Background
Captain Experiences is a platform that unlocks the outdoors for everyone by making it seamless for people to book outdoor sports guides. Offering trips across the United States and beyond, Captain Experiences simplifies the stresses of planning a trip through streamlining reviews and providing excellent, insured guides for booking. Focused first on fishing across the U.S., Captain Experiences is rapidly expanding across all outdoor sports and geographies.
The Challenge
Prior to DocSend, Jonathan Newar, Co-Founder & CEO, would ask lawyers to collect signatures for NDAs and investor agreements on DocuSign. Their time was costly and “getting them to collect signatures would cost their business hundreds of dollars,” Jonathan shared. The team needed a more cost-effective solution to centralize external documents and collect eSignatures.
The Solution
The team turned to DocSend’s easy-to-use secure document sharing and eSignature solution that would grow and scale alongside Captain Experiences. “Not only is DocSend intuitive and easy to use but it also allows us to close deals faster," Jonathan shared.
A $2 million seed fund and lasting partnership built through the DocSend Fundraising Network
When Jonathan was first testing out his pitch, he relied on the DocSend Fundraising Network for initial warm introductions to investors who align on investing in marketplaces and outdoor experiences. The initial introductions to investors helped Jonathan learn what was working and refine his pitch for future conversations. Eventually, these warm introductions led to securing a $2 million seed fundraise. The data-driven insights provided by DocSend’s Pitch Deck Analyzer helps founders like Jonathan best convey their mission and business objectives for pre-seed and seed funding rounds.
Through the DocSend Fundraising Network, we fielded multiple high-value intros to VC's excited about Captain Experiences. These intros led to relationships we continue to cultivate- hearing directly from VC's on traction benchmarks they're keying on allows us to firm up our fundraising strategy and our deck.
As a result of being part of the DFN, Jonathan secured his first institutional investor meetings that were critical to the early traction of Captain Experiences. “It was fantastic to get access to warm introductions with DocSend early on in our growth,” Jonathan shared. The DFN introduced Jonathan to 8 VCs, which led to multiple meetings and follow-ups. "The DFN provided introductions to industry-leading, brand-name VCs that we otherwise would have had to reach out to cold or network tirelessly to connect with. We met with a handful of funds through the DFN and ended up signing with our lead investor," Jonathan shared. These meetings were fundamental to the company’s early fundraising success and provided detailed feedback that helped Jonathan ultimately fundraise successfully. Additionally, a connection Jonathan made through the DFN made countless other introductions, which helped the team close their seed round.
The DFN provided data-driven feedback that was integral to improving investor views on subsequent versions of Jonathan’s pitch deck. While early slides on traction, team, business model, and "the ask" were in good shape, the data-driven feedback provided by DFN suggested that earlier versions of the pitch deck had too few product slides. Using those insights, Jonathan added a product roadmap slide to the appendix. “Thanks to DocSend analytics, I know that this is one of our most viewed slides and it gives us a chance to present our execution progress and future rollouts to investors,” Jonathan shared.
A more organized and secure way of reaching investors through seamless updates
When Jonathan was first beginning to reach out to investors, he would send out hundreds of emails each day. He knew there had to be a more streamlined approach to launching his business.
After speaking with a founder in Houston, Jonathan learned about how he could use DocSend to more easily manage and share versions of his pitch deck. As Jonathan began to use the product, he was able to seamlessly update pitch decks once in DocSend and make follow-up edits, even after they reached investors’ inboxes. With DocSend, Jonathan could protect sensitive information in his pitch deck by adding a passcode and email verification to ensure that the right investors can view his pitch deck.
Developing more meaningful relationships with investors through insights on pitch decks
Previously, Jonathan was relying on chance to determine whether he would follow-up with an investor. He did not have any insights into whether people were opening his decks, or what parts of his deck were most relevant to the conversations he was booking. Hoping to generate interest and financial backing for his company, Jonathan needed insights on his pitch decks to personalize his conversations with VC firms.
DocSend made all the difference. Jonathan sent a pitch deck out to a venture associate in DocSend and saw that the investor spent the most time on his slide that discussed unit economics. When Jonathan met with that associate, he prepared in advance using document analytics and catered the conversation to focus on unit economics, making it most relevant to that investor.
With DocSend’s insights and analytics, Jonathan was able to more effectively prioritize his time when reaching out to investors and was able to close funding from 15 investors.
Centralizing business agreements with a unified eSignature platform
Previously, Jonathan was paying an hourly fee to a lawyer who was managing Captain Experiences’ contracts through DocuSign; however, this was a costly use of a lawyer's time - basically project managing signatures - and not sustainable in the long term. Once Jonathan engaged with DocSend for fundraising, he quickly realized he could use the multi-party eSignatures feature to streamline important contracts for his business.
Jonathan is now able to collect multiple signatures on NDAs, consulting agreements with contractors, and convertible note agreements with investors in an automated way without expensive oversight. When onboarding a new hire or contractor, DocSend allows Jonathan to easily send out an NDA and consulting agreement with the click of a button and manage the workflow from the tips of his fingers. Between managing offshore workers and marketing contractors in the United States, Jonathan relies on DocSend as a simple way to manage and unify all of his agreements. Additionally, DocSend’s eSignature solution was more cost effective than other platforms, helping Jonathan and his team improve their bottom-line.
Personalizing investor experiences with multi-party eSignature customization
The founder experience can be particularly challenging, especially when it comes to finding the right investor to join a pre-seed or seed round.
With eSignature, Jonathan is able to tailor each document to include a field for a name, date, or initials. Jonathan loves how the seamless user experience saves him time when creating documents that are sent out for eSignatures.
Multi-party eSignature has been one of the most useful features DocSend offers. We are able to send NDAs, onboard new consultants, fundraise, and close convertible notes all from one platform. It is especially critical when fundraising with many different parties involved-- that’s a lot of signatures to manage and DocSend streamlines the process.
For example, when Jonathan was preparing a document that was to be sent out for a signature, he noticed that DocSend pre-adjusted the sizing of the text field based on his previous preferences. As Jonathan shares, “The customizable fields are perfect and they fit all of my needs.”
DocSend has allowed Jonathan to customize document viewing experiences for all potential investors. Jonathan has total control every step of his journey sharing pitch decks, collecting eSignatures, and more as he continues to grow and scale Captain Experiences.
