VC Harmony

Track: Revamping the Old Side challenges: Microsoft Cloud

Context

For startups, finding and connecting with investor is hard. Weeks (or, god-forbid, months) are spent reaching out to potential investors through mutual connection, networking events, or cold emails.

The advent of social networking platforms for startups and investors ease this process, but they are not without their limitations. SeedInvest, FundersClub, or InvestorHunt present significant frictions for startups to even get their names onto the platforms (startups have to go through a rigorous evaluation process). More importantly, none of these platform goes beyond information-sharing; they provide no support when it comes to relationship-building.

Problem statement

How can we provide startups a frictionless experience when it comes to seeking and connecting with potential investors, and vice versa? How can we facilitate not only information-sharing but also relationship-building?

Solution

VC Harmony - a "dating" app for startups and investors. The platform presents startups with investors that match their profiles, and vice versa. If a startup and an investor choose to connect with each other, the platform will take the first step in relationship-building: it will initiate the conversation through an in-app chat room created just for this "couple" of startup and investor.

There is no barrier for startups to get their names onto the platform. Founders have already had enough problems to worry about. They don't need a startup-investor networking platform with a high entry-bar.

How we built it

VC Harmony is currently a web-based platform. The user interface is built with ReactJS and NextJS. The backend is a Python FastAPI app, hooked to a Microsoft Azure.

We deployed our application to Microsoft Azure. The Frontend was deployed as a static web app (while it was built in NextJS, we didn't use the SSR feature). We also have a SQL (PostgreSQL) database deployed on Azure Database and a backend in FastAPI deployed using Azure App Service.

What's next for VC Harmony

How can we maintain the quality of the startups and investors that enter our community? How can we further facilitate relationship-building within and beyond our platform?