Published on March 17, 2020

In September 2019 Rockstart Agrifood Fund, €20 million Netherlands-based VC fund, entered Wenda’s capital. From September 2019 to February 2020 we attended the program created by Rockstart Accelerator held in Copenhagen, which offered access to capitals, markets and expertise, supporting the best startups from the AgriFood industry from early stages up to Series B.

The program was structured in 7 Deep Dive Weeks, intensive week-long monthly meetings, to study the different business development steps to become investment-ready. Each Deep Dive Week focused on specific topics, investigated through workshops, critical discussions, both group and 1-to-1  sessions with industry experts. Let’s see what happened in these inspiring weeks for Wenda!

Deep Dive Week #1: September 9th – 19th, 2019

ONBOARDING | WELCOME | TEAM | BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS | LEGAL & TAX

We immediately familiarized with Copenhagen, the Rockstart AgriFood program and Rockstart’s premises in which we carried out our activities. We got to know the AgriFood community with its industrial partners, mentors and wider network, and in the following days we focused on the composition of both the Team and the Business Plan, covering the fundamentals of Value Delivery. We have also identified our Core Mentors, that are the experts who – more than others – could have supported us in the scheduled activities: Mark Spronk (Nlmtd, EY, Harvard) and Lui Salemsen.

Deep Dive Week #2: October 7th – 11th, 2019

SALES | OUTREACH | MANAGEMENT | FUNDING | MARKETING

With our Core Mentors, we set up a convincing  Sales and Outreach strategy, working on the connections with investors and strategic partners from north Europe. With Marco Broccoli (former Product Manager at Booking.com) we explored different methodologies for the team management and organization, using tools to measure activities and performances.

Deep Dive Week #3:November 4th – 8th, 2019

MARKET ACCESS | FINANCIALS

We mapped the current roadmaps and the company needs for the Sales department in relation to market access, gaining greater awareness about Rockstart’s wider network and implementing strategies to connect with the more like-minded market partners. With our Core Mentors we analyzed the Sales and the Fundraising sections, focusing mainly on corporate selling and pricing. During the Ecosystem Day we displayed our technologies to companies and investors from the Rockstart ecosystem, with which we looked for interesting connections for Wenda’s international development.

Deep Dive Week #4: December 2nd – 8th, 2019

MARKETING | PR | CRM | PRODUCT

We worked on the creation of action plans for Marketing, Branding, product valorization and PR strategies. We took part into a Matching Meetup with a group of business angels from the Vækstfonden network (Danish State investment fund), and we followed a  Growth Hacking session led by Rasmus Aaberg, Commercial Director at Growth Tribe Denmark (the first European Growth Academy which offers support for growth, marketing and use of AI in business processes). With Kaythlin Das, Business Development Manager and Startup Growth & Partnerships Manager at HubSpot for Startups, we investigated the management of long B2B sales cycles and online acquisition models, analyzing lead conversions different buyer personas.

Deep Dive Week #5: January 8th – 11th, 2020

THE NETHERLANDS | NETWORKING | FINANCIALS | PITCH TRAINING

We connected with the Dutch ecosystem and tapped into local corporate and mentor networks to explore opportunities and potential collaborations. We participated in the Investor Dinner in which, between meals we had the chance to pitch the attending international investors. We started to work actively in anticipation of another pitch to be performed next month during the Demo Day, and we perfected our financial models. Do not stop reading now, you will find the presentation in the following 🙂

Deep Dive Week #6: January 23rd – 30th, 2020

PITCH TRAINING | PRESENTATION DESIGN | NETWORKING

In this week we worked closely with Mark Durno, Managing Partner AgriFood at Rockstart, and with our Core Mentors. With them, we deeply concentrated our energies on refining our pitch, which we performed later on the Demo Day – an event in which all the startups involved in the program had the chance to showcase their activities to investors from the Rockstart network. We considered all facets implicated in the development of the best pitch possible: stage presence, performativity, storytelling, deck design. You can watch our final presentation here!

Deep Dive Week #7: February 24th – 28th, 2020

CLOSING INVESTMENT | SCALING READINESS | STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT

In the last meeting of the Rockstart AgriFood program we pointed our attention towards the understanding and the application of Cap Table models. We studied the best ways to optimize our investor relationships and learned some key techniques to scale the company, while keeping entrepreneurial spirit and culture. Finally, our Core Mentors shared with us their expertise, offering us precious insights on Stakeholder management and the most adequate methods of communicating with them.