Ajaree Thanapongporn, Ronnakorn Ratananopdonsakul, Warayutt Chanpord
Due to the important of startup to Thailand’s competitive advantage by innovation and the most challenging activity to acquire the financial resource for startup, especially, the early-stage startup. This research is to explore and understand the pattern and key success factors of new startup’s fund raising in Thailand on how startups in Thailand financing in each early stage from establishment to Pre-Series A through investigating the entrepreneurial journey of selected startups in Thailand. The key elements are to understand their approaches, the end-to-end processes of funding via examining the entrepreneurial journey of startups in Thailand adopting an investor and startup perspectives to explore how they access sources of fund from start-up to Pre-Series A funding. Moreover, this research would like to propose the appropriate framework that can utilize as an initial guideline to develop the appropriate financial platform with good approach and technology like block chain and AI for startup fundraising in Thailand in the future. Design/Methodology/Approach: This research’s methodology is utilized cases study approach by qualitative using in-depth listening interview to 3 startups and one corporate venture capital. Then, research team applied secondary sources of data from literature review and related startup websites to support the interviews to clearly understand interviewees’ insights. Finding: Main findings are the patterns and key success factors of seed to early-stage startup’s fundraising in Thailand. Key elements are funding type, founder’s character, education and experience, domain knowledge, unfair advantage, traction, social network, information asymmetry, market response and supportive ecosystem. Research Limitations/Implications: This study is derived from interviews from only 1 CVC and 3 startups so the further research by other methodology (quantitative) with the samples from other funders and startups in several industries are recommended. Practical Implications: Literature’s review is performed in the area of startup fundraising, patterns and key success factors from internal and external factors which lead to the successful fundraising. Finally, we propose the framework that may facilitate the new venture to get fund easier. The study results can utilize as the initial guide for the seed to early-stage startup to prepare themselves to get fund easier.