamic Data Room, the ease of accessing the right data at the right time is both user friendly and engaging.
Founders have the ability to build a multimedia feed in a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, which empowers them to take investors on a clear, focused journey through the company data.
For investors, the headache of navigating through disparate folders and files is gone and replaced with relevant information and context provided by founders to make it easy to understand and act.
An integrated fundraising solution
Our dynamic Data Room is part of a larger, integrated solution. “What we are doing is bringing all these things that are necessary for raising capital into an all-in-one experience,” de Wever explains. This integration eliminates the need for multiple logins and separate tools, streamlining the fundraising process for all parties – companies, investors and any intermediaries.
The two dimensions of “Dynamic Data Rooms”
There are two dimensions to the ‘dynamic’ aspect of Floww’s Data Room. Firstly, as de Wever describes, “It can always be updated and keeps telling your story – almost like a feed in many ways.” This continuous update capability ensures that investors always have access to the most current information.
Secondly, the dynamic aspect relates to the evolving relationship between founders and investors. “Your investor base is dynamically changing from the stage and type that they are,” de Wever says. As that relationship develops, so too does the depth and variety of information unlocked. Founders can, with the flick of a switch, give engaged investors access to new Data Rooms, with new data points and greater levels of detail. This dynamic access ensures that all parties see the right information, at the right time, with ease.
Best practices for founders
For companies using the dynamic Data Room, de Wever recommends focusing on visual design and breaking up information into digestible chunks. “Nobody wants to read a whole life story,” he advises. “Really thinking about what will capture attention in a way that people are used to these days and really thinking about breaking the page to share key aspects of your growth story.”
The investor perspective
From an investor’s perspective, the dynamic Data Room offers a comprehensive view of a startup without requiring constant interaction with the founder. De Wever explains, “By providing tooling for maybe a thousand people to get to know you without having to be in the room is something we expect today.”
Tracking investor engagement
By inviting investors to your Data Room, you build an understanding of how investors are engaging with your information. Floww makes this simple by providing clear reporting on the Data Room views and clicks, as well as the viewing parties. This information can be used proactively by founders to identify their highly engaged investors and nudge those who are less engaged, to prioritise and tailor investor outreach.
The future of investor relations
By offering a more engaging, flexible, and integrated approach to presenting company information, the Floww dynamic Data Room empowers founders to tell their stories more effectively and enables investors to make informed decisions more efficiently. From creating and using the Data Room, founders seamlessly progress to managing their fundraise on Floww.
As the fundraising landscape continues to evolve, tools like this will undoubtedly play a crucial role in shaping the future of investor relations.