Frequently Asked Questions

Want to know more about the Startup TNT Investment Summit? Why you should participate? Or how to prepare your application? The answers to these questions and much more can be found below.

For Entrepreneurs

  • Raising money is hard. It requires deep relationships with a network of investors that trust you and believe in what you are doing. Each Startup TNT investment is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to start building and expanding their investor network. On an annual basis, 8%-10% of all applicants to our summits receive funding from the angel network.

  • You already know your business and market, so focus on making sure you communicate your story and the investment opportunity clearly to the investors. For those entrepreneurs that make it to the final stages of due diligence, they will need a fully populated data room to share relevant corporate documents with the investors, including a term sheet and subscription agreement. If applicable to your jurisdiction, consider applying for approval to offer an investor tax credit (Saskatchewan and Manitoba both offer investor tax credits). Also, make sure you’re ready to meet a lot of great people in the ecosystem and have some fun!

  • Companies less than a year old with an MVP and some early traction ranging to 20-person, revenue-generating seed-stage startups and everything in between have all raised money at Startup TNT Investment Summits. About half of the funded companies were pre-revenue at the time they participated.

  • Our investors are incredibly varied, with a broad spectrum of skill sets, backgrounds and industries. They are primarily members of your local community, are accredited investors, and are excited to support entrepreneurs. Learn more about our investors here.

  • Obviously, winning the summit is the ultimate goal, but our aim is more to build community. We hope that every company that participates will grow their network, both with fellow entrepreneurs, and with investors. There may be opportunities for partnership and many of our investors are seasoned business people who would be happy to provide coaching, networking, and advice. Past summits have fostered many fruitful relationships between participants.

  • We keep the pitch nights public to ensure your company, and the others in the summit, get visibility in the community. It also helps generate excitement for the entire startup community, so that new entrepreneurs and investors want to join us in the future.

  • Every investor has a personal philosophy on what makes a good investment, but in essence they are looking for a business they believe will provide a return on their investment, which is led by a team that they believe in. They want to see product-market fit, evidence of traction, a leadership team they trust to execute, and an exciting opportunity to grow the company to a massive scale.

  • This is a complicated question! At the most basic level, you want to make sure you describe your business, the problem it’s going to solve, and how your business will make money from solving this problem. These items tell the story to investors about how your business will grow and be successful. There are many excellent resources on pitching. We encourage you to join us for the education sessions and check out our Pitch Bootcamp.

  • Our history - TNT stands for Thursday Night Tradition, and our founder, Zack Storms began by inviting entrepreneurs, scientists, and investors to Polar Park Brewing in Edmonton.

    Our atmosphere - our motto is “Have fun. Make Friends. Build Companies.” Our Happy Hours are a recognizable way of showing that while we take supporting our ecosystem seriously, we can do it through building relationships and while having fun and being social.

  • We have a great resources page, including a video on how to structure your data room.

  • Absolutely! These aren’t requirements to participate in a Startup TNT summit. As a matter of fact, most of our previous winners did not come into the summit with finalized terms and a lead investor!

  • Participating investors each provide $5,000 prior to the summit, which is pooled together to provide the approx. $150,000 in funding to the summit winner. We also now run a VC fund that invests an additional $50,000 into the winners. Finally, participating investors also have the ability to write additional checks into either the winners or into additional side deals. Most summits end up with 2-4 total deals per stream.

  • We endeavour to have a team of about 30+ investors for each summit. With each investor contributing $5,000 to the pool, this equates to over. $150,000 for the summit winner.

  • There are no set terms for the investment. Just like any funding round, it will be up to you and the investors to negotiate terms that are fair for both parties.

For Investors

  • The summit aligns with Startup TNT’s overall goals of having fun, making friends, and building companies. Specifically, the summit builds community, provides education to investors and entrepreneurs, and raises money for great local startups. The entire event is designed to build lasting relationships among the participants.

  • The entrepreneurs and their companies will be unveiled at the beginning of the summit. Don’t worry, there is plenty of time to review them before the final selection! We ask all investors to commit to the process before reviewing the deals as an important message to our local entrepreneurs: we believe that great deals exist here and we want to invest in them!

  • More than one company has raised money from the group at every summit we’ve put on. We are confident in our local ecosystem’s ability to provide some excellent startups, but do understand there is a broad range of qualities investors look for in an investment. Most people consider the experience alone worth the $5,500 investment. To get the most value out of the program, be open to meeting great people and learning above all else. The $5,000 investment that will go to the winning company is just the icing on top.

  • Our goal is to make sure your co-investors aren’t strangers by the end of the Summit! We have a great mix of seasoned and new angels from all sorts of backgrounds. This depth and breadth of knowledge and experience is very valuable for vetting companies, and each investor has an equal amount of input.

  • The average holding period for an angel investment is 5-7 years. While we haven’t had an exit yet, we have co-invested with many leading VCs and Angels, including Y-combinator, Yaletown Ventures, Panache Ventures, Metiquity Ventures, Threshold Impact, Sprout.vc, Halo Heath, and Bluesky Equities, which shows the quality of our dealflow.

  • When people hear the term “accredited” they often think of tests or some kind of professional designation. There's no test!

    Typically, when we talk about accredited investors, they fall into one of the following categories:

    • You had net income before taxes of more than $200,000 over each of the past two years, and you have an expectation that this income threshold will be met in the current year

    • Combined with your spouse, you had net income before taxes of $300,000 over each of the past two years, and you have an expectation that this income threshold will be met in the current year

    • Combined with your spouse, you have net financial assets worth more than $1 million (net of related debt). This includes cash and securities, including the value of any private companies you have investments in/ownership of.

    • Combined with your spouse, net assets worth more than $5 million (net of debt). This includes cash and securities, and real estate. (The key difference here versus above is that this category includes your house.)

    • You have a corporation or trust that has net assets of at least $5M as shown on its most recently prepared financial statements

    You can find more information about accreditation and whether you qualify here.

  • You can find all past companies that raised at TNT on our portfolio page. Profiles of some of our past investors can found here.

  • Approximately 1-3 hours per week for 8 weeks. During the Summit, we meet each Wednesday night for 60 to 90 minutes – either for pitches or due diligence discussions. Outside of that, we encourage investors to meet with the entrepreneurs, as part of the due diligence. We also hold additional Angel Investing 101 sessions during the Summit for our new angel investors. Lastly, we host a Happy Hour every Thursday evening, which is open to all investors, entrepreneurs, alumni, supporters, etc. We understand there are many demands on people’s time, and are flexible enough to accommodate anyone’s schedule and level of involvement.

  • The “TNT” in Startup TNT stands for “Thursday Night Tradition”, so we have weekly meetings and Happy Hours throughout the Summit. While we’d love everyone to be there every week, we know life is busy, and making it work for you is important. To that end, we run a Summit Slack workspace for our investors so they can stay connected with the investment team about each company in the Summit.

  • Absolutely! The winners of each summit have seen many investors top up their investment to add additional capital with no additional fees. We love seeing people excited about awesome companies!

  • We love side deals! There are so many great companies at each summit, it is likely that more than one will appeal to you. We encourage side deals as part of our goal to support the entrepreneurial community. Side deals as individuals and in conjunction with other investors are awesome, and Startup TNT will help syndicate any deal that meets the minimum investment threshold, for no additional fee.

How the Special Purpose Vehicle Works

  • A limited partnership (“LP”). We have LPs set-up in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, which are functionally identical and we choose which is used based on the need of domiciling for tax credits. We use the same LP for multiple investments, but we use series tracking units that track the performance of the startup that you’re investing in directly to your units (rather than being co-mingled in a traditional fund). By way of example, investors invest a combined $200,000 into Series X units, and we then invest that $200,000 into Company X. Company X goes to sell down the line, and we get $1M back. Each investor then gets their units redeemed for 5x their original investment. (Or as an alternative, the company goes bankrupt and we redeem the units for $0).

  • We previously used corporations, but we changed to a limited partnership (“LP”) because of:

    • cost efficiency - we developed the series tracking units, allowing us to use the same entity for multiple investments rather than setting up an expensive corporation for each investment

    • tax efficiency - partnerships are not taxed; the income flows to the investor directly, eliminating double taxation/tax friction

    • tax credits - because of the above, the tax credits are not trapped within a non-operating entity and can instead go directly to you if applicable

  • Legally, the limited partnership (“LP”) is managed by a General Partner (“GP”) that’s owned by Startup TNT (the not for profit). In practice, the GP deals with all rote administrative tasks via a power of attorney that’s in place for all investors, though we do go to investors for any significant decisions. Examples of this would be if we have the option to sell, or if there’s a significant vote, etc.

    The LP’s administration costs are borne by Startup TNT and there’s a reserve of funds within the LP ($30k) for future administration costs through to end of life in the event of Startup TNT ceasing to exist.

    • A limited partnership agreement

    • A subscription agreement for $5,000 units in the partnership

  • By cheque, direct deposit, e-transfer or wire. We will send you detailed instructions once your initial paperwork is completed.