Startup Fundraising Office Hours Replay!

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 Sept 26. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Scott took questions from startup founders live on camera and via chat, including:

• how important are co-founders, and where to find them
• (and why he thinks most founders do not need a co-founder as much as they think!)
• how to pay co-founders &/or split equity when bootstrapping
• how to research investors to create personalized outreach when you don't have connections for "warm introductions"
• should you pay to pitch or attend investor conferences?
• why do investors insist on someone else leading the round
• what investors really mean when they say come back later
• why so many angel investors and venture capitalists never say NO
• how to get your financing round to be "oversubscribed"
• Plus, friendly startup pitch practice!
• and of course much more!

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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

The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 300pm ET / Noon PT.  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 October 23:

https://www.youtube.com/scottfox

https://www.facebook.com/clickmillionaire

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

Subscribe to the YouTube channel here! 

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.startupcouncil.org/sohsrsvp

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. 

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for September 26, 2023:

0:00
hours thanks for being here I'm Scott Fox today we're going to talk about startups I'm glad to
0:05
have you here we're going to take a voyage into the land of uh valuations and fundraising and
0:11
shareholder relations uh finding investors Angel Investors Venture Capital investors how to build
0:16
and recruit teams how to grow faster than you normally should or would all the things
0:22
that become really important once you find yourself on the road to being an entrepreneur so I'm happy to have you here we're going to talk about this for an hour or so and this is
0:31
um this is really just a chance for questions and answers I do a lot of programming and I've well I've written these books sorry over here these books to try to help Founders around the world
0:40
and there are many languages as you can see but this is just a chance where I take an hour out of my lunch time and try to talk to you and see if I can help you so there's no particular agenda
0:50
here looking forward to talking to the folks who are coming backstage who are on camera we've got a bunch of people lined up to ask questions already and if you have questions as well I
0:57
hope you'll join us in the chat room this is live Live on YouTube and Facebook and Linkedin and Blog
1:04
Talk Radio at least and maybe some other places I lose track so I'm Scott Fox I'm a Serial internet
1:09
entrepreneur I've been doing this a long time and um I've raised money for companies I founded
1:15
several companies I've worked for big companies small companies these days I'm mostly an advisor
1:21
a mentor and an angel investor so I've seen both sides of the table in terms of both raising money
1:27
and investing money also as a principal and as an agent as an investor and as a mentor so I've got
1:35
lots of different perspectives and I'm doing this really just to try to help I know there are lots of you out there who are on the same Journey that I've been on for decades which is trying to find
1:45
um well kind of to try to find your place in the world how you can make a difference in the world by doing something that you believe in that solves a problem and solving problems that are what
1:54
entrepreneurs are all about right that's why we're here I love hanging out with entrepreneurs I just got back from the global entrepreneurship Congress in Melbourne Australia I was speaking there about
2:03
how non-us companies can enter the U.S markets that was super cool we had several thousand
2:09
entrepreneurs and investors and ecosystem Builders all together in one place and there's nothing more
2:14
empowering I have to say there's nothing more empowering than hanging out with other people who
2:20
get things done and that's what entrepreneurs are some of us may be crazy but we're getting things
2:25
done we're some of the few people in the world who actually have a vision and go out and pursue it we
2:30
don't wait for other people to tell us what to do we make things happen so if that's why you're here I'm glad to see you glad to meet you if we haven't connected yet let's uh let's do that let's
2:40
see uh invite your friends please come on over here they can see us if they haven't found us somewhere else it's on LinkedIn live as well as on um YouTube there um let's see if you want to join
2:53
us backstage we've only got room for 10 people but there's going to be and we've got maybe close to 10 already but you can use that URL and come on Backstage and ask a question live I'm going
3:02
to turn on the chat room in a couple minutes so you can type in your questions on YouTube chat or LinkedIn live chat and Facebook Chat and they'll all show up here uh just right here and we'll go
3:13
through those questions as well together but of course the most fun is when people are on camera so if you want to join me on camera please do that there and what else let's see we've got to oh let
3:23
me talk a little bit so we've got some sponsors we've got a great sponsor here cake Equity cake
3:29
is a stock options platform so this is really critical stuff for any founder because managing
3:36
stock options for your employees is the way that you motivate them and it's also critical for your relationship with investors right you have to keep track of who owns what especially as the company
3:44
grows and things get more and more complicated especially like if you're issuing multiple safe
3:50
nodes and there's convertible notes and you have the stack of preferences and Things Cake will help you do all that here's their logo it's cakeequity.com and actually since they're friends
4:00
of mine in fact I have to admit I'm an investor in the company I was so excited about this company I put money in myself because I think this solves a problem that we all have right managing options
4:10
and stock options and and the legalities and cap table it's it's really important but it's just not stuff you as a Founder should be spending your time on these guys automate it all
4:21
um and they're nice folks doing the right thing for the world trying to empower more employees with ownership in their companies very cool also wanted to point out that we have Let's see we have
4:32
a bunch of services here so the startup council is my organization this is just basically this is
4:38
basically just me but with all of you guys that's this logo here startupcouncil.org and we've set up
4:44
a whole bunch of services and these are based on things that I think Founders need because they're
4:50
honestly their niches that are small enough they're never going to be a business right we're doing them at break even or we give them away for free and we're trying to help Founders like
4:58
you with the things I wish I had had when I was an original originally a Founder so here here's some logos for you now if that doesn't blind you and you can and you can let me turn it on there we go
5:09
there we go so if that doesn't blind you let's let's make that bigger there we go okay so these
5:14
are logos these are all services that my startup Council offers you guys right so if you need to
5:20
find investors there's the one the first one right startup investors directory if you want to list your startups so you can attract more attention there's the national startups directory.com if
5:29
you want to find events startupevents.org this is the first calendar in the world I think that only
5:36
lists virtual events for founders so you don't have to live in Palo Alto or New York City or
5:43
London or Mumbai wherever you are to be in the big city you don't have to be in the big city these are only virtual events educational events networking events pitch events all the things
5:51
that you want as a founder and you can check them out online for free startupevents.org and
5:58
then the workshops okay so these workshops these are workshops I run online and these are smaller
6:03
groups kind of like today but 30 or 40 people and everybody brings a question same kind of thing but
6:08
it's more of a group thing and those are a lot of fun we do those once a month alternating online or uh virtually sorry alternating online or here in Southern California where I live so the place to
6:18
go for all that is this one startupcounsel.org startup Council all right so that's what we're
6:23
up to and okay son since I'm doing this let me do one more sorry just bear with me a second there's
6:29
one more we I started another thing for you see I'm an entrepreneur I can't stop I see these I see these opportunities to help and um I want to help all of you so this is new even if you've been
6:41
here since last month uh I started a group on LinkedIn so that we can find each other one of
6:46
the biggest challenges is for I guess there's two one is finding information right so you're
6:52
a founder and you're kind of in a silo and you need to not just find generic information you need to find specific information right you have real questions that's why I do this show right so
7:00
you have real questions and I don't have all the answers or the time to answer all the questions um so this is a community right so come and join this it's free if you'd like free offer right but
7:10
you can scan that QR code and come on to LinkedIn and join this group and we'll help each other
7:16
that's all there is to it we'll help each other so if that sounds interesting to you then uh then please sign up click you know Point your uh camera your phone camera at the screen right now and
7:26
um and you can join us okay so that's all the intro let's go let's get some questions
7:33
going here like I said if you want to join us backstage come over here and I have to do a couple
7:39
disclaimers come on now let's see right here hang on it's coming this is the exciting part
7:48
just hang on you're not going to want to miss this here you go this is not qualified legal and financial advice I'm just some guy you met on the internet please don't take this too seriously
7:57
doing my best to help but your mileage may vary and this is being recorded so don't say anything
8:03
stupid okay and if you'd like oh here's another one there's my LinkedIn if you want to connect with me I'll be happy to please uh put a line in of why you're connecting I have hundreds
8:13
of connections stacking up in my inbox and I only accept those where people say something it doesn't
8:18
have to be anything clever just say hi how you how you know me right because I don't want to connect with spammers and scammers I'm trying to keep my network quality just like yours right so please
8:26
just do a quick link and say hello you know I met you on Startup office hours or that sort of thing
8:31
okay let's see and then we're going to comment over here and now we're going to get to our questions okay so I'm going to bring on some people backstage
8:41
um from backstage I see a bunch of folks and we're going to say hi to these people and they're each
8:46
going to give me guys in the back there you need to have your camera on so Nicholas or
8:52
um Rafi for example I see Roderick and madad and lynid and Fabio and some other folks they
9:00
have their cameras on right so I'm only going to put you on camera if you're on camera okay so let's go and what I want this to start guys is just a super quick
9:08
um introduction of like real quick uh who you are where you're from and the quick version of
9:14
the question you'd like to talk about right not the whole thing not the pitch this is not Pitch practice although we can do that later just a quick version well I got a full house tonight
9:23
um so that I can organize our conversation and it looks like the room is full folks are still trying
9:29
to come on uh rocket your cameras off but if you want to join us you are welcome as well the room is full right now guys so just hang on a second and we'll we'll talk to some of these lovely folks
9:39
and then we will get going uh to [Music] answer some questions okay all right that
9:47
was a lot so nice to see all of you some familiar faces some new faces um if you're
9:52
ready to just give me a quick version actually can everybody say hi for a second just say hi
9:58
Roderick smile I know you have a lovely smile there it is all right cool um so we're just gonna just introduce your topic real quick we are away from I'll call
10:07
on you in the order that you are in my screen hello Fabio you go first just turn on your mic and just tell me where you're from and what your quick version of your question is please
10:16
can other people hear him
10:24
can you try again with something else I'm going to move on to uh next here and like
10:31
am I in alcohol right now that's how that helped that helps yeah you want to try again oh okay okay yeah I work for a AI company we have a specific AI solution for EPA [Music]
10:46
by investor I still couldn't get that I'm sorry you're gonna have to come back with a different
10:51
microphone my friend I I got you're an AI company but the rest of it was gone so maybe you have a headset or something or or something else sorry about that happy to chat or put your question in
11:01
the chat probably someone as the mic okay so let's sorry we got to keep moving we got a lot of people
11:06
here so uh lunid where's luniz hi can you guys hear me again perfect I think someone else has
11:14
their mic on so that's what we're getting it yeah everyone asked mute themselves that would help
11:20
yeah that would help good point yeah okay perfect yeah so um you need CEO and founder of week
11:29
um helping babies not ingest microplastics and my question is around niching down and
11:35
finding investors and how to personalize it because trying to reach um investors so
11:42
um do we need to send a video to each one and like how personal do we get in the um that's a good
11:49
question okay we will definitely do that one okay where are you from I didn't catch that oh I mean
11:54
somebody's got a lot of car noise we need you to mute guys or I'm going to mute you
12:00
all this is yeah you're making it hard for the rest of us please um somebody's got a lot of
12:06
background noise let's see how do we do this mute it don't even know where to mute it from
12:13
there that was you my dog caught you okay all right so um next up Roderick how are you
12:20
hey Scott how you doing today good nice to see you first I want to say thank you Scott because
12:26
you uh you've been amazing for me so far man over the past six months because of you and
12:32
coming to your different events you know I came to the the startup Council event you had back in
12:38
June I think it was and I'm going to the one you have it in October great so I want to thank you
12:44
so much because you have definitely uplifted me and given me the the the resources that I
12:50
needed to to contact so thank you so much for that well thank you and I you know I've noticed you on
12:56
LinkedIn always clicking and commenting and stuff too that's very helpful I appreciate that as well of course it drives the algorithm it helps us reach more people when you do that so thank you
13:05
so yeah what's on your mind today so the question I have so for the past three months I've actually
13:11
met a lot of investors and I've had probably about a good six meetings uh pitch meetings
13:18
and I'm starting to hear the same thing which I understand we're living in a time where
13:24
people want to see traction so all six of these investors I've met with they're very interested
13:30
in what I have but they keep telling me to come back once I have traction and my web my web app
13:37
MVP is not going to be available until uh March of 2024. so I just the question I have with is
13:46
what is considered enough traction to where I probably can go back to the investors because
13:51
I don't want to go back to them until I know I have enough traction got it no that's a great
13:57
question every that's a common one I'm happy to discuss that let's do that for sure okay good
14:02
to see you uh let's see oh Rafi turned on his camera let's see who's what does Rafi look like oh there's Rafi hey Rafi nice to meet you okay madad do you wanna I'll unmute you if you wanna
14:12
go ahead yeah I apologize for that I couldn't find the mute button um my question is in my past
14:19
startups I've been a Founder raising money myself and then hiring people and I said to myself this
14:25
one like enough is enough it's time for me to get a co-founder on this new Venture and uh do it do
14:31
it the right way you know um but the challenge for me is uh I'm completely bootstrapping it you know
14:39
not not putting any money into it besides the time I've put in to build the product
14:44
um and so I can't pay a co-founder and I'm wondering how do I bring a co-founder
14:50
on without them being able to take a salary either and you know is it just on paper to go
14:56
out and raise money with the co-founder who's just committing to saying like look yeah I'll be I'll be on board with you if we can raise the capital together to continue got it yep okay chicken and
15:06
egg yeah it is and it's a tough one sure good to see you we'll come back to that I'm going to mute you again though don't take it personally okay Nicholas where's Nicholas hey Nicholas nice to
15:15
meet you what's your name hi there hi Scott nice to meet you sorry about that I just asked you for
15:20
connection on LinkedIn before you said about the line and they say that I'm just watching you live so that's me you know that's not Escape okay uh I work for a company uh we are I work with Fabio
15:33
and we are located in Vancouver and we work for a company that have a breakthrough solution for
15:38
based on artificial intelligence to enhance the power of a database administrator that's what it
15:46
does it's very simple in saying but we can talk a lot more about it later what we are really looking
15:53
forward is to help the company grow it have started this operation on sales and marketing a
15:59
few months ago a couple of months ago around North America starting on Vancouver and I would love to
16:05
have some chips and hints about how to connect with people rise have start to grow the company
16:14
okay so growth growth question and you have a product already okay of course it means
16:20
also investor but the options available yeah any options available okay and and you said you're
16:27
with Fabio you guys are a team yeah okay cool all right we are members of the company okay
16:33
we're not owners okay that's cool um let's see who didn't I get here yet um Bradley where's Brad
16:42
there's Brad there he is okay hey Brad nice to see you why don't you go ahead
16:49
you gotta unmute though I didn't mute you did I nope that was on you hey yeah hi I'm the founder
16:57
of getaway GoGo last minute vacation rental Marketplace and my question for today has to do
17:03
with cold emailing investors okay nice and concise thank you that's a good one sounds like you and
17:11
lanita might have similar interests there so maybe we can team up on that one okay and then let's see
17:17
who didn't I get yet was Rafi hey Rafi how are you hey uh how's it going can you hear me yes
17:25
where are you from yeah hi so I'm basically jump between Montreal New York and Vancouver because
17:33
that's kind of where basis of operations are we're basically like a blockchain powered wallet that's
17:40
aiming to make the lives of the global Community Easier by giving them real-time access to funds
17:45
right but the issue that I'm running into is that I keep getting compared to SPF and FDX
17:51
everywhere I go with investors right yeah sorry yeah especially without a running product right
17:58
now we're loving the MVP right yeah uh so until that's done I can't really like get any Headway
18:04
with investor so I think that's a common theme where investors now are a lot more careful in
18:11
the meetings that they take and the founders that they meet with right but my question is like uh
18:17
short of like actually going up to them in their offices and like uh ambushing them like what's
18:23
the optimal way to approach them right because if I just submit my deck and odds are No One's Gonna See it because they get hundreds of bit submissions a day yes yeah okay so approach path
18:34
yep all right yeah happy to do that we'll do that as well and I think Andre nice to see you again
18:46
sorry I had to unmute myself um hi my name is Andre I'm calling from Herndon Virginia I don't have a question I have a pitch practice um that's that
18:55
will be my second attempt and they hope to do better than the first time that was horrible
19:01
that's why we're here man um good to see you again uh all right all right so that's what
19:07
a great group all right so uh everybody give me a smile if you don't mind so we can post on social media and see how handsome you all are it's like everybody looking good cool thank you
19:17
um because you know if we don't take pictures it didn't happen right so um let's see let's go
19:22
all right so let's let me okay let me turn on the chat room and then we're going to
19:29
um sorry a lot of controls here chat okay okay chat turn on the overlay there we go here comes
19:37
our friends in the chat room and these folks are on YouTube or um LinkedIn or Facebook and
19:43
it should all start showing up here in a minute and we will get to some of those questions as well so let's I'm going to take say goodbye to our friends here in a minute give me a second let
19:52
me just think about where we're going to start it sounded like we had several questions about the initial approach to investors so I think we'll probably start there let me just look
19:59
at my notes to see who was um there we go okay so in the chat um a chat will start rolling in
20:10
here in a minute as well so anybody that types a new uh message will start showing up in there
20:16
um okay so I'm sorry give me a sec so okay the new one to yeah Angel investment yep
20:23
um you know I wrote so I wrote so quickly I can't read my own writing now okay uh retraction yeah
20:30
that's a good one co-founders yeah um well let's actually you know what let's start Madonna let's
20:36
start with you in the co-founders thing because that's before you even approach the investors and then we'll get into investor approach stuff and um yeah and then pitch practice Yeah so every
20:47
everybody's watching we can do pitch practice later as well these are quick two-minute verbal only pitches uh and it's just for fun nobody's writing checks here today um we're just trying
20:56
to give you a chance to work out the Kinksin front of an audience and get friendly feedback so a lot of times people really suck and that's fine and that's how you start right you start by
21:05
sucking it then you get better with practice so uh it's much better to practice here with friends who understand what you're doing than to practice on stage at some sort of pitch competition right so
21:14
we'll get to some pitches in a moment um okay why isn't the chat turning on here excuse me
21:21
um somebody post something new would you actually I will let me see
21:29
there we go yeah so it's working okay so go ahead sorry the other chat uh stuff it wasn't on yet so a bunch of you said hello let me just say hello to you then so Sam says thanks
21:38
steel pressure says hi Roderick says hello LinkedIn user says hello hello LinkedIn user
21:45
um a framework for processing organizing capitalize sure yeah uh desire for love okay
21:51
nice to see you Doman Washington DC is Hannah hello from London good day and Maryland and
22:00
um ask questions on YouTube or LinkedIn Anna you can either one or you can come backstage as well I think the room is full right now and um how to connect with tecost Angel that's an
22:11
easy one go to techcoastangels.com that's a uh for those who don't know have the background I'm a very active angel investor I mean in several different Angel groups like this one
22:20
Tech Coast angels I run Stanford angels for my geographical region here in Orange County
22:27
um I I'm an LP in several funds but one of the big ones in fact I think it's the largest Angel
22:32
group in North America is Tech Coast angels and they're based here in Orange County California and the best way to meet them is to just go and apply online you can use my name if you'd like
22:40
that might help a little bit but really we get a lot of deal flow so the forms there that they will ask you to fill out will give us a pretty good picture of what your company is about and if it's
22:49
a fit we'll be happy to have you in and attend one of our screenings we have several chapters in Orange County Los Angeles Inland Empire Pasadena there's a specialty medical med tech group as well
22:59
called Meda we do a lot of investing and be happy to hear from you at techcoastangels.com that's an
23:06
easy one I'll come back to uh Kirk and Larry um let's see yes Larry October 11th that's our next
23:16
startup Game Changer event in Garden Grove we will be doing that one go to startupgamechanger.com
23:22
okay so I said we're gonna bring on my dad so let's find the dot here he is okay
23:30
and I will unmute you okay it's too noisy I'm sorry I am outside with a road behind me so
23:37
feel free to meet me that's fine we'll just give us a little context again and I'll mute you and then I'll talk and you can unmute you know how that works like a walkie-talkie yeah so uh so the
23:47
product I've built is called good pigeon and uh and I've built the MVP uh started to to get some
23:54
users on it and just realizing this Venture I it's very hard for me to switch from that product to
24:00
sales mode effectively as much as I can do sales and marketing whatnot so I'm trying to find that
24:05
co-founder who can help on uh just sales and just just daily strategy you know just be that that
24:11
sounding board with me and that partner in this on this on this adventure so uh but I don't have
24:16
any money to bring anybody on and I'm trying to figure out how do I how do I bring a co-founder on without offering that except I mean just offering some Equity up front is that really the
24:25
way I just started the business and offered them and yeah it is no question for an answer right
24:34
um yes I mean if you don't have money you what do you got right I mean offer to wash their car you know anyway you know it's up to you yeah um the trick the reality is though that it's
24:44
really hard to find anybody qualified who will work for Equity these days there's just too much money in the market so you're really gonna probably more try to look for somebody who has a
24:55
shared vision and to do that it's really about making friends first and attending events like
25:00
I've seen you at events here in California right going to those events and trying to find people I get this question a lot and I'm even thinking about whether we should start another service I
25:09
showed you guys all those logos of things we've started you know little holes in the market that won't make any money but are helpful to people and co-founders is definitely one of them I get
25:17
this question all the time and literally all over the world like I said I was in Australia last week and people were asking me the same question you know how do I find a co-founder the only one I
25:25
found that is even worth the time and I haven't looked real hard but why combinator offers a service and it's called something real basic like co-founder of matching or something like that
25:35
um somebody could Google it probably and put it in the chat room uh that one has been very useful I
25:40
think because you fill out a profile and then it actually set up to email you profiles of people who are looking for things and it will match right if you say like I want to do AI or I want to do
25:50
Aerospace like it helps to find those things or you can say I want um I'm not technical I
25:56
want a technical co-founder or vice versa right it can help match uh I would go look for that
26:02
um other than that though I would just start attending events and I don't just mean physical events virtual events as well try to find things participate in hackathons find people that think
26:11
alike go to big conferences like this one I just there were several thousand people in Melbourne last week and everybody was of a similar mindset and that's a really Target Rich environment if you
26:20
walk in you just everybody you meet hey do you know anybody like this hey do you know anybody like this and the word will get around especially if it's a multiple day conference and maybe you'll
26:28
get somewhere but that's I mean you knew none of that is like boosting probably right yeah
26:33
more specifically I'm going to mute you a second sorry that road noises um just wave at me if I'm able to start talking um the other thing let's just address some of the
26:43
practicalities so first of all I don't think most people need co-founders what you need is somebody to do the work that you don't want to do whether that's technical sales whatever I'd be
26:52
very careful about handing out a co-founder title because once you give that you can't get it back so I would really look more at finding people that can do Project work and then work your way up into
27:02
building a relationship like I mean if you don't have a high school friend or somebody who it you already have a relationship with her right you're starting cold which I think is your situation
27:11
um find somebody who can do a small job and get to know them and then see if you can work up now that's going to be really hard admittedly without cash so I I don't have a great answer for that but
27:20
a lot of people think they need a co-founder but that honestly that's kind of a crutch and I'm not
27:25
accusing you of that but a lot of people they're just lonely and scared right so they want somebody to share the journey andthat's totally legit but if that's the case own it right like I I you know
27:34
your co-founder you're getting married right I mean this is you're going to be at this business for five or ten years maybe the rest of your life so this is not a casual decision and I wouldn't
27:43
wander into it not that you are again I'm kind of talking for the general crowd here the other thing is to get everything documented up front how long is each person going to be involved you
27:52
should not give a chunk of equity all in one chunk it should be vested over time based on milestone loans there's a lot of thought that should go into this even if your best friends even if it's your
28:01
sister you know like you still this things go weird when people when money gets involved and over time you know people get married they move they get sick you know whatever and things change
28:10
so you really gotta um co-founders or early stage Founders are really a place where you have to put
28:15
in a lot of kind of paperwork insurance which is annoying to do and hard on a relationship but you
28:22
have to document those things or things can really blow up in your face later so okay that was kind of you got me on one of my favorite topics but oh sorry I turned you off I meant to unmute you
28:30
okay there we go and I just said thank you okay was that helpful was that yeah okay cool all right
28:36
well hope to see you again um I know you're local so hopefully we'll see you you're reading our newsletters and come to some of the other events I'm hosting one tomorrow night at UCI actually
28:44
I'll be there yeah it's gonna be there awesome okay that's gonna be fun okay great nice to see
28:49
you okay and oh here so let's look in the chat room yes thank you uh Mark is stepping in here hey Mark nice to see you um the chat room is so that you guys can supplement what I'm saying I'm
29:00
just like the host here I don't know everything for sure right so if you have suggestions of
29:05
uh that can answer the people's questions please put them in the chat room seriously and go ahead and introduce each other post your LinkedIn Earls and stuff you know like go ahead man
29:13
you use this for what it is this is a community building exercise so Mark is chiming in here
29:18
um and it says I've tried a few co-founder matching services and even joined someone on the East Coast for their project but I couldn't find anyone to join mine interesting okay
29:26
um uh let's see how there it is um here hold on let's put that up there
29:33
I think this will now show up on there we go yes most people go there to find co-founders for their product not to offer their time oh yeah that's interesting okay so you got more people who
29:43
have their own idea rather than wanting to join something else yeah that I guess that's true I mean and I guess that mirrors my experience a little bit as well although I have seen technical
29:52
co-founders um on this y combinator thing so maybe that's better than most I I don't know but I think
29:59
it's true most Founders uh have their own idea right and they're looking for backup but that's
30:05
another reason I think not to necessarily go for a um for a co-founder because it's not likely that
30:13
someone else is going to be equally like 50 50 as excited as you are about your idea you gotta own
30:19
this stuff when you're a Founder right and like I said a co-founder is a great Theory but often it's kind of a crutch and if that's the case be careful right because it's time for you to be the boss
30:29
right if you're going to be the founder you got to be the boss and you're going to have to you know
30:35
that has a lot of there's a lot of unpacking to do on the topic that we don't have time for today but um I think co-founders are it's a little bit of a uh easy out for a lot of people so I would be
30:46
careful like I said so I don't need to beat that to death but I think hopefully you heard me all right let's keep going here uh okay dumb one great look at this so Domin says let me put that one on
30:56
there that uh okay we've got a lot of people here today say Domin I want to put this up for you guys if you didn't see it it's like a fairy tale it took a while to find my co-founder there are a
31:04
lot of brilliant people feel like the entire world not perfect but works so that's a great I like that a lot though mom uh Dome Jim um it is like a fairy tale right this is one the co-founder thing
31:14
is like the investor thing and I do this sometimes when I talk you know I'm a speaker I do a lot of speaking if any of you are having events and you need a speaker let me know but I talk a lot about
31:22
the Cinderella complex which is people have this idea that you know I'm going to build a company and then Prince Charming is going to arrive as an investor and give me money or Prince Charming
31:33
is going to arrive or princess Charming or like you're going to get removed from this it doesn't happen guys you got to get out there you gotta bust your ass right so sometimes sounds
31:42
like Donald was worked out but even then it's not perfect it's a relationship right so anyway I think that was good good commentary there um let's see uh let me hit one more here just
31:52
send it and I'll get to some more on cameras uh because we have so many people here Osmond says how do you determine the fair and appropriate amount of equity to offer expert team members you
32:01
mentioned Milestones how do you work that in very long topic Osmond but a great question the fact is
32:07
it's Common Sense there are Frameworks of course but I would really just think about what is who
32:13
is the person what do they claim to offer and then write it down and then over what reasonable period and you're not trying to be a jerk you know you're not saying whatever you know with 300 Improvement
32:22
in three weeks or whatever but figure out some reasonable um Milestones that you agree on and
32:28
this is a great way to introduce the topics of vesting and Milestones and what happens if people
32:33
go their separate ways and ownership percentages right you have to have those dialogues so what
32:38
kind of percentages I don't know probably small right until they prove themselves and investing
32:43
over time there's a very helpful document called the fast uh uh fast something advisor Services
32:52
template founder advisor Services template maybe you can Google it fast template and it lays out
32:58
for example for advisors this isn't so much for team members but if you engage somebody you know like me as a a part-time advisor to your company just kind of on strategy basis it gives you
33:07
Frameworks it has a box of a grid of like what stage is your company versus how much time is the person putting in and maybe this is the right amount of equity to give uh that's a very useful
33:17
tool as an example and there are Frameworks out there you can Google this kind of stuff I often I keep this by because I often use this as a as a demonstration madad and other folks if you're
33:28
looking at co-founders this is a really helpful site in the book and there's a website as well
33:33
slicing pie they have a whole uh methodology about how to figure out who deserves when early
33:39
stage startup because um you know everybody thinks they're worth everything and you got to negotiate
33:46
through that okay one more I saw another quick one there um Hannah had a question I was going
33:51
to pop up there where'd that one go yes this is a quick one I want to hit this too Hannah said she
33:56
recently heard someone say investment tends to dry up around Thanksgiving to the end of the year yeah
34:03
um right now is the key time after Labor day before Thanksgiving this is when a lot of money
34:09
goes to work why because everybody's busy right the kids are back in school
34:15
um it's before the holidays in December uh and then the first three months of of uh q1 are are
34:22
very popular as well there's no magic to it it's kind of like any other business really
34:27
except that the investors are really people who can kind of control their own schedule and we take off a lot of time when we can right I spent a lot of time traveling when I can right so
34:39
um not a lot happens in August a lot happens in December uh and so forth so I think that's true something to be wary of at the same time I wouldn't overthink it it isn't like there's
34:49
some Magic season Finding investment is a matter of building a relationship and the people that
34:54
are going to be interested in your Venture are going to become your friends or at least your
35:00
allies and the specific timing is it going to be so hard to get the investment completed it's more
35:07
like now is probably when they're open for the initial conversations most I guess but there's
35:14
no magic to this the fact is all these reports and standards and stuff are kind of BS it comes down to you what's your timing what do you need when are you available right especially if you're
35:22
a Founder who's only doing this part-time you're not gonna you know fit into some other person's
35:28
calendar on their perfect basis you've got to live your life and fit them into yours right
35:34
um so you got to be realistic about this but yes there is seasonality to investing okay so uh long answers to short questions okay I'm gonna bring on some of my friends here
35:44
uh lunide it sounds like Hello lynid nice to meet you and um who else wanted the early stage stuff
35:52
I noted that Brad and Rafi Rafi if you want to talk about finding early stage investors maybe
35:59
you can come back turn your camera on again and where's Brad okay let's see if we can
36:06
um let's see is Rafi gonna turn his camera back on so think about what you guys said you want to talk about we'll see if we can do kind of a group conversation here's okay here's Rafi as well
36:16
there we go okay hi hey so I'll I'll get started
36:22
um so there's two piece to the question it's um application fees or play paying for service
36:29
um I I see there's a niche of people just kind of using this as an opportunity to get
36:34
um eager entrepreneurs to sign up for something to have a service they can help you with your pitch and all that stuff like what's the lay of the land in that space because I don't want to be
36:46
um throwing money away in that way not getting a return for it so that's the first piece of it the
36:51
second piece is um you know I've been spraying it and hopefully it resonates or stick with investors
36:57
but now I'm niching down to finding women Angel Investors or those who are into baby care or
37:05
infant safety so I'm looking down however I don't want to um energies and that is finite right so
37:12
I don't want to put so much energy in something that's that's again that's not gonna work but also
37:19
um how do I build that relationship that you talk about with these investors how do I personalize it
37:26
perfectly those are great questions nice to have you here um Brad and Rafi are those the same sort of topics you had in mind or should I just do
37:34
her by herself what do you think uh yeah kind of but to what I'm mostly looking for is like
37:41
how to get the approach because like when you pay for something you kind of get your minds may vary
37:47
as usual there's a bunch of apps out there such as tender BC or openvc.app that lets you like connect
37:54
to investors but again that very much depends on the effort you put in into networking or whether
38:01
the people running the site feel like helping out and connect you to their personal Network
38:06
right because without a personal network of your own it's going to be very hard to actually like
38:13
you know okay so you guys overlap on the second part of our question anyway how about you Brad
38:18
yeah mine really has to do with um what should be included or not included in a cold investor email
38:25
all right yours is more specific okay I don't think I'm the same okay so I will
38:32
let you go for a second and we'll come back to Brad and let's talk with these other two folks
38:42
there okay cool okay so let's um first things first let's talk about App application fees
38:48
so application fees are yes for sure it happens all the time now sorry I'm playing
38:53
you can tell I'm still playing with this system uh see what looks coolest how about
38:59
there that's better um okay so application fees are a common feature for sure the
39:05
trick is to not get ripped off as you're saying and I agree with this um they're kind of two species three species really I guess of of these kind of events and
39:14
services one is a non-profit that can afford to give things away awesome this the other extreme
39:21
is of course those who are trying to actively make a profit Center out of you and then the in
39:27
between is people who are just trying to cover costs I guess right so if it's non-profit it's
39:32
free no problem of course right that's that's the ideal if they're trying to actively make money off you that's not really cool I think there's a lot of Consultants you know who are
39:42
actually sales people who are trying to help you right by selling you stuff whether it's software
39:47
and services or it's a legal incorporation or trademark services or there's accounting
39:53
of course and then there's all these conferences and events and pitches where you can hey you great
39:58
opportunity you can spend five thousand dollars and come pitch our group right that kind of stuff it depends a lot on the group of course in my experience um it depends a lot on where you live
40:08
unfortunately too especially if you're where are you I forget the need word geographically
40:13
San Diego I'm in San Diego well so you're near here okay okay and where are you you saw you were in the Montreal and Vancouver in New York right yeah Montreal Vancouver New York yeah so
40:22
you guys are both in big enough metropolitan areas you could probably find a variety of these events right if you're somebody who lives in uh whatever Tallahassee or Nairobi right the equation is much
40:33
different So for anybody who's not like you guys you really got to look online right rather than in person the in-person events are the ones that tend to charge the most and they can easily
40:42
charge you five or even ten thousand dollars I would stay away from those uh in my experience
40:48
they don't have really much better investors than the ones that will do it for free like Tech host
40:53
angels that I belong to we don't charge anybody anything um so unless we're having a big event
40:59
then we need to cover our costs actually and then the ball amount and actually that's the in-between category that I think doesn't get enough respect there are a lot of folks who try really hard to
41:09
do good work and are not making money but they are trying to cover costs and I'll put myself in that category we hold events and they're not free but that's because I spend a bunch of money getting
41:18
them up organized renting the room and publicizing them right so you know 50 bucks not five thousand
41:24
right so those two I think those legit and you gotta kind of get to know who's in in your Market
41:29
especially geographically like in San Diego or in New York or wherever you are or online as well
41:34
right who's behind it are they a non-profit are they do they have a track record of doing this or
41:39
are they somebody who just showed up you know and is trying to you know become an influencer and you
41:46
know spend 10 get 10 grand of your money that you don't have so you probably knew that but I guess I would be my short answer would I would be suspicious the more they charge and hopefully you
41:56
can find angles that don't require that is that helpful or validating to what you're thinking
42:02
credibility is yeah that helps right that's right and I guess another thought is you want to make
42:13
sure they really have investors because I know groups on all three of those places whether it's a non-profit or a covers a cost or a for-profit thing they have a bunch of people
42:22
in the room and they may be very distinguished looking you know serious investor looking types with nice suits and ties or whatever you think an investor looks like but they're not really
42:31
investors they're lawyers or they're service providers they want to teach you how to pitch or they want to make introductions you know and and those aren't investors if you want you want
42:39
people to actually write checks uh so I would try to do some due diligence on who is actually
42:45
in the room and you can always ask for references who else has pitched your event I'd like to know how they did right that's a legitimate thing especially somebody charging you five grand
42:53
if it's 50 bucks right or even 500 bucks but if it's five grand this is like you know you
42:58
could buy a car for five grand so you know you can ask a few questions and I wouldn't be shy um okay so that's enough on that one so let's get over to Rafi and Looney to your second question
43:08
um how to find investors when you don't necessarily have a personal network uh spray
43:13
and pray versus niches so I think um and raise your hand if I'm going off on the wrong track here but I think lanita you're already answering the question for yourself and this might apply to
43:23
you too Rafi which is the going from the broad approach to the narrower and narrower the trick
43:29
with finding investors of course is it's like dating you have to find people that you have a lot in common with and that are interested in your Niche and that's what you said you know literally
43:39
the words from your mouth you know you're niching down and that's exactly that's what I talk about a lot in my you can't see my books right now but the first book over there that's behind me
43:48
um you Niche down to find people that have an interest and why is this this is because the
43:53
people who invest in you are obviously they have an interest in your product and all that stuff but there has to be a level of trust and that's why most Founders start with friends and family money
44:02
not because their friends and family necessarily understand AI or reducing microplastics and baby
44:08
food right but because they know them and they trust them in other ways so you need to find a
44:14
way to replicate that like and Trust artificially essentially and the easiest way to do that is by
44:20
niching down so they don't know you they may not live in your town but they're investors and you
44:26
look here's what I'm here's my point you look at their portfolio what else have they invested in do your research like if you're spending you know uh three quarters a year a quarter
44:36
your time researching in three quarters pitching that's wrong it's been three quarters of your time researching so that you when you pitch it's to the right people you want to be in the right room
44:44
so like you said go find people that are women founders awesome African-American Founders awesome
44:51
you know people are interested in baby products awesome if you can find a fund that does baby products for companies led by African-American women you're going to get a long way quickly right
45:00
that's the key right is because you they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt that are friends and family right so you need to replicate that in other ways so now um I'm going
45:12
on here and I'll set up in a second and let you ask some follow-up questions but Rafi so to your point specifically when you don't have a personal network is the most frustrating thing I think as
45:21
a Founder it's why I do this I am a white male guy Hanford and I look like I'm super connected
45:28
well I am pretty connected now but I was not I I came from the I grew up in inner city Detroit for whatever that's worth um and I didn't know anybody right and I invented myself when I came
45:38
to California and discovered this industry and I worked my way in with some obvious advantages of being a white male who went to Stanford right but but I am committed to helping people who
45:47
don't have networks that's why I write my books that's why I do this and one of the things that we um this is not a product pitch as much as it is because it is but I built this specifically
45:56
startup direct investor this is a directory of 3 000 early stage investors that is not free we have
46:05
to cover our costs it's 79 or something but it's there's a it's half price right now I think even
46:10
but um we have to cover our costs it's taking me two years and tens of thousands of dollars in my own money to build it but it was three thousand investors you can search their portfolios and
46:20
you can search not just on industry and Stage uh but on personal characteristics like black latinx
46:27
LBGTQ immigrant veteran rural like whatever you are however you identify you can hopefully use
46:35
this tool to find firms that are interested in that and that can help you LeapFrog the lack of
46:40
personal Network I hope at least that's why we're trying to do it so the people who are Outsiders can get inside faster and raise money okay I'll stop talking for a second was any of that useful
46:51
you both look like you're falling asleep so no it was definitely useful uh Laureen dude like answer
46:58
one of your questions I think one of the people in the comment section is actually talking to you okay they have a Syndicate woman Angel Investing group Anna actually Anna in there please of what
47:11
you want to share yes you're my group which one abstract tell me which one and I'll go through the chat in a second but go ahead you guys let's just talk between us the three of us for a sec
47:20
yeah um that was very helpful and thank you um Rafi I do see Diamond Jim and um please do connect
47:29
with me I'm trying to figure out how to send my contact information or or even like my phone number to the chat but I'll do that by the end of the um session but um yeah I just started um with
47:40
the friends and family you're right on point Scott because friends and family was very successful um now it's reaching outside of that Circle that immediate circle and I need to find out I I just
47:50
saw this um company that allows you to send like personalized videos and you know I'm just trying
47:56
to find the best way to approach this like how do I how customized and I customized to be efficient
48:03
right and actually planning and that's getting right yeah and it's a great question let's cover
48:09
that in a minute as well I have some thoughts on that I have thoughts on everything as you get to know me to see so um anything else on that Rafi I'll I'll go back to the Nina's Club yeah I
48:21
would suggest like targeting people who in already invested in products in your Niche uh like reach
48:29
out to people who've you know as God said have funded women before or have uh focused on baby
48:36
products before uh or you know maybe actually like if you have something that's licensable
48:41
you could reach out to Major manufacturers if you have a patent of that you can actually reach out to them to triangular license deal rather than try and build it up yourself yeah that's true too
48:51
um let me offer this as well this is the uh Ur code I don't know if that'll work for you guys
48:57
but I started this LinkedIn group exactly for this purpose so it's lanita or Anna you you
49:03
guys want to connect this maybe you guys both go in there and you can find each other because it's really hard for me to do the copying page yeah I am part of that group I just joined earlier
49:13
today so all right I look for I look for Anna and uh great yeah yeah that's a good start then
49:20
um okay well let's talk about cold emails for a second then so uh let's bring Brad back on and
49:28
because that's overlapping your question about the video there and Rafi happy to meet you let's keep
49:33
going and I'm going to take you off and let Brad come on um okay so let's see how do I unshare that
49:42
um okay so Brad so you're interested in cold emails and it sounds like um Anita is as well so uh here's my take on cold emails and and jump in if I'm if I'm off base
49:55
um you don't want to do cold emails if you can help it no surprise right so you're grasping
50:01
at ways to make them warmer the best way to make them warmer is not to make them longer is to make them more targeted so rather than sending out 100 emails to people you'd barely know I would send
50:12
five to people that you have really researched so it's the same answers I had a minute ago whatever amount of time you're spending on Outreach versus I can't see my hands sorry change the ratio
50:23
basically right so a lot more time on Research so that when you write it can be a three or five
50:29
line thing just quick but it's hi I'm Scott I see you invest in this I have a company that does this
50:36
we're growing like this I'd love to talk to you uh and by the way I also went to the University
50:41
of Michigan and I think that uh whatever you know we're both going to vote for President Biden next time or whatever you can find that's in common right figure out who they are because
50:52
everybody wants to feel personal right and I get dozens of cold emails a day and I just even if I'm
50:59
trying to help I can't right so the only ones that are going to rise to the top are the ones that are more personal and videos a clever way to do that I just don't know I would I click on
51:07
a random video probably not I just get too much junk and people are so suspicious of random links
51:13
these days I I depend a lot on the tech for me um but that would be my thoughts um Brad
51:18
is that helpful or on the right track or you want to get back yes no that's in the research
51:24
that I'm doing that that's definitely following the line would you include uh would you include an attachment like a deck so because it's like a 50 50 on the research and what people are saying
51:33
is like included that don't include a deck yeah I don't know that there's a like you said 50 50. I
51:39
mean why not include a deck right as long as it's not like 50 megabytes and you bomb their you know inbox right yeah what I would include maybe more is some kind of teaser remember the the the whole
51:52
point is to get eating right you're not trying to get them yes they're not going to invest in one email right so whatever you can do to make that email interesting you know there are certainly
52:01
back when in my younger days I was in sales and Biz Dev and you do stuff you know think outside the box it doesn't have to be an email if you think they're the one send them flowers I mean
52:10
seriously right you send them flowers or or fax them something nobody gets faxes anymore they'll
52:15
be like what the hell is that right like get their attention that's the game right and with something reasonable not just something spammy but you've done the research right hey we went to the same
52:24
school or I see you had some great success you know it was really great sorry I meant to say this earlier to Rafi as well it's not declining people who invest in your area but find people who
52:33
invested in your area and had an exit particularly former Founders why because they've got some money
52:41
they had some uh success and they probably want to do it again right they're the perfect Target
52:48
right a Founder in your space whose exited is an excellent Target and uh if you send them something
52:53
personal and it might even be flowers don't stalk anybody right but you know in a business professional way if you're like hey I'm trying to get your attention or here's a great book I read
53:02
you know I think you'd like this or whatever you know just pounding out emails is not the way to
53:07
win anymore there's just too much base so okay thank you yeah good to see you good to see you
53:14
Lani nice to meet you both uh well I've been proud before but nice to meet you and we'll uh we're
53:20
gonna keep going here let's head over to the chat room and pick up some of those uh chat discussions
53:28
let's see all right so man we're almost an hour in here already so um let's see here let me run back through the chat and scoop up anything uh brilliant
53:38
that you guys are sharing and like I said please do use the chat please go ahead and um share stuff in there and uh of startup school thank you Rafi uh well startup school is a very
53:50
cool resource yes but that's not the one I meant in terms of the co-founder thing there's another thing but startup school is is cool um and sorry I see you putting your um your LinkedIn
54:01
back there that's the backstage chat so only the eight of you who are backstage can see that you have to go over to YouTube or LinkedIn to post it publicly and then it will show up on screen
54:09
sorry this is a lot of a lot of bells and whistles here okay let me just run through some of my commercial notes here if they're you have friends who aren't in this kind of thing please tell them
54:19
to come join us you can get free membership over at the startup Council that means we have a half a dozen different email lists trying to fill these different holes like events and finding investors
54:28
or publicity you know things that investors need that are not going to be big businesses but I'm putting my resources to plug holes for you guys uh our sponsor is cake equity which is a great
54:38
company I don't think I mentioned earlier there's a 20 off if you're looking to set up a stock option plan or you need help managing your cap table especially across borders I know a lot of
54:47
you are here from outside the United States these guys are actually based in Australia but you can get 20 off their services with that code uh sorry I'm just running through my you can comment there
54:59
oh there's the link for oh and there's the code there you go Sid launch that will get you a deal
55:05
on that startup investors directory uh this one that I was talking about sorry that's a deal there
55:12
uh this is not and I just have to repeat this again this is I'm some guy you met
55:17
on the internet did not rely on this advice talk to your own advisors every situation is different I'm not a registered financial advisor these days and we are sharing this worldwide and
55:28
happy to say hello if you'd like to on LinkedIn and what else good Lord lots of stuff to do here
55:35
um yes please like And subscribe actually that's a big one I do this because I'm trying to help and
55:41
um if we can get more people to watch them we can help more people especially I focus on underrepresented Founders uh female uh African-American minorities of any sort immigrants
55:51
like if we can help the fruits of this revolution need to be shared more widely which is why I do
55:56
this why I write these sorry those books why I speak at conferences all over the world those
56:02
of us who have done well in Silicon Valley need to do a better job of sharing that relationship and information so please like and comment and post photos and all that nonsense it really
56:13
drives the algorithms and it's free and then we can all help each other more all right now I'm
56:18
going to run back through the chat as promised okay so where did I get here Maryland London
56:24
um let's see Sandy you want to connect yes I just put up my Earl or um you can't message me no but
56:30
you can connect send a connection and if you say who you are I'll connect with you and then you
56:36
can message me for free you don't have to pay for premium that's silly uh let's see uh that
56:42
we did that we did that we did that um dialing in from Australia hi Padma nice to meet you I
56:48
was just in Australia literally on Saturday I'm not sure what time zone I'm in right now
56:53
was down in Melbourne beautiful city there and um okay it's one all right and then back here and
57:06
then high high from folks and okay working with a startup that is constrained in a g go to market
57:13
we got here Max says based on regular editor considerations as opposed to technical or
57:18
product Market fit issues regulator regulatory considerations yeah okay yeah I understand Max I'm
57:25
not sure what the question is so um I'm sorry I'm going to kept moving on here sounds challenging
57:31
find some people that know the regulatory I mean I would really talk to lawyers they're expensive but
57:36
um please share some details about gec 2023 okay sure Andre um this is where I was just in
57:42
Australia like I said uh Global entrepreneurship Congress this is a great organization especially if you're outside the US they seem to serve mostly uh Founders in other countries so they're
57:52
in like 200 countries or something we had two thousand three thousand people there from all over the world and I was speaking about how to bring how you non-us companies can raise money
58:01
here in the states and um it was fascinating so you can go to a global entrepreneurship Network
58:09
I think it's just gen.org actually and there are photos on my LinkedIn actually if you want to see we have lots of amazing uh people and uh opportunities there
58:19
does geographic location matter up here in Seattle you know it does uh traditionally but not as much
58:25
anymore if you have a good deal investors are much more comfortable doing deals on Zoom it's one of the few good things that have come out of the pandemic but of course it will be easier with
58:35
local people and that's because of the no like and trust thing we were talking about earlier if people know you and trust you they're more likely to invest in they're more likely to do that if
58:44
they have met you face to face and they can come by and visit your office and you know feel like they have some idea of what's happening in your business here's a good one from Wildfire Western
58:56
States Wildland firefighting product a lead investor it's a lead investor so okay so this is
59:05
this is a challenge for everybody this is one of those cases my next book is going to be
59:11
about how to raise money because this is one of those things that comes up people tell you they want a lead investor it may be because they want a lead investor it's more likely they're saying no
59:24
and I know that's hard to hear but they're saying no anything that isn't money in the bank is a no
59:31
so if they're saying they want a lead investor there's something wrong and I don't know you I'm not trying to offend you but nobody else going to tell you this
59:38
there's something wrong so I don't know if it's your presentation it's your team it's
59:43
your Market size I mean it could be a million things right it might be your haircut who knows um and it's not fair but I don't know what it is but if they're always insisting on a lead investor
59:53
it's three quarters that they're just saying no now so you need to think about it or or try to dig
59:59
more nicely you know back Channel off the Record why right now there is a quarter a third even half
1:00:06
of investors insist on a lead investor and that is true for two reasons one is that it might be their
1:00:12
mandate right some people you know funds are based on money that they raise from other people so it's not their own money so they have rules they have to follow a lot of times those funds are given to
1:00:23
them on the premise that they find a lead investor who's even smarter or more connected so that they
1:00:28
can say you know well Kleiner Perkins invested Sequoia was in on this deal and that for you know
1:00:34
it's an extra buffer so yes that is true that does happen the other thing is that if there's
1:00:40
a lead investor it's a lot easier for us because they probably did all the due diligence already
1:00:45
so it might be an issue around your due diligence you might suggest or ask you know
1:00:50
is it a question you know about our data do we not have enough information in the due diligence
1:00:55
making available for due diligence in our data room those kind of things but the fact is a lot of
1:01:01
that though you can clear it with prior research again back to the research do they lead rounds a
1:01:07
lot of investors will tell you do they lead rounds or not that's actually literally a field we have
1:01:12
on the startup investors director I'm searching this but that's why I built this that kind of information is really hard to find so we're trying to put it all in one place for you so do they lead
1:01:21
rounds if it says no Then maybe they really don't in which case uh then you need to go find somebody who does that's the answer so my answer is three quarters they're saying no and you need to figure
1:01:31
out why and one quarter maybe it's legit you need to go find lead investor that's all there is to it
1:01:38
um unfortunately okay um let's see keeping going here we did that one from Mark and
1:01:49
let's see this is interesting Sal chimes in here with a little legal note make sure you have contingencies when they sign a contract have your lawyer make one that protects you from
1:01:56
someone who will just sign and not do anything to move the business forward this is sounds like salesman are on the Block because this is true it is more common than you think or than it should
1:02:05
be that you only spend a lot of time negotiating a deal and then the person will sign it and then sit on their ass and this essentially happens with co-founders or advisors who promise you the
1:02:14
world and all they're really trying to do is get a piece of your company and then they don't move forward so that's why you need investing over time and Milestones and having good
1:02:23
attorneys is a great suggestion Good attorneys are expensive unfortunately if any of you need attorney referrals in the startup space you can contact us through the startup Council website
1:02:33
and I we have a lot of attorneys who are sponsors and and friends who are good and also who specialize in startups one of the biggest mistakes you can make is having a lawyer but it's
1:02:42
like your cousin who does car accidents or your brother-in-law who who is the divorce attorney
1:02:49
or something right those people don't do startups all day every day if you're serious about this you need somebody who really knows the game this is a fast moving fast-paced game with a lot of money at
1:02:58
stake so real companies have real lawyers and like I said if we can help you with a referral there
1:03:04
we're happy to what would be um let's see let's be free Hello what would be the ideal percentage
1:03:12
of shares to offer at the beginning we're this is in reference to our conversation about Founders co-founders I think it really depends uh you need to talk about who's doing what in terms of duties
1:03:22
something less than half if you're really the founder um if they're doing half the work then
1:03:28
half right if they're doing only a little then a little it's there's no right answer there it really is a question of how much are they going to contribute over time and how much control are
1:03:36
you going to want to maintain and it gets into its first relationship issue then a negotiation issue
1:03:43
and then a legal issue where you should have attorneys involved all right let me uh let's
1:03:49
see let's go back to we got a lot of people here today this is awesome let's go back to some of our on-camera folks so that uh we keep moving here so we also had let's say we did lumita let's see
1:04:01
we've still got Roderick to talk to we talked to madad talked to Brad and Rafi and Andre wanted to
1:04:08
do pitch practice okay so let's see Roger going to Roderick if you're still around you can turn
1:04:14
on your camera we can talk about traction and then we can talk about growth with Nicholas and Fabio
1:04:20
as well and that sounds like a pretty good pretty good agenda there he is hey Roddick so um so where
1:04:30
do you live you're here in Southern California it seems like are you around here not your mute
1:04:37
yes I'm here in La actually okay anelia okay cool all right um so let's let's remind everybody what
1:04:44
your question was about traction and you said you'd talk to six investors I think yeah uh five technically I just looked at it actually so I've talked I've spoken with five investors what
1:04:53
pitched five investors over the past two months and of course the the the the theme has been uh
1:05:00
come back to them once I have traction because they said they do have interests right but at
1:05:05
this point they you know everything is about risk and they just want me to have traction so so the question is what is considered to be enough traction because I don't want to go
1:05:16
back to them and so I feel I have enough traction my web app MVP is not launching
1:05:22
until March of 2024 so okay yeah it's a tough question and there's no clear answer right the
1:05:32
um first I have to say this is another way investors sometimes say no so be careful
1:05:38
I've had um I've had Founders companies that I've advised that they get answers like that especially
1:05:45
folks I don't know your background but especially people who are Engineers they like binary answers like and I have this company where the founders and engineer great guy brilliant product and the
1:05:55
investors kept saying well we need you to do this so we do that and then you come back now invest like oh well we need to do this we need to do this and they kept moving the goal posts right
1:06:03
because they're not saying yes they're saying no so there's a chance that they're just bullshitting you to be as your friend I'm telling you right you got to be really careful because investors never
1:06:13
really clearly say no so just be careful about how seriously you take their answers and how high you
1:06:20
jump to do whatever it is right and this is for everybody not just you but it but this happens investors always you know they see enough to be interesting and they don't want to say no just in
1:06:29
case later they can get a little piece and that's their job unfortunately but it's at Cross purposes with being honest which is unfortunate so that is side let's presume they do have traction interest
1:06:39
of course you can also look at the investment thesis of those funds most funds these VC funds
1:06:46
are they Angel Investors or what kind of folks one is it I met with with a guy on Friday who's
1:06:51
part of an Angel investment fund and how I got in contact with him is uh through a mutual uh friend
1:06:59
who actually is very close to him so he looked at the pitch deck and he wanted to speak with
1:07:04
me after he saw the pitch deck and hear the pitch so I did Pitch him but he told me that he's more
1:07:10
in the health field so I knew that going into it but he said he's very interested in helping
1:07:16
me because he feel like I do have something so he told me to definitely contact him when I have
1:07:21
the traction and then he can uh help me navigate through things okay well that if you take that
1:07:27
at face value that sounds awesome and there are certainly people that will do that my job today I think is to be the skeptic that's also the perfect setup for him charging you or taking a piece of
1:07:38
your company later once you make money off you right so I don't know the man but just be careful
1:07:43
right that's exactly what Anita was talking about earlier like people charging you fees for stuff and they're just kind of waiting until you get a little fatter you know and then they can squeeze
1:07:52
you so just be careful I wish him the best and I let's presume good motives because there are
1:07:59
those of us who have themand others who don't right I can tell you stories but we won't do that um so I guess my question was so in that case it doesn't apply but if it's a VC firm you can
1:08:07
usually look at their website and they'll say something like we do lead rounds or we don't or
1:08:12
we invest pre-revenue or we don't or you know something about their thesis and if it says
1:08:18
for example we lead rounds and we invest at the pre-seed pre-revenue stage and he's still telling
1:08:24
you that then there's a mismatch it's really a no right so but if it says we really only do
1:08:30
series B then you're kind of a long ways from that it's probably not worth your time anyway right so this is again the research piece like qualifying investors it's really exciting to meet
1:08:40
anybody who claims to be able to write a check but it's there's only a certain amount of people that
1:08:47
actually fit where you are in your life cycle your industry your growth pattern and all that and that
1:08:52
research is critical okay so let's talk more about so that's all Preamble really let's talk about the traction itself so how much traction is enough depends depends depends right on the industry
1:09:02
et cetera et cetera the trick for a founder and the opportunity really is how do you demonstrate
1:09:07
traction when you don't have any I think that's really your question right like I don't have any traction what do I do right because you haven't even launched yet so it's your job and
1:09:15
your opportunity as Founders everybody not just Roderick here but how can you not fake it but
1:09:22
um create traction the evidence of traction when you don't actually have sales because
1:09:28
the real traction they want of course is sales and ideally profitable sales that are growing like crazy and you're a long way from that so what do you do now well you kind of make it up
1:09:38
investors eat numbers we eat numbers and we need to see spreadsheets and growth rates and data that
1:09:47
somehow justifies the fact that like hey we had lunch I like Roderick I think he has something but
1:09:52
I can't justify this to my partners or my spouse or whoever you know controls the checkbook in my
1:09:58
operation without some numbers so you've got to create numbers so how can you create numbers well
1:10:03
um it could be anything and any numbers are better than no numbers um and I'm guessing at the moment you don't you probably have any numbers
1:10:11
um so let me keep going is this helpful am I on the right track here oh no correct you're doing great Okay so how do you find some numbers well um the best numbers are those from customers so
1:10:23
how many customers are have bought and paid are in recurring right you don't have that yet okay so
1:10:28
how many customers have you talked to and how many of those are interested okay so I ran a survey or
1:10:34
I spent three weeks on the phone I talked to a hundred customers and 83 of them were interested
1:10:39
and those 83 were interested at a price point of whatever is appropriate in your market right
1:10:45
um and uh I also qualify that they have budgets like uh half of them had a budget for this that
1:10:51
was unspent right to ask the questions think about if you were buying this as an investor buying into your company like what would prove to me that it hasn't happened yet but it's going
1:11:00
to it's something about customers probably right so you could put up ads on LinkedIn or Google and
1:11:06
say hey do you like XYZ widgets and just see how many clicks you got you say well I spent
1:11:12
200 on Google and I got whatever 37 click 37 click through that was probably not accurate
1:11:18
you know and and 14 signups to our mailing list and that suggests that if I had you know ten
1:11:28
thousand dollars to do that I would have these many people on our waiting list or this kind
1:11:33
of idea right I went on 14 podcasts and talked about it and I created this many people on our
1:11:38
mailing list that are waiting for the sign up in the launch like you see what I'm doing I'm just like making up stuff I went to a conference and I handed out a thousand business cards
1:11:46
and 47 people called me like something that shows somebody what they're really asking when they're
1:11:52
asking about traction of course again they'd like money and profits recurring profits but if
1:11:57
you don't have that then it what they're really looking for is just saying is there anybody out there other than you who leaves this that's what they're asking right or is this just uh you know
1:12:06
Roderick in his head and and that's a good start but we need more than that right because nobody everybody has a boss like even I am an angel investor I write my own checks but I still you
1:12:16
know I gotta think about my wife and my kids and our retirement you know like so everybody's got checks and balances nobody's just writing checks right despite what they do on a shark tag right
1:12:25
um so what they're really asking is who have you convinced that's what traction comes down to who
1:12:31
have you convinced that will pay for this and I would work backwards from that and run some small tests that can collect some data to give you metrics and I don't know what those might be
1:12:40
exactly but I gave you some examples maybe people in the chat room folks please chime in there
1:12:46
um uh if you uh have ideas here or or or Corrections right I'm not perfect I might have said something stupid happens all the time so anyway is that helpful no it is and let me ask you
1:12:58
one last question your thoughts on this as well so uh when I had that meeting on Friday it made me
1:13:04
think about this uh so I have access to a lot of celebrities so one of the things I thought about
1:13:12
doing since I have access to Shaquille O'Neal and I've met him a few years ago about actually
1:13:17
business nice I was thinking about bringing him on as maybe like a 10 Equity partner do you think
1:13:23
that makes a difference when you're meeting with investors so for instance my web app launches
1:13:28
next year and I started getting a little bit of traction but I also have Shaquille O'Neal on board uh as a 10 Equity stake in my company do you think that's something that would help or should I avoid
1:13:39
that oh I think it will help um for sure I don't know if 10 is the right number but um it might
1:13:45
take a lot more than that to get Jack interested but that's you know that's between you and him I think it would be uh interesting in a couple ways I'll qualify that one it would be tremendously
1:13:54
differentiating on the last topic that we talked about uh with lunid and Rafi about how do you
1:14:01
and and Brad about how do you get an Investor's attention if you you know email ends in my inbox
1:14:07
it says hi I'm partners with Shaquille O'Neal and you know he and I would like to have lunch with you on Thursday I'm like okay well that's an email I'm gonna read right and that's a big deal
1:14:16
right to get people's attention is half the game maybe more so that's the thing um what I would be
1:14:22
careful though is you know is he there just for window dressing or is there some go to market plan right so again numbers so Shaquille O'Neal cool I totally get the brand name andespecially
1:14:33
I I don't know what your app does and we probably don't have time to get into it but ideally there's some connection with him personally isn't just a name right correct well that there's
1:14:42
some numbers like he hasn't you know this many Instagram followers or this much you know he's going to be on TV 14 times this fall hosting this show or you know something that can you can again
1:14:52
numbers numbers numbers right so Shaq's my best friend he's an investor cool what does that mean
1:14:57
in terms of numbers how many impressions are you going to get what do you think that that can drive in terms of adoption what will that lead to in terms of Revenue that's what we want to see
1:15:05
so okay way better than zero because then you're just another email you know some random guy with
1:15:10
an app but this is Shaq's app cool like now I'm interested but what next right what is that what's
1:15:16
in it for me I guess is what it boils down to and if you can connect those dots then it might be worth ten percent but that means of course getting a deal from Shaq and you want that in writing he's
1:15:25
going to promote this this many times on Instagram or he's going to this many times a year what's he gonna do right and he's like a co-founder at that point so back to somebody's point earlier you got
1:15:34
to get lawyers and document that stuff because that's a perfect example I don't know Shaq I'm sure he's much more honorable than that but that's the kind of thing where people say sure I'll take
1:15:42
10 of your company and then not do anything right so it's a two-way street um been interesting well
1:15:48
that's a great differentiator sure absolutely differentiation is really key these days I think that's if you know celebrities that's a big one and a lot of you know honestly a lot of investors
1:15:56
are nerds so that's a great angle they'd love to view itself yeah I was wondering that because the
1:16:01
guy the angel investor I met with on Friday uh he knows that I'm con because I'm an actor
1:16:07
so I started off as an actor that's how this my idea came about so being an actor over the years
1:16:12
of course I've met so many people sure and so uh after I met with him on Friday I thought to myself
1:16:18
you know what maybe I should try to bring in one of these celebrities that I know and maybe that
1:16:23
like what you said maybe that'll differentiate me once I start getting a little bit of traction on my platform yeah that could make a difference I I think that's a great idea okay perfect that's
1:16:33
good to know I'm glad to know that cool well good to see you man thank you so much once again Scott you're amazing man yeah nice to see you take care let's bring on our next let's see we're gonna go
1:16:44
to Nicholas and and let's see there's Nicholas hi there hello Nicholas so do you want to bring
1:16:52
on Fabio as well are you guys a team is that the idea me if you can but um okay otherwise I can
1:16:58
just okay his camera's off Fabi if you want to join us you're welcome to do that as well you guys trying to turn the camera on but I think that's some technical issues he was not able to do
1:17:07
so all right no worries um and let me just quick uh if anybody wants to pitch um Andre I don't know
1:17:13
if you're still here but we can do some pitches in a couple minutes I'll we'll take this question and then I'll do a little bit from the chat room and then we'll um let's see yeah Andre's here so we'll
1:17:24
do his pitch uh in a couple minutes here okay so if anybody else wants to pitch let me know and
1:17:31
um for okay like Wayne I don't know when you showed up backstage I don't know what you want
1:17:37
to talk about or um you said hello but maybe you can type in the backstage chat there Wayne what what what's on your mind and we'll get to you in a couple minutes okay Nicholas go ahead sorry
1:17:48
well um I have been hearing some some of the tips that you are sharing with people and I think it's gonna we can connect very very well with the our orientation around here
1:18:00
it's not everybody that has straight access to Chapel on you as me so it's kind of complicated so
1:18:07
um your examples should be to have uh College somewhere and then moving on to another place
1:18:14
it's exactly what I was thinking about when I I talked about growth um uh we're just very do
1:18:23
a very quick sum of our our our job we do a solution for database administrator uh
1:18:33
uh it means that we are trying to connect with uh technology people industry technology companies
1:18:39
and we are thinking about how can we grow or how can we grow on the on building on this
1:18:46
network uh I'm even cover geography speaking and we are we are forcing we are seeking for
1:18:54
um Partners all over North America so it's maybe it's not a geographic problem uh
1:19:03
uh just how how can we how can we find the right Partners if you you give some very good tips about
1:19:10
building connections about building relationships to grow narrowing to go uh more more research than
1:19:18
Beach itself more research than than trying to do connect differentiate and that that helps a lot uh
1:19:26
we're still thinking about how can we put that in practice as we are seeking for something like well
1:19:33
the differentiation is kind of it's something that we must have also uh it feels like we are
1:19:41
missing something when you have so much of a good product already launched it and so much customers saying that this is a breakthrough this is something really important for the industry and
1:19:52
also we still not getting the traction that we are thinking about how can we connect with people too
1:19:58
to have a Skyrocket launch who are the specific customers that you would like to work with
1:20:07
um the the two itself it's a database administrators to so it means for uh Microsoft
1:20:14
SQL database administrators Okay so my management service providers um database administrators
1:20:24
themselves companies that have large databases environments and once you they want to
1:20:32
scale their businesses okay it's not that white yeah so no it's good it's fairly specific there
1:20:40
are a lot of companies that do this though and I can't say that I'm an expert at Enterprise sales
1:20:45
um so I would think you could spend some time on YouTube and probably or Google and find some really good information here I'm more about startup fundraising but I have a background
1:20:54
in business development so I I maybe I'll share a couple thoughts see if these are useful so yeah you heard me it sounds like about niching down and targeting research first that that's really
1:21:05
critical the the other piece is that they're because that's a very established sales channel
1:21:12
right database administrators implementing SQL there's a lot of people that do that the obvious way is to hire somebody that knows that stuff I mean that's I don't know how much money you have
1:21:21
but there are people that have relationships doing that for decades right um if that's not an option
1:21:26
then I kind of put this world into kind of two buckets it says sales versus Business Development
1:21:33
umand sales is the one-on-one contact you or your salesperson to the customer right and that may not
1:21:41
be the database administrator themselves it's the person that controls the budget for the training and the tools of those database administrators so who those people are is where your research goes
1:21:51
right you don't want to go too high because they don't care and too low they don't have the budget right so finding those people in a large organization that becomes what I call
1:21:59
Business Development and then um that's a real trick um especially in a large corporation so
1:22:07
I guess I would be segmenting your Market into whether you want to work with startups or small
1:22:13
medium Enterprises or large Enterprises and then of course you've got the government which is like its whole other thing right much more complicated or education or Healthcare those are kind of
1:22:21
their own worlds really um I would be thinking about if you can't hire somebody that knows this
1:22:28
stuff already I would be spending a bunch of time honestly at conferences and really look
1:22:33
at associations that are probably associations of database administrators and conferences and conventions where a bunch of those people come at once and just like you heard me say I experienced
1:22:42
this last week in Australia thousands of people with similar interests it's really exciting just
1:22:48
personally to be in that kind of environment but it also it's really easy to not even so
1:22:53
much sell but to build relationships right you go out for drinks and have dinners with people and if everybody in the room is a database administrator it's going to kind of come up naturally and doing
1:23:02
a bunch of that uh is is the way that I've built some businesses specifically if you can find not
1:23:10
like I said not the end user or even maybe the individual budget person but like the VP or the
1:23:16
CFO the person who controls the whole budget on the textile or the CTO somebody who recommends
1:23:22
those purchases with purchasing Authority like identifying those people before you go to an event and then seeing if you especially if you can speak or be on a panel with them going and shaking hands
1:23:33
and making friends uh you can shave months or years off the sales process so that that's pretty
1:23:39
obvious at least to me but I don't is that helpful is that helpful I think it connects very well with
1:23:46
uh the other things that you were talking about narrowing the search with the niches that you are looking for were you already working on that um I I just felt connected when you thought that
1:23:56
you were not born when you relieved today you know where you do business today because I'm not
1:24:03
born in here so uh yeah so I I feel pretty much basically the same that we need to build a all
1:24:11
the network from scratch all over again and well that's my point though is if you do this there
1:24:17
is a network like find the networks that are out there that's what I'm saying actually there are Networks you're just not in them yet so go find it right like go on Reddit and find the database
1:24:27
administrators I mean there's got to be a huge active Reddit for that right and then find out what conferences they go to or what online forums they participate in off of Reddit right um and and
1:24:37
go become a part of those communities another great tool is to go on podcasts for example I
1:24:42
don't know how many podcasts there are for dbas but there probably are a few or a couple blogs right and and this is more content marketing but like go get interviewed or or um get some articles
1:24:53
published that demonstrate your expertise or words come Source start your own podcast or your YouTube channel right is there a YouTube channel where you can be educational to these people and they come
1:25:02
to you and this is my now we're talking this is my second book uh this one e-riches 2.0 we talk a lot
1:25:10
about using social media for um for this kind of stuff Affinity marketing and building communities
1:25:16
um but that's the point there are networks just go find them don't try to build your own that's too much work you just got to go in there you know and find if you have even a limited budget
1:25:26
it's amazing the number of events that are desperate for sponsors so if you can even
1:25:31
like you know go to a big you know Comm deck sort of thing it'll be like a hundred thousand dollars it's probably outside your budget but if you go to some smaller Regional things and you say hey
1:25:40
um I've got 500 can we be a sponsor they probably will say yeah and they said well could I be a
1:25:46
speaker too they'll probably say yeah I mean or not but at least you you know at least you're having a conversation with the right person and then you work your way into the network that way
1:25:55
oh fine I'll I'd love to have the some more conversation with you if it's possible to
1:26:00
have a one-on-one later so uh this is amazing I I think it's pretty much connected with what
1:26:06
we are doing but you know way more clear in transplant sure but um you already gave
1:26:11
so many tips and hints with the other people about this specific case so thank you very much
1:26:17
let me put up this uh Chiron here because this is um I haven't this is a page people always ask me
1:26:26
to invest personally or they want to talk more to me and I'd be happy to I just don't have that many hours in the day so this page on scottfox.com has a list of the Angel groups I'm involved in
1:26:36
that you could pitch if you're interested you know there's also a link to the workshops that
1:26:42
I run and there's even private coaching calls that you can buy I'm sorry I have to charge for my time but I I do do this occasionally um if you've got a few hundred bucks I can
1:26:50
actually I'm out and I'll be happy to talk to you I I do this to help I just can't do it all and people out there that want to to join for a conversation with about a partnership over here
1:27:02
thank you all right nice to meet you uh that's our friend and speaking that again uh the cheaper
1:27:08
way to do this because I'm really not trying to make money off you guys is to share this again
1:27:16
they're so little there we go there's that QR code that's that LinkedIn group I'm just trying to get everybody together and we can all help each other uh free because
1:27:24
there's just not enough me to do phone calls with everybody so if that's useful hopefully you can scan that QR code or link link to me on LinkedIn and and I can introduce you to
1:27:33
all right um so and these are the recommendations like I said for startup funding okay man we're
1:27:39
running out of time here so we still have a at least one pitch to do um let's see I'm sorry
1:27:48
I'm just reading through the chat here real quick see if there's anything that's on fire yes okay uh
1:27:59
okay good okay Wayne it's not nice thanks for those updates doesn't sound like you had a specific question so I'm gonna move on to some of the other specific questions if you don't mind
1:28:08
let's roll back over here to the chat um let's see not that oh I turned off the chat damn it
1:28:16
sorry guys now it's going to come back on sorry I turned it off wrong button too many buttons two
1:28:22
and too many things here um uh this is the one I wanted and we're gonna oh just as a reminder if
1:28:29
you want to watch more of these there's a whole bunch of these uh on YouTube I've been doing this on and off for years so there's a couple hundred hours of Me on YouTube if you want to uh
1:28:38
say hello and soak up some more of this and let's see there okay now I'm gonna run back
1:28:46
to the chat which is I gotta turn that off and turn this on okay so the chat will start
1:28:53
appearing again sorry it starts over but I have your past there we go there's um
1:28:59
let's see okay oh so this was okay I'm gonna take that question right now because I think that one
1:29:10
from Matt yes yes Matt you actually wrote in so a few people actually sent these in earlier this
1:29:16
is one of the reasons I took lenita's and Brad's questions for example because a few of you emailed in which is really helpful because I can think about these things beforehand there's an RSVP
1:29:25
uh in the Eventbrite link I don't know where you saw this in Eventbrite or meet up or uh on our
1:29:31
newsletters whatever but there's always a link for an RSVP page as well and then you can send in your questions beforehand that's really really helpful to me so what's going to promote Matt to the front
1:29:40
of the line here from Matt from Miami um and he chimed in here Matt thank you to remind me so um
1:29:47
let's put that up there well I guess you guys can see it so how much to raise in a pre-seed round so
1:29:53
I have a little more detail here because he sent that in thank you Matt and it says I'm looking for 18 months of financing to cover the costs of a few hires platform development marketing and operating
1:30:02
costs I have a sales projections model built up but need help on determining how much to raise my
1:30:07
startup is live and will be generating 25k a month by the end of the year nicely done that's great
1:30:13
so the question is how what's the best way to calculate how much I need to raise in a pre-seed
1:30:19
round okay so how much to raise an appreciate or in any round is a challenge right so it's a legit question for sure pre-seed is especially tough because you don't really have any metrics
1:30:27
yet like we talked about Investors eat numbers and we don't have enough metrics to really figure out
1:30:32
either what your appetite is or your growth rate your churn any of those things that investors like
1:30:38
to Crunch in their spreadsheets so what do you do well there's kind of the bottom up and then
1:30:43
the top down bottom up is what's it going to cost right how much are you spending on yourself your
1:30:50
team any office space software computers travel benefits you know Etc et cetera like how much
1:30:56
you actually need and that's a totally legit way to go of course if you don't have any Revenue no
1:31:03
investor really wants to write a check for what are essentially sunk costs right so that's not real attractive but at least gives you a ballpark right like if you're burning a million dollars a
1:31:12
month then a 50 000 raise isn't going to make much difference right so at least gives you some entry
1:31:17
into the game the other way is kind of top down you think about the company and you say well how
1:31:23
much of the company would I give up for how much money because that's the reality right you're the
1:31:29
founder or a co-founding team uh we want to raise we think you know we think the comp we need like
1:31:36
a couple hundred grand here okay so let's call it uh 250. we're gonna raise two hundred fifty
1:31:41
thousand dollars so if it's a million and I'm going to leave it aside precede pre money and post
1:31:48
money just for simplicity's sake like do I want to give up a quarter of the company for 25 yeah
1:31:55
that sounds like a lot so maybe I think we'll try to say World War II million that's then it's kind of half of that well but I'm gonna have to raise several more rounds right because 250 isn't enough
1:32:03
to get me all the way to where I need to go right I'm probably going to need to do additional rounds
1:32:09
rule of thumb is it with each financing a startup founding team person or team is going to give up
1:32:16
I don't know 10 to say 20 or 25 of the company each time so ideally you're going to raise an
1:32:23
increasingly higher valuations and you give up say 20 each time you don't want to do more than
1:32:30
three or four rounds because you're gonna have nothing left right so so this is all going into your thinking you probably know this Matt but this is the calculation and this is kind of a long way
1:32:38
of both helping everybody else know how to think about this but also to help you think about it a little more like your bottom what's your bottom up and what's your top down I mean the answer is
1:32:47
frankly it's usually uh about company valuation of and I don't know your industry but if we're
1:32:53
talking about say a software startup these days if I early stage evaluation is somewhere or precede
1:32:59
I mean I don't know between two and eight million depending on how much AI you have basically right
1:33:06
um but you know especially if you have a line towards 25 Grand a month uh in a couple months that's that's very promising right so maybe it's on the higher end of that say 5 million
1:33:15
or something and then you want to give up say 10 well that's only 500 000. well that might get you
1:33:21
where you need to go I don't know right but this is the kind of calculation that's done there is no exact formula that I'm aware of because each of those is a set of compounded assumptions right
1:33:30
the valuations a made-up number your budget's kind of a made-up number certainly the revenue is a made-up number and you're trying to squish all those into an equation where the investor
1:33:39
wants to take a bite and there's no you know one plus two equals three sort of straight
1:33:46
line on that so I hope that's helpful but that is the answer uh which is it depends not real
1:33:52
helpful but hopefully that gives you some goal posts to um figure out the parameters that might
1:33:57
help box you in uh typically a few hundred grand out of a few million pre-money that
1:34:02
that's kind of where people start just because and there's no real reason for that it's except that
1:34:09
you want to maintain a good chunk of the company so that you continue to be motivated and guess what the investors do too right so if I come in with whatever the amount of money is and I
1:34:18
take 90 of the company right away well it's not likely you're going to stay motivated that long
1:34:23
so that's not in my best interest anyway right so this is a this is a Marketplace haggling sort of
1:34:29
deal how much can I get I want the most I can for the investment I make you want to give me the least I can for the investment I make and you got to meet in the middle okay then those are the
1:34:40
facts okay oh okay so Matt's still here that was great okay good if I go out to investors
1:34:46
saying I want to raise 500k do I absolutely need to raise 500 or can I end up raising oh this is great thank you Matt great question this is a big mistake that people oh I think it's a
1:34:54
mistake there's no right answers here again right I don't have all the answers so all of you chime in uh as as you will on in the chat so uh How firm do you have to be on the ask great question
1:35:06
investors are number people and a lot of us I'm more from like as you heard kind of like a Biz Dev
1:35:13
salesy strategy background a lot of investors not surprisingly are CFOs cfas accounting people right
1:35:21
the numbers as much as I eat numbers they want down to the penny right and for those people they
1:35:28
really want you to be precise and if you come in and say hey everybody we want to raise some money
1:35:34
how much well we're not really sure what kind of valuation well I don't know we'll negotiate
1:35:39
that they're gonna just not pay attention right you need to have again no exact answer but you
1:35:45
need to have something that's specific enough sounding to get to the next meeting that's what
1:35:51
this is all about getting to the next meeting right so you have to come in sounding sure of yourself like you've thought this out but you're flexible that's the key word and so your question
1:36:03
if I go to investors saying I want to raise 500k do I absolutely need to raise 500 no can I end
1:36:09
up raising 400 600 yes in fact if you want 500k here's what I'd suggest I would suggest that you
1:36:15
look at who you're talking to what their typical check size is again research research research
1:36:22
what their typical check size is what is likely you'll be able to raise so you say you're shooting
1:36:28
for 500 you look at your the book of you know of contacts you have and likelihood and timing and so
1:36:34
forth and you think I bet you know I bet we could do pretty sure we could do 250 because you're not going to bother unless you think there's something going to happen right so I'm pretty sure we could
1:36:42
do 250. so I'm going to say we're rate but I want 500 and I'm optimistic I can get 500. so
1:36:49
let's say we're going to say 300 our raises 300 and here's the qualifications one we're flexible
1:36:57
two what is the structure that's the other thing that I want to say is it a safe is it
1:37:03
a convertible note is it Equity you need to decide but again we're flexible if this is
1:37:09
your first round you can do some back and forth but just sound like you know what you're doing and you walk in and you say we are looking for three hundred thousand
1:37:18
dollars at a pre-money valuation of 3 million and we're thinking it's a convertible note
1:37:24
and you sound like you've done your homework but you actually are not wedded to any of those things until you get into discussions and that's okay the the the bigger picture thinkers will be like okay
1:37:35
sounds okay and the detailer to people will be like okay this is 303 million okay okay why
1:37:41
this why that but at least then you'll have the conversation right and that's what you want to need to do and I skipped over an important piece you're trying to raise five but I said only say
1:37:52
three why so that you can be over subscribed everybody wants to be part of a winning deal
1:38:00
so even if you know there's five 500 available and coming don't say five say we're raising three
1:38:06
or four or whatever say wow we're raising three we got 400 already and then send another email then I
1:38:11
said wow we're now we're at 450 well we're at 500 we gotta stop we're sorry we gotta stop we got 500 000 who knew this was going to be so popular right and then everybody in the deal feels really good
1:38:20
about it because they're in on a hot deal that's how you do this okay so hopefully that's helpful
1:38:26
uh because I've seen this a lot of times Founders come in either too precise and they say you know whatever we want you know 700 on a six and a half million pre-money and it's got to be this it's got
1:38:37
to be that and the investors are like no okay and then you waste time renegotiating or they
1:38:44
just get laughed out of the room because you had some of the terms off right and you were trying to act like you knew more than you did so flexible is is definitely a strategy here okay that was a good
1:38:53
one Matt thank you again for writing in early all of you are welcome to write in again early it's 139 my goodness okay I'm gonna run through the chat here and then we're gonna do Andre's pitch
1:39:02
um okay let's see make sure you have to do it we did that
1:39:07
um let's see for a business as well okay that's an interesting one I don't know but maybe some
1:39:16
other folks answer this one that's showing on the screen here in a moment here comes from teach TI
1:39:22
chawana for a business which has a public benefit in Corporate Services which will be the best entity to incorporate so if you're talking about a public benefit Corporation that's a specific
1:39:32
um a specific legal structure so you would use that structure if you want to raise Venture
1:39:37
Capital money you need to use a Delaware C corporation I'm not sure those two will Jive
1:39:43
right I'm not and I'm literally not sure I don't know like public benefit Corps are a new thing a
1:39:49
new enough that I don't know quite how they work but VC backed companies are Delaware C Corps and
1:39:55
that's what you would want to be doing um well then Lenny do you want to pitch too okay so we'll do two of those um in a minute here all right uh let's see I've recently heard someone say invest
1:40:09
oh we did that one okay sorry hang on all right we're gonna go a little faster now we did that
1:40:16
into that uh well that's an easy one let's do this is there a red flag level of salary yes too much
1:40:27
what does that mean I don't know but it's too much so you can support yourself but investors don't like the idea of paying your salary and certainly not a generous salary
1:40:38
I don't know why it's not fair but it's reality investors want you to work hard and maybe starve
1:40:45
and put everything into the company that's just how it is so I would pay yourself at most
1:40:51
whatever I don't know what cost of living is wherever you are Pierce uh you know maybe five
1:40:57
or eight grand a month at most and really look like you are putting your Sweat Equity into it and
1:41:04
um investors are going to insist on that so uh red flag is anything more than they think is too much
1:41:10
sorry I don't know exactly what that means be careful a quick side note on that my first company I almost bankrupted myself and I didn't pay myself much and I didn't pay my benefits so be careful
1:41:21
it's not just salary especially if you're a person who has a family or children and so forth you got
1:41:27
to factor in you know health care and things like that as well so there's multiple categories there
1:41:32
to think about chaos says how important is it to have an MBA to increase your chance of startup
1:41:37
is it all about Network which top MBA programs provide that I I don't think it's important to
1:41:43
have an MBA at all uh most Founders I don't think that's interesting I don't know if somebody could probably they've probably done studies on this my Impressions most Founders don't have mbas they're
1:41:53
more Hustlers they might have a solid business background and they surround themselves with mbas but um maybe in Silicon Valley they do these days I mean if you come out of Stanford but a lot
1:42:05
of the Stanford folks I mean I went to Stanford a lot of us end up you know in consulting or banking or other things so I I don't know um in terms of the network if that's what you're really
1:42:13
asking about the network is critical so any way you can get a network is fine I don't think you need to spend a couple hundred grand in a couple years to get one from one of those top schools
1:42:21
though you could do that a lot of different ways getting involved in organizations or or just starting uh a company and seeing how it goes and you meet a lot of people as an early stage
1:42:31
founder because you're out hustling right it's the hustle more than the degree I think of course having where I think the MBA can help is having you look more impressive on paper to potential
1:42:41
investors and and employees who you know want to be hired by your company and that kind of stuff
1:42:49
um okay Wade Smith okay okay so hello Wade thank you for answering
1:42:56
some of the questions in here that sounds good um
1:43:01
let's see oh prathika let's put that up now I'm sure people in the chat room have answers for this pratika how do you improve your business Acumen without getting an MBA there are lots and
1:43:12
lots of programs online one of them was mentioned earlier y combinator has a startup school there
1:43:18
are many videos online like I said you can listen to 100 hours of me talking about this if you think that'll help you you're welcome to do that there are many many opportunities out there and many
1:43:29
incubator programs I would especially look uh prathika as it looks like from your picture that
1:43:35
you're female there are female focused incubators and accelerators I don't know where you live but I'd look in your local geography as well and even MBA programs and universities in your
1:43:45
area you don't have to necessarily go and get the degree maybe you can just sit in on the classes
1:43:50
or they have a summer class or an abbreviated class there's lots of ways to slice that and
1:43:55
I would encourage you to do that read my books hey there's another idea you can read my books
1:44:00
um okay is the startup investor directory U.S focused or is it Global Padma good question
1:44:07
it is primarily U.S focused at this point we're open to adding uh non-us investors as well that's
1:44:13
primarily because the U.S has the most investors and that's where most of the VC money is certainly
1:44:19
open to expanding that if you have ideas about that or investors investors are welcome to add themselves too if any of you are investors today go ahead you can sign up and post your
1:44:29
um post your profile there and attract deal flow in very specific ways like I said we have 40 plus different categories that you can search on Founders and investors
1:44:38
um and this is a startupdirectory.com actually for those of you who are founders you can post
1:44:43
on this one this is the same thing but in Reverse this is where you Founders can come list yourself
1:44:48
and you can list yourself as a black founder or as a veteran or a rural founder or immigrant or
1:44:54
first-time founder all that so I'm trying to fill in these gaps like I said okay um the the
1:45:06
okay this is an interesting one and then we're going to move on to pitches here Osmond says we'll be a good prompt for searching people in your niche
1:45:14
for example admission statement is transforming landfills into food Forest on Google and search recycling investors in local city yeah that sounds good to me um
1:45:29
I think I would be doing that on LinkedIn though not Google well both right LinkedIn is where the professionals are and you can find the
1:45:38
keywords like that I would really look like I said in a different context a few minutes ago
1:45:43
um to who was that it's Nicholas I think about associations find the associations that support this kind of thing you can find the people on their board and the volunteers that staff that
1:45:52
organization and they're going to know a lot of people there's a real nerve centers and that could be a good way for you to um to connect with folks in that niche okay when will founding pick up yeah
1:46:05
I think so next year hopefully uh let's see our 80 plus year old Founders and underrepresented
1:46:12
class yes Kirk I think that's right that's right we need more of them though okay um
1:46:21
you think okay
1:46:27
okay this is a good one I dumb them if investors say we need to raise funds for our firm also be
1:46:34
a no or we don't invest in early stage companies but I'll forward this to my partners also no or could they be telling the truth well it doesn't matter whether they're telling the truth either
1:46:42
way they're saying no right Founders don't want to hear no but sometimes you need to so if we need to
1:46:47
raise funds for our firm then they are like a year or two away from investing anything I would not
1:46:53
waste your time I mean be friends and build the relationship right but in terms of thinking you're going to get a check don't hold your breath man move on that's just like a complete non-starter
1:47:03
we don't invest in early stage companies well then that's a non-starter too they can afford to their Partners okay maybe but this is why you got to do your research if these are the people
1:47:12
you're talking to um you're going to get nowhere like go find early stage people who already have
1:47:17
funds I mean that's that full stop I mean that that's a lack of research there you can do better
1:47:24
um okay we talked about uh we talked about that okay
1:47:32
um does the syrup investors directory it is primarily Tech digital SAS because that's where the action is but yes there are other physical products as well just go look
1:47:41
you can use the search for free you don't have to sign up and pay for it go look no um I'm not sure honestly that's not my specialty but a lot of the investors that we've added to
1:47:49
the directory do all kinds of things so I don't know you can go look and let me know
1:47:55
um okay uh Germany okay okay all right I think we're getting near the end here
1:48:01
um okay this is the last one and then we're gonna do pitches okay so Kirk were some ways
1:48:07
to build a network you're doing it right now Kirk can't travel don't live in a big town do
1:48:13
this exactly I know you come to a lot of my events so thank you but make friends post your LinkedIn
1:48:18
um come to other events uh there's another you know what sorry I gotta do one more
1:48:23
and we really are gonna do the pitches let me share this other one this did I talk about this one earlier the startup investors uh startup sorry get my own names confused startup events.org here
1:48:35
this one see the one in the middle and that's green startupevents.org that is all about there
1:48:43
I made it bigger that is a calendar of events it's the only calendar in the world I think that only
1:48:49
lists startup founder events for startup Founders education networking pitching and that are only
1:48:56
virtual so no matter where you live if you have enough bandwidth to attend this you can go to these events that's the only one on earth I think that's only for you guys and it's
1:49:05
free so go check it out and sign up and then you you know you can attend all kinds of stuff and
1:49:11
hopefully you can Network that way that's again why I do this try to try to build connections okay man I'm getting tired it is lunch time here so I'm going to turn the microphone
1:49:20
over to let's see to Andre and lunita I think you two you guys both want to pitch
1:49:27
yes yes okay cool well I'll let Andre to go first because he's done this before and um we just do
1:49:34
two minutes and well you can do it's up to two minutes you don't have to do two minutes right but we just don't want it to go on too long but I'll put on a timer and it will start beeping once
1:49:42
you hit two minutes and that's just the signal to wrap up and um just tell us what you tell us
1:49:47
whatever you'd like but pretend it's an investor pitch not a product pitch right so think about the business I want to hear about the business and everybody in the chat room please get ready
1:49:55
tell them nice things we're not going to argue about the strategy because we don't have time to do that but just in terms of the pitch what do they say what should what should they say more
1:50:03
of less of what wasn't clear that kind of thing okay so I'll we'll be back to you in a minute lunid and then uh we're gonna bring on here's Andre okay Hello nice to see you nice to see you
1:50:15
again Scott okay so you wanna you wanna do this one I'm trying to improve based on your feedback
1:50:21
from my last attempt hopefully I'll do better this time yeah yeah great that's awesome all
1:50:26
right so go ahead we'll give you a couple minutes and hold on let's switch make you big there we go
1:50:31
all right go ahead so um we all heard the news about the mass layoffs at major companies uh that
1:50:39
keep happening for the last several months and the tens of thousands of people lost their jobs but
1:50:45
um here's some exciting news um some of these companies are now trying to hire back those
1:50:51
people that they laid off and The Meta sales force are currently doing exactly that um you can Google
1:50:57
it but there's a lot of information about that and basically first these companies had no idea
1:51:03
who they need to hire during the good times when they had cheap money and they overheard and now
1:51:10
um and then they had no idea who they can hire because they didn't understand about the core
1:51:15
key people within the companies and uh this is happening not just the method with their sales
1:51:20
force um according to a poll which I found 42 percent of all employers uh considering rehiring
1:51:27
people uh who they laid over just a few months ago so um if companies like meta slash Facebook
1:51:35
um who is Infamous for collecting enormous amount of data on their clients and running their analytics if they have no idea about what's going on within their companies
1:51:45
um can you imagine what's happening with the last tax saving companies so where's this is
1:51:51
where our product foreign Labs Sherpa comes to the rescue um our product integrates with
1:51:56
the existing channels of communication within the companies and uh it provides with with the help of some AI magic it provides analytics and answers questions like uh who are the key
1:52:06
experts on the subject within this company and basically Untouchables do not let these people go
1:52:13
um if the company is looking for new Talent um do they need to hire this Talent or do they need to
1:52:18
promote someone who already has the skills which are there any growing conflicts within the company
1:52:24
questions like that and with more than 10 000 companies that have more than a thousand employees
1:52:30
only in the United States and not counting the government and not counting the contractors that creates a half billion dollar market just in this specific segment which we're focusing
1:52:41
right now and this Market is highly fragmented with Solutions being mostly built internally and
1:52:47
only the largest companies can afford building a solution that would provide analytics like that and with that in mind we are confident that we can capture at least five percent of the market
1:52:56
uh and uh have um seven acts return on investment within the next five years our product is fully
1:53:04
built it's used by clients and with more Workforce moving from offices to work remotely it becomes
1:53:10
an essential tool for businesses to become more efficient and and Humane towards their employees
1:53:17
hopefully it was not alone yeah oh that was good that was yeah you really stepped it up very nice
1:53:25
I thought that was that was very nice I'm sure I have feedback but so everybody in the chat room
1:53:30
um if you thought the tell them what you thought if you you have suggestions what he could do
1:53:36
better he's here again looking for advice which is smart I mean why not do this for free when you know as opposed to when it's a big pressure of of an audience or a actual investor looking at you so
1:53:47
um I thought it was a great Improvement so congratulations um so feedback wise I guess I would say you spent about half the time on the backstory and you want
1:53:56
to cut that down it was it was good and it was clear but the whole thing about hiring and firing
1:54:02
you know of like you're right people know that so a sentence or two on each of that is all you need and then you can get more into the details because what I didn't get is what do you actually do I
1:54:12
mean I got an idea about analytics for retaining key employees which is cool but I would like to
1:54:18
hear you know five more sentences on that and five less sentences on how the market is going up and
1:54:23
down and people are hiring and rehiring right so and in particular I didn't hear who the customer is that's what I really want to know like maybe not the super big company you know not the super
1:54:33
small company but like the specifically like work it would be nice to hear you don't have to but we're targeting you know the VP of Human Resources you know who has it typically has a budget of this
1:54:44
like the more numbers you can get the better and you did have numbers because you said like 42 rehiring that was good it's a half a billion dollar market you had a bunch of numbers those
1:54:51
was great but I can keep going like the specifics around this transactions like what makes the money
1:54:58
here that's that's what I really want to hear so your pitch was kind of half Market background a
1:55:05
quarter on what you're doing and then you very rightly got to what it's going to grow into so
1:55:10
I would just shift the the bow the emphasis a little bit and more on specifically what are
1:55:17
you doing who are you targeting and how does that make money and maybe you're not there yet but eventually we'd want to hear numbers like you know this kind of customer with a typical budget
1:55:27
of this we think they would uh renew annually for this you know that those kind of like metrics and
1:55:32
you may not know yet but the more you can even make them up it shows us that you thought about it which is key right um and I have a question should I include these numbers into the this kind
1:55:44
of elevator speech because I have this information I just left it for later yeah well it's it's hard
1:55:49
you know yeah I'm picking on you because this is an artificial length right two minutes is not people have very short conversations or they tend to have long conversation two two minutes
1:55:56
is definitely artificial so you're right um if you have those numbers um I guess it's a matter
1:56:01
of emphasis you didn't do anything wrong I'm just saying like more numbers less background
1:56:06
in in any conversation because anyone in this space will agree immediately your opening statement you know all those companies laid off a bunch of people and rehired them because they
1:56:14
don't know what they're doing yes okay move on you've got that right and then we're going to improve that by this Y and Z our customers with these we're going to make money like this
1:56:23
like money we want to know how you make the money that's the piece you you kind of skate it over and that would really give you the heart and you're right it probably doesn't have to you don't want
1:56:32
to sound like you're giving a stage speech if you're in an elevator and start dropping in all statistics and stuff but that's the trick for all of us for everybody that's listening
1:56:40
you need to kind of know your whole pitch think of it like and I usually think of like it's five or six bullet points and each of those may be if it's a long pitch it may be three minutes each but an
1:56:51
elevator they might be 10 seconds each and you got to just be able to kind of expand just like you would with your life story if I asked you what's your life story in 10 words you do it like this
1:56:59
if I ask your life story and you had half an hour you'd spend a lot of time on each part right but you know the whole story right so you would just expand and contract and the key is to pull out
1:57:08
what important bullet points from the Investor's point of view and this was if I recall correctly
1:57:14
this is way better than last time in several ways because this was much more investor focused rather
1:57:19
than product focused and that's great so you're making awesome progress and getting to the end
1:57:24
um 7x you already have it built that was really good to know people often skip over we're like is this in Market or where are you that's really critical and then also the return on investment is
1:57:34
nice the piece that you didn't have which is fine if you're actually pitching you would throw out a
1:57:39
number like we're looking to raise 500 000 at this kind of valuation and ideally with some kind of
1:57:45
structure like I was saying a couple minutes ago 500k on a 5 million free money evaluation using
1:57:51
a safe node or something like that just because that gives investors a sense you know like do you fit in my box or not so otherwise that was a lot of feedback on what was a greatly improved pitch
1:58:01
so I hope that's helpful nice job good evening thank you Scott appreciate it yeah all right
1:58:06
cleanup hitter I'm gonna bring on lanita here yes there she is and I'm gonna say goodbye to
1:58:13
Andre cool all right so you got the vibe here does that look like look like fun you want to
1:58:19
give a shot yeah we're gonna try it out cool thank you all right you're whenever you're ready okay
1:58:28
imagine a baby consuming 60 million microplastics daily unknowingly alarming
1:58:34
I know that's the reality for many parents who due to hectic schedules resort to dishwashing
1:58:40
for cleaning baby bottles a method that inadvertently introduces microplastics enter
1:58:48
we're not merely launching a product we're disrupting the 77 Billion Dollar Baby Care Market cool with Innovative design makes baby bottle cleaning quicker tidier and above all safer
1:58:59
tackling the micro plastic plastic Menace remember 90 of parents turn to bottle feeding after
1:59:06
maternity leave now in only 30 days we've garnered over 5 000 followers on Facebook testifying to the
1:59:14
Urgent Demand with a ready manufacturer working prototypes and over a hundred and early adopters
1:59:21
establishing product Market fit we're set for a November 2023 launch with 70 pre-orders already on
1:59:29
the list our season team with 30 years of combined experience understands the market the product
1:59:36
and the parents ensuring careers and just the product is a promise of better safer infant care
1:59:42
join us join our mission as we aim for a multi-million dollar licensing deal within the
1:59:48
next three to five years we're not just raising the bar we're redefining the Baby Care thank you
1:59:55
very nice I think you've done this before once or twice yeah that was great no really good obviously
2:00:03
if you're very practiced and nice um yeah very good job so everybody in the chat room if you
2:00:09
have suggestions what you missed or what you could do better please share them she's obviously open to feedback good for you it's Brave to go out and do this kind of thing um so I thought it was very
2:00:19
good my job is to poke holes so let me see if I can help you improve it it was very good seriously
2:00:24
um and you have a nice confident way of speaking which is and the pace was good also sometimes people you know talk too fast or too slow so you've got most of this down so
2:00:34
um you open with a nice sort of store it was quite a story but kind of a story or a use case anyway
2:00:39
uh the problem solution framework which gets people quickly to understand it you tossed in a 77 billion dollar market that's a big Market we'll get everybody's attention that's good um
2:00:48
what you did the best which I thought was amazing and everybody else is listening especially people are asking about traction earlier do you notice how she mixed in traction they don't really have
2:00:58
traction Traction in the sense of uh sold products that are generating profits and revenue but she
2:01:04
had traction-esque sort of words I should buy that was a good name tractionesque right because they
2:01:11
had 5 000 Facebook followers in 30 days and 70 pre-orders and you know these metrics that don't
2:01:17
actually prove uh money but they prove momentum and they prove like what I was saying earlier that somebody besides will need using this and that's what investors are really asking for you know of
2:01:27
course they want profit but but you just got to show that it isn't just in your head so great job on that that's maybe the best I've ever heard of you like you know kind of Faking the traction not
2:01:37
fake imitating traction I guess so very nicely done um it was interesting also the licensing
2:01:43
deal I would like to know more about that but that was probably enough in a two-minute pitch because what you're trying to do is make me want to know more right okay so what's the model interesting
2:01:53
um so then two there's two feedback and these are only two real suggestions I have one is
2:01:59
I I don't really know what the product is and you don't need to answer me but I get the the
2:02:05
market you're attacking and that you're helping babies with microplastics I get that but I don't know is it a physical thing is it software is it if it's physical what does it cost to make
2:02:15
do you have manufactured relationships if it's licensing is it is it design is it a low like
2:02:20
I I think I was taking notes so maybe I missed it but whatever it is you need I think you need
2:02:26
to hit that harder like we make this and this is how we make money like the simple version right
2:02:33
um and I under did the same thing A lot of people do like you're so close to it you forget you gotta say you know we make pencils and we use them to write you know like but that's you know we don't
2:02:44
know because we don't know what you do right so really break it down and then I would just be careful a little bit I like the disruptive like um you know revolutionary feel to it but investors
2:02:54
are a little wary of that because teaching customers new behaviors is a really good way
2:03:01
to lose money right so I I get it I understand why you're doing it but just be careful not to hit it
2:03:07
too hard in my opinion and I could be wrong right disruption is awesome but if it's making some
2:03:12
people do things they haven't traditionally done that's really really hard which means it's really expensive so it would be interesting to hear how whatever it is you're doing fits naturally into
2:03:23
the flow of their lives anyway that's kind of the angle I would use to position it whatever because I still don't actually know what you do um but you know moms do this every day anyway so we just kind
2:03:34
of help them like this you know and so it's not a re-education effort so that you could maintain the
2:03:39
the Revolutionary Spirit but try to make it not sound like a re-education because that's the easy
2:03:45
way to lose billions right trying to like vitamins right you're trying to make people take vitamins they don't want to take one right right so but if you have aspirin and they have a headache
2:03:54
then they're going to buy it and that's you know what's the real problem here and how does it how is it easy for them uh to fit into their lifestyle it is such that they will actually pay for it that
2:04:04
brings up the last point I wasn't clear I guess you said licensing deal so that implies that more of a B2B relationship not a consumer okay that might be worth exploring anyway but that was very
2:04:14
very good I hope those comments are helpful yeah I know that helps with them because we want to frame ourselves as a teaching company as well so now I'm gonna think about that on how to frame it
2:04:23
because people are not aware of the mycoplastic happening with the BB bottles and so I will use
2:04:29
your advice and reframing it on the deck thank you yeah yeah great great to meet you I hope we'll see
2:04:35
you again where are you working with do you have investors or you have an incubator or somebody you seem like you know what you're doing um I started this a few months ago so I'm learning
2:04:46
as I go that's impressive very nice yeah all right well hope to see you again all right two o'clock
2:04:52
I think we gotta wrap this up and um let's see what any last notes there oh boy I gotta go eat
2:05:00
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2:05:30
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2:05:38
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2:05:43
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2:05:52
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2:05:59
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2:06:11
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2:06:17
you have a great rest of your day please like and comment and share and all that other stuff bye bye