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!
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 August 26:
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RSVP and submit your startup strategy questions or investor pitches for practice here: https://startup-office-hours.eventbrite.com
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.
