CSHARK Venture Program – If You Have a Startup, Then We Have Everything Else

Have you ever experienced famous, ‘don’t call us, we call you’ moment? It doesn’t have to be this way. If you have a validated idea and can prove its market potential, contact us. Maybe you already have a product and want to quickly put it on a market by finding an offshore software development team for further growth. If so, contact us. Or maybe you need business, marketing and social media mentoring. Contact us and maybe for the first time in the history of your company, an investor will actually call. Join CSHARK Venture Program!

Below you’ll find a list of our venture Partners. This is our success story. Each company has its own respective field of expertise and successes gained in a short amount of time.

Husarion has been mentioned by Financial Times in their report ‘New Europe 100: eastern Europe’s emerging technology stars’.

The Knights of Unity is one of the small group of companies working on Google Play Instant and Playable Ads mechanisms.

VecCtor is a company that won the award granted by German Telekom just months after launch.

How to join CSHARK Venture Program?

CSHARK invests in and supports pre-seed and incubation startups, seed and growing startups, post-seed and scale-up companies.

1. Pre-seed and incubation startups achieve an estimated investment value between 80,000 and 120,000 EUR. That’s not all. We will support you with a number of services that have a serious market value and will help you build the company, create a go-to-market strategy and develop products.

This is for companies that:

• Have a validated idea and can prove that they have a business potential
• Are about to start working on the initial architecture of the system
• Have started first discussions with potential customers who expect the MVP or PoC soon
• Have a good understanding of their domain

We will support you with:

• MVP development, covering budget of a senior software team for 4-6 months, providing you with #MAKO – rapid software development platform. This will allow you to build ready-to-scale MVP in 4-6 months and a product in less than 12 months.
• Product validation, feedback, and product development
• Initial marketing and social media, data access and market insights, business strategy building, operational aspects, go-to-market strategy mentoring
• Contacts to our business and technology network worldwide
• Lead generation support and prospects sharing
• Full UI/UX design consulting sessions

You will also own the IP of the developed product!

2. Seed and growing startups achieve an estimated investment value between 100,000 and 150,000 EUR.

This is for companies that:

• Have built MVP or PoC and would like to improve and scale it for initial customers
• Have signed initial agreements with potential customers and will soon expect the full version of the product
• Have a good understanding of their domain

We will support you with:

• A dedicated cross-functional team and free consulting with CSHARK Venture companies that established themselves globally
• Each startup can expect a combination of benefits spanning distribution, product validation and feedback, data access, market insights, relationships, credibility and capital, product development, technology, business, marketing, social media, and go-to-market strategy mentoring​
• 4-6 months of product development by a dedicated software team - budget covered by CSHARK
• Full UI/UX design consulting sessions
• Pilot opportunities and C-level introductions
• 30,000 EUR cash
• International markets network and access to our locations in Poland, Sweden, Germany, UK, Canada. 

CSHARK takes 8-12% of equity in exchange.

Join us, we have a full table!

3. Post-seed and scale-up companies achieve an estimated investment value of 60,000 EUR for the initial month of cooperation.

This is for companies that:

• Have built their product, have paying customers and need to grow quickly to fulfill the market demand
• Have difficulties in finding local, experienced talent quickly and like to keep software development costs at acceptable levels

We will support you with:

• Product Development Teams working in nearshore/offshore models, supporting continuous product development for startups and established companies. By taking responsibility, CSHARK mitigates the number of risk factors from a company in terms of costs, recruitment, fast team ram-ups, and ramp-downs depending on the market situation
• First FREE month of support – we believe that knowledge transfer should not affect your budget

Alternatively, you can decide on Build – Operate – Transfer (BOT) model for startups in scaling. In this model, you can set up a tech/R&D branch office in Poland to optimize costs and find better quality and nearshore development localization. This model may be applied when a nearshore/dedicated product team is established and the client would like to take full responsibility for the management of such team as one-time-service, covering full BOT actions.

Knowledge transfer

During the cooperation: All IPs stay with the startup. All shared knowledge stay in the repositories (tools like Confluence or Wiki pages with documentation). All product owners/stakeholders have full access to the information.

On exit: All IP rights, knowledge, etc are transferred to the startup within a reasonable time (1-3 months), so the startup can act on its own, develop the code/product with no harm to the business.

After exit: Agreed number of extra consulting (software, product, technical, etc.) hours provided by CSHARK as part of the exit strategy.

Exit options from Venture Program

CSHARK has two models of exiting an investment since we believe in options and flexibility.

Quick exit after a short time (6-12 months):

• Cash for provided services – IP rights for MAKO and T&M development costs on pre-agreed, fixed T&M rate
• Counted as debt to be repaid e.g. within 12-24 months or on IO/Series A funding, with monthly/quarterly installments
• % of shares decreases accordingly with the installment payments
• Optionally: % based on a future income, once the startup is on its own and generates stable revenue, for a certain amount of time to repay the investment

Long-term exit (12+ months):

• A traditional IPO or real valuation performed by an external company and repayment of the agreed amount for the % shares owned by CSHARK – either by another investor or the owners.
• Repayment models are the same as in short-term options

Diversity is our strength. Each company is different, all add value.

Meet our Partners

Husarion

A Polish company that specializes in robotics. Husarion's team provides autonomous robot platforms for research and education.

Founded in 2013, the company consists of engineering specialists fluent in hardware & mechanical design, embedded software programming, web and mobile applications development, and secure device connectivity. Husarion provides of the shelf robots for R&D teams as well as creates completely custom constructions based on customers needs.The newest service is called Husarnet. This is a dedicated P2P VPN network for robots, autonomous vehicles, and industrial IoT applications. It allows connecting devices without a central cloud for forwarding traffic giving low-latency and high level of privacy at the same time.

VecCtor

German company VecCtor is all about data digitalization and telematics. Founded in 2018, it specializes in workforce management solutions, security applications, digitalization of workflows, preventive and predictive maintenance and fleet management for both industry and public sector.

The company has its own product (made with CSHARK’s MAKO platform) for fleet tracking, monitoring and managing employees’ working hours. It can track vehicles, people, resources, help to reduce the cost of processes and development of new business areas.

VecCtor helps companies improve workflow, keeps costs at bay and optimizes daily operations. Their solution is perfect for both small and large, industrial companies. Just months after launch, VecCtor has been awarded DIGITAL X award, at the event hosted by German Telekom. VecCtor won in “Digital process and organization” category.

The Knights of Unity

Polish company specializes in Unity development. Founded in 2015, the company helps video game developers build their games and achieve business goals. KoU offers porting services (bringing games on different platforms), multiplatform development (from desktop and mobiles to consoles), Google Play Instant games and playable ads development, creation of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects and more.

Along with CSHARK, the company offers solutions for Industry 4.0, including industrial AR and VR.

The Knight of Unity is recognized by Google – the company is one of the five companies involved in the further development of Google Play Instant system, allowing game developers to create interactive demos and ads.

The studio also produces its own games. It shipped and is working on Tools Up! as well as Aye Captain!

Art Games

Polish company founded in 2017. It specializes in video games development and creates artistic, tailored products for gamers interested in truly indie experiences. At the moment the studio is working on several games; among them are “Spyhack”, “Unlucky 7”, “The Worst Day Ever” – all coming on PC. Art Games also plans to ship games on Nintendo Switch, including “Father” and “Toolboy”.

Upsoft

A Polish company founded in 2015. It offers PatchKit – an innovative way to update an application or a video game seamlessly. It’s cloud-hosted, meaning the client can focus on building an application, rather than hosting files. PatchKit integrates into the build pipeline for fast and easy distribution. It’s also white label –the client can fully automize the design of the launcher, therefore software is invisible to the players.

Summary

Six different companies and teams, one common goal – to deliver quality to our clients. We are experts in building enterprise and SaaS solutions, FinTech, VR and AR solutions, autonomous robotics and video games. Software outsourcing companies, as well as video game studios, work separately and together to deliver value.