Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders raise money for their startups. 

The fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions answer financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice. 

The latest free lunchtime session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was August 26.

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Startup Office Hours Venture Capital Funding Advice for Startup Company Entrepreneurs welcomed angel investor and VC pitch practice from startup founders worldwide.

StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox helped accelerate the startups fundraising process with friendly discussion and advice about raising money from angel investors and venture capital firms including:

• Daniel from Los Angeles practiced his angel investor pitch for a new soccer-style sports league
• Shaun from Boston asked questions about Venture Capital firm structure and the impact of fewer IPOs on liquidity and investments from LPs
• Niusha from Dubai shared about her new minerals and mining marketplace. Scott and the crowd shared feedback on her practice investor pitch.
• Carl from Manila asked about startup platforms and listing services to join (hint: https://StartupCouncil.org) and also how to build an MVP without any funding.
• Leo asked how to find investors (hint: https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory...)
• Aileen asked for strategies raising money for her haircare business. Scott explained small business vs startups and how raising money for high growth companies is different from traditional businesses. Plus they discussed corwdfunding opportunities like Kickstarter vs equity CF like Wefunder and StartEngine.
• Shaun also asked about fundraising platforms, accelerator programs, and deal flow management software, plus whether their costs were worth it.
• Mona asked about traction and Scott introduced the concept of MVT - meaning "Minimum Viable Traction" from his upcoming fundraising book.
• And everybody wanted to know the best resource to find early stage investors interested in their startups. Answer: Google + https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory...

And much more, as usual!

Watch the free replay for startup founder pitches, and the expert investor feedback they got!

To watch this month’s Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Please don't forget to SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, and SHARE if the show is helpful to you?

Visit https://www.StartupCouncil.org to join us for lots of FREE startup resources, expertise, publicity opportunities, events, and much more - including 7 different FREE email newsletters - and discounts to find investors using https://StartupInvestorsDirectory.com's unique investor research tools.

Plus, get details on StartupCouncil.org's worldwide network of Meetup groups that can help promote YOUR events.

Great to see everyone and congratulations on progress you are making with your visions!   

JOIN STARTUP OFFICE HOURS LIVE NEXT TIME to WATCH & COMMENT:

The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 900pm PT / Wednesday 1200am ET. Questions and practice investor pitches are hosted LIVE by Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council/Angel Investor/Serial Founder/Author/Startup Expert.

You can watch LIVE here later this month on September 23:

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for August 26, 2025:

0:00
magic. We're going to do some magic tricks tonight, which is telling you how you can build a startup company with as
0:07
few resources as possible and to maximize profits, hopefully change the world on your way. I'm Scott Fox. We're
0:14
here tonight taking questions and practicing investor pitches for with people from all over the world as a free
0:20
service of the Startup Council. I'm the CEO of the Startup Council. Uh we are at startupsil.org. We're a worldwide
0:26
community service group supporting earlystage founders, especially in high growth ventures, those that are looking
0:31
to raise venture capital or money from angel investors. If you go to startupconsil.org, you can join us and
0:36
we have all kinds of services that are just launching that can help you publicize your startup, find investors,
0:43
promote the services that you're looking for, find partners. You can we even have advertising for co-founders, things like
0:48
that. All the little pieces that I wished I'd had when I was a first-time founder. We've tried to build them for
0:54
you at startupconsil.org. So, thanks for joining me. We're going to be here for an hour or maybe an hour and a half
0:59
taking questions and practicing pitches, like I said, with people from all over the world. We've got a half dozen people
1:05
backstage already. And if you'd like to join us and invite your friends, that would be great. We're here as a free
1:10
service to try to help everybody accelerate everybody in the ecosystem to raise more money faster, to change the
1:16
world, to be a better place. Why? Well, because the politicians aren't going to
1:21
do it. It's up to you and me, right? Entrepreneurs are the most positive force for progress in the world today.
1:28
We are bold. We think big and we're willing to work to make it happen. So,
1:34
the secret story is there isn't really that much magic in startup land. It's a lot of hard work. But tonight, I'll give
1:41
you as many tips and tricks as I can based on my 25 plus years of raising money, building companies, and these
1:47
days, I'm actually mostly an angel investor. So, I spend a lot of time evaluating pitches. And tonight, we're
1:52
going to do some of that as pitch practice for all of you to help give you some free feedback from a person like me
1:58
who's heard hundreds, maybe thousands of pitches at this point. If we haven't met before, I appreciate you joining us. We
2:04
love to have you invite your friends. Come and join. Tell your friends right now. and uh give us some likes and some
2:10
thumbs up and all that stuff because it really does drive the algorithm and help us reach more people. That's really what
2:15
we're about here at Startup Council is to help more people find their own piece of the digital revolution. Things are
2:21
changing perhaps faster ever before, maybe even well my first company was back in the internet web 1.0 and we
2:28
thought things were moving fast then, but now with AI things are moving even faster. So tonight, we'll help you untangle some of that and figure out how
2:34
you can get your company, your team moving forward, raising some money and growing to solve the problems that
2:41
customers want to pay you to solve. So, if we haven't met before, like I said, I'm a serial uh internet entrepreneur.
2:47
I'm an angel investor. I run several angel groups and I speak all over the world about uh startup ecosystems and
2:54
angel investing and helping people learn how to raise money. The books you can see over my shoulder here. I wrote these
3:00
uh that these three here in the middle are in English. The rest are all foreign translations. So you can see Japanese and Turkish and Russian and uh
3:08
Vietnamese and uh Polish and all kinds of languages. And I'm working on a new one which is about how to raise startup
3:14
money for your startup. So watch for that uh coming hopefully in the next uh probably in the spring. So um let's uh
3:22
let's get on with it. And let me just I have to give you a couple quick disclaimers. you're in the right place if all that sounds like fun. But let me
3:28
do point out this is not qualified legal or professional advice. I'm just some guy you met on the internet and I'm
3:34
doing my best to help. But you should take this advice uh as worth what you paid for it, which is Zippo. So do be
3:41
careful and confirm everything with your own professional legal or tax or other intellectual property counsel and
3:48
experts who are more familiar with your personal situation. Also, this session is being recorded. So anything that you
3:54
say will be recorded and shared online worldwide. So participating here grants us the right to share that and please
4:01
just don't say anything dumb because we will try uh to uh share the expertise that's shared here today uh worldwide
4:08
and if you uh don't want that included then uh don't participate I guess is the short answer. So uh speaking of that
4:15
we're going to be I'm going to be turning on the chat room here in just a minute. So let's have everybody join us and if you have a uh participation and
4:23
of course if you have a question would love to have you uh chime in and even more important is that this is a
4:29
peer-to-peer opportunity. I don't have all the answers. I'm just kind of convening the meeting so that all of you
4:35
can participate as well and you can participate if you wrote in early and you RSVPd like the several people who
4:41
are backstage already and we're going to bring them on in a minute to see what they want to talk about. but also the
4:46
rest of you can participate in the chat room both on Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and if you comment on any of
4:52
those then your uh comments will show up here uh right here and we'll I'll
4:58
respond to those as best I can but even more importantly you can help each other. So I'm like I said I'm just I
5:03
just called the meeting together. So, you're welcome to put your uh LinkedIn, for example, in there or your um uh
5:11
YouTube channel or your new product, your website, uh whatever it is that you're promoting, go ahead and even
5:17
more, please try to help each other. People are going to come on with questions. And like I said, I don't have all the answers. I've got plenty and I'm
5:23
a good talker, but I'm not going to fill in all the blanks and a lot of you certainly together have a lot of
5:28
expertise on anything that's going to be raised tonight. So, I would appreciate your help. Please go and chime into the
5:34
chat room and let us know what you think about the different things that are going on. Now, so far I looks like um is
5:40
anybody can you hear me there in the chat room? And I don't see anybody here from LinkedIn yet. Is anybody are we
5:45
having trouble with LinkedIn tonight? That kind of happens sometimes. So uh if you're on LinkedIn, could you please uh
5:51
comment and um give us a like or something so I can see that that's working. So for um please tell me where
5:57
you're from actually like Intellig. Johnny from Anaheim, California. That's near me. I'm in Southern California. Hi
6:02
Johnny. And then uh Ishy and Carl and Chad. Where are you guys from? Love to
6:08
have your um love to have you guys chime in and let us know where you're from as well. And there's Stephen from Royal
6:14
Meets. Cool. Nice to meet you all. Uh so far looks like it's all guys. So let's
6:20
get some ladies in here too because that's one of the beauties of the internet and digital media is that uh
6:25
anybody can play. So I would love to have the rest of you participate as well. Still not seeing anybody from
6:31
LinkedIn. So, uh, hi Matar. Where are you from? Um, fill in the blanks here for me, guys. And, uh, let's see. David.
6:39
Okay, there we go. That was looks like LinkedIn. David, it looks like you're on LinkedIn. I hope that's right. And Steven's in Costa Mesa. So, we got a
6:45
couple folks local and San Diego. Hi, Rachel. The Philippines. Excellent. All right. This is a global medium. There we
6:51
go. And Joseph from Fremont. That's California. And SA from LinkedIn. Good. Katherine from Vancouver. And Chad's a
6:59
mission VJO. And Taylor is in Los Angeles. Las Vegas. Los Angeles. And
7:04
Eileen from Cape Town. Hey Ailen. Nice to meet you. I haven't been there yet. And another San Diego. All right. Good.
7:10
Good. All right. We have a nice global crowd. Um Italy. Hey Metar. Nice to meet you. Don't have anybody from India yet,
7:16
which is kind of surprising. I do these at evening now in Southern California so that we can get help people from um
7:22
Australia and the Philippines and India and Malaysia and uh Indonesia uh and the
7:28
Middle East. So, um, hopefully those folks will be showing up as well. All right, so that's kind of what we're
7:34
gonna do. Uh, let me see. I think that's about all I've got to do to start with. And we've got, um, a bunch of people
7:41
backstage. So, folks backstage, I'm going to have you all come on. And the idea is to have you, um, just tell me
7:49
really quickly what it is you want to talk about. Like just the 10-second version. Okay? This is not the time to practice the pitch. We'll get to that,
7:55
but I just want to see who's here and I'll write down each what each of you want to speak about and then we'll try
8:00
to uh cobble that together to um to create a flow that will be interesting for everybody else to listen to. All
8:06
right. Oh, there's India's checking in. Hey, Lily from Huntington Beach and Siba from Bangalore and Gorav from India
8:11
also. Excellent. Okay. And those are some LinkedIn people as well. All right. Looks like we're all systems go. Excellent. Okay. So, backstage folks,
8:18
which looks like Daniel and Sean, Leo and Na. Leo and Naosha, you need to turn on your cameras if you want to play with
8:23
us, please. And I'll bring the rest of you on in just a second. And Ta also on
8:29
YouTube. All right, Leo and Na, hope you're going to join us here. Let's
8:35
see. Yep, I can't turn that on for you. So, otherwise, Leo and Nusha, you're
8:40
going to miss your chance here. So, um, come on in and join us if you can. And,
8:47
um, let's see. You know what? Let me put up the um if some of the rest of you
8:52
want to join in real quick. Uh Intellgage, yes, you can post your products, descriptions, and links here, go ahead. Yeah, this is this is a free
9:00
space and please go ahead and join us. Uh like and subscribe as well. Blah blah blah always. But what I was looking for
9:07
I was looking for my YouTube my uh LinkedIn le link. Here we go. Yeah, come on over here and uh say hi. And uh if
9:15
you do uh reach out on LinkedIn, I'd love to hear from you. Um I get a little overwhelmed there though. So please tell
9:21
me that you attended here and then we'll be sure to um accept your connection and hopefully we'll see you as a regular
9:27
attendee at these sessions. All right. So let's go to
9:32
and right and this is our main thing right the startup council. Please come and join us. This is a whole new thing
9:38
we've launched. It's a whole new platform and it's all for you guys. I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk more about that in a second. Okay, last call.
9:44
Leo and Na, it looks like you guys are not going to be joining us unless you turn on your cameras, but I wanted to
9:49
turn on the invite link for some other folks in case we want to get some other folks back here. So, I can do I think
9:56
that will do it. And then I can put it in here. All right. So, here is
10:04
there. Hopefully, the rest of you There you go. Okay. So, I don't know if you guys can click on that. That's going to be a pain to uh to type, but you can
10:12
try. Um, and that will get more of us backstage. Okay. So, all right. There. Nusha turned on her camera. Okay. So,
10:18
I'm gonna Daniel and uh Sean Leo, you're welcome. And Nusha, come and join me.
10:24
Hi, guys. Nice to meet each of you. Hey,
10:29
nice to see you again, man. All right, you guys can hear me. That sounds like good. Let me turn up my volume. I'm doing all the talking here.
10:36
All right, so you guys can hear me. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Great. Well, nice to meet you
10:42
all of you. Well, Sean, I've seen you before and Daniel, too, right? So, yes. Okay. All right. Well, nice to see you guys. So, give me the, like I said, if
10:49
you could just give me the 10-second version uh of what you'd like to talk about so I can put them in order and then we'll start taking some questions
10:55
and we'll work our way through them together. All right. So, uh who wants to go first?
11:00
Uh can I go? Sure. Go ahead, Nisha. Uh I'm from BB Mineral. Uh it's a
11:07
platform for connecting uh miners and mineral trading um sector.
11:15
Right. Okay. Right. And you wrote in, didn't you? Okay. I saw that one. Thank you. From Dubai. Okay. Good. And you
11:20
want to practice your pitch, right? Yes, I do. Okay. All right. Excellent. All right. So, hang on. And then, uh Sean, nice to
11:27
see you again. What's on your mind this time? I think you wrote in too, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have um two questions. one
11:32
is uh I attended a um a meeting in Boston some some startup group and they
11:39
had mentioned uh sort of drying up of venture capital because of a lack of
11:44
IPOs. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about how the ecosystem works you know where funding comes from and how exits work.
11:51
Sure. Second question would be um what do you what's your opinion about some of these platforms that are servicing
11:57
founders stuff like Gust or um some of these like expense management or FPNA
12:03
platforms you know some of these guys these all these guys that are you know pedling what I feel are kind of like selling a dream what do you think about
12:08
those platforms okay great we can definitely talk through those and thank you also for writing in early so I can think about that a little bit okay and then Daniel
12:15
you're back with your your uh your sports thing is still going huh yes sir yes sir We're finally I'm
12:22
hosting the the first Square Bus tournament on December 6, but I just need some I want to learn some feedback
12:29
from you. You know, how would you start a new business in today's, you know,
12:35
generation, all of that. Anything that can that you can give me, I would really
12:40
appreciate it. Any like advice, you know, maybe people I can go to and talk
12:45
to would be amazing to make this new sport great. Okay, good. Well, nice to see all
12:52
three of you. And Leo, last chance. If you want to join us, you can turn on your camera and we'll add you to the
12:58
list. Other than that, um Okay, so let me look at that. So, we've got two pitches and some questions. So, why
13:04
don't we uh let's see. Why don't we jump right into a pitch? Daniel, you've done this
13:09
before. Why don't you do your pitch and then we'll do some questions. Um except that let's see. You're I'm trying
13:16
to think of the time zones. Na, where what time is it where you are? Uh, I'm in Dubai.
13:23
Yeah. So, what time is it? Uh,
13:30
it's like noon. Uh, oh, we lost her.
13:36
All right. Well, I guess she won't go first then. Okay, you should try again and we'll we'll we'll bring you on when
13:42
you reconnect. All right. So, that's one. And then Sean. So, Daniel, why don't you Sean, we'll get back to you.
13:49
And Daniel, you and I have done this before. So, welcome back. Thank you. And great to see you still at it. Um,
13:55
all right. Let me tell everybody else though how this works. So, we do generally do a minute or two pitch. It doesn't have to be two minutes, but it
14:02
shouldn't be any more than that. And yes, that's a really artificial amount, but the idea is just to practice, right?
14:08
Nobody's writing checks tonight. We're just going to try to give everybody a chance to to spit it out and see what
14:14
they can do. And it takes practice. So even two minutes can feel like a long time if you haven't practiced or it can be so short that you don't get anything
14:20
communicated. So practice is the idea here that we all want to share. So I'm going to put two minutes on the clock
14:27
and uh just on a timer and let me do that. And then um there's two jobs here.
14:35
So Daniel obviously is gonna pitch, right? He's going to tell us about his company um which is Square Boss. And
14:42
then uh the rest of us, your job, which includes me, is to listen to him and think of things that he could improve,
14:49
right? So, we're going to try to give him feedback. And not everybody can come on camera and do that. So, I'll talk a little bit, but we'd love your feedback
14:55
in the chat room. And you can say things like, you know, uh you talked too fast or you left out this or I think more
15:02
about this would be helpful. I mean, you know, everybody has an opinion and I'm not the only expert on this on this
15:07
call, right? A lot of you guys have lots of experience and um love to hear from you and that would be helpful to Daniel
15:13
and to Na and everybody who pitches tonight. Okay, so that's how it works. So, um Daniel is going to um be our our
15:19
lead off hitter tonight. And um and go ahead and start whenever you're ready,
15:24
Daniel. Got it. Thank you so much, Scott. Square Boss is a new sport inspired by soccer.
15:30
It's designed to help soccer players to improve their skills with the ball and also precision. What's the thing here is
15:37
that I was doing some research and I re and I found out that only 1% of the
15:43
college soccer players, people that are training super hard to get to the professional level, only 1% are going to
15:51
get to a professional level. What's going to happen to the 99%. So we have here a huge problem that yes, some
15:58
people have tried to solve with creating other sports like crossnet, tech, they
16:03
have raised some money. I love the job that that they're doing, but these sports are just designed to sell you a
16:11
product, right? I want to focus with a square boss in the event side of this of
16:17
of this sport. And this sport can go up to 512 people playing. So imagine this,
16:25
512 players, all their families paying to see their kids of course play the
16:31
game. And also the winner since it it's a such a competitive sport, right? The
16:37
winner gets a huge amount of money. That's the idea of this sport that we can bring and give opportunity to this
16:44
99% of soccer players that end up with broken the broken dream of becoming a
16:50
professional soccer player, which is sad. Why am I saying this? Because
16:55
that's what that's that's me. I used to work I worked so hard to be a professional soccer player but I didn't
17:01
know I was fighting against this statistics. So how can we solve this? I
17:07
came out with this idea which is a sport that I used to play in Colombia and I found out there's nothing about it on
17:14
internet. So, I made um I made a way to commercialize it and that's why I'm
17:20
having the first square bus tournament on December 6 in uh Coina, California.
17:27
So, that's it. Scott, any feedback? I would really appreciate it, man. I don't
17:33
know if I'm doing it right. Well, that was You were right on time. Like, that was I don't know if you
17:39
rehearsed that, but that was exactly two minutes. So, nicely done. That's hard to do. Hard to do. Okay, so
17:45
this is our chance everybody, including me, but especially you if you're listening and watching, to give Daniel
17:50
some feedback. What did you think of that? Did that make sense? You know, does that sound like a real business? If
17:56
you know, try to put on your investor hat. Like, what did he not say that he should have? Like again, two minutes is
18:01
hard. So, you can't cover everything, but you know, what is what are the priorities and did he cover those
18:07
things? And what could he do better? Because that's why everybody's here. We're all here together and that's why we're entrepreneurs. That's the magic I was talking about at the top of the show
18:13
is that we're all trying to improve ourselves, right? So, that's the fun thing. Okay. So, my feedback would be
18:20
first of all, very nice. I think you did a great job. You're very personable. You're obviously enthusiastic about
18:25
this, which is super important. Um, having, you know, investors, we take our
18:31
cues from you. So if you come up and say you don't look at them, you know, you
18:36
read off your note cards or your slides, you know, why would be we be excited if
18:41
you're not and you are excited. So that's great, right? That's an instant credibility builder. And you have a great smile. You're working the smile.
18:47
That's good. You know, you're friendly. Um and you look like a soccer player like this, you can tell this is
18:53
something that you believe in. And that is really important. Um the the uh
18:58
metaphor in the investing world a lot of times is do you bet? The question is, do you bet on the horse or the jockey? And the horse is like the company, right?
19:04
And of course, both are important just like in a horse race, you need a horse and a jockey, but the jockey is really important at the earliest stages because
19:10
that's the person who's going to ride the horse and lead the horse and in this case even build the horse and um you
19:16
have that kind of charisma. I think that's good, right? So, what could you do better? Well, um I wasn't quite clear
19:23
and people in the chat room are are agreeing. Uh George says, "Good job." Robin Cipher says, "Uh, Cipher's excited
19:30
about a new sport and me, too." Um, I don't quite understand, and you don't
19:35
have to answer me now because we don't have time to get into it, but 512 players, if that's all at once, then you
19:41
should really emphasize that. Or is it like a league, 512 people in a league, and then there's some kind of brackets
19:46
and they all get to play 27 different games? I'm not clear. So, if it's 512 at
19:52
once, that's I don't know how you do that. So, I would like to hear more. Um, and that's really the point of this kind
19:57
of pitch. So maybe it's okay. Um, it's obvious to you what you meant, but it wasn't to me. And the idea is that when
20:03
you do a pitch like this for everybody, nobody gets a check on the first discussion, right? It's to get the
20:10
investors interested enough to ask more. So maybe you're hiding the ball there, no pun intended, on purpose because you
20:15
want me to ask. Um, but I'm I'm still intrigued, right? And and even Cipher is commenting 512 players. Wow. Like we we
20:22
don't quite get it. So, um, you'll need a stadium like Taylor says. Yeah. Um, so that's one thing. That's a small one.
20:28
The bigger piece is that you didn't talk anything about the money, uh, until the
20:34
last you used the word commercialization at the end. The only time you talked about money earlier was criticizing
20:41
other businesses that sell a lot of gear and so forth. So, that may be what you believe in, and that's cool. I get it.
20:48
But investors don't want to hear you not interested in the money. That's why we're investing, right? So,
20:55
um, you gave me a lot of vision, but you didn't give me much business model. In fact, zero. Like, I don't know. Are you charging people? Is this an app? Is it
21:03
league fees? Are you selling t-shirts? Is it is it a subscription business? Like, I don't know literally anything.
21:09
Um, and that's what Py is saying from India. How did the economics work? Exactly. So,
21:15
um, this is very common with early stage entrepreneurs. are so excited about the vision, you want to talk about the big picture, but honestly, we don't care
21:22
about the big picture unless it makes money. So, you got to push those together and trim down the part about
21:29
the excitement and the vision and tell me who buys this, how often, for how
21:34
much, um, and how you're going to grow that. That's the piece you didn't even address. So, great style points, pretty
21:43
weak on the substance. Now, to be fair, of course, if you'd had another 60 seconds or 90 seconds, you probably that
21:49
was probably the next thing in your head, but you got to prioritize that because otherwise we tune out. We just
21:54
think you're a dreamer. And um we hear dreamers all the time. So, that would be my suggestion. Now, who who in the chat
22:00
room has other questions for him? Um I'm looking at my notes. Um I really did like the thing about um most people
22:07
can't make it as a professional player, right? That suggests an underserved market. It would help to have more
22:13
numbers. for example, how many of those people are there? Right? I you you talked about percentages, but you didn't
22:18
say there's 1.2 million of these between the ages of 16 and 22 or what whatever. I don't know. Right? But investors eat
22:25
numbers. So fill this thing with numbers. Well, what I want to hear as an investor is for you to make the case not
22:32
just about the dream, but give me an equation as you're speaking. A plus B
22:37
plus C plus D makes a zillion dollars for you, missinves investor. uh and that
22:43
that you're not doing and I know you can but that's that's why you're here, right? To get that kind of feedback. Um
22:49
and I'm sure you can do it. So George has a good a good question. He asked, "Is this a US-based opportunity or
22:55
international?" So that's another good thing. And that's something you didn't do, which is um talk about who the
23:00
target market is. Now, I can presume it's young people who like to play soccer, right? But even that's kind of a
23:06
big market. So are you thinking it's high school? You don't have to answer now, right? But is it high school? Is it college? Is it semipro? Is it um you
23:13
know male or female or is it like he said is it us only or is it you're going to start like I don't know in Mexico or
23:20
you know France like you know all those questions are interesting and they can certainly will come out in a 10-minute
23:26
pitch. You'd probably tell me all that but to get our attention you need more of those hooks and specifics sooner.
23:34
All right so that's one. I thought it was good though and your enthusiasm is going to carry you a long way. So, I
23:39
mean, we got that nailed. Thank you. Sure. Nice to see you again. So, that's our friend Daniel from
23:46
Arcadia. We got a lot of Southern California here tonight. Nice to see you again. You had a partner last time, didn't you? Are you guys still working
23:51
together? Yes. He had to move to San Francisco. Oh, okay. So, um it just me right now.
23:57
Okay. All right. Well, that that happens. Okay. Well, good to see you, Daniel. And um we're gonna move on to
24:03
whoever's next here. And thanks thanks him to him for sharing his dream. And uh
24:08
sounds like sounds like fun, right? Like I'd love to play, especially if it's 500 people at a time. I used to play soccer,
24:14
too. That sounds like a riot. Okay, so next up, let's go to who we got backstage here. Um, hey, Leo and Carl.
24:22
And let me just bring Leo. Well, hold on a second. Yeah, sorry. I just want to
24:28
order this. Uh, get some sense of Carl. Here's Carl. And here's Le. Hey Leo, can
24:35
you turn your camera on again and tell me what you want to talk about? There we There he is. Okay, cool. And here's our
24:42
other friends here. I'm just gonna get everybody on camera for a second. I'd like to do these little photos. Let me just We can see everybody. There we go.
24:48
Can we do a group photo? Yay. Everybody smile or wave or something.
24:54
Awesome. Thank you. That helps our social media promotions. Okay, so Leo and uh well, Leo, why don't you go
25:00
first? What What were your questions or topics tonight? Uh, well, it's my first time. Or can
25:08
someone else go first or it just like uh I know I just I was searching you guys. Okay. No, I just we just want to know
25:14
what you what do you want to talk about? You don't have to go right now. Or do you have a question or do you have a pitch or why are you here?
25:20
Uh I mean what's the best way to find investors or like uh you know capital
25:27
you know like to attract investor attract people you know like yeah I know you need people to trust you you know
25:32
how they're going to invest their money even if you know they need to have I mean how the wealthy people you know
25:38
invest their money beside buying real estate or they let them the money someone else around them you know and
25:45
return and get money back you know they buy properties they do flips and stuff
25:50
That's good enough. That's good enough. I'll come back to you. I'm just trying to figure out where to fit you into the show. And how about you, Carl? What's on
25:55
your mind? Hey, um Scott, thanks for having me. It's my first time to be here. Um I was
26:02
wondering if I could share my screen. No, we don't do that. Unfortunately, it
26:07
crashes the system. Why didn't screen though? Okay, sure. So, here's the thing. I'm
26:13
I'm alone in all this. Hold on. Just give me the five second version. I'm just trying to figure out where you go in the show and then I'll
26:19
come back to you. What What is your question or did you want to pitch? Yeah, I wanted to pitch this app that
26:25
I'm working on and I'm trying to penetrate the travel booking market. Okay. Particularly the Yeah. the lower income
26:31
class people because I've checked out all the other apps clo
26:36
what I have in mind is something that they don't do. Uhhuh. So, so I was thinking if I could penetrate
26:42
that market but still know establish the brand and the app as as as that identity
26:48
then later on penetrate the market as these the same travel booking apps so that it could be understood that we are
26:55
in that kind of business for now um yeah I'm alone in all of this I'm creating the design I'm creating the
27:02
stop stop I'll come back to you got it thank you got it thank you yeah we're just trying to get everybody
27:07
in order okay cool so all right So Carl will be um that sounds like an interesting pitch. I'd like to see that.
27:12
Okay. All right. So let's go to Sean because Sean, are you still here? Yeah, there he is. You had two questions. So
27:18
let's do one of your questions and then let's and then we'll go on to another pitch. So you wanted to talk about IPOs
27:24
or accelerators. Um well, let's talk about the IPO thing
27:30
first. What can you rephrase the question for those who are um those who are just joining us?
27:35
Yep. So, I was at a startup conference in Boston a couple weeks ago and there
27:40
was a set of panelists there and one of them was a a VC and one of the things that she um
27:49
mentioned uh was that the VC market um the funding that the VCs receive is
27:56
drying up that um you know private equity and some of the uh limited
28:02
partnerships are having difficulty with their exits. Um, and that's primarily because the IPO
28:08
market has been kind of dry with aside from like Figma and a couple of other notables. Um, you know, all of the big
28:16
guys are sucking up, right? Open AI is getting tons of money and SoftBanks, you know, giving giving big chunks of money.
28:22
Nobody's really, you know, exiting enough to to put money back into the top of the funnel to let it come down. So, I
28:29
thought it would be interesting if you uh wanted to give some some macro insight into how the funding funnel is.
28:35
What's a GP? What's an LP? What's a VC? What's private equity got to do with it? And how do IPOs sort of replenish the
28:41
pool? You asked good you asked good questions. You're obviously an adult.
28:46
Nicely done. Okay. Sure. Um, it sounds like you kind of get it already, but I'll kind of go through it a little bit
28:52
and you can raise your hand and fast forward me if you want, but I think a lot of people don't understand even what you're asking because so it's a it's a
28:58
very helpful question for the That's why I thought it would be helpful for for you to address it. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um, okay. So,
29:05
what's interesting about venture capital is that most people don't realize that venture capitalists have to raise money,
29:11
too. They aren't. There are some who are just wealthy like or angel investors who invest their own money but anybody that
29:17
works for a firm an investment firm meaning there's a bunch of partners and they have like offices and stuff like
29:23
that they have clients as well and they raise their money as Sean just said um
29:29
that those are usually called limited partners. So the general partner and the partners that operate a venture firm are
29:34
the ones who actually take raise a bunch of money themselves. Say they raise just round numbers hund00 million fund and
29:41
then they invest it in maybe 50 companies at $2 million a piece. So their job is finding those 50 companies
29:47
and doing the due diligence and they'll talk to 500 or 5,000 of them in order to narrow it down to the best 50 and then
29:53
they get two million each. Just real simple example, right? But where did that $und00 million come from? And that's what Sean's talking about. The
29:59
$und00 million comes from what they call limited partners. And they're limited partners in the legal sense because they're partners in the business, but
30:06
they're limited because they're not actually involved in the day-to-day operations and they have less liability legally as well. And who are those
30:12
limited partners? Well, they tend to be people with lots of money. And even more often, they tend to be institutions. So
30:19
the limited partners in a big VC firm like if you're going to have a hund00 million fund are most likely insurance
30:26
companies or foundations or the endowments of big universities or
30:31
pension funds. People that have not just millions but billions or even hundreds of millions of dollars and their job is
30:38
to invest in lots of places and make money to go back into their business like to pay for life insurance claims or
30:43
to pay the pensions of uh the steel workers or things like that. So those are the LPs and then there might be
30:49
super rich ultra high net worth individuals who also can be LPs as well and they might put in uh money to be the
30:55
general partners as well uh to be limited partners sorry. So what does that mean and why is Sean asking this?
31:02
Well, the problem is that that money goes in. So, you put that $und00 million
31:07
to work and like I said, it might go into 50 companies at two million each and the average life of a a lot of, as
31:14
you guys know, that's why you're here. A lot of startups fold within the first year or two or certainly five. But the
31:19
ones that might make it often take six, eight, 10 years, sometimes 15, maybe
31:24
even 20 years to return the money. So if that's the case, the money goes in and
31:30
it takes a long time to come out and the main way it comes out is through initial public offerings or IPOs like you
31:36
mentioned or mergers and acquisitions um where another company buys those companies and turns that stock into
31:42
cash. The problem is lately the IPO window meaning the opportunity to take companies public has really they say the
31:49
IPO window is shut like there isn't aren't many companies going out except like Figma like you mentioned which had
31:54
a big successful exit recently and I in initial public authoring that did really well. Why is that? Well, there's a lot
32:02
of reasons but it's economic uncertainty. Interest rates are too high. They're too low. Um people just
32:07
aren't excited about the market. There's a lot of, you know, the tariffs and regulatory changes and this just it's
32:13
the market. Like there isn't any one cause, but for whatever reason, the mood, it's really the vibes. The vibes
32:18
on Wall Street are that IPOs are not cool right now. And and not just in a cool sense, but they're they're dangerous, right? This is not the time
32:25
to go out and sell your company to the public because you won't get as much as you could or should. Um, and then the
32:32
other in addition to IPOs, there's mergers and acquisitions. and the mergers and acquisitions were largely shut down during the Biden
32:38
administration especially because they had a very strong antirust enforcement
32:44
um opinion. They didn't want Google buying more companies for example or Adobe uh or big, you know, big software
32:51
companies. They didn't want them buying more and concentrating their power. And that's you can argue whether that's a
32:57
good idea or not. But now the Trump administration is perhaps more open to that. So, we're starting to see more M&A
33:02
starting to happen again, which is at least good for those of us who are LPs and venture funds because it means there'll be more um um more money
33:11
exiting the system. So, again, the 100 million went in, it might take 6, 8, 10,
33:16
12 years to come out. And hopefully the 100 million, even though most of those companies didn't survive,
33:22
the 100 million hopefully has increased a lot. Like it's now 200 million or even a billion because you found a couple
33:28
Ubers in there, right? The problem is until the Uber type company can go public or be acquired
33:34
that money doesn't come back to the system. So venture capitalists can't raise more money because the general the
33:40
limited partners don't have that money and people like me we have our a lot of our money tied up in startups and we
33:46
can't get it out in order to invest it again. So everything Sean said was true.
33:51
Um, and the practical impact on preede and seed level companies is that there
33:57
is less money available because our money is stuck. The word I use is it's
34:02
constipated. The market is stuck like it can't let go and return that money to
34:08
its investors hopefully doubled or tripled and then we can start the cycle again. It's that flywheel that drives
34:13
Silicon Valley and that it's gotten constipated lately. So, um, there's a quick lecture on that. I don't know if
34:20
that was more than you wanted, Sean, or if that was useful, but yeah, other folks out there and and again,
34:26
people out there probably know as much or more than I do about this stuff, but go ahead and chime in if if that didn't make sense or if you have follow-up
34:32
questions and we'll try to uh try to address that. So, um yeah, so that it's
34:37
a challenge and it is a problem. Like I have a friend right now who's raised super talented woman raising a really
34:43
cool fund and she asked me to invest and I'm like, I'd love to invest but I I I got to get some of my money back from
34:49
these other funds. I'm in right you gota have it cycle right um and it's uh
34:54
constipation is the word I think unfortunately uh and for you guys who are here watching this show then it's it
35:00
means it's harder to raise money so um the other piece we haven't talked about which you also I'm sure know Sean but
35:07
everybody is probably aware of most of the money that is being invested is going into AI companies so even if there
35:14
is a healthy market right now which there isn't more than half probably dramatically more than half of the money
35:20
that is available for early stage companies is going into artificial intelligence and ignoring what five or
35:26
10 years ago were seen as big opportunities in in SAS or biotech or
35:31
other things like all the action right now is in AI and that's hurting the market as well. So reducing the
35:37
liquidity and reducing the opportunities for early stage founders to raise money. So a little disappointing but it's a
35:42
cycle, right? All these things come and go. Um, yeah, Pitch Pitchbook had a a report
35:47
they put out a couple weeks ago about uh the se, you know, segmentation. 85% of the money in the first uh half of 2025
35:55
was AI. 85%. Okay, that's way that's even more than I was thinking. Okay. Yeah, that was Facebook's survey. Yeah.
36:00
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had heard high numbers, but wow. 85. Yeah. Yeah. And and the rounds are bigger, too, right?
36:06
These companies are raising massive, you know, that's the problem. Yeah. eight nine figure rounds that you
36:12
know imagine how many startups you could fund with the money that open AI has raised
36:17
because because AI is so compute intensive and you need data centers and all the inference and everything else
36:22
it's it's just it's sucking all the the air out of the room. Yeah, that's right. So PI
36:29
Yeah, Py chimes in and says, "Isn't this money leveraged already like banks funding against collateral?" Um,
36:37
yes, there's lots of variations, but I think that's a fair statement, Push. Um,
36:44
yeah, I'll leave it at that. There's a lot a lot of ways you could do it. Um, and and leverage often plays into it, for sure. Um, the traditional model
36:53
isn't quite so leveraged. It's kind of cash for equity, but the more money there is on the table, the more fancy
37:00
things people do with it. Um, but it it's not so much done like what you're thinking. I think in terms of basic
37:06
banking where $100 comes in and their capital reserves by the bank are say $10
37:11
of that and they use the other 90 to lend out. Um VCs put actual cash into
37:17
those companies. So um if a venture capital firm has $100, they they do keep
37:23
um probably 2% on average for fees and they might have other expenses and
37:28
stuff. So maybe they eat 5% of it, but the other 95 actually usually goes pretty much directly into startups as
37:35
equity. Um it might be leveraged in different ways, but the the plain vanilla case is not not leveraged at
37:41
that point anyway. Um so it's a good it's a good question. Okay, so that's uh
37:46
a little overview on IPOs. Uh Sean, if you don't mind, I'm going to do another pitch and we can come back later and
37:52
talk about your accelerator stuff because that's a good question, too. Uh, and let's see. Let me just check the
37:58
chat room here and see if I'm missing anything. I'm doing a lot of talking here, as I often do. Um, let me give you
38:05
a quick plug for the Startup Council. We have a whole bunch of free newsletters to help you advance your cause. And we
38:13
have a bunch of services that can be helpful to you, including uh different um event calendars and uh discussion
38:20
forums. and you get your own blog so you can reach investors and publish about your company when you join
38:26
startupconsil.org. There's a lot of things going on. And uh those of you who are watching who haven't yet, come on
38:31
and uh you're welcome to join the party and introduce yourself. And um while I'm clicking on things, please come and like
38:38
and subscribe. That always helps. All right, let's go and see about uh who was
38:44
going to be next here. Let's see. Daniel went Sean. Lean has two questions and then travel Leo Nusha. Nusha, let's uh
38:52
Nusha, are you still around? How about you do your pitch? Does that sound good to you? Let's see if you're ready.
38:57
Yeah. Okay, cool. Perfect. Yeah. So, did you hear how I described to Daniel how we usually do this about
39:03
two minutes um and just you can kind of say whatever you want, but I'll call you off after two minutes or so. And uh try
39:10
to focus on try to focus on the business side of things, not just the vision. Uh if you can. Okay. So, I'll start the
39:18
timer and you go ahead. Uh, VRP mineral uh we are a website uh
39:24
basically connecting buyers and sellers uh in the mineral and mining sector. I
39:31
don't know how much you're familiar uh with it. Uh it seems like every step of the way uh it's a headache. uh there is
39:39
uh hardship in every step and we are trying to uh make it easier
39:45
uh by first uh establishing trust. Uh there is not much trust in this uh
39:53
sector and uh you might not believe it but uh most of the uh like this is a
40:01
2.83 83 trillion uh industry. Uh but
40:06
people are doing it very old-fashioned. Uh not much of it is online and uh
40:13
everybody is like just doing business with the people they know and uh the
40:18
connections are just uh so small and we are trying to uh expand that. Uh we are
40:24
trying our best to establish uh trust uh so that uh both buyers and sellers are
40:30
verified and they're legit people so they can trust each other and the
40:36
process can be so easier. Uh we are trying to uh do it with uh
40:42
cryptocurrency. uh it's not uh we have an MVP uh but we are uh pre-revenue and uh
40:52
basically we are just uh looking for investors uh to go from uh preede uh to
40:58
series A and to be able to expand this market uh more
41:03
uh it's an international market and uh but right now uh most of our buyers
41:10
and sellers are uh either from uh UAE or uh Africa. Uh we are trying to expand
41:17
that as well. Uh what we are looking for uh is around
41:23
uh 500k uh investment and
41:29
Okay. Yeah, that's kind of it. But do you want to wrap up? Uh yeah, this just trying to be a more
41:35
transparent uh for everyone doing business. Okay. All right. So, thank you for that.
41:42
And um everybody who's listening, go ahead and chime in. Um Push has a good
41:49
question. What was the website again? Is there a website up that people can see? Yeah, it's b2bmineral.com.
41:57
Whatmineral.com B2B B2B B2Bmineral.com.
42:03
Okay, that's a good that's a good URL. b2bmineral.com.
42:08
Okay, so what do other people think? Did you have suggestions or ways that uh
42:14
Naisha can uh improve things? She'd love to hear it. That's why she's here. That was brave of her to go out and uh you
42:20
know demonstrate her expertise in front of everybody that she doesn't know including me. So So great to have hear
42:26
that. Um I'll go first uh and everybody else can chime in as well hopefully. So
42:32
um very interesting business. A$ 2.8 trillion market. Is that right? That's a that's a really large market.
42:38
Um so I I might lead with that. That's like wow. Um that's really eye opening.
42:43
Um the other thing and and I I understand I think what you're doing. Um I think you just the overall comment is
42:50
you need to be a lot more specific if you want investors to be interested. So, you kind of hinted at a bunch of things,
42:56
but um I didn't hear the only specific thing I heard was at the end you're
43:01
looking for 500K, but and you said you were pre-revenue, but I didn't hear how many people you have already, um how
43:08
you're acquiring them, what minerals are being traded, like I need specifics,
43:14
right? So, um again, it's two minutes, so I know this is hard and I don't know how often you've pitched this, so it's,
43:20
you know, it's not an easy thing to do. That's why I hold these sessions so people can practice. But, you know, in the trust thing, I get it. That totally
43:26
makes sense. I've built a bunch of marketplaces myself. So, I think what would be most interesting is uh
43:31
specifics, like I said, and numbers, like I said to uh Daniel, I guess a whole bunch of um uh numbers in there so
43:38
that we can quantify what you're talking about because 2.8 trillion is a great place to start. So, how are you going to
43:44
break that down? And then uh actually Sean Sean is hinting at this. I'll get there in a second. Um, I would want to
43:51
know why you like it's a massive opportunity. Like, and you don't need to answer me now, but why Naosha? Like, do
43:58
you have some background in this? Do you have a PhD in metallurgy or you were a big, you know, metals trader or
44:03
something? I mean, I don't know. Your family owns a mine. I, you know, there's probably some story here, I'm guessing,
44:09
because this is a a niche, right? Um, something you've deliberately chosen,
44:15
um, that is not, you don't hear of very often. And it sounds like you've got a good handle on it. Like as you mentioned, you already have some clients
44:21
in Africa and they're in Dubai. Like this is happening, right? This isn't just theory. So I need you to kind of
44:27
like be a little more specific about how you're making money and who's involved
44:33
and why you and why now. And specifically what Sean said, what's your moat? Like you the defensibility, right?
44:41
Like who else is doing this and why are you the one to do it? because I totally hear you about like they're trading like
44:48
in archaic ways. They're probably using spreadsheets and it's a old boy network and like totally sounds ripe for
44:54
disruption and that will get the attention. Like I heard like okay that sounds like a thing, right? Um but fill
45:01
us in on why you why now and who else is already trying, you know, and how you're going to beat them to so that you can be
45:07
defensible. Does that make sense? Yeah, perfect. Thank you for your
45:12
feedback. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Is that helpful? I hope it was helpful. Um
45:18
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and then the other thing I saw you were nice enough to um is one of the ones who wrote in early so I could think
45:23
a little bit about it. You mentioned real quickly that this is blockchainbased and you're using crypto.
45:30
So that's something I would address for sure and even if you only have two minutes because the most common question
45:36
that investors like me uh will ask immediately is why, right? Because a lot
45:42
of what you're saying and I don't know, right? I we just met, right? But why crypto? Because crypto is I like I am a
45:49
big fan of crypto and blockchain. I really am. But it introduces an extra layer of complexity and an extra level
45:55
of risk. Like it why couldn't you just solve this with a traditional ecommerce type website marketplace, right? That
46:02
alone would probably introduce a lot of efficiency into the marketplace um and
46:08
maybe make you a bunch of money. Um, and then if you add crypto on top of that or blockchain, I can see why you'd want to
46:14
do that, but it just makes it so much more complex. As an investor, what I hear is risky, right? Because you're
46:21
going to try to do a whole bunch of things already. And the crypto blockchain layer makes it really cool
46:27
and more efficient, but also makes it a lot harder to build and deploy. And that
46:32
concerns me as an investor, right? So, um, if you're going to if blockchain is key to your approach, then I would be
46:39
sure to explain why as quickly as possible. So, looks like she froze. Unfortunately, we might have lost her.
46:46
Um, but I hope that was helpful to Naisha. Um, and
46:52
Naosha, if you're watching and you can tune back in later, you can catch all this on the replay. In fact, everybody can. If this is useful to you, you can
46:59
go on YouTube and watch the replays. There's a whole bunch of them. and happy to have you uh comment and continue the
47:05
conversations over there on YouTube as well. If there's something you see when you're watching this replay, you can um you can post questions there and we'll
47:12
try to help you out also uh online as in comments. Push says, "That's a pretty
47:17
cool business. How do you onboard buyers and sellers? I see a lot of orders in the website. How are you still
47:23
pre-revenue?" Okay, that's a great question, right? I didn't have time to look at it, P, but you asked the question, so you went and found it, I
47:28
guess. Yeah, it sounds like they've got something going on, but um maybe you kind of got to be a little more
47:34
specific. Kind of what I was saying to Daniel, right? Like what are investors? We call this unit economics.
47:40
This is just what I said to Daniel. Who's buying how often for how much? Um
47:45
and let us know because otherwise it it's so vague we don't really understand what you're talking about. And um
47:52
especially in a $2.8 trillion market, sounds like there's room for you. Um but the specifics are what we need.
47:58
Cool. So, that was Na from Dubai and interesting to hear about that business
48:04
because um somebody's going to do that and make a boatload and um I hope it's
48:09
Na and maybe she'll send some back to all of us. Okay, so who's next? Got
48:15
about nine. Okay, so we got maybe another half hour here. Um if other
48:20
folks Let me just buzz through the chat room here and see what um if I've missed anything important as we've been
48:26
talking. Let's see. A bunch of folks said hello. And uh let's see. So Chad
48:32
and uh uh Ishy and Matar and Rachel and
48:38
David and Stephen, you're all here, I think, but you haven't said anything. So if you want to go ahead and chime in,
48:44
you can use the chat room. Uh and Joseph, I think you even wanted a pitch, but you didn't make it into Backstage.
48:50
So we sent you the backstage link. It should be in your inbox. And if not, we'll catch you next time, I guess. And
48:58
um let's see. And Shenzhu here in Orange County and
49:04
Akash and Garav and Lewis. Okay, Lewis
49:10
and let's see. Okay, nothing on fire here. It looks like um
49:19
yes, Py and Lachland. So yeah, next time you can pitch, but we're already going to be over time with the people we have.
49:26
Uh you're absolutely be happy to have you, but there's only so much time we have for this. And you need to do when
49:32
you sign up uh with the registration, there's a separate link that you can RSVP to get backstage and then you can
49:38
submit. There's a form uh like this one that everybody that's I brought on camera. There you can see it better. Um
49:44
but there's a form and we need you to fill that out in advance and be happy to bring you on uh next month. Okay. Um,
49:51
we've got enough folks already tonight. Sorry to disappoint you, but um, we're gonna stick with uh, stick with the
49:57
folks we've got. And, uh, Stephen said, "What was the name of the sport again?" I think it was Square Boss. Daniel,
50:03
maybe you can put that in the chat room. And I think that's it. Okay, so let's go. Oh, let's try this one. What's
50:10
Eileen says? Eileen says, "What funding opportunities would you recommend for startup in the beauty or hair care industry?" There you go, Ishy. Go ahead.
50:16
Yeah, pitch next time. Excellent. Housematehive.com. That sounds like fun. Eileen, this is a good one actually. Um,
50:24
uh, looks like Naisha's back. Let me just repeat this for a second. Naisha, we lost you during the the last part of my analysis of your pitch. So, um, you
50:31
froze, but I kept going and then I realized you were frozen. But anyway, you can watch the replay of this later on YouTube as all of you can. And then
50:38
you can watch it at double speed. You get tired of hearing me talk. Um, you can watch it on YouTube and um,
50:44
hopefully that was helpful to you. Nice to have you here and I wish you the best of luck. So Eileen says, "What funding opportunities would you recommend for
50:50
the startup in the beauty and hair care industry?" This is a great question actually. That's why I popped it up here right away because this is kind of like
50:58
another one that somebody wrote in about
51:03
Yeah, I can't find it. But anyway, um there's two tracks here. And this is something important for my new book that
51:09
I was actually I should tell you guys. You should go get on the list if you want previews of my new book. Um, we
51:16
have a special we started a special newsletter list. Where is that? Here it is. How to raise
51:24
startup. Yeah. So, if you go to startupconcil.org, there's a whole bunch of newsletters to choose from. And if
51:29
you want excerpts from my new book, which talks about a lot of things that we talk about on this show, you can sign up for that newsletter and I'll be
51:35
sending you previews and special offers and that kind of stuff. Okay. So, Eileen says, "How to raise money for a beauty
51:41
or hair care?" um um startup and I the point I want to
51:47
make and the reason I'm promoting this question is that um there are two kinds
51:52
of ways to answer that and beauty and hair care and they reflect they they
51:58
suggest different paths for financing. Okay. So the traditional beauty and hair care industry is as you all know is like
52:06
a barber shop, a hair salon, a nail salon, maybe even a spa, right? with u
52:11
you know different kinds of treatments and massages and stuff. So I don't know exactly what you mean uh Ailen but um
52:18
that kind of business can be a totally cool and profitable business. Absolutely. Um the uh the trick is that
52:27
those businesses are generally not venture capital fundable. Why? Because
52:32
they're based on human output and services and it's just really expensive.
52:38
Right? So, if you're going to have, you know, a hair salon that started with you and maybe a partner and then you hire
52:44
like, you know, 30 more stylists and then you hire 50 stylists and open three more salons, like that's absolutely a
52:51
good business and you can make millions doing that. But venture capitalists are not going to be interested in that usually because what we're looking for
52:58
these days is mostly software or medical devices or something where you can make it once and then make a zillion more
53:07
with very little additional cost. So it can scale really rapidly, right? So if
53:13
you can figure out how to build an eBay or an Uber or a medical device that you
53:19
know cures cancer or something and it may cost a whole bunch to set it up but once it's gets set up the and you have
53:27
say a thousand customers to add another thousand customers costs almost nothing more. That's the scalability that
53:34
venture investors are looking for these days. So if and then if you add a thousand, you can add 10,000, right? And
53:39
you might need to upgrade the systems a little or spend some money on sales and marketing or maybe get some more office space, whatever. But it's it's small and
53:46
incremental relative to the profits that suddenly you have like a 100,000 customers for only like maybe five or
53:52
10% more of the cost. That's just not going to happen in a traditional beauty business. At least as far as I know. I'm
53:57
not an expert in that space, but um that would be my opinion. Okay. So, if you're looking when you ask about um
54:05
money for a startup in the beauty and hair care industry, if it's a physical location that grows by hiring more
54:12
people, then you need a bank loan, right? Or you need friends and family who are going to be satisfied with uh
54:19
whatever they put in $100,000 and you turn it into a million dollars. That is a totally legitimate way to do business.
54:25
It's the way most of the world has worked for for time from time immemorial. but it's not venture capital
54:31
gap. Okay? So, hopefully you got that. The other path that maybe you are
54:36
talking about is um raising money. And this is true for everybody that's listening, right? I'm not picking on on
54:43
Ailen or the beauty space, but any of you who have consulting businesses or agencies or uh dog walking or anything
54:51
that requires you to hire a lot more people, whether those are people doing the services like say in a beauty salon
54:58
or those are sales reps, you know, who are out calling everybody or whatever. Um, if it's peoplebased to grow, it's
55:06
not going to scale inexpensively enough to attract investors like me. So the other path is I'm hoping alien since
55:14
you're here we're talking about a software type scale. Well, maybe your beauty or hair care startup is about
55:21
like um a device, you know, that like I said, like a medical device that would cure cancer. Maybe you have a device
55:27
that is a consumer product that you could, you know, if you can prove the prototype and get approved by uh the FDA
55:36
or anybody that might need to regulate it, uh then the first one might cost a
55:41
whole bunch of money to make prototypes, but then you get it licensed and then you can send it to a factory and make like a hundred,000 of them, get them
55:48
into Walmarts all over the world. That is a scalable business. then venture
55:54
capitalists like and angel investors like me are much more likely to be interested because the key here is the
55:59
scaling means that you can sell a lot more without hiring a lot more people. So I hope that's making some sense. Um
56:07
and there are lots of ways to do that. It might be software like it could be scheduling software for salons. That's
56:13
awesome, right? Because you can if you can schedule 10 salons, you can probably schedule 100. You can probably schedule 100 thousand if you scale the software.
56:19
That's a venture capital type investment. But the uh hiring of more more individual stylists cutting hair,
56:26
not so much. So, I hope that's helpful to everybody. Oh, okay. So, Eileen chimes in. She has a hair serum. Okay.
56:32
Which we want to sell online. Okay. That so that's a maybe that's in between. Yeah, that that could be. Um I'm working
56:38
with a doctor uh right now actually who has a nasal spray. That kind of idea, right? So, yes, uh that kind of thing
56:45
can work. We in the business of investing, we call that CPG, consumer
56:50
packaged good. And so if you're looking for investors, you would want to be looking for CPG investors. And there are
56:56
people who know that world. I'm not one of them. I'm more of a software guy. But if you want to um manufacture a product
57:02
like a hair serum, for example, and then get that out to you could sell it online or then you could get it out into beauty
57:08
supply stores or back to Walmart or Target or whatever. Um depending on where you are in the world, of course.
57:14
uh that kind of product can scale uh without hiring a ton more people. So
57:20
yes, that might be interesting and uh but CPG is probably the uh the beauty
57:25
CPG is probably the keywords that you want to look for. Okay, so let's move on. Um let's see. Uh
57:35
okay, Chad says, "Trying to take all this info in. We're currently working on starting up a maker space." Oh, cool. I like maker spaces. Oh, that's not what I
57:42
meant to do. Sorry, Chad. There we go. Here's Chad's
57:48
uh sorry, I'm having too many. There we go. Okay. Maker space and trying to see what we need to have in place before
57:53
reaching out. Yeah, that's why way I do this, Chad. I hope that before reaching out to try to find funding. Yep, makes
57:58
sense. Um happy to have you here and anybody that's looking for um this kind
58:04
of advice. That's what we do and that's what we do at Startup Council all day long, right? So, uh you can come and
58:10
list your startup there. Uh, and it's only 20 bucks. I think we're just trying to charge uh to cover the overhead and
58:18
we'll help you learn all this stuff and um find investors and so on and so
58:24
forth. So, that's what we do. Okay. So, let me get on to our next. So, who do we
58:29
still have backstage? Thank you for your patience backstage. Uh, Carl, Sean,
58:34
Daniel. Okay. Carl. Adrien. Okay. What's Adrien? What did How did you get Let's see. What did Adrien say?
58:42
Yes, Adrien, you are. Um, yeah, Adrien, can you put in the private
58:48
chat room back there what you'd like to talk about and I will try to bring you on. Okay. And let's go to um Carl. You
58:57
still with me, Carl? You can turn on your camera and let's do the pitch practice with you. There
59:02
Scott. Hey there. Hi there. So, where are you? Yeah. In the world. So, yeah, I'm here in the Philippines.
59:09
I'm here in Manila. I'm in my lunch hour right now. So, I'm
59:15
I'm but I'm good. So, um this is my first time to be here and thanks for having me. I I have a few questions here
59:21
if I'm going to present this idea. If first of all uh first of all, do I really have a good product in my mind?
59:28
And number two, what if I don't have the funds to create an MVP? How do I make a really impacting
59:35
pitch for the VCs? Number three. Yeah. Number three, what are other groups that we could join
59:41
alongside startup council so we can get more VCs? We could get to know more VCs and mentoring. And uh fourth, yeah, what
59:49
are other platforms that do you think we got to join so we can make a presence and uh talk about our our cost? So my
59:56
idea is this. Um I wanted to penetrate that travel booking app just like Airbnb
1:00:03
and um like a um trip.com expedia.com those things because um
1:00:09
there's this economy that I'm trying to tap for the lower income class like here
1:00:15
in Asia there's been existence of these trip operations for a while that's been
1:00:20
more than 15 years that could uh be less hassle for the customers. So, um, this
1:00:26
app offers a very packaged trips already for very undiscovered remote locations.
1:00:32
Something that could offer peace and quiet that's not offered by expensive popular locations. So, something like um
1:00:40
if I uh come up with a trip for a weekend at a beach and would only cost
1:00:46
somebody $60 for everything like the tent, the the transportation going
1:00:52
there, the boats, the food, everything. It's just $60. Yeah. So, I wanna I want
1:00:57
to tap that market because I've been joining these trips for more than 15 years in my life and I've checked out
1:01:03
Bokun, Get Your Guide, Vitor, even Airbnb, and none of them are doing it.
1:01:10
There's there's a lot of undiscovered locations around here in Asia, even Europe, or maybe even there in the
1:01:15
United States. And I don't know why these locations are not getting discovered. Yeah. And in a few in a few years time, what I
1:01:23
can see is that an economic circumstances where there's going to be a lot more inflation rates that could
1:01:29
happen every now and then. So what's left? So what's going to be left for everybody to enjoy their lives
1:01:34
and their family? Nothing. Yeah. So I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to come up with something so that people
1:01:40
wouldn't really need to break the bank when they go off when they go off on a trip.
1:01:45
Right. Right. Okay. So what's that? I get it that and I agree. What's what
1:01:50
question would you like to start with because we can't probably cover all of those together. Yeah, thank you so much because uh
1:01:56
number one, I I don't have any funds for creating an MVP. So, most of the MVPs here in the
1:02:02
Philippines would need you to come up with one in order to make your pitch. And if I don't have any funds, I don't have any
1:02:08
MVP. So, I don't have any funds for that. How do I make a really impacting pitch? Yeah. To make my cost really, you know, really
1:02:14
convincing. Do you have any web design experience? Do you know how to build a website? Yeah, I I do I do have the skills to
1:02:21
build a website and right now I'm creating a database schema for to get my app ready for Amazon Web Services. So I
1:02:28
don't have to hire a team for that. Great. All I have to do is a team. All I need to have is a team that could build the
1:02:35
MVP and then when the MVP is ready, I could make that pitch and maybe more um
1:02:41
VCs could really believe in this business. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's great. Well, good for you. So you have a technicalish
1:02:47
background, which is super. you know, it makes things a lot easier. So, here's here's what I guess I would do. Um,
1:02:54
because you're asking the right questions, right? And you found an opportunity. This this sounds like a thing. So, congratulations. You know,
1:03:00
you've been bitten by the startup bug, right? It might kill you, but hopefully it'll work out better. Um, so I think
1:03:07
probably I would probably take a step back. A database schema sounds awesome, but if you're worried about an MVP, I
1:03:14
think I would step back and just build a simple website like a on Squarespace or Wix or something like that because
1:03:20
people don't have much imagination. Investors don't. So, especially and they might not even know what a database
1:03:26
schema is, right? And you could I don't have your whole vision in my mind,
1:03:31
right? But I think I got the general idea. What you're talking about is is a a site that showcases some trips and
1:03:37
then you probably build a mailing list and maybe you have a blog that promotes them in a newsletter and you try to sell
1:03:43
some package tours. I mean at least to start right now that may not be the full sum of your eventual vision but if you
1:03:52
start there that would show first of all that you can do something and you have something to show. Um, and that's a big
1:03:59
question from investors like me, right? We're always like people talk about stuff, but can you actually do anything? And um, you can get on Squarespace, at
1:04:06
least in the States. I don't know what the pricing might be in the Philippines, but um, I I think it's less than $100 a
1:04:13
year. Um, and so, you know, it's not nothing, but it's certainly way less than you would trying to build
1:04:19
something, you know, that's truly database driven, right? Um, so I think I would just start with that. And if you
1:04:24
even if that's too much, maybe you could work in Canva or uh Figma or something
1:04:30
like that and and do some wireframe designs so that if you had to, you know,
1:04:35
it may not be live on your laptop, but you could show through a bunch of JPEGs and say, "This is what it would look
1:04:41
like if I had whatever your initial numbers. If I had 20 grand, I could do this much, right? And then if I had
1:04:48
$200,000 then we would do you know obviously then you start moving up towards the database driven thing. But it seems to me at the
1:04:55
moment you're asking the right questions. You know how do you do an MVP? You you you got to work with what
1:05:02
you got right? So you got to prototype from the very basic level even if it
1:05:07
means that you build something that you're just going to throw away when you get to the next level because otherwise you won't get to the next level. Right?
1:05:13
If the only way you can do this is by building the Taj Mahal, you're never going to get there, right? You got to
1:05:18
take these manual annoying baby steps, um, and you know, even if it means like
1:05:24
when an order comes in, you write it down on a piece of paper and then you, you know, move it over into a
1:05:30
spreadsheet like doing that kind of physical work that of course a database could do way better, but you you just
1:05:36
you don't have the resources to build a full database, right? Because then that's very distracting and expensive,
1:05:41
right? Um, so anyway, that's a long the short answer to that is kind of fake it till you make it.
1:05:47
Yeah, that's that's the reality, right? That when you're an entrepreneur without resources, that's what you do. Um, to
1:05:53
ask your to address your other question since it sounds like you're you're on the right track here. I'd like to help.
1:05:59
Um, first of all, Amy in the chat room is asking what's your contact and where where is this? So, Carl said uh they're
1:06:06
in Manila. Um, but it sounds like some people would like your Do you have a a website or a a LinkedIn that you can
1:06:12
share if sounds like somebody wants to help you? Yeah, sure. Um, my name is uh this is my
1:06:18
name on LinkedIn. Uh, actually I already have uh Canva tools already. I already
1:06:25
have some screens already. Uh and um I I'm already building my schema so that
1:06:31
when I'll just download my SQL codes, all I have to do is just put them on Amazon Web Services and then
1:06:38
automatically build a database. But for now, we'll we'll start with Excel files for that. Uhhuh. Okay. I'm just going to copy what
1:06:45
you put was in the backstage chat. I'll put it in the main chat and then I want to talk about platforms for a second.
1:06:51
Yeah. Um Amy, here's the here's Carla. Is that on LinkedIn then? Yeah, that's LinkedIn. Um
1:06:58
um NBA clss. Yeah, CLSS. Yeah, that that's my my name on
1:07:04
LinkedIn. I could have misspelled that. I I apologize. I I misspelled my clssyb.
1:07:10
Oh, no worries. Um okay, so let's talk about platform. So, you sound like a great candidate for an accelerator, an
1:07:15
incubator. Um and I don't know the programs that they have there in Manila. Uh but I think you could do some
1:07:21
googling and find there's got to be somebody interested. um first of all in in travel right I mean that's there
1:07:28
should be if there isn't there should be given the all the great beaches in the Philippines there should be some support
1:07:33
for travel entrepreneurs um and um in the states we have these programs like
1:07:40
called like the small business development corporation and SCORE the service corps of retired executives
1:07:45
these are government funded programs I that do free consulting for people like you so any Americans that are listening
1:07:51
to this I'll say that again service corps of retired execut executives score and SBDC, small business development
1:07:57
corporation. Both of those are funded by your tax dollars here in the states and they provide free consulting to people
1:08:03
like Carl. I hope but I don't know Carl if there are things that are equivalent
1:08:08
to that in the Philippines. I would think so, but I I don't Philippines very well. I've never been. It's on my list. I'm
1:08:14
going to get over there soon. Maybe I've got 60 bucks and I'll go on one of those trips. Um but uh so I would look for
1:08:21
that and I would look for any other affinity groups that you have like you looks like you have some education like the university where you went you know
1:08:27
or alumni networks you know um look at the business school um and and the real
1:08:33
answer to your platform question is and finding investors and this is true for Leo and other people too. You just got
1:08:40
to get out there and meet people. Um you can come online and we will do as best we can at startupconsil.org like I said
1:08:46
and I should put up this other uh service that we have called uh startupinves investorsdirectory.com.
1:08:53
So the number one question I always get on this show is how do I find startup investors? So, we built this
1:08:59
um startup investors directory.com very creative name and that's got 3,000 earlystage investors and you can search
1:09:06
on all kinds of thing any kind of industry or stage or personal characteristics like if you're black or
1:09:12
Asian or Latino or you're rural or you're an immigrant or you're LGBTQ or you're a first-time fan like we've tried
1:09:18
to figure out all the parameters. So, um I don't think you're quite ready for that Carl but you made me think of it so
1:09:25
sharing it. Um but uh so what I would do is find the meetups in Manila, find go
1:09:32
to the university, find the government resources and then go to as much stuff as you can. And then of course the other
1:09:37
level is what can you do online because they may not be in Manila. They might be in San Francisco, right? And you can
1:09:42
attend things virtually like you're doing right now, right? I'm in California, you're in the Philippines. Um that works out because it's night for
1:09:48
me, it's morning for you. U and that that's fine, right? Um and we could be best friends if we did this repeatedly.
1:09:54
So I would really spend some time looking for that. Um and of course we've
1:09:59
also addressed that need on startupconcil.org. We have what I think is the only um calendar in the world
1:10:06
that is only virtual events only for founders. So if you are in Manila or
1:10:12
Mumbai or Montreal um you can um find events that are specifically for you so
1:10:19
that um you can attend from Miami or from you know anywhere. Um, and I think
1:10:24
we have the only calendar in the world that does that. So, even if you don't join startup councsil.org, you guys should come and get on the newsletters
1:10:30
because then we'll send you stuff that you can attend and that's a great way to meet uh investors, too. So, that was a
1:10:36
long answer. I hope that was helpful. Thank you so much. Yeah, I I'll be joining around these groups, finding
1:10:42
more people online. So, yeah, hope to meet more of you guys. Thank you so much. Okay. Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks for
1:10:48
joining us. Cool. All right. So, this is fun. It's all right. for and getting near the end here, I think. Um, oh,
1:10:55
here's Ailen again. One more quick question. What does she say? Join us. How do I put that on the screen? Because
1:11:01
it's a good question. Oh, no. Hold on. Let me see who's waiting here. Um, oh,
1:11:07
Sean, is Sean, are you still here? Sorry. I was going to take Let me take that other question from you. Um,
1:11:14
there we go. Hey, Sean. you wanted to talk about. I I think that first one you question you gave me was a softball, but
1:11:20
you were actually more interested in the second one. No, not necessarily. I think it's it's
1:11:26
all good. Okay. Um yeah. So just what's your what's your opinion of some of these um these these
1:11:32
founder you know assisters accelerators um you know these guys that are um you
1:11:40
know saying that they're going to prepare you to get funded and charging two three $400 a month uh you know those
1:11:46
of things. Yeah, it's a good question and I have a lot of opinions, but um
1:11:53
it depends a lot on the platform. Um buyer beware. Um I don't think hiring an
1:12:00
finding uh a coach or a mentor or an accelerator or an incubator or a
1:12:05
training program is honestly any different than hiring a plumber. Uh you should check references, make sure that
1:12:11
they understand the kind of plumbing you have in your house and there the quality varies a lot. So these days, especially
1:12:18
like I was just saying in that other conversation, um anybody can reach anybody online, right? And you don't know who's going to show up, especially
1:12:25
so if you pay a lot of money, I would definitely check the references first. To be a little more specific, uh there
1:12:30
are some big brands in the space at Tech Stars or Founder Institute or um any
1:12:36
number of others uh that I am a fan of. Um Startup Grind uh you know, startup
1:12:42
council my mine as well. Um, you know, we a lot of us are trying to do this with the right intentions. What I would
1:12:50
be really careful of is anybody that charges a lot of money. So, if and this
1:12:55
is true whether you're going to go pitch something or sign up for a training program or anything, people like us, we
1:13:02
really do have expenses, right? So, I think those that can offer them for free is awesome. Um,
1:13:09
but that means they're making money somewhere else or they have they're just rich or they have, you know, foundations
1:13:15
or donations behind them and that's fine. That's great, you know. Um, but I think that our philosophy is we charge a
1:13:21
cost to try to make everything sustainable. So 20 bucks here, 100 bucks there, even $500 here and there, I think
1:13:28
is legit depending on what you get for it. Like if you're going to a a pitch competition at a fancy hotel, you know,
1:13:34
with really good food and all kinds of stuff, then and you get on stage, even if it's only for five or 10 minutes,
1:13:40
yeah, it's going to cost $500,000 because they're they're paying out 50 grand, right, to rent that room and get
1:13:46
all the lights and the, you know, everything set up. So, yeah. Um, but you got to really be careful who's
1:13:53
in the room, you know? Are they active investors or is it just their friends? You blah blah blah. So, due diligence, it's a long way of saying due diligence.
1:13:59
Certain platforms like Gust or um Startup Steroid or some of thethings we
1:14:05
do um I think are great. I mean they they they can help you get where you
1:14:11
need to go faster. But I would in every case try the free version. Look around,
1:14:17
you know, test it out. Um you know, if I were a founder, anything more than I mean everybody's got a different
1:14:22
threshold, I guess, right? But anything more than I don't know a couple hundred bucks a month is sounding like it's
1:14:29
expensive, you know. Um so, uh anybody that won't give you if
1:14:34
it's if it's any real numbers, you know, like $1,000 or more and I would ask for
1:14:39
references, you know, who's done this and who likes it, you know, uh and if they can't give you references, I would run away.
1:14:48
I don't know. Is that uh Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. I think I think that you know there's there's a lot of um
1:14:55
just a lot of sales about it too. I think you know that that people are
1:15:00
to me kind of selling a dream like you know if you do this thing you're going to have an increased chance and
1:15:07
you know maybe but you know maybe not you know that's right
1:15:13
and and you know we and we got you know we got seed without joining any of it so
1:15:18
right um I think a lot of it you know it's interesting a lot of it has to do with the person right a lot of it has to do
1:15:24
with the with the personal relationship you know the people who invested in us, we just we really hit it off. Um they
1:15:31
believed in us and it was good. It was a good sort of vibe. Yeah. Which is which is so much of it in a
1:15:38
frustrating way. So in a frustrating way. That's right. Exactly. That's why I'm writing this new book is because I think the number one
1:15:43
problem in the startup ecosystem is the amount of time that is wasted by earnest
1:15:48
talented people like you trying to find the right version of me for your project. It's just crazy with all the
1:15:55
tech we have and we've had match.com for 25 years, right? Matching people and we don't have, you know, anyway, I think
1:16:01
it's so anyway, that's what my new book is about trying to help people figure this out a little faster. Um, another
1:16:07
couple just thoughts before I let you go. Um, you're right to talk about the individuals because the partners
1:16:12
involved, this is true at any VC firm. You want this more senior person, but also the one who's not so senior they
1:16:19
won't have time to deal with you, right? So, you want to find the person who's going to engage. And that's true at incubators and accelerators as well. So
1:16:26
if you feel like you're one in a thousand, then that's probably not the right place, unless that's what you're looking
1:16:31
for, right? If you just want something light touch, then that's fine. But if you really want to to bear down and
1:16:36
really participate, then you probably want something more personal, especially for those programs that take a chunk of
1:16:42
your equity. And uh in exchange usually for some cash, it's usually, you know, a couple hundred grand for six or eight%
1:16:48
of your equity or something like that. Well, that implies a valuation immediately on the company of a couple million, not more than a couple million
1:16:55
dollars. So, if you've already put three or four years into this and a whole bunch of your own money, then you
1:17:00
probably can't afford to join an incubator, an accelerator, because it's going to crush your valuation. And it's
1:17:06
hard to go back, say, to your friends and family and say, remember that money you put in and we were valued at $5 million? Well, now we're only valued at
1:17:12
1.4, but we got into tech stars. Yeah. Right. It still may be a good trade, but it's an awkward conversation. The other
1:17:19
thing I was going to say is I worked with an uh an incubator uh that has since gone out of business and one of
1:17:25
the things that they did to um this is a due diligence point for anybody that's interested in incubators and
1:17:30
accelerators. They would bring people in and these were good people. They weren't trying to fool anybody but it ended up
1:17:37
being a little bit bait and switch because they would bring people in founders I mean and say you know come and join us and they had a certain
1:17:44
amount of money for this and that and it was all you know whatever it was all very explained but the part of their
1:17:49
pitch was that we have this huge list of investors out of the camera how do I
1:17:54
yeah here we go huge list of investors um and it was a long it was like columns and columns like I don't know two or 30
1:18:01
hundred names of these are all the kind of firms that we work with. So, as a new founder, you walk in, you see this, and
1:18:06
they literally had it on the walls like, "Wow, everybody from American Express down to whatever Z would be like piles
1:18:12
and piles of them." And I was ended up being on an advisory committee or judging one of their pitch competitions or something. And so, I
1:18:18
asked, you know, how many of these are active? And it was like this many,
1:18:23
right? So, they were listing everything and they'd been around for 15 years or something. So, they they were basically
1:18:29
listing every investor they'd ever met. not every investor that was currently
1:18:34
writing checks in their program. And so it wasn't a lie, but it certainly wasn't the whole story. And I would be careful
1:18:41
of that kind of thing. So that's that's an example of checking references again. Yeah. You know, I just make one comment.
1:18:47
Um Pitchbook, I'd bring it up again. And not that I'm trying to sell them or anything else, but they're just an
1:18:52
awesome uh resource from my perspective. um they have dry powder numbers so you
1:18:58
can look at you know which VCs are actually actively looking for people not
1:19:03
just right yeah it's interesting here's a here's a platform I'm just put that in the chat
1:19:10
startup steroid this is a company that I'm actually to be full disclosure I'm an adviser and an investor in and they
1:19:17
are building um kind of even the next step beyond what we've built at startupconsil.org They're building an
1:19:23
ecosystem where you come in as a founder and they have a bunch of um services u
1:19:29
for example they have like a FICO score like you can upload your deck and they'll AI examine it and say oh you
1:19:34
need to work on this and that some very useful stuff and um anybody that's interested in these kind of platforms I
1:19:41
would suggest that startup steroid might be some worth checking out. Yeah. So
1:19:46
all right well great well nice to see you again. Thanks for joining us again. Um, he's a he's a repeat. Uh, I must
1:19:53
have said something moderately helpful last time because he returned, so that's always a good sign. Um, all right. So,
1:19:59
what do we got left here? Okay. I don't see anybody else with their cameras on backstage, so let's
1:20:04
cruise through the chat room and then we'll wrap it up for tonight. Okay. Um Oh, okay. Leo, there you go. You're
1:20:11
back. Did you want to join us? What's on your mind now that you've got a sense for how the show works? Yeah, I was just
1:20:17
like doing laundry and doing but yeah, I I knowit's telling me everyone can see and hear you, but I don't know. I don't
1:20:23
know what's the I don't think because my my mic was muted, but Ah,
1:20:29
okay. Did you have a question? Uh, no. Well, yeah.
1:20:37
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. My I know because the Yeah, actually he he brought the pitch book
1:20:42
because I remember interviewing for them. They're based in Seattle. Yeah. and sign up for them because that's a good you know gives you the you know the
1:20:49
companies they have and start I mean what do you have to lose just to reach out to people and comp you know and I
1:20:55
know it's hard to to start by yourself you know you need a lot of people need you know it's to share the risk even if
1:21:02
you started the most easiest uh company you know like a like a fitness center
1:21:08
like or something or like a hair salon but you know it's depends
1:21:13
yeah it's definitely a challenge. Well, that's why we do this trying to I know. And it's just like the only thing that, you know, put me down, you
1:21:20
know, feet on the ground is like there are so many other people like me, you know, that have more power, more money,
1:21:26
more, you know, they're more pretty, more, you know, they're 6'4. I'm just saying they have more network and they
1:21:33
have more money, but probably don't have the courage or the thing that's a risky business or it's hard, it's not, you
1:21:39
know, uh like, you know, if you share, for example, my thought with someone said, "What's wrong with you? Are you
1:21:44
crazy? Are you do you need to go see a doctor or you know there are other you need to talk to someone that it's in
1:21:50
that avenue and have so much experience and you know and they will tell you the good the bad and everything between you
1:21:57
know that there are like because even if you have ton of money you know still you need to know how to allocate and be you
1:22:04
know be profitable because what's the point you know just having a business even if you do for passion you know
1:22:10
you're just being you know for it's your you know love for something, you know, that you because if you don't like
1:22:16
something, it's pointless for you just to do jump in, you know. Well, that's right. I think you're on the right track there about community
1:22:22
because that's really what most founders think that they need capital the most and and they usually do. But what they
1:22:29
really need is friends and supporters who understand them, right? They support each other. That's why we
1:22:35
do that's why I do this kind of thing because I really hope everybody in the chat room can meet each other. Yeah. Thank you. I know because and you
1:22:41
have to have, you know, product. is I'm not going to I mean I'm just going to bring it real quick Larry Ellison you know the Oracle guy that he will sell a
1:22:48
product without having the product you know he would just collect start getting but yeah back in the day it was different and he will go name this
1:22:54
software 2.0 or 3.0 when the even the 1.0 didn't come out yet you know he was
1:23:00
just like doing the marketing or he would just go tell Bank of America hey I have 15 employees when there were just
1:23:06
four of them that started the Oracle company. Yeah, I was I remember watching a you know a YouTube video years ago.
1:23:13
You know how he Oh, yeah. He was like a Yeah, very you know, he was like very I know he's 80 something now, but
1:23:20
Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, that's how he was like Yeah. All right. Well, nice seeing you
1:23:26
tonight. We're going to just head head back to the chat room and I think we'll wrap this up. Um I put a couple new
1:23:33
links up on the screen. If you're having meetups in your town, like Leo just said, we try to encourage community and
1:23:39
we have meetups in I think 51 cities around the world and uh 19 or 20
1:23:46
countries uh including Manila for example, Carl. Um and there's a lot of opportunity there to um we'll help you
1:23:54
publicize things if you're building communities in your local uh region. happy to have uh you submit your events
1:24:01
and we'll post them in our meetups and then uh hopefully bring you more founders and build a community where you
1:24:06
are and uh doing that all over the world and let's see what else. Um all right
1:24:12
well let's go look at these other chats. So okay so
1:24:19
all right so LinkedIn user says oh here's my here's the best quote of the night. LinkedIn
1:24:25
user loves the startup office hours. Thank you, LinkedIn user. Um, Dr. Sanjay
1:24:31
posted a whole bunch of stuff there. Um, okay, that's a really long SIG file. So,
1:24:36
Sanjay, that's I'm gonna Let's see. Think we're going to rem Well, I don't have a way to delete that easily, but
1:24:43
please don't do that because it jams up the chat. Um, okay. What uh I found
1:24:49
another question here. Mona, I'm going to get to you in a second, but I did that. I did that.
1:24:55
Oh, Kickstarter campaigns. That's what it was. All right. And then Mona, I'll get to you. So, Ailen says, uh, one more
1:25:02
question. What do you think about Kickstarter campaigns? So, Kickstarter, I'm sure you guys know, but it's a kind of um funding mechanism. Crowdfunding
1:25:08
they call it. And crowdfunding is it can be great. Uh, crowdfunding can raise a lot of money for interests that are um
1:25:16
important to groups that might be geographically dispersed but are
1:25:22
passionate about. So, you know, whether it's collectibles or hair serum or
1:25:27
anything, right? Really. Um, and so Kickstarter is great. What Kickstarter is not is equity crowdfunding. So, well,
1:25:34
Kickstarter, I think anyway, I'm not somebody correct me if I'm wrong in the chat room here, but I think Kickstarter
1:25:40
is like gift crowdfunding in the sense of like you say, I'm going to make this
1:25:47
thing and everybody can contribute and then maybe they get a discount or something, but they don't actually own a
1:25:52
part of the product if or the company. Um, equity crowdfunding is what I know
1:25:58
more about. So, that might have been off, but that's kind of the vibe. Uh equity crowdfunding is platforms like
1:26:04
Start Engine or Weunderer um or um uh Dealmaker or uh Net Capital, people like
1:26:12
that. And with those platforms, Title Three Funds, where you go and you list
1:26:17
your company and say, "We're going to build this kind of thing." And if you put in some money, you'll actually own shares in the company. It's equity. Um
1:26:26
and then you end up owning a piece of that company. So if the company does well eventually hopefully your stock is
1:26:31
worth a bunch more than you paid for it, right? So um okay so those are the two types of crowdfunding like the kind of
1:26:36
charity giving side and then the equity side. What both do that is um not
1:26:43
appreciated often by entrepreneurs is they require you to do the marketing. So
1:26:51
those platforms can be super in terms of helping you structure and present and collect your
1:27:00
offer and collect money from the public and then issue them their shares in the
1:27:05
case of equity crowdfunding or connect them to whatever resources or prizes or
1:27:10
discounts you might be offering. Um they're great for all that stuff. What they don't guarantee though is that you
1:27:16
have an audience or that anybody will invest or buy. My point is that if you're going to use
1:27:22
crowdfunding, whether it's Kickstarter or Weunder or anything else, you're going to need to bring your own
1:27:27
audience. So, they are not there to
1:27:34
fill your to make all the sales for you, right? So, if you're going to succeed in crowdfunding, you need to come and use
1:27:41
them as a platform to set up and automate the offer, but you need to bring your own mailing list of fans who
1:27:48
are already interested and market to them to come and then visit that crowdfunding platform and use the
1:27:54
crowdfunding platform to buy your product or buy into your company, right? So, if you don't have an audience
1:28:00
already, they're not going to provide it. Now, of course, there are lots of services and agencies and so forth that
1:28:06
can help you do that, but then you're going to end up spending a bunch of money on not only the fees of setting up
1:28:12
the offer properly and like having a slick video and stuff, you know, to push it, but then you're going to spend a
1:28:17
bunch of money on an agency as well. So, you're probably talking about something that sounded inexpensive quickly adding
1:28:24
up to tens of thousands of dollars and maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it well. So, I am a big
1:28:29
fan of those platforms. I'm I'm literally an investor in several of them. I I I believe in that model, but
1:28:35
you just need to know how they work, right? It really is about bringing your own audience. So, if you don't have that
1:28:41
yet, I would get back to working on that and then go to the Kickstarter sort of route once you're ready. Okay. So, I
1:28:49
hope that's useful. Um, hey Pete Vahed, thank you for identifying yourself. Um,
1:28:56
let's see. And Sean says, "Yeah, uh, yeah, search this is I think this is a
1:29:03
suggestion here. Um, he's suggest this is an answer. Where is it? There we go. Yeah, try googling reggg cf platforms,
1:29:11
crowdfunding platforms." That's right. Search on this and uh, Kickstarter or
1:29:16
any of those, he he put it very succinctly, is only good for selling into your existing network. So, if you don't have an existing network, they are
1:29:24
they are legit and useful platforms, but will not be useful to you unless you already have an audience to sell to.
1:29:31
Okay. And then I think we're going to wrap up here. This looks like our last question. Yep. Okay. What's the best way
1:29:37
to show traction? Mona wants to know for a high-tech skincare startup that still needs funding to reach the market. So,
1:29:44
sharing showing traction is a challenge. It's a challenge in any business. And that's I'm not trying to keep pushing my
1:29:50
book because it's not even for sale yet, but that's another piece of my book, right? I'm trying to give a bunch of ideas about how to show traction when
1:29:57
you don't have any traction, right? Or you don't have the money to do an MVP like Carl was talking about, you know,
1:30:03
and get the thing out there. Like, how do you do this? And the answer is, and
1:30:08
this isn't just for um skinsare startup, this is for anybody, any startup, any of
1:30:13
you that are listening either now or in the replays. And by the way, if this is useful, please do like and comment. Um
1:30:19
it makes a difference in terms of how many other people see this. And I'm doing this to try to help. So really would appreciate your likes and comments
1:30:26
um in whatever platform you're watching, especially on YouTube though. Actually, that seems to drive the most. So if
1:30:31
you're on YouTube, please hit that thumbs up and subscribe and so forth. But the answer is, how do you show
1:30:37
traction when you have no traction? How do you show traction when you have no MVP? How do you show traction when you haven't raised any money and you can't
1:30:43
create an MVP to show some traction? It's a chicken and egg problem that everybody um suffers through. And the
1:30:51
answer simply put is kind of what I said earlier. You you have to do it anyway, right? You have got to find they call
1:30:58
talk about a minimum viable product MVP. What's your minimum viable traction?
1:31:04
MVT. I just made that up. I'm going to write it down. Maybe I'll put it in my book. What's the least you can do to show
1:31:12
something, right? Because what investors are looking for is we don't invest in
1:31:17
dots. We invest in lines. So, what I mean by that is if I meet you once and
1:31:23
you tell me this great story and um about what you're doing, it may sound
1:31:29
amazing, but I only met you once. So, I'm not necessarily going to believe you because I don't know you. I don't maybe
1:31:35
like you. I don't know your industry, whatever. You know, it's my I need to see you again and again and again. So, I
1:31:41
have several dots and hopefully each of those interactions is positive and is trending upwards. Should go this way for
1:31:47
you guys, right? Um trending upwards so that I'm not investing in any of those dots, but there's a line. There's a
1:31:52
trend line. That's what we investors are always looking for. We want to be on a trend line that's going up so that we
1:31:57
can make a bunch of money. That's our job. So, you need to show some points
1:32:03
that start to make a line, right? So, what can you do? You have a high-tech skincare startup. Okay, who cares? I
1:32:11
mean, literally, who cares? Who have you talked to? Have you talked to 10 customers? Have you have uh seven of
1:32:18
them been interested? How about if you talk to a 100 customers? How about 70 of them are interested? That's even more
1:32:23
interesting, right? What if you talk to a thousand people and 700 of them are interested enough and they're not just interested, but they they would actually
1:32:31
buy? That's starting to sound like traction, right? You haven't sold anything. and you don't even have the
1:32:36
product, but at least you have shown us that you've done some leg work, that you're serious about this, and
1:32:42
apparently people are interested. And that's the key thing, right? Because there's nothing worse than an
1:32:47
entrepreneur who loves their own product that nobody else cares about, right? You can have all the supply in the world, but without demand, you'll go broke. And
1:32:54
I don't want you going broke with my money, right? Why would I do that? So, you need to find ways to show traction.
1:33:00
So, some Let me keep going. Right? So, you talk to a bunch of people and note their reactions. How about you uh buy
1:33:06
some ads on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or Tik Tok and you run some
1:33:11
ads for your fictional product, right? Get an AI or somebody to mock up a picture of what it would look like or a
1:33:17
discussion about what the benefits are and say, uh, we spent $100 on these ads
1:33:24
and we got whatever it is, I don't know, you know, 83 expressions of interest.
1:33:29
And then work on it a little more. you know, 83%. That's pretty good. Okay. But if we priced it at $10.99,
1:33:36
we got way more interest than we did at $29.99. Now, that's not a surprise, but those are the kind of numbers that we
1:33:42
investors want to see. Give me a bunch of numbers so I can evaluate the potential of this opportunity and
1:33:49
also show me that you understand what I need, which is numbers. I'm an investor. I eat numbers. You don't give me
1:33:55
numbers, I starve, right? So, what are ways that you can find numbers? you know, you put out an offer and um you
1:34:01
have a thousand people sign up for your mailing list. Okay, that's good. Now, send out an email to them that says
1:34:07
something, you know, that shows more traction, right? Um and a price survey
1:34:13
or offer a prize or anything you can do. Um Sean says, "How about pre-orders or a
1:34:19
wish list?" Yeah, exactly. Pre-orders would be great, right? So, the next step is say you've got a thousand people and
1:34:25
756 of them are interested. Well, how many of them can you get to actually sign something? And if they're it's this
1:34:33
works in a businessto business, too, because you you haven't said, but you know, Mona, maybe you're a B2B company,
1:34:38
right? So, instead of selling 756 different bottles of your thing,
1:34:43
maybe you're going to sell these are B2B contacts, so you can sell 756 cases to
1:34:49
distributors or to retail shops. That's interesting, right? Right? Because 756 times whole case loads is a bigger
1:34:55
number than 756 individual sales, right? So you get the idea here, right? Or you start a Facebook group and say, well,
1:35:01
you know, we grew from zero to uh 10,000 members or or a X account or a Tik Tok
1:35:07
or Instagram, right? Like how many likes do you get on your stuff? Like anywhere that you can find stuff that has numbers
1:35:12
is demonstration of traction. Obviously, real sales with real products at high price points and fat margins are what we
1:35:19
really want to see. But what can you do between now and then? It's like I said earlier from the top about the Taj
1:35:24
Mahal. You can't build the Taj Mahal from the top down. You got to start at the bottom, right? So, what are the
1:35:29
bricks that you can make that tell those stories that are the little points that connect into a line so that every time I
1:35:36
hear from you, it's creeping up, right? Your trend is creeping up. Beep beep
1:35:41
beep. That's what's going to get me interested. And that is what can lead to a story that you can tell first probably
1:35:48
to friends and family of why you need 10 grand from them and then maybe $50,000
1:35:54
and then $100,000. And once you get past that, well then it's probably time to talk to an angel group and the angels
1:35:59
will put in 20 grand or 50 grand a piece or $100,000 each. And you and you cobble together 300,000 or 400 or $500,000 and
1:36:07
that gives you enough to actually do something and demonstrate some more traction, right? It's step by step by step. It's a It's a very steep and long
1:36:13
ladder, but climbing rung by rung is the only way you can do it. Okay, so um or
1:36:20
sorry, one more question here. I thought I was done. My MVP, this is related, so we'll just uh this will be our last one.
1:36:27
I think this is Pete again. My MVP is almost ready. How to get investors who can market fund and help me building a
1:36:33
team. So, okay. So Pete, I think if this is Pete, I think um let me blow up your
1:36:41
paradigm a little bit. Investors aren't interested in marketing, funding, or helping you build a team. That's not
1:36:47
what we do. At least venture investors. What we do is if you have already
1:36:52
demonstrated an ability to market and maybe already have a team, we might fund
1:36:57
you to expand on that. Okay? So I'm splitting hairs here, but it's an important mindset shift. investors are
1:37:05
really only here these days. I mean, it depends a lot on what market you're in. And I'm sorry we don't have time to get
1:37:10
into it tonight, but I'm mostly a software guy. So, if if it's a software, I I'm I'm on more solid ground that I am
1:37:16
in consumer goods or um medtec or something. Okay? So, take this with a grain of salt. But in the software
1:37:23
space, even an MVP isn't enough anymore. It's just way too easy to make one.
1:37:30
you need to get out there and actually have some customer relationships. And Sean suggested a pre-orders or um some
1:37:37
kind of memorandum of understanding or letter of intent. You can call it a lot of different things. Um a purchase order
1:37:44
is even better of actual customers is really what you
1:37:50
need to get funding these days. Now, you might be able to demonstrate enough traction, you know, review the stuff I
1:37:55
was just talking about, connecting some dots of traction so you can get some money from friends and family so that you can get that MVP rolling and then
1:38:03
money can come in a lot faster. And if you're in certain markets like in the Bay Area, you can raise a lot of money
1:38:08
with less, especially if you're connected or have a track record. But if you're in a rural area or another
1:38:14
country where there are not very developed risk capital markets, it's going to be really hard. So basically,
1:38:19
the more it looks like a business, the more you can raise money. So um if you don't have an MVP, it's going to be
1:38:25
hard. And um you need to find the people who are already interested in that
1:38:32
market or have had some success there. This is the other part of my new book, like how to do the research to find
1:38:37
people that are sympathetic. Um I can offer that. Um um
1:38:44
uh oh, this is not Pete. Okay. Another LinkedIn user. Okay. Sorry. Um, let me just put up that other um caption for a
1:38:51
second. The startup investors directory. We built this for this kind of question.
1:38:56
Yeah. And there's a a deal. It's like half price right now. Um, because we're trying to get it rolling and help you
1:39:02
guys. Um, but it did take a lot of money to build. So, it's not free, right? I
1:39:08
think it's $99 or something, right? So, but it's not to Sean's point, it's not a,000. It's not Pitchbook. It's not
1:39:13
$12,000 like Pitchbook would cost, right? It's 99. I think it's $99 or
1:39:18
something like that. Anyway, okay. So, anyway, um
1:39:23
investors are really looking for things that are already proven. Why? Because we can. Why wouldn't we, right? Why would
1:39:29
we take all the risk that you are taking and lose our money, right? This is your you're the one that's going to get rich.
1:39:35
We might just make, you know, triple our money if something if things go well, but nine times out of 10, that money just disappears. So, um it's a fiction
1:39:43
that investors are looking for seed stage ideas. um or preede ideas. It just
1:39:48
really doesn't work exist anymore to be honest, at least in software, right? Um and and or unless you're a super
1:39:54
connected founder in the Bay Area who, you know, happens to have a PhD in in artificial intelligence from Stanford.
1:40:00
So, I would um I would adjust your thinking a little bit and think about how you can demonstrate traction in the
1:40:08
kind of pseudo ways that we're talking about. Feed that into an MVP and use the
1:40:14
MVP. Again, kind of like I talked about with Carl, don't try to build something super fancy and that's all a real thing.
1:40:19
If you can fake it with a u and I don't saying fake in an ethical way. I'm saying de demonstrate it using just a
1:40:28
website or uh just a prototype and get traction in the sense of like purchase
1:40:34
orders and things like that and then you can ladder up step by step. Okay. So
1:40:40
anyway, sorry. I hope that was useful. Um that's the reality and um you don't hear it a lot. So I'm here to tell you
1:40:48
baby steps. Thank you, Bess. That's what I meant. Baby steps. Yeah, you guys are I talk for 10 minutes and then you guys
1:40:54
summarize it in 10 words. You're like you're like AI, right? You can just summarize it for me. So, thank you.
1:41:00
Okay, so I think that's about it for me tonight. Thank you all for being here. Please do like and subscribe. Tell your
1:41:06
friends for next time. Go to the startup uh council. Let me put that up there. Uh go to startupconsil.org or actually it's
1:41:12
right here over my shoulder anyway. You should get on these email lists. They're free. try to have you connect with us
1:41:17
again and um I'll be if you are looking for a speaker in your town, please let me know. I'll um I speak all over the
1:41:24
world all the time and love engaging with people like you. So, I hope this is helpful. You are the future. Together,
1:41:29
we're going to make some stuff happen and I appreciate you being here. Thanks and I hope to see you again next time.
1:41:35
Go join those newsletters and uh like and subscribe. Thanks again. Good night.

Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders raise money for their startups.

The fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions answer financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice.

The latest free session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was July 15.

To watch the new Startup Office Hours FREE REPLAY VIDEO click here.

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Startup Office Hours Venture Capital Funding Advice for Startup Company Entrepreneurs welcomed angel investor and VC pitch practice from startup founders worldwide.

StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox helped accelerate the startups fundraising process with friendly discussion and advice about raising money from angel investors and venture capital firms.

This month's fun and interactive Startup Fundraising Office Hours livestream YouTube Q&A session ​welcomed practice investorpitches and answered questions from ​entrepreneurs worldwide once again including:

• Shaun from Delaware asked about resources for finding investor pitch competitions (We recommended good old Google, plus https://StartupEvents.org)
• Salman from Los Angeles practiced the investor pitch for his fintech AI startup
• Mark from San Francisco checked in with questions about the pitch for hardware deeptech startup, too.
• Tiffany from Amsterdam asked about how to talk about AI in her investor approaches but without overdoing it
• Mike from Sydney (down under!) asked how to get more feedback and response from their many investor pitches that received no reply
• We also offered the free lawyer introductions service at StartupCouncil.org that can help founders find legal attorney expertise that specializes in startup strategies: https://www.startupcouncil.org/intros

And (as usual) everybody wanted to know the best resource to find early stage investors interested in their startups. Answer: Google + https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory...

And much more, as usual!

Watch the free replay for startup founder pitches, and the expert investor feedback they got!

To watch this month’s Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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Visit https://www.StartupCouncil.org to join us for lots of FREE startup resources, expertise, publicity opportunities, events, and much more - including 7 different FREE email newsletters - and discounts to find investors using https://StartupInvestorsDirectory.com's unique investor research tools.

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Great to see everyone and congratulations on progress you are making with your visions!   

JOIN STARTUP OFFICE HOURS LIVE NEXT TIME to WATCH & COMMENT:

The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 900pm PT / Wednesday 1200am ET. Questions and practice investor pitches are hosted LIVE by Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council/Angel Investor/Serial Founder/Author/Startup Expert.

You can watch LIVE here later this month on August 26:

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for July 15, 2025:

0:00
I'm glad you're here to talk about your startup. You brought some questions, right? Or maybe you have an investor pitch you want to practice. Well, I'm
0:06
here to help. I'm Scott Fox. I'm the CEO of the startup council.org. We're a worldwide community service group that I
0:12
started to help you. We help founders all over the world accelerate their success by connecting them to better
0:19
resources, to investors, and to each other. So, if you're here tonight for questions, answers, some strategy
0:25
discussions, or to meet other people and network with other founders, service providers, investors, well, you're in
0:30
the right place. So, thanks for joining us. We're going to be here for an hour or so taking your questions live here on
0:36
YouTube and LinkedIn and Facebook. And um all of this is available to you free
0:41
as a service of the Startup Council. If you're not a member of the Startup Council yet, you should probably come and join us. We just built a brand new
0:48
website that is really lovely and full of uh services for you and they're all
0:53
offered at cost or even free based on support from our sponsors. So this is a
0:59
community service worldwide effort that I started after many years as an entrepreneur myself. For a long time I
1:06
was been a founder and I guess I'm still a founder in ways but I have the heart of a founder in any case. I've been
1:11
raising venture capital, deploying capital, and building teams and companies and products all over the
1:16
world for decades now. And I'm here tonight, as I am often online, all over
1:22
the internet to try to help those of you who are new to this get up to the next level to accelerate your success. It's
1:28
really about understanding where the future is going and finding the resources to help yourself get there. A
1:34
lot of this is encapsulated in my books, which you can see over here behind me. Uh the three in the middle are in
1:39
English and the other ones are foreign translations. You can see uh like there's Japanese and Turkish and Russian
1:44
and uh Polish and Vietnamese and so forth. So if you're here because you've read one of my books, thanks for thanks
1:50
for reading. There's another one on the way uh sneak peek actually. There's a new book about startup financing, how to
1:56
raise money coming pretty soon. So if you interested in hearing about that, go to the startupsil.org and make sure you
2:02
check that box. We've got a whole bunch of free email newsletters for you there, all designed to help connect you to
2:07
better resources and raise money and grow faster, like I said. So, I'm here because I'm a long-term serial
2:13
entrepreneur, like I said, an author. I've written several books trying to help other people find success as
2:18
internet entrepreneurs. And these days, I'm actually mostly an angel investor. So, I've been on both sides of the
2:23
table. And that's why I do these office hours. It's to help you to help you figure out how to speak to investors,
2:30
how to present your ideas, take the ideas out of your head and bring them out into the world where investors can
2:36
engage with them and especially actually more importantly customers. You need to meet a lot of customers to build a real
2:42
business. So, we'll talk tonight about your strategy questions. Some people wrote in early and those folks are backstage. I can see uh who do we got
2:49
back there? Sean and Salman and Jay are all backstage waiting to come on and join me on camera to talk about the
2:54
questions they sent in. So, thanks to them for giving me some advanced notice and then uh we're going to have a whole
3:00
bunch of other folks um in the chat room. So, if you're here from anywhere in the world, be happy to hear from you
3:06
as well. Let me let me turn on the chat room here. And if you are over on YouTube or LinkedIn, you can uh please
3:12
chime in. Let let us know where you're from, who you are, where you're from, even what you do. And of course, you can use the chat room for your own purposes,
3:18
too. I don't have all the answers. So, I'm hoping that throughout the show, you'll be able to help each other. So,
3:23
when I give some advice, that's great, but I don't have all the answers. I have a bunch and I have my opinions, but your
3:29
opinions could be just as valid. And of course, you bring with it your own wealth of experience, too. And that's the way you get ahead as an
3:35
entrepreneur. You help each other and you find mentors, whether they're older or younger or richer or poorer. But
3:41
there's a lot of diversity in opinions and creativity and intelligence. And together, it's those teams, those
3:47
communities that can help accelerate not just one individual founder or founding team, but whole communities. And that's
3:53
really the objective of startups.org. So, thanks for being here. Like I said, come on into the chat room and let me
3:59
know where you're from. I got George checking in from Denver, Colorado, and Chad from Surf City. Dan, I think Dan is
4:05
local. That's Dan Urelian, I think. Nice to see all of you. Thanks for joining me. And the rest of you, go ahead, let us know who you are, where you are, and
4:12
if you have questions and um comments as we go, of course, please go ahead and stick those in there as well. There's
4:17
Dong Yun from LA also. And I think there's a bunch more people, so we'll let that keep running there for a
4:22
minute. And let me just say, I have to do a couple little legal things and then we'll get going. And then uh Oh, there's
4:29
Dan. Yeah. Hi. Nice nice to see you, Dan. And Duane coming from Tennessee.
4:35
And Anna from Irvine. local. Okay. Anna and Newport Beach and Burbank. Okay.
4:41
Excellent. Well, nice to see all of you guys. Let me put on a couple our little disclaimers here. So, first of all, this
4:48
is not legal or financial advice that you should rely on. This is basically um
4:53
quick hot takes from a guy you met on the internet who's trying to be helpful, but may be full of it. And that's how
4:59
the internet works. So, I think you all know that by now, but just want to formally say this is not legal or financial advice. You should consult
5:05
consult your own personal legal, financial, and other expert adviserss to get advice specific to your situation.
5:12
Also, this is being recorded, so please don't say anything stupid or offensive. Of course, if you're offensive, I'll
5:17
just kick you out. But otherwise, don't say anything too confidential. And um we will be this is being recorded. It's
5:24
being broadcast obviously worldwide already. And it's also archived on our YouTube channel. So, if you want to come back and watch later or re-watch parts
5:30
of it, uh there's a whole bunch of hours of this stuff. So, if it's useful to you, please visit and subscribe to our
5:36
YouTube channel. And that if uh that's at youtube.comscottfox,
5:41
no surprise, right? And there's 20,000 plus of you there now. So, please like and subscribe and comment. If you're over there now, please uh hit that
5:48
little thumbs up. It helps us help more people. And that's really what we're doing here, right? I don't really make any money from this. This is volunteer
5:54
service that I do as part of my give back because the internet and digital media have been very good to me. So, I
6:00
hope this is all helpful to you. Okay. Hey, David from Surf City, Lucas from Colombia but living in Austin. Uh,
6:06
LinkedIn user from Fort Collins, and Chris from Pasadena, Alfred from Ghana. Excellent. Africa checking in. Rich from
6:13
Carl'sbad. Okay. Well, nice to see all of you. Let me let's get to our business here. Hakeim from Malaysia. All right.
6:19
We've got a glo I think we're spanning the globe here. This is good. But I moved this call time as some of you may have noticed so that we could reach our
6:26
friends um in India and uh East Asia, Australia, uh Middle East a little bit
6:32
better because I used to do these at lunchtime for me when it was easy but that missed a lot of you. So what happens now is that we don't see the
6:38
people from Europe as much because it's late in the evening for them. But of course Europe doesn't need as much help
6:44
as a lot of other places do. So uh happy to have you all here. Okay. So, let me
6:50
remind you to go visit the startup council. This is uh lots of free startup help for you. That's this logo behind
6:56
me. This uh where's my finger here? I can't see. There it is. This blue one
7:01
here. All right. So, go check that out and please join us and get involved. It's um a rapidly it's a new site, so
7:07
we're just getting started, but you could get in on the ground floor and be happy to help all of you everywhere as much as I can, as much as the sponsors
7:14
and team members that we have are able to. All right, so that's enough pencil sharpening. Let's get to it and see
7:19
who's in backstage and what they want to talk about because it's time to uh really get into Styrof office hours and
7:26
do some Q&A. So, I'm going to those of you backstage, I'm going to bring you on and have you um just say hi for a second
7:33
and please be ready with just a super quick hello sort of thing like just a the 30 sec, not even 30, like the
7:40
10-second version of what you're doing and what you want to talk about so that I can prioritize, right? And then we'll
7:45
come back to each of you since you're here early. uh and on camera and um we'll figure out uh the order. But just
7:51
for the moment, let me start with uh let's see who we got. Sean here. Hi Sean. Nice to meet you.
7:56
How's it going? Can you hear me? Yes, sure can. What's on tonight? I'm uh I'm in from Delaware. I'm I'm
8:02
currently on air here. The uh the overlays I'll just lean. Yes. Okay. Sorry. Let's move you over
8:08
here. Yeah, um yeah, I'm working on a large language modelbacked uh AI CFO
8:16
with a a co-founder and I got a couple questions about um doing pitch meetings and also about our product spectrum.
8:23
Cool. Okay, that sounds interesting. Congrats to you. That's a hot topic for sure. Happy to talk about that. And then
8:30
who do we have here? Salman. Hi, Salman. Nice to meet you. Hey, Scott. Nice to meet you. Um my name
8:36
is Salman. I'm a founder of Draco AI. Uh, and we're doing a fintech startup.
8:42
We're from uh, Los Angeles, California. Okay. You wrote in, you wanted to practice your pitch, right?
8:47
Uh, yes. And, uh, if there's time, maybe a very short question. Okay, cool. No, we happy to ask do what
8:55
we can. Um, Draco AI. Got it. Okay, cool. So, we usually start with a question or two and then we'll work you
9:01
in as well because I the questions help everybody kind of get level set, you know, get on the same page. And then
9:06
this is Mark. Yeah. Good evening, Scott. Hi. Nice to meet you. Where are you from?
9:12
I'm from the San Francisco Bay area. Okay. Certainly know that area. Excellent. What would you like to talk
9:18
about? Well, I'm the founder of a hardware startup, uh, Deep Tech, uh, these days
9:24
we call it, and it's a lighting device. Actually have it here. I won't turn it on because it's it's LED lighting. Um
9:31
but it works in a novel way and it is going after the niche of academics and
9:37
researchers and scientists initially and yeah I'm pretty uh pretty enthusiastic
9:43
about it but there's a lot of details that's for sure. Sure. Sure. Well what did you have a question or you want to practice a pitch
9:50
or I would like to practice a pitch. Yes. Okay. Cool. All right. We can probably get to
9:56
that. And it looks like we got one more person backstage. Jay, if you want to join us on camera, you got to turn on your camera. Um, otherwise, we'll be
10:02
just talking to these other folks here tonight. So, Jay, if you want to turn on your camera, come on down. Now's your
10:08
chance. Okay. All right, guys. So, let's see here. Sounds like um well, Sean had
10:14
the most general questions. That's usually where I like to start. So, um Solomon and Mark, I'm going to take you
10:19
hide you again if you don't mind. and Sean and I will chat for a minute and kind of set the uh environment for our
10:26
uh the rest of our uh audience here and uh hopefully say something smart. Okay, let me just one more second. Sean, just
10:33
um so welcome to uh Tiffany from Amsterdam and Rainia from Saudi Arabia, uh Glendale, California, uh DC, Tustin,
10:42
all that kind of stuff. Great. How do you get backstage? Well, these people all followed the detailed instructions that are posted in the event. So, they
10:48
all submitted stuff before the show. So, if we have extra time, we can let you backstage, but you got to read the
10:55
details in the Eventbrite and the Meetup listings and our newsletter. Everywhere we put it, there are also links that
11:01
these folks all figured out. So, happy to meet you. Um, but we can't have everybody. So, if we have time, we'll
11:07
we'll try you as well. Um, but in for the moment, we're going to talk to the guys that uh followed all the detailed
11:12
instructions. So, okay, cool. All right, Sean, let's uh let's have at it. Nice to meet you.
11:18
So, uh, we, um, we launched our product April 15th. Um, my co-founder is, uh,
11:24
running a bookkeeping company. He has about, uh, 200 clients. So, we have this kind of built-in a nice built-in beta,
11:31
uh, beta group for the product, which is aimed at, uh, small business owners, which is, you know, exactly what his
11:37
demographic is. Sure. Um, started to doing our pitching. We did, um, tech week in New York City.
11:43
Nice. Uh, just sort of saw a bunch of people pitching. um we were a little bit too late to do our pitches, but then we've
11:49
subsequently um got onto a couple of different um uh uh contests. And so my
11:56
first question and and we're doing very well. We got um actually first place on uh Level Up, which is a uh I think
12:03
Grasshopper is the supporter, whatever. And so they've moved us to the next round of review. Um but we just want to,
12:09
you know, we want to get more. So, I'm wondering what is your advice for finding pitch contests because that
12:16
seems to be where we do very well. You know, we're we're both 30-year business people. We, you know, we know we're
12:21
comfortable with presenting, right? We have a very tight pitch. It's, you know, we have a video pitch. It's all it's all
12:26
really good. Um, but we just need more. So, what's what's your advice on finding pitch contests?
12:31
Yeah. Okay. That's a great question and that's a nice general one. Thank you for opening the show. Um yeah, it it's uh
12:38
it's a moving target and the publicity is so inconsistent. So I agree with you. So the the traditional answer of course
12:43
is Google, right? Or Eventbrite maybe. Um one thing that you could try doing if you haven't already is to set up a
12:50
Google alert, a free Google alert. We'll scan um the internet for listings, right? If you get the keywords right and um that
12:57
can be helpful. We actually have, believe it or not, you you played right into my evil plan here. We actually have
13:03
a website about this um because this is a consistent problem for people. So, but let me just ask you one thing. Are you
13:09
do you have a budget to travel or are you looking for stuff? You said you're from Delaware. I'm in I'm in Delaware. Yeah, we can.
13:14
Yeah, we can travel. That's fine. Okay. Okay. So, that's a big one, right? Because the the distinction of course is
13:20
local or you know how local how how far can your budget go? Right. So, um so I would um there's a couple
13:28
big series like you said the tech week series. So there's New York Tech Week. Um there's Denver Tech Week. There's San
13:33
Francisco Tech Week. There's LA Tech Week. I personally we run Irvine Tech Week, Irvine Tech Week, which is Orange County here in Southern California.
13:39
There San Diego Tech Week. So I would just Google a bunch of tech weeks if you want to do that. There's a lot of them.
13:44
Um and there's a Midwest Tech Week that's in being organized right now that I got a call about, um etc., etc. So
13:51
that's one if you hadn't done that already. Um, the other would be um to
13:57
um sign up on a bunch of email lists for some and then you know it will kind of
14:03
grow. You know how spam grows, right? You sign up for five, pretty soon you'll be on a list for 12, right? Um, but the
14:09
one I like the best um I could show you, but I I'm always afraid to show Well,
14:14
well, let me try. Okay, I'm If I lose you all, I apologize. Let's I'm going to try to share screen here because we
14:20
built this website. We built what you're asking for which and it's called, let me say it before I lose you. It's called
14:26
startupevents.org. Startupevents.org because everything I do is trying to help founders fill in
14:33
gaps because we don't make money doing this and there's no money to be made and so nobody will do it, right? Unless you
14:38
have somebody like me to do it. So, hold on. I think we even have a caption for this. I'll put it on the screen.
14:45
Investors. There it is. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So try this. Go to
14:51
startupvents.org and I'll try to show you guys right now. We just kind of rebooted it. So there's a gap um and we
14:57
just started putting up um new events actually literally last week. So let's see if I can get this to actually show.
15:05
And like I said, everybody, if I lose you, just come back in two minutes and I'll reboot. Okay, let's see what that
15:11
does. Okay, how's that? Can you see anybody? Can you see that? Yep. Yeah, it's good. Okay, so there you go. Look, um,
15:18
startups upcoming face-to-face events. So, the key with this, sounds like you all can hear me still, too. This is a
15:24
global calendar of face-to-face events. So, I emphasize those two words because I don't know of any other calendar like
15:31
this. And that's why, Sean, I wanted to show it to you. It's global, first of all, so that may be more than you want.
15:36
And but it's also why I asked about your budget because if you're willing to fly to Australia or Paris or Riad, there are
15:42
lots of, you know, there's pitch competitions everywhere. Um but it's so it's uh face tof face globally and
15:49
that's the other piece face to face. These are not virtual events. Um and we're trying to put all in one place
15:55
because of what you were asking about. Um I guess that worked right and now I'm back.
16:00
You're back. Cool. All right. Well, I learned something too. Excellent. Um so that that uh maybe that's helpful to you and
16:06
we're trying that full and we're trying to find more submissions, too. So if you find some events and we don't have them,
16:13
there's a form. Please send them minimal post them. That's the idea is to spin up everybody here. Right. Simultaneously, since I'm on the topic,
16:19
since you were so generous to set this up for me to smack it out of the park, um on startups.org,
16:26
uh we actually have the the sister calendar, which is virtual events. So,
16:31
um I guess you know what? I'm getting good at this. Let's try sharing this. I'm g uh okay, I'm sure this is going to
16:38
break, but let's see. Startup in. Okay, so this is the new startups.org. org that I was talking about. So, this is a
16:46
website obviously and it's a membership directory is the heart of it, but if you scroll down, there's all kinds of news,
16:53
uh, featured members and such. And this is why we built this for all of you guys to come on, founders, I mean, to come on
16:59
and promote yourselves. I'm giving you the business development and publicity tools that um, this platform offers so
17:06
that you can publicize yourself. So, every member has their own blog, for example. And like I said, we're supported by uh sponsors and it's only
17:13
20 bucks. We're just charging something so that people will value it, right? If it's free, it just gets overrun. Here's
17:18
the the first wave of startups that have signed up. Um and the service providers are coming and we're getting investors.
17:25
But this is what I was driving at. This is going to be and you can see we only have one event and it's not even an
17:30
online one, but we're literally tomorrow there will be virtual events. As you can see, this one is highlighted as virtual
17:36
events. And so the two of those together should give you Sean a really good overview of um all the events at least
17:43
that we can find. Not necessarily all the ones that there are, but the best collection that I know of of pitch
17:48
competitions and conferences and things that are oriented towards supporting early stage uh high growth founders. So
17:56
awesome. There you go. That's a long answer to a short question. Yeah, that's great.
18:01
But you found the right guy. Cool. So, all right. Um, well, let's see. That was probably enough on that.
18:08
Did you have more you wanted to talk about? I did have, yeah, one sort of focused question about uh product. So, uh, our
18:14
core product is an AI CFO. So, you know, you're a small business owner. Let's say
18:20
you own an insurance company and maybe your revenues are 5 to10 million a year.
18:25
You have, I don't know, seven, nine, something like that employees. You're not going to hire a CFO. So you might
18:30
get a fractional CFO but you know they maybe only five hours a month something like that. So the idea is that we're
18:36
interfacing with um an accounting system. So right now it's QuickBooks but
18:41
we can pretty much connect to anything. Um and we're interfacing to their bank account. So we're using uh Mastercard's
18:47
Finicity product which allows you to kind of like Plaid whereyou can connect to a bank account and get bank balance
18:53
information, bank trans all that you know transfers and checks and all that stuff. And so you can ask, so it lets the small business owner u ask natural
19:00
language questions like, you know, how much is my payroll next week, whatever, right? And it goes and searches all the
19:06
information and and responds back. Yeah, that's our core product. Um I'm thinking of adding a
19:14
a fintech component to it because that's really my background. I'm I was CTO of a credit card company for a long time. Um
19:20
I built a couple of fintexs from the ground up. uh had a couple of actually successful exits using consumer uh
19:27
credit consumer fintech stuff. Um and so now we're doing this is strictly B2B. So
19:32
the idea would be that um we would be their bank. We'll we'll use a rent a charter kind of arrangement through you
19:40
know somebody like Q2 or Treasury Prime um and we'll get I don't you know Celtic Bank or Evolve or one of these guys to
19:47
um to do the backend piece of us. But the the the proposal would be you know
19:52
um hey you know name of the project is Quantari hey Quantari uh pay the
19:58
electric bill right and then it can just do it can initiate an a can you know hey quantari send a wire to Joe for $5,000
20:06
whatever right and so because then we own the back end of the platform we can facilitate those things so my question
20:13
is should we like is it better to remain sort of laser focused on a core value
20:20
proposition or you know go into a much larger ecosystem where there are
20:25
potentially 800 pound gorillas that are owning some space already. What's your take on on that?
20:30
Yeah, that's a great question and um obviously you're well qualified in this area so I don't know that my answers are
20:36
any better than yours but but since you asked I'm happy to try. Um,
20:43
yeah, it's a great question and everybody listening, this is something you all should be thinking about because in the AI world, people can spin things
20:49
up really fast, right? And it's things are moving faster than they used to. So, the kind of on the one hand, the
20:55
back-end integrations that you're talking about would offer you some great defensibility because those are hard to do. I don't need to tell you if you were
21:00
CTO of a credit card company, you're talking about highly regulated industries and massive security concerns
21:06
and blah blah blah, right? I mean, know your customers and yeah, I mean, that's a big deal. If you could pull all that
21:11
off would be fantastic. Um, I guess my gut would be though that I
21:18
would think that that's first of all a really big bite to chew with what I gather are the resources that you have.
21:25
And again, you would know because you probably managed big teams of people doing this, right? That's and and more
21:30
importantly, as you said, the big gorillas in that space, they're all trying to do that, too, right? and they're probably going to get
21:36
there faster. So, as a purely exit-minded advisor or as your new friend, I I guess I would think
21:44
it depends on what you want, right? Like if you want to build this into the new Capital One or, you know, some big, you
21:50
know, company, then of course you can try and do that, but that's going to take a lot of work, you know, obviously
21:56
and resources as opposed to if you're in this, you said you've had a couple exits already. If you're looking for another
22:01
exit, it would seem to me that if you built something that was really useful that was a a feature that one of these
22:08
guys could then buy and plug in to the Taj Mahal that they're building. Y you might have a shorter uh lifespan but
22:15
in a good way because somebody would take you out. Whereas if in a good way I mean by buy you out. So if you were to
22:21
build uh this other thing, it's going to take you a lot longer. Who knows what all the competitors are doing in the
22:26
meantime and I would guess that they're going to see you as competitive as opposed to complimentary.
22:33
My two cents. Yeah. But yeah, we're thinking, you know, Intuitit is a great sort of takeover target because, you know, they
22:40
may be struggling in the LLM space and they have they have a product on QuickBooks Online, but it's kind of crummy and Well, all of QuickBooks Online's kind of
22:46
crummy. Yeah. That's no surprise, but which for us, but
22:51
Yeah. Yeah. Plenty of opportunity there. Good point. Yeah. Okay. Cool. That's awesome. All right. Well, I hope that's helpful.
22:57
And anybody in the chat room, so we've had a couple interesting back and forths here. Um U Sean and I, uh so if you have
23:04
expertise or ideas that could be helpful to him, please chime in as well. I don't, like I said several times, I
23:10
don't have all the answers, but uh Sean's here being brave and talking about his ideas. So if you have support
23:15
or resources, introductions that could help him or certainly feedback on his questions, please post that, too. Sean,
23:21
nice to meet you. Hope we'll see you again. Um, useful. Love to hear more about that. Good luck.
23:26
All right, so that was our friend Sean from Delaware. Um, something exciting he's building there. Lots of AI
23:32
everywhere. Everywhere is AI now, right? Um, let's uh Okay, let's say hi to some folks in the chat room and then we're
23:38
going to go over to I guess Salman or Mark. Let's see what Let me see if there's anything going on in the chat
23:44
room. Anything's on fire. Sounds like everybody can hear me. I forgot to ask that, but obviously some of you can hear
23:49
me. And it looks like we've got um YouTubers and or LinkedIn people here as well. Let's see. Yeah, I saw some
23:57
LinkedIn users, right? Good. Okay. Okay. So, uh there we go. Marcus from uh
24:06
Huntington Beach and um Rajesh from India. Nice to meet you. And uh let's
24:16
see. Not sure what Alfred's talking about. Drug powered military cartel. Okay. Um,
24:25
let's see. Davies Graham. Davian Graham from Irvine, a edtech platform. Very
24:31
cool. You guys can you can put the URLs of your uh of your companies in here. Let each other know. You want to put in
24:36
your LinkedIn, you know, go ahead. You can do that, too. This is not like I'm not managing this like it's some big uh,
24:43
you know, fancy production. This is just me with a webcam. So happy to try to help you all. In fact, let me put my
24:49
LinkedIn in there, too. Happy to meet you guys. We are very active on LinkedIn. Actually, there's more news
24:55
that we get from startups than we can put in our newsletters, but a lot of it ends up on LinkedIn. So, the first of
25:01
those links is the startup council page. Love to have you uh follow us there. And then uh second one's my personal one.
25:08
So, uh if you want to connect, please uh happy to do that. Just please say like, you know, I saw you on startup office
25:14
hours or something like that. So I know cuz I get so much inbound because of my books and stuff. I we don't accept all
25:20
the requests basically. So but if you're a a virtual friend be happy to connect and um and help you out or um make
25:27
referrals etc. Okay. So um sorry back to the chat. I was just trying to catch up with the chat here. Okay. Um
25:36
okay. Okay. So Sesh is kind of agreeing with what I said uh to Sean there. He says, "Uh, I believe the more micro the
25:43
services, the more sellable." Yeah, I think that's kind of what I was saying. That's a better summary. Um, okay. And
25:50
another Delaware guy, too, or girl. Okay. Okay. Cool. So, everybody's
25:56
doing well here, it looks like. Good. Okay. So, let's move on to what are we going to do next? Let me look at my
26:02
notes. So, Solomon wanted to pitch and Mark wanted to pitch as well. Okay. Well, let's see. So Salman, I got your
26:08
um I got your email earlier. Let's see.
26:14
So let's trying to find this. Okay. So the idea here, by the way, guys, is that
26:20
um people who are members of the startup council are going to get priority for this stuff. So just as a reminder, happy
26:26
to have you come join us and check it out. Uh there's a lot, and believe me, there's a lot coming that isn't there
26:32
yet. So it's going to be very cool and it's really trying to introduce you all to the worldwide network that I operate
26:37
in right. So like I I do a lot of speaking all over the world like in Australia or India or you know Canada
26:44
whatever. Uh so I have friends and I belong to organizations in all over the world and I think that this kind of show
26:51
and our network that we're building there at startupconsil.org is designed to help you connect with all those
26:56
resources. So whether you're from India or Indiana, you can um find the
27:02
resources you need. Okay. So let's let me go backstage here again and let's
27:07
see. Salman. Here's Salman. Okay. Hey,
27:12
Salman. Hey, Scott. All right. So the uh I I didn't do the
27:18
rules. I don't know. I don't think you've been here before. At least I haven't met you. But here's how we do our pitches. This is for you and Mark
27:23
and anybody else. So they're two minutes. no slides. Um, just verbal. And
27:29
I know two minutes is an artificial length, but the idea is it's just to,
27:34
you know, it's long enough to really say something, but without getting into the detail because the real detail we don't have time to get into when we got all
27:40
these other people watching, right? It's not a good use of everyone's time. But, um, 2 minutes and verbal only. And the
27:46
idea for everybody watching is that you'll listen and give him some feedback. So, we're not going to really
27:52
be able to debate the business model. That's not what we're doing. We're debating or trying to offer constructive
27:57
feedback on the pitch itself. So, what did he say? What should he have said
28:02
that he didn't? What did he forget to say? Does he need to talk louder? Does he need a haircut? You know, like like
28:08
stuff like that. Just like try to keep it friendly and what feedback you would have if you were an investor, right? So,
28:14
just that kind of thing because we're going to presume that the idea is awesome because that leads to a much
28:19
longer discussion. And if we want to have that discussion then Solomon and I have to talk take it offline and you know have a private call or something.
28:25
But this is so this is just about the pitch and kind of the style. It's it's kind of like style tips really as much as anything and also just to give
28:31
everybody practice. So a lot of times we have people come on and they've never pitched at all before but they see that this is a friendly and supportive place.
28:38
So it gives them a chance to practice because honestly that's what you need. Practice is it's king here. I mean
28:45
especially to speak quickly uh and coherently about something you're excited about. you can stumble over your
28:50
own words or or miss things and practice really does help. So, I'm just looking here. There it is. We're gonna label
28:57
this. Startup investor pitch practice. There you go. Tada. All right. So, I'm going to put two minutes on my phone
29:03
here. Yeah. Just a quick question right before um am I supposed to I forget if this is a rule or not. Uh
29:09
am I supposed to say the amount that we're raising or leave that out? Well, that's a good question. A lot of
29:14
pitch um competitions don't want you to. Sorry, I'm trying to get the timer here.
29:20
Um, for this reason, hold on, let me Okay, there we're ready. Um, it's a good
29:25
question. This goes to whether people are accredited investors or not. There's a lot of rules, especially in the United States. I know people are here from all
29:32
over the world, but um, the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States is very fussy about to whom you
29:37
can market a private deal. And private deals are supposed to be only marketed to accredited investors. And that means
29:43
you have um a couple million dollars in the bank or a very high net worth of current income sort of thing. So I'm a
29:50
I'm obviously an accredited investor, have been for a long time. U but Salman isn't just pitching to me, right? He's
29:55
pitching to the whole audience. So there are pitch competitions. For example, um like I run Stanford Angels for my area,
30:02
right? And at Stanford Angels, we only allow accredited investors on the call. Um, and we're very picky about what they
30:09
can and cannot I mean the founders can and cannot say in terms of their raise because we don't want the university it
30:16
to look like the university is involved in in the investing. So it's just educational, right? But in this context
30:22
uh I'm very clear that this is pitch practice. That's one of the reasons it's on the screen. This is practice. So I think you can say whatever you want and
30:28
I would suggest you do practice that because the ask is a very important part of the pitch and it's also something a
30:34
lot of people have trouble they have trouble asking. Right? So it's I don't know you Solomon if that's easy for you
30:40
or not but some people they they get embarrassed when it comes time comes time to ask for money and it's important
30:45
to ask confidently and clearly. So yes as a long answer I'm good at
30:51
so go ahead. All right so let whenever you're ready. Okay. Um hi everyone. Uh I'm Salman. I'm
30:58
the founder of Draco AI. We are a fintech company. Uh we're B2B. Um and
31:05
what we're doing is we're automating uh loan underwriting uh starting with a
31:10
specific uh industry called uh merchant cash advance. It's a spec um it's called
31:15
uh uh MCA for short. Um it's a small business lending type of uh funding.
31:23
And um the problem that we're trying to solve there is that uh when an
31:30
underwriter looks at a loan application um in specifically an MC underwriter
31:36
when they look at a loan application they have to go through a whole bunch of bank statements um and
31:44
they have to do a lot of tedious manual data extraction u by looking at a lot of
31:49
financial documents. And to make matters worse, um it 90% of the applications
31:56
that come in don't actually get funded. So most of their efforts actually wasted. So the product that we're
32:02
building is we're using le uh we're leveraging AI to look through financial documents and we're building software uh
32:09
and AI pipelines to um do all the information gathering for the
32:14
underwriter so that they have freed up uh their time and energy to um simply do
32:21
the funding decisions. Um so we already uh have a customer
32:26
lined up who's eager to use this. Um we've developed AI algorithms um inhouse that are uh performing very well and in
32:34
certain cases outperforming humans. Um and we have domain and technical expertise uh in this area. We've worked
32:40
on it for three years now. Uh so we have a lot of it already built out but we
32:45
need to staff up to um get to production. So uh we're trying to raise a seed round of $ 1.5 million. Um, our
32:52
goal is to get to production within six months and spend the next six months um, scaling and branching out to other
32:59
industries from there. Okay. Well, I hope you were done because you were exactly on two minutes if
33:06
Oh, yeah. That's a pitch. Okay. I don't know if you practiced that, but that was that was pretty pretty on point. Okay. So, thank you.
33:13
So, great to hear about that exciting opportunity. So, everybody that's listening, um, please come on to the
33:19
chat room and offer him feedback. Right. That was a good pitch, I thought. But what was not good? We're we're all we're
33:25
all going to presume we're all friends here, but so we want to pick on him rather than be supportive. So I'll start with the I'll start with the nice stuff
33:31
anyway. But um you're clear. You speak clearly and in a friendly professionally
33:36
casual way. That's a real asset, right? A lot of people especially that listen to this show from other parts of the world, they would love to have your very
33:44
clear American accent, right? It's it's seriously it's an asset, right? Um and
33:49
uh you've got a nice smile. you you know you you're good at this. You you'll be you'll be even better if you practice. So um the uh proposition was well
33:58
explained. I understand what the problem is and that it is an opportunity. That's good. Um so and then you gave an ask
34:06
that was clear uh and what you were going to do with it which was uh clear as well or at least clear enough you
34:12
know so that it could lead to the next conversation. And that's the point with all these things is as probably most of you know, but just to say it out loud. A
34:18
pitch is never going to get you a check. A pitch is designed to get you to a meeting, right? And another conversation
34:24
and then another conversation. So you don't need to feel like you got to cram everything into that two minutes because
34:29
that's really hard, right? Um but you did a good job of giving me enough so that I could be like if I'm was that
34:35
kind of investor, I would know what stage you were at, what kind of resources you need, what kind of
34:41
resources you have and track record to date. and it would give me some idea about whether I wanted to ask more and
34:46
that is the objective. So I'd say you passed for sure. Absolutely. Thank you. And LinkedIn user says it was a nice
34:53
pitch. You're a friend LinkedIn user. Um and Project says the same. Um so uh and
34:58
Sean says every pitch we did was two to three minutes and you get penalized for going over. Time is super important. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So what
35:05
could you do better? Well like most on Well, how how much have you pitched before? Is this the first?
35:10
I have conversational pitches through uh certain meetings. Uh we only started raising money about uh two months ago.
35:18
Um Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I like the phrase you use there. I'm going to write that down. It may show up in my next book,
35:23
conversational pitches, because that's what you want a pitch to feel like. A a pitch should not feel like some Broadway
35:30
show la, you know, like the rehearsed thing. It should feel like especially at the early stage because your investors
35:37
are going to be angel investors probably or um VCs who've chosen to focus on early stage. So they want to be your
35:43
friend like they want to like vibe together and a conversational pitch I think is exactly the right vibe you want
35:49
even if you're on stage in front of hundreds of people. You want to be like a real person and be like hey here's what we're doing. Are you interested?
35:55
And that's the vibe. I I like that. So what would I do better or differently? Like most founders, you talked like 90%
36:02
about the product, a little bit about the ask, and you said nothing about the business. So that's a big hole. You need
36:09
to rework your pitch. And you had no numbers. Investors eat numbers. So if
36:15
you don't feed me numbers, I'm starving. Now, I got the idea, but your pitch would double in its impact very quickly
36:21
if you could add I don't even know what they would be, but six different or 10 different more numbers, right? Like the
36:27
only numbers I heard were a million and a half and you have one customer in six months. Those are the only three numbers you said I think in the whole two
36:33
minutes and that's not enough. You need to be supporting everything you're doing with numbers. Um so I would revisit you
36:42
can watch the replay because what you said was fine. It was good but listen to it again and think like I could prove
36:48
that with a number or I could quote a statistic for that or you know this kind of conversion rate is what we're seeing.
36:53
Like we we need numbers. We're listening. We're building spreadsheets in our mind. We're building financial models as we hear you. And if you don't
37:00
give us numbers, it suggests that you don't know how we think
37:05
or worse, you don't know the numbers, which is really scary, right? Yeah.
37:10
Yeah. So, we do know the numbers. It's just uh time crunch trying to squeeze everything.
37:16
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not throwing stones at you. Yeah. This is an artificial environment, but I'm making the point for everybody, not just you.
37:22
Like, numbers are key and it's very often missed. Sorry, that's why I'm harping on it. So, okay. So, a lot more
37:27
numbers and I would talk more about the business and less about the product. Well, the solution, the problem, and
37:32
then really I heard very little about the customer and that the one you have any traction you like any traction you
37:39
have, you have one interested customer or something like that. Talk more about that and how are you going to acquire more customers. Um, and then if you can
37:46
throw in numbers that you may not know for sure, but at least gives us a sense. we have a gross we expect a gross margin
37:52
of this or a typical customer acquisition cost of that or a lifetime value of this and and I know you may not
37:58
know that stuff yet but just dropping a few of those in will give you more financial credibility to those of us who
38:04
think about numbers as we're hearing the rest of your talk. So um and Sean says
38:10
try not to say um well yeah we all try that. I work on that. Yeah. So that's but that's fair for sure. Um, yeah. And
38:18
Taylor, this a good one, Taylor. If you were given one and a half million, what would you do with it? And when will you start making money and amounts, right?
38:24
Those, so those are businesses type questions. That's kind of what I mean. Like how does the business work and then
38:29
when do I start getting my money back? Like we need a little more of that and a little less of like the painting the
38:34
picture of the vision so that we can like engage because because what you're saying I think people are going to get
38:39
at least anybody who's financial is going to get it quickly. even if they don't specifically know the merchant cash advanced market, they're going to
38:44
get the idea this is a lending business, you know, and it probably has high rates because it's that kind of business.
38:50
Okay, I got that. I don't need much more of that. And the processing story is good. Yeah, absolutely. Um and then um I
38:57
guess and again, you don't have time to do all this in two minutes, right? I'm just trying to be helpful. Of course, competition is going to be the other
39:02
one, especially in AI. If you're spinning up something in AI, there may be 40 other people doing the same thing. So, it might be good to get ahead of
39:08
that and say something about competition or barriers to entry or um any unique competitive advantages that you guys
39:14
have. So, all right. Well, I hope that's helpful. Oh, yeah. That's been uh tremendously helpful. Appreciate it. Yeah.
39:21
Great. If uh if I have a quick chance to ask a short question. Um the
39:26
Okay. Um we are uh reaching out to investors
39:31
uh and we're trying to find investors to pitch to. Yeah. Yeah. And what we've been doing is going to meetups and local events and um we have
39:39
conferences that we are attending um upcoming conferences specifically in the
39:45
MCA market. Okay. So we'll be talking to both investors and customers at that conference. Um,
39:52
now do you have any advice on go finding local meetups or finding um
40:00
investors locally where we can take a little bit of a a more of a targeted approach? Because I'd like to just kind
40:06
of approach investors rather than kind of going to meetups all the time and
40:12
finding that there's um not that many investors in the group and
40:19
you know. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's a that's a a fair problem, you know, that everybody has.
40:26
Um, and believe it or not, we built another website for that. You guys are making this easy for me tonight. Let me
40:32
show you another website. This is called Startup. You're never
40:37
going to believe it. What you kind of want, what you're saying is you want a directory of startup investors. Well,
40:42
here you go. Here's a startup investors directory.com. And we built this about a year ago. This
40:49
has 3,000 early stage investors searchable by 50 different categories and sets of keywords. And this is not
40:55
free because it took us a lot of time and money to build it. Uh but it's still, you know, way less than it would
41:00
cost you to go out and find all these people. So you can check that out u if that looks useful. That might be a good
41:07
resource. Um I'm really not here to u just you know pump our own services
41:12
though. Um more other opportunities would be especially since you're in Los Angeles. LA Tech Week is going to is
41:17
coming up in October or something like that. Like I talked about with Sean earlier. You want to get go to as many
41:23
of those events as you can. Um you're in Kenoga Park, so you could get down to
41:29
Santa Monica if you want. Uh Expert Dojo is a very active probably the most
41:34
active venture firm certainly in Southern California, maybe in America. And they're headquartered in Santa
41:40
Monica. And those guys, I'm I'm an LP and them they have all kinds of different events because they have a
41:45
nice big space. It's on the Third Street Prominade and they have a big space that used to be a big restaurant up on a roof
41:51
deck. Um so there's all kinds of events there. I'd get on that list. Um
41:57
yeah, uh stuff like that. I could think about it some more, but um basically the meetups are a good place, but I would
42:03
look at who is sponsoring the meetups that you find interesting and get on their mailing list and then they'll start emailing you, you know, and then
42:10
you can kind of pick the the best ones. Okay. Um another one is Techco Angels. I'm I'm
42:15
a Tech Coast Angel. Uh uh Duwayne, it was startupsdirectory.com.
42:20
Startupinvestorsdirectory.com. Uh hold on. I think I've got a Chiron for that
42:27
there. Um, Techos Angels is the largest uh, angel group on the West Coast, maybe
42:34
in America. There's 400 of us in several different chapters, including Los Angeles. And we don't fund stuff that is
42:40
pre-revenue much anymore, but it would be a good place for you to go to Techost. It's it's sorry, it's not Tech
42:46
Coast Angels anymore. We're now the TCA Venture Group. TCA Venture Group. And TCA Venture Group website has a bunch of
42:52
information about what what you know, angels look for and an online application and stuff like that. And uh
42:59
you could get on the list for the events that we host. Uh and then maybe I'd meet you in person. I personally MC a lot of
43:05
the stuff for TCA actually um at least here in Orange County. I mean I would love to meet you in person, both my uh co-founder and I. So
43:11
I mean anytime uh if you're at an event would love to know and uh yeah, at least
43:17
Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's going to be more going on in LA. uh in the fall. So, I'll I'll be up there again. Um yeah, that's probably enough
43:24
for now. So, I could talk LA is local for me, so I could keep talking, but we got people here from all over the world. So, we're gonna move on. But nice to
43:31
meet you. Yeah, you're welcome. Nice to meet you. I hope that uh everything goes well for you. That sounds like a cool another
43:37
cool startup. I love meeting new founders with new startups. So, um Okay, anybody in the chat room have more
43:43
questions? Uh or Oh, there was one. And then we'll get to Mark. I saw there was What did somebody say?
43:51
just so I'm not talking to myself. Um uh
43:57
okay, Taylor. Oh, Taylor, you're an investor.
44:03
I see. Okay. Yeah, you always I remember your name. You come in and you have good comments repeatedly. So, thank you for for showing up again. Um
44:12
yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, for sure you can do that. Just the the instructions are all in the event listings, Taylor. um
44:18
send in your your picture and so forth and happy to happy to include you. Okay,
44:23
here's the one I was looking for. Um from uh down under, Ali says, "General
44:31
advice uh scale my startup. We help small businesses implement AI into their
44:36
email systems, improving customer support and lead response times, etc." Okay, I don't see a follow-up question,
44:42
though. So, Ali, that didn't that's not a question. Um, that gives me some good context. But if you want if you have
44:47
actually a question, I don't see a question anyway, but if you want to follow up with that, we can we can try
44:52
to address that. But in the meantime, let's go over to Mark, who has been waiting patiently.
44:58
And he is over here, I think. Yes, Mark. And
45:03
uh, Jay and Santosh, both of you, it looks like you're backstage. If you want to come on and talk about something, you
45:10
need to turn on your cameras, please. Jay and Santosh. Okay, there's Mark. Hi, Mark.
45:16
Hello there, Scott. Okay, so you had a deep tech startup,
45:22
right? Yes. Okay, cool. So, um I don't think I Your email came late, so I didn't quite get
45:29
to print it out, but why don't you Well, did you hear the uh the sort of the format that we're doing? Just kind of
45:35
slides. Yep. Yeah. Does that work for you? It does. Okay. Well, we can go whenever you want,
45:42
though. and everybody please listen and and provide feedback when we're finished here for Mark.
45:47
Terrific. Um well uh evening. My name is Mark and I'm the CEO and founder of
45:53
light geometry and we are building a light. It's like the Batman beam. It's a
45:59
very narrow columnated light and we have a patent uh issued in the US for it. And
46:06
the problem we're solving is that typically when LEDs are used about 50%
46:11
of that light is just wasted. It's kind of just spilled. And our solution is a mouse trap that controls the light. It
46:18
brings about 98% of LED light to control uh where you want to aim it. So if
46:24
you're doing photography for example uh you know in lo Angeles and Hollywood and
46:30
cinema, you know those are winning applications. Um but our our business is
46:35
is new. We started uh maybe about three weeks ago. Uh and we already have
46:41
traction in the market uh with uh basically cold calling professors,
46:47
academics and researchers whose white papers we read that use uh LEDs or
46:52
imaging or lighting and just being like, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Here's some pictures. This exists. Do you want
46:58
to test it?" And uh yeah, we've got a lot of traction uh already. Uh, so we
47:03
sell our product for $4,000 and our cost of goods sold is about $2,000. A,000 in parts, a th000 in
47:11
labor. So, you know, 50% gross margin and our team is now two. Uh, so we added
47:17
a co-founder uh just very recently. Um, and uh we're we're growing. Our
47:23
financial uh position is we expect to do about $100,000 in sales in this year.
47:30
And that'll be our first uh you know half year in business. And our plan is
47:35
to raise a preede round of $250,000 to use for accelerating product
47:42
development. So right now we're doing kind of custom solutions uh quasi
47:48
off-the-shelf products, but we want to launch our own product which requires a production run. And yeah, that'd be
47:56
great to have everybody's feedback and insight. Thank you. All right. Good. Well, nice job. I mean,
48:01
especially if you're only three weeks old, congratulations. First of all, that's exciting, right? That's the best part of the startup is you're you're the
48:08
potential is infinite. So exciting. Um, okay. Well, that was
48:13
that was good. And, um, I think you were listening to the advice I had for Salman, like you had a lot more numbers
48:19
in there, which is really helpful because it gives us a better sense of the stage of the business. Of course,
48:24
being three weeks old gave me a pretty good idea anyway. But you went on beyond that to give me some um cost of goods
48:30
and the gross margin sort of numbers. That's really that's really helpful and even maybe a sales estimate for the end
48:36
of the year which gives some some idea of the ramp that you're expecting. So that's really helpful in terms of modeling. Um, so everybody before I
48:43
rant, everybody go ahead and uh offer your feedback there to uh to Mark. Um,
48:48
and let us know what you thought of what he had to say. And if there are more uh
48:54
suggestions that you have, constructive criticism would be great. Um, okay. So, let me see. So, how could we improve
49:00
that? Well, it was it was very nice. You get a nice conversational tone, speaking clearly and friendly. Great stuff. The
49:06
Let's see. I guess so you're early enough that there's a lot of things, you know, you can't pick I I couldn't pick on too much. I guess to someone who
49:14
doesn't know that space, I would have been curious a little more about the competition, but you made a good argument that you have patents and also
49:20
that you have your 98% of the light is somehow being concentrated. So that suggests some sort of efficacy. That's
49:26
very impressive. Um, I guess a little more just on a specific I think it would help me a lot because because I don't
49:32
know this this um this industry you kind of referenced Hollywood and professors
49:37
but maybe a specific use case would and I don't know what that would be but like on a movie set we replace this with this
49:44
because of that or whatever it is you know something specific it get so I can get my head around it. Um, and then I
49:51
guess another thing would be I like your outreach. You're going guerilla style and the professors are are interested
49:58
that congrats on that. As an investor, you know, putting my skeptical hat on, I
50:03
would be I would wonder are are are they going to buy or are they just interested
50:08
and flattered that you read their paper, right? So, there's there's people that are interested and then there's people that will actually buy. And confusing
50:15
those two can be fatal to a startup, right? because you can tell your whole family, I'm doing this and everybody's like, that's amazing, but it's because
50:21
they love you. They don't even understand what you're talking about usually, right? And then you go out of business because it it was not something
50:27
anybody actually really would pay for. So, it sounds like the next step of your outreach would be around uh finding and
50:34
validating customers. And again, maybe that doesn't apply to you because I didn't hear your whole story in two minutes, but for everybody listening,
50:40
that's the next step. If you were in a situation like Markx, he's got enough initial interest to keep going. And then
50:47
that you want to qualify that even more and more and see who would pay how much. And then a key a lot of uh people miss
50:53
is how often, right? Is this a renewable thing? Right? So they pay $4,000 once. Are they good for life, you know, or do
51:00
they have to replace this every year or do you have a razor razor blades model where you're going to sell them some fancy bulb for $1,000 every two years
51:07
that gives you some kind of recurring income? because that would be nice to hear some kind of recurring income as opposed to just oneoffs. Um and then of
51:15
course the and again you're a little early but um the go to market strategy would be the other thing. So if you tell
51:21
me a little more about with a case study, it's this like our beach head market is films or it's dental offices
51:29
or I don't know what it is conferences um someplace where lighting is important military. Um then how big is that market
51:37
and like how many would you hope to sell? You know, just give me some sense because again I don't know the market
51:43
and if it's any of those I'm not going to have numbers at hand either about the market. So if you tell me you're going
51:49
to dominate this market, I and I don't know how big that market is, it doesn't I I can't do the numbers, right? So
51:55
again, I'm trying to do estimates in my head as you talk. So if you can say, again, just making this up, you know,
52:00
we're going to go after the film market and you know, the typical thing is they use one of these every year and there's
52:06
I don't know a thousand customers for this and they'll buy three each and then they have to replace it every two years. like I I can start to do some, you know,
52:13
quantify all that and that also gives me some idea of how big the company could be because I would be a little concerned
52:20
as your new friend that the market isn't big enough at least in your initial
52:25
space if again it was film right but if there were and I think you probably I
52:30
think you kind of alluded to this maybe that was where I got the idea but like that's your initial market but there's these adjacent applications right we
52:36
start in film but then we get into uh I don't know like I said dental offices and fly fishing and whatever the other
52:42
ones are. Um, but especially if you could go towards something really big, um, like hotels or the military, like
52:49
something where they need a lot of these worldwide, that really gets investors interest, right? Because then you're
52:55
talking not just millions, but potentially billions. And that's really the the business we're in is finding
53:00
unicorns. So, was that useful? I I hope so. Yes. Yeah, definitely. So, thank you.
53:08
Great. Great. Great. Okay. Um, I'd also suggest specifically, I kept coming back to military because I don't know again
53:14
the applications here and unfortunately we don't have time to get into it, but um, if there are milit and I should say this for again for everybody, if there
53:20
are military applications of anything any of you are working on, the military is look, you know, unfortunately the
53:27
world we're living in is a little more military than it was 10 years ago, right? So there are big budgets coming
53:35
towards anything that can help the troops or help defense or help uh you
53:40
get the idea, right? So there's a lot of money there and quite often those programs are non-dilutive funding which
53:47
is what we call it because it doesn't require you to sell any equity. In other words, it's a grant. It's a gift. They
53:52
will give you the money if you can demonstrate efficacy to help the military deploy or save money or save
53:59
lives, you know, or be more deadly. So that I guess your light expertise might
54:04
have some application in there somewhere. Just guessing. So um anyway,
54:10
so yeah. So and and then for all of you also one more thing. If if you're talking about niches like that, and this is true for Salman and Sean and Mark, if
54:17
you find yourself with an application that that does attack a specific market,
54:23
say military or dental offices or or film, anything, there tend to be investors that specialize in a lot of
54:30
these things. And if you can go find those investors so that you're pitching the right investors rather than just any
54:36
investor you meet at a conference, you'll get a lot farther faster. and you may fail faster, but that's because they
54:42
have expertise and can help you correct course and it's more likely that you'll you can move faster in a good way the
54:47
sooner you get honest feedback, right? So, one of the important missions of this show and all the work that I do, my
54:53
books and stuff is to help people understand not all investors are the same. And if you invest in the research to find people that are really targeting
55:00
what you're doing already, you'll just move so much faster than the spray and prey approach, which which a lot of
55:06
people do. So, all right. Well, was that There we go. That's my TED talk. So,
55:12
cool. So, oh, I didn't I missed the um the chat room. So, what uh here's some suggestions for you. Um looks like we've
55:19
got two. One, frontal says, "What are your qualifications?" Okay, that's a good one. You don't need to tell me, but next time if you happen to have a PhD in
55:26
this, I would include that. Or, you know, what brought you into it? Because that gives people interesting context.
55:31
There's probably a personal connection somehow to this. And the fact you already have a patent, you must have been at this a while. So that's a great
55:38
suggestion and Sesh says which is the market what's the market challenge commercially now and how the solution
55:44
resolves is not very clear. Yeah. Okay. That's kind of what I was saying in a different way like some specific
55:49
examples of a use case would help crystallize that a lot and especially if there was a initial what we call a beach
55:56
head market that you were really excited about that would be great to hear more about that in particular. So cool. All
56:03
right. Well nice to meet you Mark. I hope that's helpful and uh you're welcome to uh like I said watch on
56:09
YouTube. Everybody can go back and watch them on YouTube again if you'd like. But if you want to review what you said and compare that to what we've talked about,
56:15
I bet you you'll be you know we'll be here again next month if you want to come back. We've had many people do that and it's amazing how uh to see them
56:21
improve. It's lots of fun. So great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet
56:27
you. All right. So there we go. All right. So we're already at an hour. So I guess that's probably going to do us for
56:34
tonight. And I'll just run through the chat room here. Let me see if anybody else um if anybody wants to toss in some
56:40
last minute questions. I don't mind. Um but let's see. Got to click over here.
56:47
Okay. So, what have we heard lately in the chat room?
56:52
Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
56:57
Okay. Now, thank you all for the feedback. I see a lot of you giving feedback there. and our founders who
57:02
pitched. You could go and review that on LinkedIn as well. You'll see um you'll
57:08
see the feedback scroll through I think on YouTube when you watch the replay so you can see what people said.
57:14
And um okay, and let me remind you, yeah, next time if you want to be backstage, happy
57:20
to have you do that. I just can't manage everybody when it everybody shows up at the same time and I don't get any chance
57:26
to prep. So, if you can send in the RS, use the RSVP form and email uh like
57:31
Solomon and Neil and Mark did, that's super helpful to us and happy to have you. And of course, we'll give
57:36
preference to those of you who are members over at startupconsil.org. Okay. And we have a couple last minute
57:42
questions here. Here's Tiffany. I think Tiffany, you're from Amsterdam, it looked like. So, uh if that's true,
57:47
you're up really late or really early, I should say. So, thanks for joining us. the um uh she says Tiffany says uh
57:58
what's going on here? Uh there it is. Okay. Tiffany says, "I know a lot of investors are a little tired of
58:03
listening to another AI solution." That's true. Is there anything we should avoid when pitching a tech startup uh
58:09
for a health tech startup? Yeah, Tiffany, that's a good question. You're right. We're seeing everything as AI
58:14
now, right? Um five years ago it was crypto. few years before that it was uh
58:20
cloud services or mobile maybe these days it's all AI and honestly I think AI
58:25
deserves the hype but it does make it hard for the those of us who hear a lot of pitches to separate the facts from
58:31
the fiction so I guess um the number one recommendation I would
58:37
have for you Tiffany or any of you who are pitching AI things is to be sure that you're truly using AI in a real and
58:45
um defensible way authentic way. There's a lot of companies that are calling
58:51
themselves AI that aren't really using AI. They're just using some basic
58:56
machine learning or even just basically software like database calls or something, you know. Um, and they're
59:02
automating things, which is super cool and it may be all you need, right? You don't have to be AI. If you can make
59:07
money, investors will be interested. It's not about being AI or not. The reason AI is exciting is because we
59:12
don't really know where it's going to go and how big it could be. And that like I said a minute ago in another context the
59:18
potential for massive gains is really attractive. Um so I would if you're
59:24
going to say AI I would be ready to defend it with specific use cases and description of the AI that you are using
59:32
and any as well as any dependencies that that suggests. For example, if you're
59:38
building on top of OpenAI versus Perplexity or Llama or or DeepSeek, whatever, you know, whatever whichever
59:45
model you're using, or is your platform somehow agnostic API based that you can pull from different ones or you know
59:52
what what of the AI is yours and unique to you that you own that investors can
1:00:00
benefit and profit from if they invest in you as opposed to things that you're just importing or relying on. third
1:00:07
party sources that maybe anybody else could do just the same. That's so it's
1:00:12
kind of a mixture of real tech and defensible differentiation. I think that
1:00:17
would help. So, um there at least that's something. And who else has suggestions
1:00:23
here? Again, I don't think I have all the answers. And oh, it's 6 a.m. for you. Okay. Well, you got up early for
1:00:28
this, I guess. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. That's great. I don't get many, like I said, I don't get many European uh visitors or viewers anymore
1:00:35
live anyway because uh I've been doing this to try to help the Indian and uh South Asian markets and and East East
1:00:42
and Australia as well, Asia Pacific. Okay. Uh Taylor says, Taylor is back
1:00:49
with uh can you let us know one more time the website for accredited investors? Oh, I was talking about Tech
1:00:56
Coast Angels. Tech Coast Angels, but our name, like I said, has changed. We were
1:01:01
that for 25 years, and now we are TCA Venture Group. TCA Venture Group. And
1:01:09
that's here in Southern California. But there is a new chapter in Atlanta, I think, as well as uh I think in Tampa or
1:01:17
somewhere like that in Florida. And there are TCA uh chapters popping up all over the place. So, if you're watching
1:01:22
this and want to learn how to run an angel group in your town, contact me and we'll get you that set up. Um, so yeah,
1:01:30
tca venture.com and you can use my name if you want to um apply as a member or as a founder
1:01:37
either, right? Uh, I'm a long-term member there. Okay, let's see. What is this one? LinkedIn user says, "I have a
1:01:44
B2B SAS point of sale product. I realize I'm in a highly competitive market, but I did it better and cheaper. Good job.
1:01:51
More importantly, I have features and products the industry has never seen before. I've reached out to investors via emails. I never hear anything. I
1:01:57
spent easily 300 hours on my pitch deck and I think it's pretty solid. How do I get more feedback so that I know what it
1:02:03
is I am doing wrong? Okay, that's a legit question and so frustrating, right? 300 hours. Okay, first of all,
1:02:11
don't spend any more time on your pitch deck. That's clearly not the problem, right? That's that your pitch deck must
1:02:17
be magic. You could have written like 300 hours. You could have like written Lord of the
1:02:23
Rings or something by now. Um, and and I, you know, I'm not being mean. I did this myself. My first company, I rewrote
1:02:29
that business plan so many damn times over and over and over and it didn't make any difference and eventually we
1:02:35
ran out of money anyway. The business plan is not what you're missing here. I think um I think it's your networking if
1:02:42
I had to guess. And I'm sure some other folks who else has questions or sorry advice here for a LinkedIn user. uh the
1:02:50
the frustration you're feeling I I feel badly for you because I like I said I've lived it. Not getting any feedback is so
1:02:56
annoying. So that's literally why I'm writing this book is to help teach folks who are smart like you and accomplished
1:03:02
like you have something to add but maybe don't know how to do business development and meet the investors. Um so watch for the new book or get on the
1:03:09
email list like I talked about before because we'll do some prizes and you know early giveaways and stuff when it's
1:03:14
ready. Anyway, the answer. So, uh I would go to more events and meet investors. Enter pitch competitions.
1:03:22
Come on here and practice your pitch. Uh you've got to get out and engage. And
1:03:27
maybe you have been, but I think you got to do more because what you're lacking, it sounds like, is feedback. And
1:03:32
whatever you're presenting, if you're getting literally zero response, there's two answers. One is that you're
1:03:38
targeting the wrong people. So, you haven't done enough research into
1:03:43
finding out who really invests in these kind of things. And we can talk about that. Go watch some of the old episodes
1:03:49
of this show. I talk about that almost every show. We haven't gotten into that here today. But targeting the right people is critical. Um, you haven't
1:03:56
developed relationships so that people will do the referrals and give you the extra attention that it sounds like you
1:04:04
deserve because the warm introduction is key here. Uh, and if you really don't
1:04:09
know anybody, then I would suggest trying to find attorneys who work in the startup space and hire them because
1:04:15
attorneys know everybody. It's like the secret, right? Attorneys know everybody and maybe they can introduce you to some
1:04:22
people you don't know. And um, speaking of that, as usual, we have a service for that for free. If you go to
1:04:28
startupconsil.org, there's a form under services that says attorney or professional services introductions or
1:04:34
something like that. and you can fill that out and we'll help you meet attorneys or accountants or software
1:04:41
developers or whatever kind of professional services you need because our sponsors love to hear that stuff,
1:04:46
right? So, if you're looking for smart feedback about that, attorneys may be a way to do that. The other thing is it
1:04:52
might be you, right? Maybe the way you're writing the emails is coming off
1:04:58
as rude or uh in person you're I don't know, you didn't take a shower. I mean,
1:05:03
you got to examine all your assumptions. Um, and I I it's probably not that. I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm trying to
1:05:09
be honest. Uh, it's probably your networking game is weak. That's my guess. So, if you haven't, I would get
1:05:15
out of get out from behind the keyboard. Stop rewriting the deck. Get out into situations where you can pitch,
1:05:22
especially where you can pitch to some customers. And if you all this would
1:05:27
start to change if you could say in your outreach something like whatever the
1:05:33
numbers are. We've talked to 50 potential customers and 17 are are 25
1:05:38
are interested and seven are so interested that they wanted to give me an upfront deposit. Right? Show some
1:05:45
traction and that the responses will change a lot. building something in their garage uh that has no customer
1:05:52
traction is just too easy these days and it doesn't impress people anymore. So even if you have if you theoretically
1:05:58
you have these things that are so much better, you need customer validation to prove it. That's really what you're
1:06:04
missing. Okay? And like I said, there'll be a whole book about this coming hopefully this fall.
1:06:10
All right. And I think that is it for tonight. Uh,
1:06:16
let's see. What's this one? Sorry. Hakeime says,
1:06:22
"Can we use the chat to promote yours of MVPs?" Sure. Yeah, this chat you mean? Yeah, go ahead. I We're out of time
1:06:28
here, but um yeah, absolutely. I I'm, you know, don't spam everybody, right?
1:06:33
But if you have something legit, this is a crowd of friendly, qualified people, and they'll probably understand what
1:06:39
you're talking about better than your family does. So, go ahead and take advantage. And again, that's what startups.org org is for I showed you the
1:06:45
site briefly, but there's discussion forums. You can post you'll have your own blog. You can post articles about
1:06:51
things and get your name out there so that you can build relationships and attract inbound attention, maybe even
1:06:56
attract investors. That's why we built it. It's a publicity toolbox for you guys.
1:07:02
The URL for counseling, I'm not sure what that means. Uh, Filberto, what counseling was I talking about?
1:07:10
Counseling? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe startupconcounsil.org. That's kind of the big one. Um, let's
1:07:18
see. Let me uh Okay, we're gonna have to wrap up here, but there's a couple more it looks like. Um, Centellia, let's do
1:07:25
that. I I'm Ali again. We help small businesses. Oh, you're coming back with the questions, right? Okay. Sorry. Um,
1:07:35
okay. So, okay, now everybody wants to chat. Okay, hang on a second. Um, let me
1:07:41
get back to Centilia Ali here. Or Centilia. Oh, I see. It's Centilia AI
1:07:46
and your name is Ali. I thought you were both of those. Okay. You're welcome, Dong. I'm glad it was helpful. Yeah, I'm
1:07:52
here every month or more often and um if uh you know, I speak at a lot of events, so sign up for those event um emails I
1:08:00
was telling you about. And I I I do a lot of this, so happy to help. Okay. So, uh, since Ali says, okay, this we're
1:08:07
trying I promised him I would answer this if he put it some more context. So, as we're growing 60% customers from the
1:08:13
US, we currently don't have the scale of funds to provide customer support on US time zones. Any tips to overcome this?
1:08:19
Okay. And all right. So, this is the context. Your business is implementing
1:08:24
AI into email systems. I see. Okay. Okay. Good. So, um, any tips to overcome
1:08:31
this? So, uh, Ali, I don't remember where you're from, but I guess I'd have
1:08:38
two two tips. Um, and I don't know that they're good ones. Actually, is anybody else? Yeah, let's ask the crowd here.
1:08:45
Let's crowd source this. The um the opportunity to how should he staff
1:08:51
overnight customer support for him? U because I don't remember where you're from. So, were you from Sydney maybe or
1:08:57
or India? Anyway, so my two suggestions would be one and you know this AI chatbot, right? So if you're an AI guy
1:09:04
anyway, seems like you could pull something together to do uh customer support at least at a rudimentary level.
1:09:10
And then um the other one would be to outsource to some uh some other country
1:09:17
that has a lower cost basis than you. So those of us in the US, you know, we have support teams in India, the Philippines,
1:09:25
Bangladesh, Africa, all over the place. So I don't remember where you are. So if you're already in India, that maybe
1:09:31
isn't going to give you the cost advantage, but that's tends to be what people do. Um,
1:09:37
and the other thing I guess would be to and I don't know if this would answer the question, but but to build out a really good frequently asked questions
1:09:43
or knowledge base so that people can self-s serve a little bit. I don't know if you've done that. Maybe that would
1:09:48
help. I don't have a great answer beyond that. Um, customer service is a is a,
1:09:53
you know, it's a full-time thing. Uh, of course you could use Zenesk and things like that also. Yeah, call center,
1:09:59
right? As Taylor's saying. Yeah, call center. Same idea. Um, but you'd probably want to put that someplace cheap. Um, and ideally cheaper than
1:10:05
where you are. So, sorry I don't have a great one on that, but um, if anybody does, please come uh chime in. Um, Sean
1:10:14
is chiming in. Do pitch competitions, not only making connections, but also get you inerson interactive feedback.
1:10:20
Super valuable. Yes. So, Sean sounds like an expert on that. They won a prize, I think he said, at New York Tech
1:10:25
Week. And believe me, that's going to be a competitive room. So, good job, Sean and all of you. Pitch competitions are
1:10:32
lovely. And the winner, and I, let me say this, actually, uh, pitch competitions are really not necessarily
1:10:39
about winning the so-called big prize, uh, because of course that's nice. Um,
1:10:46
but they're really about getting you on stage so that a lot of people can hear you. And you never know who's listening
1:10:54
who, you know, might be the one kind of like we were talking about for um, was it Salman? You know, he has this niche
1:11:00
business in uh, in merchant cash advance, right? So maybe he didn't win the prize, but there's some people that
1:11:06
understand the merchant cash advance business and are like, "Hey, we got to talk to this guy, right?" And that's how investors arrive in your life. you get
1:11:12
on you get on stage and you talk to a whole bunch of people at once and it can really benefit you because you never
1:11:18
know who's in the room. And by the way, I would take every advantage to pitch. I was at a startup competition last year
1:11:24
at a community college near here. I was one of the judges for the startup competition and before we got started,
1:11:30
the MC actually said, "Oh, you know, whatever. We're a couple minutes ahead of schedule. Does anybody who's not in
1:11:35
the competition want to pitch?" And they were like, "God, there had to be 300 people, 400 people in the room." and
1:11:41
nobody jumped up. So, you know what happened? Guess who stood up? Me. I stood up and I took the microphone and
1:11:48
said, "Hey, let me tell you about the startup council, right?" I mean, like, you've got an audience. You got to take advantage of it. And that kind of
1:11:54
practice is is critical to your success. Trust me. Um, okay. Uh, let's see. Let's
1:12:01
see. Hakee, sorry. Okay. Um, Philberto, I'm thinking maybe
1:12:08
what you were asking was the uh for counseling, maybe you meant the attorneys because I see young speaker
1:12:14
has a question also uh about discussing with mentor attorneys. So, let me position this a little differently.
1:12:20
Attorneys are not mentors, they're attorneys, right? They're doing legal work. And a good startup attorney, at
1:12:25
least here where I live, will cost you at least $500 an hour, easily $1,000 an
1:12:30
hour and maybe even $1,500 per hour. So they are not mentors in the
1:12:37
sense of like volunteers like I'm doing here to help you out, right? They are
1:12:43
trained experts. Think of them like you know doctors, neurosurgeons, right? Very expensive specialists, right? But my
1:12:49
point was if you get introduced to a good attorney and sorry Phil, the answer
1:12:54
is startupconsil.org under the services tab there's a a a link that says uh attorney introductions
1:13:02
or something like that. That's what I was talking about. startupconcounsil.org. Um, so but my point was when you talk to
1:13:08
attorneys is you need to talk to them about a real legal need, right? They're not just
1:13:14
going to sign up and introduce you to all their friends, right? Because they need to know who you are, right? So, you
1:13:20
want to call them and you have a deal. You want to do them to do legal work. You want them to help you issue stock in
1:13:26
a financing round or you have a patent that needs filing or you have a copyright issue or an employment law
1:13:31
issue or or even real estate issue, right? anything that is real legal work. Then you become a client and then you
1:13:37
say, "Hey, we're raising around, you know, would you know anybody like this?" Right? And and get them to think about
1:13:44
it because now you're a valuable client and um they can think about all the
1:13:49
people they talk to because startup attorneys talk to other startup attorneys and investors all day. That's
1:13:55
what they do. So, they're very useful and um hopefully that's a useful suggestion. Um,
1:14:02
okay. David, uh, you're welcome. Uh, you're welcome for the feedback. I hope that's helpful. And young speaker, I
1:14:08
would love to discuss, uh, all your questions here about the mentoring and so forth. And, uh, but we're kind of out
1:14:15
of time. And this is we talk about this sort of thing all all the time. So, you're welcome to go back to YouTube and
1:14:20
watch the old, um, episodes. There's there's literally like a couple hundred videos of me talking about things like
1:14:26
this on on YouTube. or send in this question next month and we're happy to do it there. Or actually, this is the
1:14:32
new one, the new startups.org, it's just launching. You could go and post this question in uh the discussion forums
1:14:39
there and and we'll try to help you out, right? Or comment on this YouTube, right? And we'll try to help you out there. Okay, but we're kind of out of
1:14:45
time tonight. And Marcus says, "We met at one of the Hey, Marcus. Okay, that's
1:14:51
cool." Yeah, your name sounded familiar. Um the picture's too small for me to see what you look like, but nice to see you.
1:14:57
I hope this was useful to you and I think that takes us to the top of our
1:15:02
time here. Let me just make sure I didn't miss anybody. Okay, thanks for doing this. You're welcome. Okay,
1:15:11
appreciate the honest response. Hope to see you again soon. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay, so there we go. All right, so I will
1:15:17
close on the uh last I guess our our big offer tonight is to go over to the
1:15:22
Startup Council. The It's on It's on sale for half off right now. I don't know. We're never going to charge a lot of money, but it's only 20 bucks and
1:15:29
we're charging that mostly just to make sure you're serious. Get in there. You'll have a whole bunch of tools to use, other people like you trying to
1:15:36
spin this up on a national basis across the United States and globally because this is what we've done here where I
1:15:42
live in Orange County. I started one of these in 2018 and it's been really helpful to the ecosystem here. So now
1:15:48
we're going to try to help even more of you all across the world. So if that's useful to you, please go join. And if
1:15:54
you're still on YouTube or LinkedIn, please comment and like and subscribe and share and all that stuff, it really does drive um this whole thing, right?
1:16:02
So, if nobody's listening and nobody cares and I'll stop doing this, you know, that's not I don't I don't need to do this. I'm doing this to try to help.
1:16:08
So, if it's helpful to you, please uh take a give me a click or two. Okay. All
1:16:14
right. Well, so it was wonderful to see all of you tonight. Thank you all for sticking around and uh whether it was uh late at night or early morning for you
1:16:21
or smacking midday and easy. I appreciate your time and I hope that you and your startup are going to find great
1:16:27
success and if we can help you at the startup council, please let us know. Hope to see you again soon and next
1:16:34
month if not sooner. I might know.

Next free MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours livestream is Tuesday, April 6 at 12 Noon PT.

Join us LIVE and bring questions about raising money for your startup!

Register FREE here now on EventBrite: https://mastermindsofficehours.eventbrite.com

Want to know how to find investors?  Or practice your investor pitch to get some friendly feedback?

Or maybe you have questions about venture strategy, product development, valuations, finding investors, growth strategies, pitch decks, or other challenges you're facing as a startup company CEO?

Free MasterMinds Startup Office Hours can help!

MasterMinds Startup Office Hours is a free livestream Q&A support service for startup founders.

The free show is LIVE on the first Tuesday of every month at 12 noon PT. 

Tune in then to join Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council, LIVE via YouTube and Facebook to get your questions answered - FREE.  Or practice your quick investor pitch for improvement suggestions.

Join Startup Office Hours LIVE on 1st Tuesdays to watch and comment:

LINKEDIN LIVE:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ocstartupcouncil

YOUTUBE LIVE: https://www.youtube.com/scottfox

FACEBOOK LIVE:  https://www.facebook.com/clickmillionaire

Subscribe to the YouTube channel here! 

Enjoy previous episodes of free, expert startup advice here, too.

Submit your Question in Advance >> Win Free MasterMinds Workshop Tickets: 

Submit your question about raising money for your startup, or practice your startup's investor pitch for friendly, free expert feedback:  https://www.mastermindsforum.com/office-hours-rsvp

If your question or pitch is included for live discussion during the show, you'll get an email of special instructions on how to join Office Hours on camera.  AND, you'll WIN FREE TICKETS to the next MasterMinds Startup Accelerator Workshop (http://www.mastermindsworkshops.com)!

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours are a free community service of the Startup Council. 

ENTREPRENEURS: Bring your startup strategy questions and investor pitches to MasterMinds Accelerator Q&A #48 for fun info and networking!

GET TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds48.eventbrite.com

The Startup Council's virtual MasterMinds meetings offer tech entrepreneurs, startup employees, founders, service providers, and investors a friendly place to share growth company challenges, expertise, and experience.

Together we discuss fundraising, strategy, marketing, IT, legal, angel investing, design, staffing, product development, venture capital, and growth hacking problems in order to develop better solutions together.

** WHAT'S YOUR QUESTION?
BUY A "QUESTION TICKET" OR A "PITCH TICKET" AND THE GROUP WILL HELP SOLVE YOUR BUSINESS PROBLEM OR GIVE YOU PITCH FEEDBACK!

NOT your typical boring webinar: the interactive MasterMinds Workshops help founders learn to start, raise money for, and succeed with high growth startup ideas. They offer the best networking, educational, and relationship building opportunities of any online workshop you've ever attended + NO SALES PITCHES!

** FREE TICKETS TO THE FIRST 10 PEOPLE WHO SHARE A STARTUP QUESTION OR PITCH FOR FRIENDLY FEEDBACK. Use this quick form to submit for a FREE promo code: https://bit.ly/MMSquestions

OR buy a ticket just to watch, network, and learn how it's done from Silicon Valley and Stanford experts: http://masterminds48.eventbrite.com

A FREE RSVP ON MEETUP IS NOT ENOUGH TO ATTEND THESE PAID PRIVATE EVENTS. PLEASE REGISTER ASAP !

[FREE TICKETS: Members of the MasterMinds Founders Forum, Tech Coast Angels, or Executive/Premium members of the OC Startup Council attend FREE. Just email us for the comp code!]

AGENDA

5:00pm PT Making Friends (Don't miss the intros!) (8:00pm ET)
5:15pm PT MasterMinds Moderated Q&A Group Discussion (8:15pm ET)
6:00pm PT Networking Break (9:00pm ET)
6:15pm PT More Q&A Group Discussion (9:15pm ET)
6:40pm PT Startup Investor Pitches Practice (9:30pm ET)
7:00pm PT Follow up with new friends (10:00pm ET)

SPONSORS

Joe Daniels, McCarter & English Attorneys at Law
Expert legal counsel to startups and investors nationwide on company formation, financing, growth, and exit. The McCarter team is globally renowned for high quality representation of entrepreneurial enterprises and the investors who support them.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA)
The largest angel investor group in the US, TCA members have fueled the growth of innovative companies and entrepreneurs in Southern California with over $200 million invested in more than 400 companies since 1997.

MasterMinds Startup Founders Forum
The friendliest online community dedicated to helping early stage startup founders raise money and grow their startups. Free Trial: https://www.MasterMindsForum.com

MODERATOR

Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council
Chairman of Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs OC
3x Best-selling Entrepreneurship Author, Serial Internet Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, Angel Investor, Nice Guy.
Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fox_(author)
Books: http://www.ScottFoxBooks.com

CAN'T MAKE THIS ONE? JOIN THE FREE MAILING LIST FOR FUTURE EVENTS AT http://StartupCouncil.org

By attending all attendees agree to release, indemnify, hold harmless, defend, and pay defense costs for all organizers from any and all liability or claims and consent to use and sharing in any media of any photos or videos taken.

THESE PAID PRIVATE VIRTUAL EVENTS SELL OUT EVERY TIME - SO PLEASE REGISTER ASAP!

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds48.eventbrite.com

ENTREPRENEURS: It's PITCH PRACTICE night!

Come network and learn how to raise money for your startup at MasterMinds Pitch Practice Startup Accelerator Workshop #41.

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds41.eventbrite.com

[SOME FREE TICKETS FOR PITCH PRACTICERS ARE STILL AVAILABLE BELOW!]

Learn how to grow and fund your startup, get your fundraising questions answered, and get valuable expert feedback that can help you raise money from angel investors and venture capitalists, too.

Founders: Bring your investor pitch to practice and get friendly feedback from fellow tech startup founders, experts, and investors.

Each startup will get 5 minutes to share its pitch with the group, followed by helpful Q&A and expert advice for improvement in our friendly peer coaching workshop format.

AND, WE HAVE FREE PITCH TICKETS TO THE FIRST 8 FOUNDERS WHO SHARE THEIR STARTUP PITCH FOR FRIENDLY INVESTOR FEEDBACK.
Just use this quick form to submit: https://bit.ly/MMSpitches

OR you're invited to buy a ticket just to watch, network, share your feedback, and learn how it's done: http://masterminds41.eventbrite.com

ABOUT MASTERMINDS

The Startup Council's virtual MasterMinds meetings offer software and technology entrepreneurs, startup employees, founders, service providers, and investors a place to help each other benefit from shared growth company challenges, expertise, and experience.

MasterMinds is perfect for anyone with a tech startup company or idea who would like to share experiences or challenges in a friendly, problem-solving format. Our goal is to help everyone in the startup community learn how to found, raise money for, and succeed with high growth startup ideas.

[FREE TICKETS for MEMBERS: If you are a Member of the MasterMinds Online Coaching Forum or Tech Coast Angels, or your company is an Executive or higher member of the OC Startup Council, you can attend FREE. Just email us for the comp code!]

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS

Azad Virk of Stradling, Attorneys at Law
Azad Virk is a shareholder in Stradling’s corporate and technology transactions practice groups. His practice focuses on corporate, commercial, and intellectual property transactions, including the formation of startups, equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances across multiple industries.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA)
TCA is the largest angel investor group in the U.S. Since 1997, TCA members have been fueling the growth of innovative companies and entrepreneurs in Southern California with over $200 million invested in more than 400 companies.

Startup Council
These workshops are a service of the Startup Council. Based in Orange County, California, the Startup Council is dedicated to supporting early stage venture founders and accelerating high tech entrepreneurship.

Learn more and join for free to list your startup company or service provider in the OC Startup Ecosystem Directory at: https://OCStartupCouncil.org

MODERATOR

Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council
4x Best-selling Entrepreneurship Author, Serial Internet Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, Business Strategist, MasterMinds Leader, Community Builder, Deal-maker, Angel Investor, Nice Guy.

Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fox_(author)
Books: http://www.ScottFoxBooks.com
Forum: https://www.MasterMindsForum.com
Contact: https://www.ScottFox.com

CAN'T MAKE THIS ONE? JOIN THE FREE MAILING LIST FOR FUTURE EVENTS AT https://OCStartupCouncil.org

By attending all attendees agree to release, indemnify, hold harmless, defend, and pay defense costs for all organizers from any and all liability or claims and consent to use and sharing of any photos or videos taken in any media.

THESE PAID PRIVATE EVENTS ARE LIMITED TO 30 PEOPLE. THEY SELL OUT EVERY TIME - SO PLEASE REGISTER ASAP !

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds41.eventbrite.com

ENTREPRENEURS: Bring your tech startup questions and investor pitches to the virtual MasterMinds Accelerator Q&A and Pitch Practice Workshop #39!

We'll be online via Zoom on Tuesday, June 16 starting at 500pm.  

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds39.eventbrite.com

Enjoy networking with tech startup founders, learn how to grow and fund your startup, get your questions answered, and learn how to pitch investors, too.

The OC Startup Council's virtual MasterMinds meetings offer software and technology entrepreneurs, startup employees, founders, service providers, and early stage investors a place to help each other benefit from shared growth company challenges, expertise, and experience.

** HAVE A QUESTION? OR A PITCH YOU'D LIKE TO PRACTICE?
TICKETS: BUY A "QUESTION TICKET" OR A "PITCH TICKET" AND THE WHOLE GROUP WILL HELP SOLVE YOUR BUSINESS PROBLEM OR GIVE YOU PITCH FEEDBACK: http://masterminds39.eventbrite.com

There are only a few of these special tickets available - buy yours now to get friendly expert feedback!

These small, private peer group ZOOM coaching sessions are designed to accelerate the technology entrepreneurship community, so the MasterMinds Workshops are a NO SALES PITCHES environment.

Together we share business, strategy, marketing, IT, legal, angel investing, design, staffing, product development, venture capital, and growth hacking problems in order to help develop better solutions together.

MasterMinds is perfect for anyone with a tech startup company or idea who would like to share experiences or challenges in a friendly, problem-solving format. Our goal is to help everyone in the startup community learn how to found, raise money for, and succeed with high growth startup ideas

[FREE TICKETS: If your company is an Executive or higher member of the OC Startup Council, a member of Tech Coast Angels, or you are a monthly Member of Scott Fox's MasterMinds Online Coaching Forum, you can attend FREE. Just email us for the comp code!]

AGENDA:

• 5:00pm PT Making Friends (Don't miss the introductions!) 

• 5:30pm PT MasterMinds Moderated Q&A Group Discussion

• 6:30pm PT Startup Pitches Practice and Brag Box 

• 7:00pm PT Followup with your new friends

SPONSORS

Azad Virk of Stradling, Attorneys at Law
Azad Virk’s corporate and technology transactions practice focuses on corporate, commercial, and intellectual property transactions, including the formation of startups, equity and debt financings, M&A, joint ventures, and strategic alliances.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA)
TCA is the largest angel investor group in the U.S. Since 1997, TCA members have been fueling the growth of innovative companies and entrepreneurs in Southern California with over $200 million invested in more than 400 companies.

OC Startup Council
These workshops are a service of the Startup Council. We're dedicated to supporting early stage venture founders and accelerating high tech entrepreneurship. Learn more and list your startup company or service provider free in the OC Startup Ecosystem Directory at: https://OCStartupCouncil.org

MODERATOR

Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council
4x Best-selling Entrepreneurship Author, Serial Internet Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, Business Strategist, MasterMinds Leader, Community Builder, Deal-maker, Angel Investor, Nice Guy.
Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fox_(author)
Books: http://www.ScottFoxBooks.com
Forum: https://www.MasterMindsForum.com
Contact: https://www.ScottFox.com

CAN'T MAKE IT? JOIN THE FREE MAILING LIST FOR FUTURE EVENTS AT https://OCStartupCouncil.org

By attending all attendees agree to release, indemnify, hold harmless, defend, and pay defense costs for all organizers from any and all liability or claims and consent to use and sharing of any photos or videos taken in any media.

THESE PAID PRIVATE EVENTS ARE LIMITED TO 30 PEOPLE. THEY SELL OUT EVERY TIME - SO PLEASE REGISTER ASAP !

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds39.eventbrite.com

ENTREPRENEURS: Bring your tech startup questions and investor pitches to the virtual MasterMinds Accelerator Q&A and Pitch Practice Workshop #37!

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds37.eventbrite.com

Enjoy networking with tech startup founders, learn how to grow and fund your startup, get your questions answered, and learn how to pitch investors, too.

The Startup Council's virtual MasterMinds meetings offer software and technology entrepreneurs, startup employees, founders, service providers, and early stage investors a place to help each other benefit from shared growth company challenges, expertise, and experience.

** HAVE A QUESTION? OR A PITCH YOU'D LIKE TO PRACTICE?
TICKETS: BUY A "QUESTION TICKET" OR A "PITCH TICKET" AND THE WHOLE GROUP WILL HELP SOLVE YOUR BUSINESS PROBLEM OR GIVE YOU PITCH FEEDBACK: http://masterminds37.eventbrite.com

There are only a few of these special tickets available - buy yours now to get friendly expert feedback!

These small, private peer group ZOOM coaching sessions are designed to accelerate the technology entrepreneurship community, so the MasterMinds Workshops are a NO SALES PITCHES environment.

Together we share business, strategy, marketing, IT, legal, angel investing, design, staffing, product development, venture capital, and growth hacking problems in order to help develop better solutions together.

MasterMinds is perfect for anyone with a tech startup company or idea who would like to share experiences or challenges in a friendly, problem-solving format. Our goal is to help everyone in the startup community learn how to found, raise money for, and succeed with high growth startup ideas.

[FREE TICKETS: If your company is an Executive or higher member of the OC Startup Council or you are a monthly Member of Scott Fox's MasterMinds Online Coaching Forum, you can attend FREE. Just email us for the comp code!]

AGENDA - PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE TIME ZONES:

• 5:00pm PT Making Friends (Don't miss the introductions!) (8:00pm ET)
• 5:30pm PT MasterMinds Moderated Q&A Group Discussion (8:30pm ET)
• 6:30pm PT Startup Pitches Practice and Brag Box (9:30pm ET)
• 7:00pm PT Followup with your new friends (10:00pm ET)

SPONSORS

Azad Virk of Stradling, Attorneys at Law
Azad Virk’s corporate and technology transactions practice focuses on corporate, commercial, and intellectual property transactions, including the formation of startups, equity and debt financings, M&A, joint ventures, and strategic alliances.

Tech Coast Angels (TCA)
TCA is the largest angel investor group in the U.S. Since 1997, TCA members have been fueling the growth of innovative companies and entrepreneurs in Southern California with over $200 million invested in more than 400 companies.

Startup Council
These workshops are a service of the Startup Council. We're dedicated to supporting early stage venture founders and accelerating high tech entrepreneurship. Learn more and list your startup company or service provider free in the OC Startup Ecosystem Directory at: https://OCStartupCouncil.org

MODERATOR

Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council
4x Best-selling Entrepreneurship Author, Serial Internet Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, Business Strategist, MasterMinds Leader, Community Builder, Deal-maker, Angel Investor, Nice Guy.
Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Fox_(author)
Books: http://www.ScottFoxBooks.com
Forum: https://www.MasterMindsForum.com
Contact: https://www.ScottFox.com

CAN'T MAKE IT? JOIN THE FREE MAILING LIST FOR FUTURE EVENTS AT https://OCStartupCouncil.org

By attending all attendees agree to release, indemnify, hold harmless, defend, and pay defense costs for all organizers from any and all liability or claims and consent to use and sharing of any photos or videos taken in any media.

THESE PAID PRIVATE EVENTS ARE LIMITED TO 30 PEOPLE. THEY SELL OUT EVERY TIME - SO PLEASE REGISTER ASAP !

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW: http://masterminds37.eventbrite.com