How Coffee Resurrect uses Carta Launch to get ready for its seed round

Coffee Resurrect is on a mission to reduce environmental waste while expanding its company footprint. The biotech startup is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and connects businesses that produce and consume coffee with opportunities to recycle pulp, husks, and grounds.

For founder Almaw Molla, this means maintaining dual roadmaps. The first outlines his personal agenda for contributing to environmental sustainability in Ethiopia and beyond. This is the vision that doesn’t waver.

The other is his financial growth strategy, a more dynamic outlook that expands as the startup discovers new opportunities in other parts of Africa.

Carta Launch has been instrumental, Molla says. The free resource, available to companies with up to 25 stakeholders and up to $1 million raised, provides the tools, education, and support he needs as he works with investors.

Equity education and resources

Molla, an alumnus of Y Combinator’s startup accelerator, said he learned everything he knows about equity management from Carta’s educational resources.

“Our company had just started, and Carta helped me understand how we can leverage our business. I understand big concepts, like how valuation works and how equity works, from the knowledge on Carta’s blog and in its webinars,” he says.

The information helped Molla feel prepared for early investor conversations. Coffee Resurrect was founded in 2021 and, as it moves into raising a seed round, Molla speaks confidently with investors from around the globe.

Cap tables for better conversations

It’s not just educational resources that help drive some of Molla’s confidence. Carta Launch also provides state-of-the-art tools like cap table management software and virtual data rooms to streamline the fundraising process.

During a recent conversation, a potential investor wanted to know how an investment would impact Coffee Resurrect.

“Our investor asked if we had an updated cap table to share, and I went to Carta’s dashboard and downloaded it in under one minute,” Molla says. “That was amazing. It was definitely great.”

And if his cap table had been in a spreadsheet, like many early-stage companies use?

“There are tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo for how to manage capitalization in spreadsheets,” he says, “but it is absurd.”

International expansion plans

Coffee Resurrect has plans to expand from Ethiopia into Kenya and South Africa. Molla has identified these regions because Kenya is one of the world’s largest coffee producers and both nations have high amounts of waste from dense urban and tourist centers.

He expects that his investors will come from a mix of Africa, the United States, United Arab Emirates, and Europe. With this growth ahead, Molla is glad to have tools he can count on to streamline communications and data exchange. Carta’s virtual data rooms let Coffee Resurrect securely organize, store, and share confidential documents and information.

“Once we have raised our seed and after that, we can see how the deal is working for everyone. Especially once there are a lot of investors involved, my life is going to be easier with the data room as a tool, definitely.”

Tools that stay true to the vision

“My personal roadmap, the environmental and sustainability things, come from inside myself, from seeing the problem,” says Molla. “And we’re representing coffee, which is one of the biggest markets here in Africa, with its birthplace in Ethiopia. The business roadmap may change, but my personal roadmap never does.

“I chose Carta because it gives me the information I need to communicate with investors about the financial side. That’s important for me, because it means I can keep my personal vision for the environmental side.”