The Tech Startup Ecosystem: Parrots, Hippos, and Pumas

Financing a tech startup is rarely easy and there are a plethora of options – personal savings, credit cards, friends & family, banks, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

Vancouver-headquartered Espresso Capital is doing their best to educate startups on the true cost of equity capital and ways entrepreneurs can stretch their funds for higher capital efficiency.

To explain Espresso has created a video titled Journey Through the Tech Startup Ecosystem that depicts a machete-wielding entrepreneur navigating his way survivor-style through the fundraising jungle.

Out-of-cash, the entrepreneur hits the swamp of despair and comes across three options—Hippos (slow-moving banks), Parrots (flighty angel investors), and Pumas (hungry venture capitalists).

According to the video’s soundtrack, “banks are only interested in you when you don’t need their money” and “angels are tricky together and hard to wrangle.” But an entrepreneurs biggest threat? “VCs mitigate risk by taking a bite of your equity, often a big one.”

Espresso Capital certainly isn’t against working with Parrots and Pumas, but they’re doing their best to explain that there are alternatives to giving up equity.

Espresso must be doing something right, their portfolio of financing clients include HootSuite, Recon Instruments, and Clevest. Video below.

Kudos to Bare Advertising & Creative for putting together a great video.