Startup Fundraising Strategy & Pitch Practice Office Hours Replay! [VIDEO]

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 September 24. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Startup Office Hours Venture Capital Funding Advice for Startup Company Entrepreneurs welcomed angel investor and VC pitch practice from startup founders worldwide. StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox helped accelerate the startups and moderate discussion including:

• Almajd from Berlin asked about protecting, maybe patenting, his AI enhanced 3D modeling software before going to market. How to protect his confidential IP but still market the product?
• Ketan from Bangalore practiced the angel investor pitch for his new venture's social media tools and AI-enhanced content creation services.
• Andy from Los Angeles asked about the dangers of pitching to venture capital firms who are already invested in competitor companies.
• Julia from Riverside wanted guidance on how much to raise for her company, how to set a valuation, and how to find angel investors. (Hint: Try visiting https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory.com)
• Phyu from Faroe Islands (Denmark) is new to #startups and wanted to discuss how to find and build relationships with investors when she lives so far from major financial centers. (Hint: Try visiting https://StartupEvents.org for free newsletters highlighting virtual entrepreneur events you can attend from anywhere.)
• May from Mountain View asked what founders should say when investors ask them "Why You?" (Hint: Scott added "Why Now?" as a followup question...)
• Sean from Laguna Niguel has an early idea about brokering social media influence to brands seeking exposure. We discussed the opportunity and challenges, plus what he needs more of in his investor pitch.
• Alex from Mexico City practiced his pitch for his travel startup. He did a great job but Scott and the audience offered suggestions to make it even better.
• Nataraj from Murrieta practiced his quick pitch for his biotech startup venture. Curing cancer is their goal and the group helped him identify ways to make his pitch even better for investors.
• Polina from London UK pitched us her AI-enabled sales coaching and training tool.

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

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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

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

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

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

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

The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 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 22:

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

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for September 24, 2024:

0:00
welcome to Startup office hours I'm Scott fox live coming to you from Southern California it's lunchtime here
0:05
so I've turned on the camera in my office to help you advance your startup company you've got dreams about changing
0:11
the world raising some money making a difference hopefully and we're here to help you I run the startup Council
0:16
startup council.org is website a community service that we started several years ago after my decades long
0:21
career as a serial startup founder and now mostly an angel investor and we're trying to help you move your startup
0:28
farther faster and forward usually this involves raising some money so we'll be talking about all different
0:33
kinds of startups today but especially those that are looking for venture capital or Angel Investors to accelerate
0:39
their growth that's my specialty and we're here today to help you with your questions and to practice your pitches
0:45
and we'll give you free helpful feedback both from me and from people from all over the world I'll be turning on the
0:50
chat room in just a second and we'll be inviting everybody in to uh share where you're from maybe your LinkedIn profile
0:56
or however you'd like to be in touch and of course your feedback I don't have all the answers here I'm just here to help
1:02
sort of convene the party and have you all contribute and help each other and that's really our goal at startup council.org is to help you we're trying
1:09
to help everybody connect and move up a level level up right I came from fairly
1:14
modest means and I've managed to work my way over to the other side of the table from being a Founder without any
1:20
connections or money or expertise and these days well it took you know 20 30 years but I'm on the other side of the
1:26
table I'm here offering advice to you based on my years of experience and we're hoping to help you learn how to
1:31
raise money better so that you can build your dreams accelerate all your plans and reach out to customers build some
1:37
money and then hopefully like I said do some good in the world and then give back to the community as well if we
1:42
haven't met before uh I'm Scott Fox I'm the uh CEO of the startup Council as I mentioned I've uh been at this for a
1:49
long time and I've been working on helping people like this for many years I've written these three books these
1:54
three in the middle are in English and uh starting way back in 2006 uh and uh
1:59
the others are foreign translations Russian and Turkish and Japanese polish uh Vietnamese and so forth so if you're
2:06
here today because you've read one of my books that's great we're happy to have you here and we'll be taking this session is mostly in English of course
2:13
um but be happy to help you in English if you want to enter into the chat room I'm going to turn that on and help you
2:18
figure out how to uh participate here in our little Forum we'll be here for an hour and a half or so and we've got a
2:24
bunch of people sent in questions and we're looking for questions from you from the chat room as well but let's turn on the chat and everybody please go
2:30
ahead and introduce yourselves just say where you are and um what brought you here today and also I'd just love to
2:36
know are we working this is supposed to be live on LinkedIn live and Facebook and YouTube and Blog Talk Radio so if
2:44
you are in any of those um those formats or platforms please let me know if you can hear me it looks like Benjamin is
2:50
here and that looks like a YouTube yeah and leas as well and Mickey from Oklahoma good nice to meet you okay
2:57
looks like We're Off to the Races so it sounds like you can hear me also which is always a key factor of these sessions
3:02
so if anybody from LinkedIn is LinkedIn working somebody say hello there we go Adam okay good that's good on LinkedIn
3:09
okay so here's how this works um we're going to take your questions like I said questions and pitches and try to make
3:16
the most of our time together and I hope you all participate in the chat room as well go ahead and talk to each other like I said I don't have all the answers
3:22
I'm just uh the hosting the party as it were so together we're going to have you help each other and I will toss in my
3:29
opinions of course as well because I've been doing this a long time uh and we're going to um invite some of our friends
3:35
who are backstage already as well to come on camera and those are people who applied early and uh just a quick
3:41
housekeeping note so um the people backstage which looks like a trayard and
3:47
Julia and uh Shan and Alex and F and alage you guys are in a separate chat
3:53
room and that's cool but you're just talking to each other so if you want to be in the major chat room then you have to go over to YouTube or LinkedIn in
4:00
okay because this is like the backstage and then the and then the the general audience right and those of you who keep
4:05
asking how do you get backstage well backstage is full already so you have to register for that in advance and um get
4:10
here early and um and hit the right URL and especially the folks that get
4:15
priority are those who um have listings who have come and participated we built a service for you called National
4:22
startups directory let me uh put that up on the screen so you can find it uh yeah
4:27
today National startups directory so this is a uh directory that we're building so that you all can post your
4:33
startups so that investors like me can find them so there isn't like a phonebook right remember there used to
4:38
be phone books well there's no phone book really for startup so this is a service and as you can see there's a Code there on the screen SS viewer you
4:46
can sign up for free there's no money involved um after a year you'll put in a couple bucks um because we have costs
4:52
right just got to cover the costs I try not to lose money doing this and those folks who are listed there get priority
4:58
in terms of their questions and pitches and so forth okay that's why we're trying to build this flywheel to help
5:03
all of you and I should point out that if you're that's one of many services we're building here at startup
5:09
council.org you should actually even more so go over to Startup council.org there's seven different SE seven seven
5:15
different free newsletters for you um we're trying to help you find investors we have service providers like attorney
5:21
referrals and things like that there's an event calendar even if you don't live uh in San Francisco you know or New York
5:27
or London there's events going on all over the world we have a calendar for that all kinds of different things
5:32
trying to help all of you U because I used to be you I used to be a founder and I really struggled U and it took me
5:38
a long time to learn the ins and outs of this and so today we're talking about how you can accelerate your success and
5:45
we'll get you up to the next level as well so I want to welcome everybody in the chat room let me just hit a couple
5:51
um disclaimers here right um we have uh this is not qualified legal or financial
5:57
advice uh I am Li Ed in a couple different ways but that's not what we're doing today um this you need to consult
6:03
your own professional advisers because every situation is different and this session is being recorded online like I
6:08
said we're on many different platforms and uh this will be replayed so if you're in the chat room or the live on
6:14
camera with me in a couple moments um happy to hear everything you've got to say just don't say anything too confidential or anything stupid because
6:21
this is being recorded so happy to have you here and by the way if you're watching this replay letter there's lots
6:28
of these um replay uh on YouTube and Linkedin and everywhere across the web and if you
6:33
have questions later you can follow up watch the old ones the old sessions I mean and you can post questions there or
6:39
me and my team will try to answer you and help you this honestly what we're trying to do is help you so that's our
6:45
our uh our agenda today is helping you guys okay so let's just say hi to
6:51
everybody in the chat room and then I'm going to get uh going in the back room and inviting some of our friends on camera so there's uh let's see here so
6:59
Georg ero from Huntington Beach that's local near me Paulina blobfish Paulina okay so
7:04
you looks like you're on YouTube you wrote in and this is a perfect example Paulina I would love to hear your pitch
7:10
she wrote in early and um she listed her startup on National startups directory
7:16
but I can't hear your pitch if you're over here Paulina you need to be in the back room so unless you're back there at the same time which I would think would
7:22
be difficult to do because you'd have to have like two webcams and all that kind of thing so um I'm not sure how I'm
7:28
going to see you Paulina um but I I'll be happy to reach you if you can by the way if you're on YouTube um if you're
7:35
not already you want might want to subscribe to us on YouTube youtube.com scotf Fox Okay so Kon hey Kon nice to
7:42
see you and there's Kon he's putting in his LinkedIn address that's a good idea kon's a regular attendee and same thing with you Katan could you could not
7:48
couldn't get backstage I guess so um the link Adam the links are in all the
7:53
emails we send um yes we we are pretty good about that I think so just read the
7:58
emails a little more closely they're posted publicly uh Kenny hi Kenny and Andre hey Andre nice to see you and Xena
8:06
is checking in from Seattle and James Brett from Las Vegas you know I was in Las Vegas yesterday James my flight got
8:13
cancelled I spent the night in Las Vegas unexpectedly so sometimes the things that happen in Vegas you really do want
8:18
to forget that was an accident I just got back last night uh after an unexpected vacation there um Kenny and
8:25
Kristen okay on YouTube from La excellent Lisa from Hartford Welcome to you tahar from an army officer veteran
8:34
okay from San Diego excellent cool Wendy Orange County near nearby and um let's
8:41
see Paulina I said hello to her janha from Seattle okay well that's everybody
8:46
for the moment it looks like but more people coming in and oh by the way invite your friends that's the other thing we're going to do here um I do
8:53
this um you know online publicly because I try to help as many people as we can
8:58
like I keep saying I don't have the answers so the more people that participate in this the more that we can
9:04
um you can you'll get better answers right this is like crowd sourcing expertise essentially so come on in and
9:11
um uh tell your friends right now we'll be here for an hour or so and if they have questions or want to meet other people go ahead and reach out and um
9:20
LinkedIn user says I only live eight minutes from the airport thank you well the air the airline put us up uh at one
9:26
of the casinos it was fine but uh yeah thank you for that offer LinkedIn user um next time log in with your real name
9:32
it'll be happy to happy to chat okay so I think we're about ready to get going here so uh yeah tell your friends and um
9:40
uh subscribe blah blah blah blah okay and just sorry I have a bunch of marks I
9:46
need to hit here and yeah okay and if you want to comment on LinkedIn or uh
9:52
YouTube that's how you get over in the chat room over here and then I will feature those over here as we discuss them and we'll go through them together
9:58
okay and if you are on LinkedIn actually please follow us trying to build the audience there again so we can help you with these free events okay so now we're
10:05
going to go over to the uh web I'm going to turn on the webcams and I'm going to bring a bunch of people in here and those of you who are backstage are going
10:11
to get inside and I have a request for you and that is if you have a pitch or a
10:17
um a question that's awesome if you don't um then we're going to ask you to leave so that people with questions and
10:22
so forth can get backstage right and you can go over and watch no problem just go over to youtube.com scotf fox or um or to
10:30
LinkedIn live or Facebook Etc okay so let's see who's with us backstage I'm going to turn off the chat room for a
10:36
minute to give us a little more space and backstage folks okay who we got here
10:42
so backstage okay so here is Sean and Kon and uh few I guess you say few and
10:51
um let's see and who else we got here Alex and alage and uh got a full house
10:59
today may you got to turn on your camera if you want to join us not Taj Julia and
11:05
trayard okay and there's me okay cool what a good-look group here we have hey
11:11
everybody um I'm trying to figure out here we go let's do it like this and we can see everybody at once okay everybody
11:17
say hi there we go hi everybody nice to see you all and we're gonna talk through the questions and pitches you have today
11:23
but to do that I'd like to run through just uh five seconds from each of you I don't need the whole pict the whole
11:29
question I just want to put them in some kind of order right so that they make sense so I'm going to unmute each of you
11:34
or call on you and just tell me like whatever you know my my name is John and I'd like to ask about raising money or I
11:42
something like that just real quick okay so let's go with um Sean you were here early how about what's what's on your
11:47
mind today Sean is he talking I don't see him hi
11:54
everyone great to be here no I think he need there we go
12:01
are you what's your question or or comment today Sean hear me now
12:07
yes okay so yeah my question
12:12
is about social media
12:19
okay that's that was very what's a little
12:25
more okay did you want to pitch then or do you just have a question yeah yes I
12:32
do um I have a pitch a pitch okay okay great okay we
12:39
will come back to you in a couple minutes thank you um and then Kon how
12:44
about you nice to see you y gotta unmute my friend Hi I guess I'm
12:51
audible yes it's really late here in India but yes it's always amazing seeing you on the screen well thanks for
12:58
staying up so did you want to practice your pitch again uh I am here for a pitch it's a
13:03
new pitch so you might be interested in this great okay great well good to see you and then let's go on to uh who's
13:12
next here looks likeuh few I'm probably seeing your name wrong pH hi yes pH that's correct okay yeah I
13:20
would like to ask some questions about like um transfering company to us and
13:27
something like that oh okay yeah and also I want to practice some ideas okay
13:34
and Pitch also okay okay cool nice to see you and then um let's see how about
13:40
Alex which one is Alex H hi guys uh yeah I would like to practice my beach and uh
13:48
yeah looking for feedback for potential investors and any okay any kind of
13:53
networking okay great Alex there's a lot of background noise so unfortunately I'm not going to be able to let you pitch
13:58
and unless you can move somewhere quiet or if that's hold on let me make sure it's you or
14:04
[Music] not yeah that's you unfortunately so um
14:10
happy to maybe you can put it in the chat or something I will I will move in right now so there will be less noise
14:16
okay okay good enough all right we'll come back to you okay and then uh who some other new faces here well may
14:22
what's on your mind today May nice to see you
14:29
I think you're muted May is it better you hear me there we go
14:35
yes yep yeah thank you Scott um and um I really appreciate you doing this for the
14:41
whole startup community and then um happen to be able to help some Founders to find investors so um I guess I have a
14:48
general question which is I recently find out was both challenge for investors and also Founders
14:54
well called the founder Mar uh founder um Mar Market fit you know so I love to
15:04
hear um your comments about that okay founder market fit oh that's interesting
15:10
okay okay so that's more of a question okay good nice to see you and then how about um sorry this is hard to manage
15:18
all these at the same time aled what's on your mind hello it's a pleasure to be
15:24
here and speaking with you so I live in Germany Berlin and I finished developing
15:30
my AI software I'm an AI engineer and I my question is like it
15:36
said two part questions one is if I want to get a patent for this uh software and
15:42
I don't have the enough money for this uh so how can I ask an investor to do this and the other one is also I want to
15:48
build my own startup so I will ask to for funding also this is my other question okay great well those are good
15:55
good starting questions so we we'll get to you pretty quickly I think everybody's got those kind of questions
16:00
so nice to meet you gluten okay so then what left we've got here who
16:07
um come on you they make the scroll bar so small on these things man uh okay
16:14
there we go tranard hi tranard nice to meet you hello Scott it's nice meeting you uh
16:20
I had a question about um I just started my business and I've been uh getting
16:26
into like ads and uh um basically advertising my business and I just wanted to know like what would be a good
16:33
route to start out with um before investing in so many different Avenues in terms of marketing yeah yeah yeah
16:40
okay okay we can talk about that for a minute good where are you calling from uh Las Vegas Vegas okay I was as
16:49
you heard I was just there last night yesterday okay and Julia hey Julia nice to see you hey hey Scott nice to see you
16:56
can you hear me yes that's fine okay awesome nice to see you again I'm um I'm in Riverside right now California but
17:03
I'm based in Huntington Beach California um so I'm building an event Services
17:08
Marketplace and I've been bootstrapping for four years now um and now we're at a point where're we want to scale and
17:15
we're getting a lot of momentum I'm meeting a lot of investors and so um I just want to learn like how to start the
17:22
fundraising process we we want to start fundraising next year and I'm really I'm
17:27
really brand spanking new to fundraising and so just to tell my story too
17:33
excellent okay nice to see you and our last gentleman here
17:39
is nataraj yeah hi nataraj hi hi Scott nice to meet you uh I'm a founder and
17:45
CEO of lron Bio uh I'm looking for bch investors and I'm interested in pitching
17:51
okay perfect and where are you located uh I'm I'm in Riverside County murata
17:57
but my lab is in San Diego oh okay so you're nearby all right great all right well nice to see everybody so there we
18:04
have a uh let's see here let's do this okay one two three and we'll turn the
18:11
chat back on and okay so give me just a second and
18:17
let me figure out what order we should do this in so we have some talented people and the idea here is that um
18:23
we're going to have those folks uh ask their questions or do their pitches and then they'll leave the backstage so some
18:30
of the rest of you can come in because I know some of the people like Paulina and stuff rsvpd and would like to hear that
18:35
pitch as well so uh okay so pitch pitch pitch okay Alex needed to fix his mic so
18:42
may had a question amjad had a good question okay train art of ads pitching
18:51
okay so I'm thinking amjad let's talk about that let's talk about let's go find amjad again um sorry let me just
18:58
just hit the chat room what are we anybody anything on fire over there okay good luck everyone says Kenny that's
19:04
very nice um okay James
19:10
when okay struggling to connect okay yeah we'll come back through some of those
19:18
um y okay I think yeah we're nothing on fire there
19:23
okay next so I said I'm J right is that what I said let's see here
19:32
where did go there he is okay yes okay I'm it's me and you it's
19:40
me and you again hello all right okay so give us still a quick version but a little longer than what you did tell me
19:46
what's up and and we'll try to help you and again everybody in the chat room please listen and and offer him suggestions as well go ahead I'm sure uh
19:54
so I was building for more over than seven months a software for like in area
20:01
computer vision and also uh integrating it with uh architect software such as
20:06
like 3ds Max and SketchUp and blender in order to uh enhance the presentations
20:14
for the 3D models that Architects has and also there is a version for also other General presentations such as
20:21
PowerPoint presentations and everything using the mouse movement mouse cursor movement and also detecting the buttons
20:27
on the screen so uh like I was really confident that
20:33
it is a really good solution although it was like I thought about it if I do now show it to
20:39
investors and everybody it will be a little bit tough because it can be copied with a good team better than me I
20:46
I I'm honest about this at the same time also I I was asking about the fundraising because I'm working alone in
20:53
my team now I had a co-founder but I couldn't depend on him in this area
21:00
and yeah so here I am I will I wanted to work also as a freelancer in order to
21:05
get a fund for this but I thought about it it will take a lot of my time so I
21:11
need guidance in this area okay for it's a pleasure to be with you yeah you too
21:16
all right so I'm gonna talk for a couple minutes and you can wave your hand if I go off track and everybody in the chat room I think a lot of you are in this
21:23
situation right I know I was multiple times in my life you've got an idea you you're moving forward but how do you get
21:29
the resources to expand on it and build it so totally legit question that's why I do this happy to meet you um okay so
21:37
lots of things to unpack there and obviously this could be an hourong strategy call too right but that's not
21:42
what we're doing today we just kind to Drew this quickly so um so let's hit some quick things I don't think
21:47
investors are going to give you money you mentioned patents before I don't think anybody's going to invest in you to give you money to patented uh these
21:54
days and I could be wrong I don't know the German Market but my what everything I hear is that Europe is more
22:00
conservative than the states not less right so here in the United States I don't think anybody would do that so I'm guessing probably not in Germany either
22:07
unfortunately um it's so easy to do what you have done
22:13
and I don't mean what you've done because you've done sounds like some pretty cool stuff you must have be a smart guy with a serious engineering
22:19
background but it's so easy to start something these days that starting it alone isn't really enough to be honest
22:25
I'm going to tell you the truth here this is not what you're going to want to hear I I don't think anybody's going to invest because you're one guy with a
22:32
cool idea and I haven't heard anything about customers or revenue and so many
22:38
people have ideas that people like me are flooded with ideas and we just don't have to take the risk we can wait until
22:45
people have found some customers and have Revenue so I don't know you I don't want to
22:51
offend you I'm trying to help I think you're being unrealistic if you spent seven months on this you need to find
22:57
some other people or you really need to talk to customers or who is going to buy this because what investors want to see
23:04
isn't the idea or to know that you're a genius because you probably are but we want to know is how we're going to make
23:09
money and at least in what you said initially I didn't hear anything about money I heard about some cool products
23:15
um for which you have a supply but what investors need to hear about is the demand have you done any Outreach to
23:22
customers or clients or is anybody offering to pay for this Yes actually like there are some customers and they
23:29
want to invest in it but like they I can give them for free for two months but
23:34
this is was my idea like if I gave them some of them will I don't know expand or
23:39
spread about the software and it can be copied so that's why I wanted to make a
23:46
patent but there is a lot of customers and it also was builded based on the
23:51
feedback of the architect so good good okay good okay so so I for for amjad's
23:57
sake I I take back I said but it applies to the rest of you don't forget this stuff you got to talk to customers don't
24:03
just sit by yourself and build something I don't care how smart you are you could cure cancer but without customer demand
24:10
that proves it investors are not going to be interested so you got to talk to customers so anyway he already did that so moving on good job man okay so okay
24:18
so then you're more worried I see so you're in the market already is anybody actually paying or they're just offering you're kind of almost there they're
24:25
offering like they're ready to pay but I told them it's not ready yet and now I am ready to be honest I did the finish
24:31
the MVP yeah and I can say I can pitch it and show it and give them like a I
24:37
don't know sponsor okay I get it so all right so you're at that point where it's it's ready to go but you're afraid of it
24:43
leaking and getting copied is really the issue okay this happens a lot and um so
24:48
there's a couple things yes a patent may work that's that's a good idea uh if it's if it's there's two versions of
24:55
this a patent is a thing everybody I presume knows but patent is a legal filing basically that says this is our
25:00
thing nobody can copy it the problem is most a lot of patents are if you look at
25:06
the thing you can kind of think like oh that's a good idea I'll do it just a little bit different enough that it
25:11
doesn't violate the patent and they copy you anyway right so there's that so A lot of times people keep their secret
25:16
thing um as a trade secret they don't file the patent because once you file a patent it's published publicly what
25:23
you're doing so sometimes people just keep it a secret and the classic example of course is Coco Cola right they have
25:29
this secret formula that nobody knows and if they had published they might have gotten a patent on it 150 years ago
25:35
or whenever they started but if it was a patent then it would have been released right so there's two strategies there you might think about the trade secret
25:40
thing since your product is so visual I'm guessing that once they see it they kind of understand it so the patent may
25:47
not be what you even need I again I don't know this is not legal advice you should talk to a patent attorney
25:52
especially in Germany or in the states or whatever markets you're targeting to figure out if that is a worthwhile time
25:58
money for you and in between that we do here in the United States and again I don't know German law uh is that people
26:04
will file an initial patent like a cheap and dirty version and then at least they
26:09
can say patent pending even though they haven't done the full thing which takes years and tens of thousands of dollars
26:15
and there may be an in between like that that you could get by get by with as a bootstrap founder like we have a patent
26:21
pending at least it sounds like you have something even though you don't really have much and that can be enough to you
26:27
know defend your uh your proprietary ideas a little bit um am I making sense
26:34
is this helpful yeah yeah sure okay okay let me just go another minute here and and of course um everybody thank you I
26:39
see a bunch of stuff coming into the chat room as well so uh later um J you should go back and read watch this on
26:45
YouTube and read all the people are talking to you so um and that's what I'm gonna do yeah okay so um let's talk
26:51
about the money again or what was I the patent oh okay so confidentiality is tough but you got to do it I I mean
26:58
there's no other answer right there is no good answer and in my
27:03
experience the what differentiates a company is not usually the initial idea
27:08
or even the expression in the software or the detailed business plan it's how you execute so I know that's kind of
27:16
like a religious belief you just got to have faith that you are going to not just have the idea but you're are going to out execute anybody that copies it
27:23
and that's just the world we live in and in most cases you know you you could hand me everything you know and
27:30
everything written down and I would take it and I would still go in some
27:36
different way because I'm not you right I don't know the market I don't know the customers so you usually and I don't
27:42
know if this is true for you but usually the fear of copying is more than it's worth because you don't have an
27:48
alternative you gotta go you got to get this stuff out there or you're never going to make any money right so you can
27:53
some in-betweens again you need a lawyer is you can have customers sign like an NDA or you know proprietary information
27:59
agreement that they won't tell anybody or you know whatever but it's going to get out eventually so you can delay a
28:04
few months and that may be enough or even years but you're G to have to go to market so you got to just kind of get
28:10
over it is my advice again not the right answer but an answer and I really think you need an attorney who really knows
28:17
this stuff um and are you thinking of marketing in Germany or is this a us or UK or where are you going so initially
28:24
in Germany okay and maybe after some I don't know years
28:30
internationally or I don't know until like I meet also a marketing product manager co-founder I don't I don't I'm
28:36
not that good in marketing yeah yeah fair enough so okay so I I was gonna say if it's us I can introduce you to people
28:42
because I know a lot of attorneys actually all of you if you need Venture Capital attorneys or intellectual property attorneys that's one of the
28:48
things we do with startup Council happy to connect you with people that are really good and who specialized in this stuff because what you don't want is
28:55
your cousin who's a lawyer who really does person injury cases or your sister who's a divorce lawyer and they're just
29:01
going to help you that will just mess you up don't do that find somebody who really knows this stuff I think you got
29:07
to do it and yeah I think you need a co-founder or at least a partner uh because again investors won't invest in
29:12
a single founder these days either because it's a single point of failure right you get sick and suddenly the
29:18
company goes away it's just not good business for us it's too risky so they don't necessarily need to be an equal
29:23
partner but you probably need a couple other bodies to make you look like a company
29:29
of course and we'll move on to the next person but the answer to all of this is growth and revenues if you can do all
29:35
this by yourself with or without patents and you can start making 10 50 whatever you know thousand Euros a month
29:42
investors will be very interested and they won't care if you're by yourself or you have a patent right this is all about the money so if you can get
29:49
yourself some we call that traction right if you can start demonstrating some kind of traction you'll be okay but
29:54
in the classic case you probably need co-founder you probably want a patent you want all all this other stuff but the customer interaction is what you
30:00
really need so I would I would switch I'm working on a new book and I'm talking about this a lot you know about the 8020 rule like you know 80% of
30:08
results come from 20% of the effort so many Founders and like you maybe as well I don't know you but so many Founders
30:14
spend 80% of the time on the product and 20% on the Outreach you need to flip that you got to spend 80% of the time on
30:22
the Outreach figure out who all those relationships are because the best way to lock this down is for the day you launch it to already have 50 paying
30:29
customers signed right and then you're good right yeah flip the ratio stop
30:34
worrying about the product features and your road map and the you know minimum viable product and all that stuff
30:41
develop the market okay that was too long anyway but I hope that's helpful thank you thank you very much and also I
30:46
would contact you maybe also you can I will take advantage of the connections you can introduce me okay be a pleasure
30:53
thank you again yeah you're welcome so alad's exactly the kind of guy we want to help smart guy doing stuff kind of
30:59
new to the marketplace right but he's got some cool stuff right that sounds very cool so um let me see let me
31:04
mention actually because he mentioned contacting me I I don't do much private work anymore I try to help everybody at
31:11
the same time but if you want to uh you can come there's a page on scottf fox.com about working with me you can
31:17
book a private call with me or I'll review your pitch deck or your website that kind of stuff but we have to charge
31:23
money for that right so it's it's literally one to one and I just don't have enough time to do that unless we
31:28
charge money I can't manage my schedule otherwise but if that's helpful to you as it might be alad I'm happy to do it
31:34
uh if you can uh if you want to sign up so that's there uh is that the same one
31:40
no here we go yeah so we'll actually do video reviews of your of your uh deck if you want to send me your deck and
31:46
there's yeah these are the more specific links and private coaching calls.com you can tell I've been doing this a long time I actually have the URLs for both
31:52
of those right so uh business plan reviews.com or private coaching calls.com be happy to work with you uh
31:59
if you can fit into my schedule okay so let's go on to our next one that was um
32:05
John and I hope that was helpful to you let me know in the uh chat room if that was if that was why you're here um looks
32:13
hopefully that is um let's see spot on the focus is on how the
32:19
solution can go to market yep thank you tajar and uh James is putting his uh his
32:25
Link in there that's good good uh what else we got
32:30
here okay Julia yeah good talk to Julia Kenny good yep yep uh advice on how to
32:37
proceed with startup good traction okay yeah okay good all right well I can't read all those that's good you guys are
32:42
doing it all right so let's go on to our next person so let's talk about um well
32:47
let's do a pitch right let's mix this up a little bit and then we'll do some more questions so uh I think top of the list
32:54
Kon I know it's a middle of the night for you are you still here yeah he is let's put Kon and because this is he's
32:59
in Bangalore India folks so this is commitment this is startup [Laughter]
33:06
hustle so you need to wake up at at nights to grow your startup that's
33:11
really true and I'm experiencing it right now there you go exactly let me tell people how this
33:17
works I know you've done it before so generally what we do here is a minute or two minute pitch like two minutes top
33:23
and just verbal we can't do slides and all that because it'll just you know it'll mess up lose each other basically
33:29
uh so two-minute pitch or less and uh at the end I will give my feedback and all of you too please um We're Not Gonna you
33:36
can ask ask questions of what you think he missed like we don't have time to debate the business model I don't even
33:41
know what he's going to talk about right so I don't know that what we're going to try to do is help on the style or things that were left out that kind of stuff
33:48
and give him a couple minutes of feedback and we'll do several of those over the next hour okay okay all right so kitan all yours uh cool hi hi guys
33:56
this is Katan Janai I'm co-founder on CEO of amoi so we are transforming how
34:01
social media influencers particularly medical professionals monetize Their audience okay with minimal ad spend we
34:07
are already generating 1 million views per doctor from zero followers each month you know uh from the first month
34:14
resulting in 600 hot leads per doctor so we have understood this problem creating
34:20
content managing multiple platforms and converting engagement into monetizable opportunities can be a very difficult
34:26
job for the influencers As as well as the new bees especially for the medical professionals because they don't have
34:31
lot of time they have very less time treating patients and all they often struggle to manage their audience efficiently while developing a profit
34:39
profitable digital product so it's very difficult for them to monetize Their audience and product and develop a
34:46
product on their own so at amoi uh we are building an AI enabled platform designed to the Simplicity of the
34:53
content creation and monetization process for influencers with what sorry with one click onboarding process
34:59
influencers can seamlessly upload their content across multiple platforms our platform automatically analyzes audience
35:06
data to generate tailored content suggestions boosting relevance engagement and as well as helping them
35:12
helping them in overall productivity so main concern for influencers on Instagram is the monetization part so
35:19
beyond content creation our platform gives a step further by helping influencers create and sell customizable
35:26
digital products okay so which can for example let us take one of our doctor he's a diabetologist so diabetic
35:33
reversal program is a wonderful digital product for him and we help him to analyze his all audience and create a
35:39
digital product for him so this is how we also help in the monetization part and for the lead generation part our
35:45
platform also uses CT automation if you anyone of you don't know what is a CT it's a part to action so whenever you
35:51
see a uh Instagram video there will be clicked yes in the comment box you receive a deliverable that actually
35:57
captures your lead so which captures we capture the leads directly from the comments maximizing both engagement as
36:04
as well as the conversations so uh this is for this for the traction part we have already as I already said we have
36:10
seen incredible success already reaching 1 million views per month from scratch generating 600 hot leads we are at 2
36:17
lakh rupees MMR monthly recurring income okay recurring Revenue that's approximate
36:24
$2,000 and we are at a growth of 50% Revenue every month so uh for this particular pitch I'm
36:30
seeking $250,000 for 5% Equity to scale our platform we need some expertise data
36:36
scientist and few more tool subcriptions for this particular amount we are
36:41
investing in and as we are a bootstrap company your investment will really help us to scale so this was a a small pitch
36:49
I'm uh uh this was what I wanted to say and definitely we have tested the product and it's Market fit excellent
36:56
well that that was very good very good I'm taking notes but I don't have any real complaints very nice um some people
37:02
are asking to type into the chat uh or say the name again slowly because if you and I type it'll be in the backstage
37:07
chat what's the name of the company how do you spell that
37:13
though am am i l yeah so previously I was uh
37:22
telling you about my mentorship company but right now am i l o i put that in okay yeah so
37:29
last time you pitched it was totally different was Human Resources sort of thing right um this is this is exciting
37:35
okay so here's my feedback and there's a bunch in the U in the chat room as well um very nicely done really good job um
37:41
and intriguing this is a this is a exciting space as you know um couple style things if you can speak a little
37:47
more slowly and clearly your English is perfect but the accent is different than mine so I do have a little trouble
37:54
understanding some of the things you're saying that's my fault not yours but it's a real right so maybe work on your
37:59
diction and speak even more clearly enunciate so that I can tell some of the words apart that's just the fact of
38:05
cross that's the zoom world we live in right um um I like that you led with
38:10
numbers uh you had yeah you said a lot of good things um so you can go back and
38:15
watch it I liked a lot of it but the uh couple of things he ended with an ask which is good he converted rupees into
38:22
Dollars which is good because I was just writing that down he only talked about rupees but then he said it in $2,000 that was good so I didn't that's not a
38:28
complaint but for the rest of you make sure you do that because I was I was judging a pitch thing a week or two ago and was also in India and they started
38:34
talking about lock and c and I I don't even know what that meant right again my fault not theirs there's a billion
38:40
people in India right that's a legit thing it's just that I don't know and if you want to impress me you got to speak my language so um so a million viewers
38:48
from nothing is very impressive uh the AI kind all all this very cool so let me a couple things so um you didn't say
38:55
anything about competition that's the big thing that I that's a wide open thing everybody's trying to do this
39:00
right now so what makes you different I would want to hear um and I really think this is my big one you need some
39:05
examples because you talked about a bunch of stuff but I still don't really know what you do like I mean I get the
39:12
theory of it but it would be great like you said medical and you mentioned medical a couple of times and that was one of the phrases I didn't quite catch
39:18
there's a medical digital product what is it is it a checklist is it a PDF is
39:23
it a a video like what is it I I don't know so specifics will bring this to
39:28
life um give me some it's true for everybody again Kon did a great job but everybody the specifics we don't know
39:35
what you're talking about and I'm not talking to him I'm talking to all of you we don't know what you're talking about we hear you'll hear today we'll hear
39:40
pictures of all kinds of stuff I have no idea what you're GNA say when the microphone turns on right so you give me
39:45
some specifics you know we work with farmers and we make their grass grow faster so they can feed the pigs and the
39:51
pigs get fatter okay got it right like like just break it down like I'm seven years old and that will help everybody
39:57
as part of that I would recommend ukt and to everybody come up with a one or a short sentence just like I said we do
40:04
this for these people making this kind of money here's an example and just
40:10
start with that and then I'll at least know where you're going like oh okay they make retrofitted airplane parts for
40:17
old spaceships okay and now I at least know what the rest of it is about you got to give me some context and that
40:23
would help a lot but that's about all I had man you did a really nice job um and I hope hope that's helpful I I'd be
40:28
excited to hear more about this um I guess the other piece now that I say that is the billing model the um who's
40:36
paying and where uh is it subscription to the influencer yes it's a subscription I mentioned mm uh it's
40:43
multi Mr right that's recing income yeah yeah no I know what that is of course but that's a perfect example you said it
40:49
fast I something MMR and I I heard it but I slow down this much monthly Rec
40:57
ing revenue from influencers who pay us an average of $50 each per month or whatever it is like just tell me right
41:04
yeah anyway you get it so okay well awesome we'll let you go to bed you can watch the rest in the chat room or when
41:11
you get up in the morning and check the chat room a lot of people have uh have comments for you as well so nice to see
41:19
you okay so that's our friend uh Katan okay so that's how it's done guys um and
41:26
there's you know no matter what you do I'm always going to have complaints right that's why you came right to try to help you get sharper and this pitch
41:32
was better than the one he did uh in July I think and also was a different company so I don't know he's got a whole
41:37
new company the people are hustling which is cool all right so let's move on
41:42
to um um okay here's an easy one I just saw this pop up um how do I do
41:50
this oh I got to do it over there hold on I want to show you this question there this one okay so Asm R makeup and
41:57
raindrops where can we find a list of angels well actually um lists of angels
42:03
are hard to find because angels are a private individuals like me but what you can find is Angel groups and you can
42:09
find uh VC firms and we actually built uh something for this this is one of the things if you go to Startup ccel.org you
42:16
can get on the email we send a newsletter that's full of new investors several times a week because we built
42:22
this startup investors directory.com this is a directory that I built
42:27
uh literally for you guys because it's so hard to find early stage investors so this is um what you need and we built it
42:35
for you there's 3,000 plus investors in there and there's a Code there at the bottom you can try it for free it's a
42:41
search engine basically so go to Startup investors directory.com and see what you can find and the idea is that there are
42:47
dozens and dozens of categories sector stage industry geography you can search by keywords and here's my my best tip
42:55
search on their previous portfolio Investments that's what we're really trying hard to put in this database is
43:00
what else have they invested in so when you go actually before you go figure out
43:06
three or four other companies that are kind of like you and then see if you can go find out who invested in them okay
43:11
and that should be listed in there we don't have everybody there's a zillion investors these days and there's a lot of people that call themselves investors
43:17
who aren't right but we're trying to make this a legit resource for you folks and um you can go and check that out at
43:23
your convenience all right what is the code Julius says it's on the bottom there it says s I'm trying to read it
43:29
backwards here s launch there it is free trial Sid
43:35
launch okay and that that's a free trial okay um
43:42
boom let's try next okay so let me just see
43:50
um uh Kenny says he tried registering but it wouldn't accept a debit card I'm sorry Kenny I don't know how to fix that
43:56
can you use a credit card I just I'm not the tech person here oh it's backwards this is backwards for you guys really
44:04
you're seeing all this backwards I've been doing this for like a year and nobody told me all right hold
44:09
on yes it's backwards oh my God all right hold on all you guys are way too
44:14
polite somebody should have told me all right mirror camera bang how's
44:20
that yes is that better now oh look at that amazing when technology works it's
44:26
awesome okay so all right I got to make a deal with you guys if I do this again you got to tell me I had no idea I can't
44:34
tell right okay so there you go so that's there's the code now you can read it
44:42
excellent oh technology crazy okay uh will they still invest in basically a a
44:49
competitor well that's a good question maybe right you never know uh it's hard to tell um this is a message from uh
44:57
where' that go um come on
45:04
you what's going on here there we go let's talk about that for a minute Andy
45:10
says will they still invest in basically a competitor maybe maybe not um they
45:16
probably shouldn't and this is a danger zone for entrepreneurs this will be in my next book right if they have a
45:22
competitor in their portfolio they may want to just meet with you to learn your secr
45:27
right what are you doing what's different what can we do what should our company that's competitor be building so you have to be a little
45:33
careful but on the other hand these are people who know the space and they may give you the benefit of the doubt when
45:39
they don't know you already nobody's going to invest in you unless they trust you and know you and hopefully even like
45:45
you so if they've already invested in that sector you're farther down that
45:50
path they may not path they may not know you but they know the business they know that market and they may give you a
45:56
break and they say oh you used to work at that company and you think this is a good idea huh I know a lot about that
46:01
business because we invested in that other one this sounds legitimate and you will get farther faster so it's a it's
46:07
you're walking on the edge of a knife it's a very good question Andy I don't have the answer it's going to be different every time and yes you should
46:12
be careful but this is kind of like when alage was saying you know he didn't want to put his um his uh product out there
46:19
because people would copy it what's the alternative right you can't make any money in your bedroom and you can't talk
46:26
to to invest the people most likely to invest in you are those who have already invested in similar things so not a good
46:32
answer not a clean answer especially uh if you're uh an engineer perhaps uh
46:38
people always like the uh you know the clear answer yes or no this is a lot of ambiguous territory to put it nicely so
46:45
uh I don't know and uh might be uh might be helpful for you okay let's move on
46:52
back to our um backyard sorry backstage uh who was gonna be next here
46:59
um let's let's talk let's do another pitch let's see had to go and
47:04
I'm sorry about that we don't have um like I don't have there's too many people here to answer your question if you're not here so folks this show runs
47:10
like 90 minutes at least usually I try before I get so hungry I have to go eat lunch so if you um want to come I'm
47:16
sorry I can't talk to everybody as fast as You' like but we'll cover people who are here of course um oh let's go to
47:22
Julia Julia are you still here because you wanted to talk about bootstrapping and also how to start fundraising and
47:27
Pitch so that's kind of a good let's do all of those well that might be a lot for you but let's let's see if you're uh
47:34
upfor that here comes Julia hey hi Julia hi all right so let's do your
47:40
question and then if that's enough or not enough you can pitch or we'll come back to you to pitch okay let's start
47:46
with your question oh well I guess I don't have a very specific well no let's think I I'm starting my fundraising
47:52
Journey um I've been bootstrapping this whole time um it's been been four years now and again I'm meeting investors and
47:59
stuff who are really interested in me but I guess I want to know um firstly is
48:05
how much to raise like is it based on the expenses is it based on how much I
48:10
value my company is it based on someone else who who values my company um I guess that's kind of my first question
48:18
sure we's do them one at a time that's probably enough because we got a lot of people here today um the answer is yes
48:23
it's based on all those things all those things yeah valuation is a is a difficult thing especially when you have
48:29
no revenue or do you have revenue or customer I have yeah so I have 500 um businesses listed on my it's literally
48:36
just like our beta website which is so crazy and I'm so grateful for that um but we have a new prototype so our beta
48:41
website was an event directory page that we just kind of put out there to see if people were interested in it yeah got so
48:47
much um interest in it so we built two uh demos and prototypes since and now we're looking to fundraise because we
48:53
have this huge audience of people who are looking for we have 35,400 followers on Instagram people like Kim Kardashians
49:00
balloon stylist who are supporting us they're like what are you going to make this when are you gonna make this sound
49:05
like I'm working on it did you say Kim Kardashian's balloon stylist yes that's
49:11
what I thought you yeah all right cool keep attention
49:17
yeah and we've we've worked with um businesses like wine um OC Wholesale Flowers La
49:25
balloons who are a lot of people people who are interested in what we're doing um and so they're all ready to use the
49:30
products it's just we need to have a team to build that product faster I have um a a technical lead hold on hold on
49:39
you can do part of this as your as your pitch right so let's talk about your so the question is how much to raise and
49:46
how do you value the company let's let's just do that to start um and everybody again in the chat room go ahead you all
49:51
have ideas about this uh Andy just said it's a tradeoff yeah exactly um okay so how much to raise well generally
49:58
investors are going to want like 15 or 20% of your company per round I mean
50:03
that's super rough it depends on a million things but if you think about doing uh seed a b c and then hopefully
50:09
go public that's like four rounds and you give away 15 or 20% of each that leaves you as the founders with roughly
50:16
20% or so but of a much bigger pie right so that's kind of the just you know
50:22
rough um valuation early stage software companies believe it or not they're always pretty much valued between two
50:28
and four million do why I don't know it's just kind of what people do it's just it's just kind of the reality of
50:34
the situation you don't there's so much risk at the early stage that we don't have any idea really what you're going to do of course you're going to make
50:39
projections and we're going to agree that these estimates seem reasonable but of course they're just compounded
50:45
guesses which really means they're so you know you're just trying to show that you understand the business
50:50
and um you know if lightning strikes and it takes off you won't need to raise any more money and you'll be fine um but if
50:57
it's say it's a $3 million and you're going to give I'm keep the numbers easier well 15 20 say it's a $4 million
51:03
and you're going to send uh 10% of that you know $400,000 okay you know something that's pre-money there's it
51:09
gets Fancy with pre-money and post money that's mathematics you'll need to learn and figure out um but they generally
51:15
start around there okay unless you have a whole bunch of Revenue and it's compounding and growing fast you could
51:20
justify more yeah the first round you probably as the founder you want to raise as little as possible because
51:26
deluding yourself as little as possible and that first valuation again is going to be kind of made up and angels are
51:32
going to want as low as possible because the odds of them having any meaningful stake after three four or five rounds of
51:39
funding like say say I give you 200 grand for 10% and then you go series A B
51:45
C and you turn into a huge company but my 10% goes so I have like less than 1%
51:51
probably by the end my $100,000 um if I still own 40% you know would be huge but now my $100,000 turns
51:57
into $120,000 well after six years I could have done that by putting it in the bank right so that it's all these
52:04
it's like Andy said it's all these things at the same time and um yeah I'm
52:10
literally writing a book about this so I'll send you one you can be one of the beta readers I love that yeah but it is
52:16
complicated that give you the kind of ballpark though yeah no it does it's interesting that you said um what did
52:22
you say you said 200 grand for 10% that was another question I had is how much how much Equity do I do I give out so
52:28
you kind of answered that right like each round is around you said 15 yeah
52:33
15% yeah and it's an important note here you don't give the equity you have like
52:41
if if you have 100% of the shares and then I invest say for 10% you now issue
52:47
more shares you don't give me your shares that's why you get Del looted so after several rounds say you started
52:53
with a million shares and you own them all and then you have rounds of investors you might have six or eight or
52:58
20 million shares issued you still own your shares you're not you're creating new ones with each new investor and
53:04
that's why you get diluted the pool gets bigger but the price goes up I see I see
53:10
I guess another question that I have is per raise round how many investors
53:15
should I have like I know people are like oh you shouldn't have too many because it's hard to like manage all
53:20
them what's a good ballpark number um yeah well the good ballpark number is
53:26
working backwards from how much money you need and how many people it takes to get it right so there's all kinds of
53:32
theories and that's why that's honestly why I do this show Julian you've been to some of my workshops too people talk all
53:37
kinds of theory but the fact is you know the valuation is what you say it is it's a it's a it's a haggle who knows you
53:43
argue about it and hopefully not violently but you you find something in the middle same thing with all these
53:48
other things you're the reality is yeah there might be some ideal number of investors but you need the amount of money you need to pay your mortgage and
53:55
keep building the company so I don't care if it's five or 5,000 if you need
54:00
that 100 Grand and that's the only way you can get it that's what you're going to do and nobody says that but that's the fact you're you're gonna hustle and
54:07
make it happen so the so that's the real answer the Practical answer is um bigger
54:14
checks are easier the easiest part of of investors is adding zeros right to the check right if you have a check for $100
54:21
$1,000 $10,000 $100,000 but that's the easy part the hard part is talking all those people so there's a practical
54:28
ceiling on the number of people that you want involved because you got to have lunch with all of them and keep in touch with all and especially if they're
54:34
friends and family they're gonna be really worried about their money and calling you all the time and they're gonna need their money back because then
54:39
suddenly they want to buy a house or something you know so there's a practical level um which would be you
54:46
know I don't know five or 10 20 investors at most because it's just you're gonna have to hire somebody just
54:51
to manage all your angels right because it's it's a pain butt so um that's the
54:57
that's the reality I see okay these are good these are good I'm gonna be going
55:02
to the tech host Venture network speed dating speed networking okay thing um
55:10
and I want to say it's like only it's it's it's a short amount of time for each one and so I want to prepare like
55:16
my pitch or just like conversation topics topics that I want to hit um in
55:22
such a short conversation that you think like what topics do you think are most important to communicate in those
55:28
short conversations good news for you because I will be there oh I'm running
55:34
the founder Clinic oh great we can talk about it in person yeah but I'm one of
55:40
the sponsors of that um but to answer your question um there's a video actually on my YouTube channel I had put
55:45
that up lately everybody go please go over to our YouTube channel and join there because there's one I recorded it
55:51
um here it is um it's a short so it's only like one minute but basically uh
55:58
let me think what I said I I said it more succinctly in this video but um if you only have a short
56:05
time with an investor and the literal elevator pitch like 20 seconds product
56:11
what did I say I had some clever seriously it's better in the video find the video but product and growth product
56:16
process and growth or something like that you got to tell us what you're doing like I was talking about who are you I have no freaking idea so come up
56:23
with a one sentence we do this for these kind of custom customers we make money by doing that like tell me then give me
56:29
an example we do this by doing this for these kind of customers we make money by doing this for example when dentists
56:36
have this problem blah blah blah blah we step in with blah blah blah okay that's the product then the process or the the
56:42
progress you've made so far we are here we've done this this this this we have these customers this Revenue blah blah
56:48
blah and then growth what will attract every investor more than anything else even if you skip the first two all you
56:54
say is I build a product and it's growing 50% a week every investor in the world is going to want to talk to you
57:00
because you'll figure it out later right oh my God right so anything you have as you know we call that traction any
57:07
points you have that point toward you accelerating like momentum so growth is
57:13
good but growth is better right like bam anything you've got that demonstrates momentum and really about uh product
57:20
Market fit or customer adoption customer enthusiasm that's the stuff I would throw in because um the quick version is
57:28
all you want to do in a speed dating scenario or an elevator pitch is just get a longer discussion nobody's gonna
57:34
write a check right you just want to have them be interested enough say oh she seems smart that was interesting I
57:40
wonder about oh she didn't say that can I can we have lunch or what whatever
57:46
that's your goal you're not gonna close anything even in a pitch competition it's always to the next level it's it's
57:51
like tell me later tell me more later yeah yeah that's right right so all
57:56
right well we should probably move on here I hope that's helpful to you we'll come back yes yeah nice to see you hopefully come back and uh get to your
58:03
pitch as well and that is our friend Julia Vu
58:10
Okay cool so yeah uh please like And subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're on LinkedIn please
58:15
go and follow startupcon soul. org um that's the only way we get paid for this is building the audience uh hoping to
58:21
help you guys and accelerate everybody and then as somebody noticed uh uh I write books and the new one hopefully
58:27
I'll buy the new book it it won't be here soon but it takes forever to write a book but I'm looking forward to that
58:33
trying to help you guys more all right uh let me just talk about that for a second too please go and visit over here
58:39
build those mailing lists help you guys up and there's a free code there for the national startup structor okay let me
58:45
hit the chat for a second here I can see a lot of folks here today uh it's always the growth Katan says yes must read book
58:53
for every entrepreneur thank you Vlad and James got a long question here okay maybe I can come back to that
59:00
James let me see uh it's kind of long tradeoffs yes yes yes yes yes yes I
59:07
can't believe we had the camera backwards so thank you all when this show gets super famous and I'm on real TV you guys can all say like I remember
59:15
when he used to do this backwards um let's
59:21
see okay few oh you're from Denmark the Pharaoh Islands cool you wanted a pitch
59:26
right all right let's do that one oh us localization that's a good one all right let's bring you on she's still here hey
59:33
there hi nice to meet you now that's a remote place that's some place I've never been the Pharaoh Island yes it's
59:39
very beautiful yeah sorry about the alarm yeah um yeah I mean I wanted to do
59:46
a pitch but uh I'm not sure I'm where preper right
59:51
now so question like duation and then I want
59:58
to know your opinion like what do you think because currently I'm in FOH
1:00:04
islands and it's not easy to get accessible to like Venture capitals or like Angel Investors you yeah for sure
1:00:12
and um mostly the options are from us but because we are far away it's hard to meet for lunch or like uh kind of yeah
1:00:20
no uh like content for those like yeah yeah raising activities right so yeah
1:00:28
kind wondering yeah I'm kind of wondering like uh if I send my page to
1:00:34
those like directories to Angel Investors and like what is the chance of
1:00:40
like somebody interested in or like many people interested in my idea or my
1:00:47
company yeah yeah the chance is pretty much zero yeah that's what I guess to yeah
1:00:55
but but it's not it's not zero it's something just a little above zero so yeah let's talk about that so that's
1:01:02
again why we built this uh where I put it this directory is to give you guys some ammunition because the trick is
1:01:10
umlike I said investors only invest in people it's ideal if they meet you but as you said that's going to be hard for
1:01:16
you so you need to build relationship somehow and a way to fast forward the relationship is if you have things in
1:01:21
common and that means research so as I was talking earlier about the 8020 rule
1:01:26
most entrepreneurs and I used to do this too I still do it frankly you're in love with your product you spend 80% of your
1:01:32
time on building the product and thinking about all the features and all this cool stuff and you spend maybe 20%
1:01:38
talking to the customers or thinking about what investors want because you just kind of figure well we'll build this and it's going to make a bunch of
1:01:43
money and and they'll have to be interested it's just not that easy it's all about research so that 8020 I've
1:01:50
been calling this the fox split like Paro the Paro law is 80% comes from 20% 80% % of the results come from 20% of
1:01:57
the action I'm talking about just reversing your focus from 80% product
1:02:02
and 20% Outreach to the reverse 80% of your time should be focused on investors
1:02:08
and customers actually customers first but since we're talking about Investors and here's here's why find out where
1:02:14
they went to school find out what they invested in find out um go to their website figure out what they the
1:02:20
thesises of that company of that Venture firm and all of this is public it just
1:02:25
takes work and these days with AI tools maybe you can just Google that stuff essentially or Gemini Google tool right
1:02:31
but find the background so that your email Isn't a cold email and then your hit rate will go way up if you send me
1:02:38
an email that says um not uh here's the emails I get I'm doing
1:02:44
this I'm doing this are you interested how the hell do I know I don't even know who you are and I get four or 500 emails
1:02:50
a day delete right I'm s it's not because I don't want to I used to read them all I just can't the amount of
1:02:56
inbound that investors get is just hard for a non-investor to understand we just get deluged especially Knuckleheads like
1:03:02
me who go out in public and talk about it we just get so much stuff that's why when I do calls I have to book and make
1:03:08
you guys pay because I just can't talk to everybody right that's why I broadcast instead anyway that's my problem um but an email that comes in
1:03:15
that says something like hey I saw you invested in this I hope that made you
1:03:21
money we're doing something like that but with this twist which is better we're doing it now because something
1:03:28
happened there's a trend or new tech or um regulations change like like you make
1:03:34
a logical story that is still only like three or five sentences um then I'm oh okay it shows
1:03:42
me that you took the time first of all because emails are cheap right um make
1:03:47
it so it doesn't look like a Spam make it sound like I could make money that you understand what I'm looking for and
1:03:54
then at least the chance goes from you know almost zero to 4% maybe something
1:04:00
like that yeah that's very helpful yeah thank you okay it is Imagine yeah I I
1:04:08
had a young woman come on a couple years ago I never forget it and she was in DC Washington DC and she was so
1:04:14
disappointed and she was like I've been reaching out to investors and nobody would return my calls and I like oh I'm
1:04:20
I'm really sorry because she's a smart person the company was interest well how many people did you contact
1:04:26
four I was like well come on right this is not you know you'd be easier to get
1:04:32
struck by lightning you know so it takes work um and then I also have another one special specially for you um actually
1:04:39
few which is we have a website I'll put it in the chat um which we don't talk about much but again if go over here and
1:04:45
get on the list you'll see it but this this I built this for you actually startup
1:04:51
events.org and this is the only calendar in the world that lists only virtual
1:04:58
events only for Founders so it's made for people like you who don't live in San Francisco or Mumbai or London or New
1:05:05
York you can go and meet investors at events virtually and you can sign up for
1:05:11
the newsletter and we publish events from all over the world and they're on all different time zones so you know you
1:05:16
can find the ones that fit you and a lot of them are super specific but that's the other way to do this is meet people
1:05:22
and do pitch competitions and anywhere you can you show up and be there if if you don't go you're not going to grow
1:05:28
that's you got to go and this newsletter will help you it's free entirely free um and maybe you can find some events like
1:05:35
this one you know and go to places and meet people uh and hopefully that'll be helpful too thank you okay yeah great to
1:05:41
meet you that's so great yeah good luck with everything hope to see you again join our newsletters and everything and
1:05:48
the Pharaoh Island she's our first uh first caller from the Pharaoh Islands I'm gonna put that on my travel bucket
1:05:54
list I think all right so what time is one o'clock okay so what do we got going here so that was few okay Sean wanted a
1:06:01
pitch may had a question Alex had a question did Julia not haraj had a pitch okay so
1:06:08
that's good all right let's do um hey uh let's see who's still here I know sometimes people have to leave these
1:06:14
these uh take a while to do this right
1:06:20
Andy come on now thanks guys for sticking around um okay okay okay Sean
1:06:27
did you want to try uh pitching just not I can see you is that still a good idea let me check with Sean and in May
1:06:34
is May did you Sean can you give me a thumbs up or something are you in okay moving
1:06:41
on um let's see here may where's
1:06:46
may may there's May okay there's May hey may how are you hi I'm good Scott thank
1:06:53
you um I actually also try to help a lot of Founders and actually this is one of the question you know Founders many
1:06:59
Founders here and then there's a question I heard from the investors is like I really want to know why it's you
1:07:05
you know so I love to hear about you know from the comments about from you
1:07:10
Scott veryy much that that's a really important question right yeah you love this product but why you are the person
1:07:18
to do this uh I see so you as an investor what
1:07:24
do you think a Founder should say to the investor when they get there question I see that's interesting okay so yeah
1:07:30
founder market fit as you phrased it earlier that's a good question
1:07:35
um okay so you guys understand everybody you can give suggestions here because there's no right answer the idea is if
1:07:41
you're a Founder what do you say when an investor asks you why you so the best
1:07:47
ones I've heard in this context are something personal and dramatic so I remember a
1:07:53
pitch we saw I belong to a group called Tech Coast Angels which is a very large uh Angel Investing group and I remember
1:07:59
uh when I first joined there was a pitch and it was something about um 911
1:08:04
emergency call software and the reason the founder was doing it was because so
1:08:10
I forget someone had passed away because they couldn't get through the emergency call to get the ambulance there fast
1:08:16
enough it's like wow okay this is personal right and dramatic and they had
1:08:22
software that would route the calls faster or something like that right so person is a great place to start um that
1:08:28
isn't always believable because now that I say that out loud like that's almost too perfect maybe they made it up I don't know but it got our attention the
1:08:34
classic one of course is um eBay right do you know the eBay founding Story the
1:08:39
eBay story was that Pier omdar his wife collected Pez dispensers and then they
1:08:46
she had a like a garage full of Pez dispensers and he's like how do we get rid of these things so we'll set up an online Marketplace and people there must
1:08:53
be other Pez collectors out there and they set up this Marketplace so people could buy and sell used Goods which at
1:08:58
the time was a very novel idea and they turned it into billionaires right it turned out later that was made up their
1:09:05
PR team made that story up but still a good story and it sticks with you right
1:09:10
um because it's it's relatable so I would start with those the others are a lot of the whyu is also the why now uh
1:09:19
the why now the Confluence as I mentioned a little while ago I think is really important the Confluence of some
1:09:24
trends something you know demographically is changing regulations have changed um crypto's coming in you
1:09:31
know it's affecting payments and fch um globalization crossb stuff you know what
1:09:37
are the trends that make this now and of course AI right uh what why now and if
1:09:43
you can tie your personal credentials to the now like you know I have a PhD and
1:09:49
AI from Stanford and I was at this company and they saw saw this I saw this
1:09:56
Market that needed a product and they wouldn't listen to me because they were busy with this other product so I left to start my own company that's the kind
1:10:02
of pitch we often hear is frust people are frustrated at larger companies and they come and say whatever General
1:10:09
Motors wasn't going to do this so I'm here to do it myself and I'd like your help as an investor to realize this
1:10:15
dream and and solve this problem is that the kind of thing you were asking about yeah yeah lovely okay yeah yeah it's a
1:10:22
lot about I tell really convincing story even though yeah yeah and that's that's
1:10:27
a thing actually you know I know you work with a lot of Founders so this I say something I've been thinking a lot about there's a lot of consultants in
1:10:34
the market who want people to pay for storytelling like they really want to work on their brand and their
1:10:39
storytelling and that's important it's important that your pitch has a a through line like it makes sense a b c
1:10:47
d but way more interesting to us is if you're making money and if you talk to customers
1:10:54
so I I have some friends that do this so I don't want to to pick on anybody but
1:10:59
build the business this isn't nap time and I'm not seven years old I I you know
1:11:04
the story is not interesting unless it serves the business so I would focus on
1:11:09
um May's good question here why you and then I added why now um if that's a
1:11:15
story that leads to a business result I'm interested if the story I've seen this also you know a 12-minute pitch and
1:11:21
they spend six minutes talking about how they grew up on a farm and they wanted to raise better avocados and you you
1:11:29
know like get to the point right so the story that's my that's what I don't like storytelling if it relates to the
1:11:35
business and drives the business purpose that suggests an Roi for me as an investor then it's a good story so all
1:11:41
right thank you so much yeah yeah okay I hope it's helpful nice to see you again thanks for showing up again good to see
1:11:48
you and uh we'll see you next time I hope all right so that was May and let's
1:11:55
see see here um Sean I will turn you on are you ready yeah I I I got to turn you on I
1:12:01
just I need to know that you're watching otherwise I'll you want to pitch
1:12:08
Sean okay yes raing okay thumbs up there we
1:12:13
go okay here comes Sean all right there he is hey Sean okay all right so we got a couple
1:12:20
minutes here you want to share with us your I'm good I'm good why don't you go ahead and
1:12:27
Pitch I I also included my pitch in the chat
1:12:32
as well oh okay I'm not sure if you say it
1:12:37
too um what do you think oh what whatever you'd prefer uh you want me to just talk about
1:12:44
I could uh yeah I can look at it in the chat if yeah let me go find
1:12:52
it oh you're you're probably and you have any questions about it please
1:12:59
ask okay okay here it is a shark tank type idea is is that the
1:13:07
right
1:13:12
one yes that's correct Sean is it Shar okay okay so Sean says I can't put this
1:13:20
one on the screen but here's what he said folks using a semi- similar blueprint to shark tank I came up with
1:13:26
an idea that gives smaller content creators the option of a to build followers over time or B create a pitch
1:13:33
to pitch larger creators to give them a reason to sell a predetermined amount
1:13:39
that's very intriguing um that does ring a bell yeah you sent that in in advance didn't you may get some more details
1:13:46
here as well I did um yeah sorry let me got a lot of people
1:13:53
here today let's see okay this is from the uh I know autism Foundation Sean
1:13:59
sent this in earlier okay a new social concept yeah okay once the transaction
1:14:05
is complete similar to how it's the responsibility of businesses to M cut maintain customers it will be up to the
1:14:11
new channel to maintain and keep the plot likes Etc interesting okay
1:14:17
so I don't you know this you just did the summary version so I don't have the full picture here but I guess I would
1:14:22
have two ideas one is I don't exactly know what you're doing and that can be okay because you want somebody to be
1:14:29
interested right and have ask for more details the what isn't here is what an
1:14:36
investor would get out of it like how does it make money um I would want to know more about um how how many custom
1:14:45
num numbers basically numbers uh investors we eat numbers if you don't give us numbers we starve so have do you
1:14:53
have users how many how fast is that growing all that kind
1:15:01
stuff exactly um
1:15:07
so first of all I think it's
1:15:17
important a couple ways that invest will benefit
1:15:25
first three they would
1:15:32
have the opportunity to
1:15:37
discover a
1:15:43
option similar to how investors who invested in
1:15:52
YouTube would benefit from it right
1:15:57
um and how
1:16:02
investers who invested
1:16:08
in Facebook benefit benefit I haven't done enough h on how
1:16:17
investors benefited from investing in um
1:16:23
things like Google um or anything like that but I'm pretty
1:16:32
sure that they made a huge for those um Ventures
1:16:39
um Maybe I'm Wrong um yeah um I'm not true no no you're right you're
1:16:45
definitely right there's a lot of money made in those Ventures yeah I think that's what you're going to need next is to have a bunch of numbers that's what I
1:16:52
would do the idea sounds interesting um one of the challenges is you're building
1:16:57
a marketplace where you have people on both the buying and the selling so you need some of these and then some of
1:17:03
these and they have to alternate and it's going to take some marketing money or some Outreach so uh questions that
1:17:09
investors are going to ask pretty quickly is what they call CAC CAC customer acquisition cost and you're
1:17:15
going to want to figure out how you can acquire people both who are offering the
1:17:21
the likes and influencer and then also people who are buying it right and quantifying that is what people are
1:17:27
going to need to know to know whether this is a good business or not and then if that grows how fast is it growing and
1:17:33
then eventually like you said the opportunity to participate in something large like an IPO that Facebook or or
1:17:39
Google had so that's where I think I'd start and you're breaking up a little I'm having trouble hearing you so I'm
1:17:45
going to move on but if you want to put some more comments in the chat room or we'll see you next time then we'll do
1:17:50
that as well thanks for being with us today that was Sean from Laguna Nigel
1:17:56
okay so that leaves us uh Alex and nataraj let's see who let's
1:18:05
see okay all right Alex you said you got your camera someplace quieter let's
1:18:14
see here in the moment uh is the sound okay
1:18:19
now no no you're still in a cafe or something aren't you I'm in the I'm in the cafe but inside not outside so no
1:18:26
cars just people okay just people okay well you want to do a pitch right if you're talking then it rounds them out
1:18:32
so when you're done talking just mute yourself and then my voice will be you should be okay okay perfect no slides
1:18:40
right no slides that's right cool where are you Geographic uh I'm in Mexico City
1:18:46
cool all right yeah go ahead give me a couple minutes and then we'll give you some [Music]
1:18:51
feedback go ahead all right so so uh we are a travel company from Mexico City
1:18:57
called Vibe Adventures so in the last almost six years we have always been profitable got over 9,000 customers and
1:19:05
generated a revenue of over 1.5 million us so during our journey we saw that
1:19:12
there is a problem on the market uh that holiday planning in Booking is tiring
1:19:17
and uh that Travelers actually want to book um a lot online and easier so
1:19:22
that's why what we are doing right now we we are launching uh in October a new
1:19:27
product which is going to be a dynamic packaging tool that will combine through
1:19:33
API uh over 20,000 multi-day organized uh tours uh around the world with
1:19:39
flights all around the world so this will allow users to literally book their vacations in less than 10 minutes uh
1:19:46
while getting the best combination of flights and tours for your destination and and dates in in in economic sense
1:19:53
and uh making sure ever is of high quality and reliability because we manually vet all uh local suppliers so
1:20:01
uh the revenue we're going to get through markup we're going to put a markup at to the cost which we are going
1:20:06
to pay through in real time through stripe and we're going to get uh post
1:20:12
booking commissions which are going to give us uh about 16% of gross profit
1:20:17
margin at the moment which we going to improve and uh yeah we have a we are sure that we are ready for this because
1:20:24
we we have a diverse team of 10 people four of them are uh developers and two
1:20:29
advisers uh we have a knowledge of the market we have been there for almost six
1:20:35
years and we got uh positive feedback from our customers the market is actually huge uh the vacation uh package
1:20:44
Market is also growing uh so 61% for example of people who went abroad uh in
1:20:50
uh in UK uh for example they used it as a package tour and uh there is a competition but um
1:20:58
just one company called Exotica from Spain is doing exactly what we do it's a dynamic packaging for uh multi-day tours
1:21:06
but they have a limited Supply because they literally have their own supply of
1:21:11
about 300 tors in 76 countries and they just fly from seven countries in the
1:21:17
world on the contary we're going to have over 20,000 uh tour in uh in over 160
1:21:24
countries flights all around the world and um yeah we are looking for a seed
1:21:30
Angel Investments of 250k with uh 5 million post money uh cap uh on Save
1:21:38
right now and um yeah uh looking forward to uh connecting with um with potential
1:21:47
investors and also receiving the feedback from you guys excellent that was
1:21:52
great I'm done no that was really really good um just
1:21:58
for everybody else that's watching did you hear how many numbers he used numbers numbers numbers that's what
1:22:05
we want to hear I wrote them all down six years of business 9,000 customers a million and a half dollars in Revenue today 20,000 tours on their database 16%
1:22:13
gross margin 10 people working for the company 60% of UK Travelers do something else I lost track of he had a specific
1:22:19
ask 250k at a $5 million valuation that's what investors want to hear
1:22:24
especially because he has real numbers right they're not all zeros I know if you're brand new then they're all zeros it's hard to make an equation out of
1:22:30
zeros but that is what we would need to hear because that's a business it's not just an idea it's not just a product
1:22:36
it's not a bunch of features that you put together on your dining room table it's a business so good job um I thought
1:22:42
that was very good um so I don't have a lot of critiques but um obviously we're
1:22:48
here to help so what would I would suggest um some things that I would uh suggest to add were it wasn't clear to
1:22:54
me what Market you're in so as it emerged it sounded like you're Global but you say you're in Mexico City you
1:23:00
don't sound Mexican so I to gather you're from somewhere else so I don't know and you can tell me now or you can
1:23:06
just for next time I think you should say it we're serving the United States or we're serving the world or we're only
1:23:11
serving Mexico City I don't know because that's critical to us right because I don't know unless you tell me um what
1:23:18
you didn't do which I thought actually was good um that no you didn't bother with Tam Sam
1:23:25
analysis because everybody knows that travel is a huge business a lot of people get stuck on total addressable
1:23:30
Market serviceable addressable Market serviceable obtainable Market those are common acronyms that you'll see in a lot
1:23:36
of uh Blog advice about how to pitch startups and it's important if it's a business that nobody knows but everybody
1:23:41
knows that travel is freaking huge um and um it would be interesting if you had some more about specifically about
1:23:47
package tours but then you did you toss some of that in so good job um
1:23:52
competition is definitely the thing here the the number one thing I would say the analysis of Exotica was very helpful and
1:23:59
I know that company actually I've looked at that company not as an investor I mean as a as a customer right looking for cool things to do in foreign
1:24:05
countries it's super cool um but so many so many people have tried this what I
1:24:11
didn't hear was why you like we're talking about with May why you why now
1:24:17
and um yes you can maybe beat them but why not Expedia or Trav velocity or you
1:24:22
know whoever one of the airlines whatever uh one of the travel companies um that makes this urgent and
1:24:29
important and that you're the one to do it that's the piece you're missing everything else was great I mean it would definitely like if you were here
1:24:35
pitching us I would definitely be interested in having another conversation because they have Revenue this is what I'm telling everybody right
1:24:41
I've been saying this all day traction is what gets our attention um and I don't think I actually heard much about
1:24:46
growth you might have said it I was writing the other things out so it would be nice to know what the ramp was on some of those numbers but having numbers
1:24:52
at all is such a relief because it gives me some idea a what how big you are because again everybody who's listening
1:24:57
to this we don't know how big you are unless you say you have 10 people I don't know unless you say you're marketing to Mexico or not Mexico I
1:25:04
don't know so you got to tell us the stuff that's totally obvious to you you know um and then the ask 250 on 5
1:25:11
million if you're running this long and you've raised that much money that sounds small like I would want to know why are you raising money um and why not
1:25:18
more um and you don't have to answer that now it's up to you but that's and that's okay if you didn't say it because it leads to the question and the
1:25:25
question is what you want which is the further discussion so maybe that's deliberate but that's a pretty small amount of money given your track record
1:25:32
and that also leads to my other question is you didn't say anything about financing history I presume but I don't know you were bootstrapped or maybe you
1:25:39
said that but um you know if there are other people involved or Etc right so
1:25:44
again that could be a second level conversation and a two-minute pitch it's hard to cover everything I thought you did a great job um but I hope some of
1:25:50
that helpful to you I hope yeah okay good thumbs up okay so um check in the
1:25:57
chat room as well I think some people have ideas for you as well I think but uh Alex uh let me just see here uh
1:26:05
anything quick okay wonderful pitch keep it up well there you
1:26:10
go yeah yeah okay all right so those are some other things but other folks if you have suggestions for Alex please let him
1:26:17
know uh and Alex and I'll tell all of you this actually um this is the kind of
1:26:22
company I think I mean I don't know Alex but it sounds good this is the kind of company people want to invest in oh that's a big one actually I missed one
1:26:28
and this goes back to um fuse's question about localization where is the country
1:26:34
domiciled right and actually I do want to know that can you unmute for a second is this a Mexican company the US uh
1:26:40
legally we are a US company but we also have an operational company here in Mexico because most of the team is
1:26:46
actually based in in in Mexico okay but but we are raising as a US company and our main Market is us and we are uh
1:26:54
targetting a initially a global uh upper middle class English speaking Market
1:27:00
North American Europe okay that makes sense that makes sense yeah so that was easy to add right um the uh so the you
1:27:07
the reason I asked for the rest of you including few um if you're a non us company us investors at least angels are
1:27:14
probably not going to be interested just full stop because the and it's not personal like you can tell in my books
1:27:20
are languages all over the world I do this to help people in other countries but I can't invest in other countries very easily because the tax laws are so
1:27:28
favorable to us Investments that I really I can't really put money in Nigeria or France or the Philippines
1:27:35
because I can't really get it back without taking a huge haircut um meaning a reduction uh so if you are thinking
1:27:42
about selling to the US market or um raising money from us investors uh do like Alex did here and set up a company
1:27:48
in the United States and if you're going to do that it needs to be a Delaware the US state of Delaware a Corporation
1:27:54
that's the that's a type of legal entity that the Venture Capital industry has um
1:28:01
has standardized around and that's what you want to be a Delaware SE Corporation that'll just make the rest of your life
1:28:06
easier when you're raising money um so great stuff um thank you thanks for being here Alex hope you'll join some of
1:28:12
our other lists go over to Startup council.org list your uh list your startup at uh National startups
1:28:18
directory if you if that's interesting to you we'll try to help you meet some people and uh all the things we're doing
1:28:23
are to try to help help people like you so I'm glad you're here thanks for coming thank you guys right all right so
1:28:31
we seeing some talented folks today and I think we have a couple left and then we're gonna oh it's 1:30 already Okay so
1:28:37
let's do so that was Mr Alex oh by the way everybody if you're watching um go ahead and um link to me on LinkedIn I'd
1:28:44
be happy to connect with you I can't keep up with the messages there but that way we'll see posts from each other and
1:28:50
I'd be happy to you know like your posts and you can like mine you know all that works but we'll be happy to um uh you
1:28:56
know collaborate okay um what do we got nataraj has been waiting very patiently
1:29:02
and he is still here so we're GNA do nataraj and here he is hi there nataraj
1:29:09
yeah hi uh hi Scott nice to meet you you said you're in Southern California right
1:29:15
yeah yeah yeah I'm in M near Los Angeles yeah all right have we met I don't think so no no no this is the first time that
1:29:22
I signed for this even yeah okay great yeah all right well you want to practice your T your pitch you said you're in
1:29:27
biotech huh yes yeah biotech yeah all right all right well go ahead if you'd like to start well happy to yeah hello
1:29:34
everyone I'm natas pagadala founder and CEO of lron Bio do you know that the interaction between Kass and rafen is
1:29:41
responsible for about 20% of all new cancer cases worldwide with rafen being
1:29:47
highly expressed in L cancer impacting a $40 billion Market with 13.4 billion
1:29:52
spent annually on l cancer alone traditional treatments have struggled because these cancer causing proteins
1:29:58
were deemed undruggable because but we have achieved a breakthrough with our AI
1:30:04
powered trimatrix analyzer platform this platform offers Superior specificity and
1:30:09
selectivity compared to existing platforms worldwide our molecular glues lip 10 and lip 11 have shown impressive
1:30:15
results reducing rafon Levels by 44% and 34% in breast cancer cells respectively
1:30:22
we are seeking one million in initial funding from progress to progress from
1:30:27
Discovery to invo studies our aim is to capture 20% of the market potentially generating around 9 billion by 2020 2044
1:30:37
to facilitate this we plan to explore acquisition or buger opportunities valued between 5.8 billion to 10.8
1:30:44
billion so in exchange for your investment we offer a safe note with 20%
1:30:50
or 8% interest join us in rizing cancer treatment and making a real difference
1:30:55
for Millions thank you natas padala founder and CE by
1:31:00
excellent okay well very nicely done and a lot of numbers in there I like it good job um okay so folks who are listening
1:31:08
if you have suggestions please put them in the chat room as well natar is very patiently waiting here and so I'm sure
1:31:13
you'd appreciate your feedback um so fascinating stuff I'm not a Pharma or
1:31:19
biotech guy I know just enough to lose money and I've done that enough that I don't do it anymore so I'm not the
1:31:24
perfect guy for this but I I'll tell you what I what I think um it sound it sounds very promising obviously anything
1:31:31
that can cure caner would be fabulous the as you obviously know but just to tell everybody else these kind of
1:31:37
companies need a lot of capital upfront because they have such an investment in research and then trials and it's it's
1:31:44
it's life or death stuff and it takes Millions to get anywhere so they have a very different pitching model than say
1:31:50
like a a SAS software app um yeah because they have to raise all kinds of money before they can prove anything
1:31:57
right so um but he did you did a nice job nataraj of of fitting into the um
1:32:02
the traditional template there so what would I say that would be uh to help you improve uh well you spoke pretty quickly
1:32:08
and that's understandable because you're a little nervous like we always are right um but just slow down like I
1:32:14
didn't quite catch it and most importantly I didn't catch the key sentence you had at the front you said
1:32:19
something about an interaction between caras and something yeah K and rough one
1:32:25
okay I don't know what either of those words even means what's a Kass or a these are these are the two proteins
1:32:31
basically all the biotic companies are working at the moment because you know you see recently the birati Therapeutics
1:32:38
has developed a inhibitor for kasas so is a kasas is a protein which uh where
1:32:45
this is highly expressed and also in breast cancer lung cancer uh in all the
1:32:51
cancers basically 20% of all the canc answers so mirati Therapeutics recently has developed an inhibitor that can
1:32:58
inhibit this this protein membran protein so that is the reason why mirati theraputics was acquired by BMS for $4.5
1:33:07
billion in in in a couple of months back in the last year right okay so that so I
1:33:15
don't know what that is so if you're pitching me you got to explain that
1:33:20
because I don't have any idea what you said right um if you're pitching a bunch of biotech people maybe that's obvious
1:33:25
so you don't need to I don't that's you get the point right yeah but um I think regardless slower and with a little more
1:33:32
context because there's a lot of people that know more than I do but that less than you do and giving them just you
1:33:38
know another three sentences this is the protein that does this and as you may recall this is the other protein that
1:33:44
does that and we see a lot of it in breast cancer and just you know just unpack it a little because that will help people keep up with you yeah with
1:33:51
the numbers um the anything AI related is hot the Confluence of AI and
1:33:56
Healthcare are very cool sounds cool um and reviz revolutionizing cancer treatment certainly an honorable goal
1:34:03
the uh big hole I saw is even say anything about the team or who you are or why you're qualified so this comes
1:34:09
back to the thing we're talking about with May why you and why now and I'm guessing the why now has something to do
1:34:15
with the AI automating Discovery and molecule matching and stuff right um but then the Yu is a big one you don't need
1:34:21
to answer me now but that's important right because you sound like you know what you're talking about but I I don't know are you a PhD are you an MD do you
1:34:29
you know did you stay at a holiday and express and you're acting like one I I don't know what the you know the vibe is
1:34:34
so um that would be helpful and then um financing to date like how have you is
1:34:40
it bootstrap so far it's a Bo bootstrap yeah yeah so initially I got an investment as a uh for the laboratory
1:34:46
facilities in San dieago as a convertible note for one year so we are
1:34:52
we are right now working on l and we are also working on Alzheimer's uh and at
1:34:59
the same time we submitted two Grant applications for National Science Foundation and also National Institute
1:35:05
of Health on Alzheimer's for seven for 775k and we are also approved to submit
1:35:13
3.5 million Grant application in the January phase uh on on ALS you know
1:35:21
lateral scis which is another yeah as neurod degenerative disorder as yeah as
1:35:27
of now it's a boot strap but um we have two lead compounds from the breast
1:35:32
cancer and also we have couple of lead compounds from Alzheimer's where actually these molecules can regain the
1:35:39
memory of dementia patients uh if if all the studies were done we hope that these
1:35:47
compounds can regain the memory of a dementia patients in the advanced stages so yeah because these are not
1:35:54
traditional drug molecules as I said you know these are called as a molecular glues so molecular glues uh right now if
1:36:01
you if you check it with BMS or verati Therapeutics or or C4 Therapeutics
1:36:08
chimer Therapeutics all these targeted protein degradation companies they are they are working on molecular glues
1:36:14
they're developing especially on molecular glues and as of now all the botch investors from the last from the
1:36:21
last couple of years they switch from uh Inhibitors to degraders so and one of
1:36:26
the best degrader you know is a small molecule called as a molecular glue where it destroys the proteins in the
1:36:32
biological system using the body's own shell body's own missionary so
1:36:38
degradation is more important that inhibition as up now okay well that's more detail than I even understand
1:36:43
you're obviously an educated guy but um yeah well a little of that in the pitch just to you know would would
1:36:50
help so sounds like a great opportunity I so I would offer you and I meant to tell Alex this as well I don't know Alex
1:36:56
if you're still online that last pitch about the travel industry I'm part of tech Coast angels I started saying this
1:37:01
earlier and I distracted myself but Tech Coast Angels is a very large um Angel Investment Group here in the United
1:37:06
States and the west coast and we're based here in Orange County and we have about 500 members across Southern California anyway we invest in all kinds
1:37:13
of stuff and a bunch of the members are doctors for example so they lead due diligence on deals like yours and then
1:37:18
guys like me more talk to people like Alex that are software and e-commerce sort of plays um so I can't promise
1:37:24
anything but um if you go to um it used to be called Tech host Angels now it's TCA Venture group yeah.com and you could
1:37:32
learn about that group and we're always looking for deals and um you could submit it's a fairly lengthy application
1:37:38
I'll warn you but if it uh looks applicable to you uh it sounds like both you and Alex might have some opportunity
1:37:45
to talk to us and also Kon I don't know if you're still here he probably went to bed um but we are looking for high
1:37:51
growth opportunities the early stage um that have some traction already so sorry everybody else
1:37:57
it's not just idea stage this is why I keep saying we need customers you need to talk about customers and traction um
1:38:02
but for you um nataraj or Alex if you're still here or Kon those are the sort of companies we like to talk to so you
1:38:08
might go to TCA Venture group.com yeah I I actually a couple of weeks back you
1:38:14
know I gave it speed dating pitching in uh uh yeah in Edwin yeah yeah speak yeah JJ
1:38:23
is so that time I came to know about tech Coastal angels and also I'm pitching
1:38:28
tomorrow in a pitch fors with the presentation to 40 Angel Investors and
1:38:35
also venture capitalist and also I'm also pitching in uh um Paulo Alto with
1:38:43
you know a pitch Force again with in front of Life Sciences
1:38:48
investors great great well good for you not then I'm glad especially glad you're here because as you know know practice
1:38:54
will make difference just practice practice practice and friendly feedback is super valuable so awesome well nice
1:39:00
to meet you hope to see you um there's another event that Julia mentioned earlier uh Tech Coast Venture Network
1:39:07
it's October 10th or something like that well you're you're near enough you should go to the Orange County startup
1:39:12
Council website if you're not they're all on that calendar there so I'll be at that one myself actually hosting part of
1:39:18
it okay yeah happy to happy to meet you in person sometime yeah thank you for the feedback well thanks thanks a lot
1:39:24
well Julia says it's called Wings that's right Wings yes you could Google that yes nice to meet youaj okay so think we're about out of
1:39:32
time here let's what do we uh there's not and then
1:39:38
okay okay let me run back through the chat room and see if there's anything else I put up um uh and find me on
1:39:46
LinkedIn everybody if you'd like so I put up the URLs there we the company startup Council and I'm Scott Fox author
1:39:53
and and um happy to um connect with any of you like I said I can't um I'm not real good at me keeping up with the chat
1:39:59
there because I get so many but happy if we like each other we'll see each other you know in the feeds and stuff and then we can keep in touch and stuff like that
1:40:06
oh Paulina okay so Paulina I'd happy to have you pitch but you're in the wrong place I can't um you can't pitch from
1:40:12
there you gota you got to follow the instructions and get over to the other room I'm sorry and we're kind of out of time I feel bad because you're you're
1:40:19
the right kind of person um do we have room backstage hold on let's
1:40:25
see yeah if any of you are done backstage and are going to leave anyway maybe we can let Paulina back here um
1:40:32
how many is that one two three four five six seven oh yeah there's room it's okay um
1:40:39
oh thank you Andy no I think Paulina you need to go to um where is that it somebody just joined there she is okay
1:40:47
aha all right so here we have Paulina hi I've been trying to get in
1:40:53
for for a while okay sorry was too busy in the room yeah yeah all right sorry about that fully understandable it was
1:41:00
my mistake okay okay so I'll just quickly give the pitch then so we don't take much of everyone's time anymore
1:41:07
yeah so hi everyone my name is Pina and um I'm here to present you blobfish AI
1:41:13
the platform that revolutionizes training of sales reps and also call uh Center operators sales
1:41:22
training in industry is over 16 billion in the US but it's wildly ineffective
1:41:29
unscalable unscalable and also not very personalized as a majority of it in fact
1:41:37
85% of all sales trainings that are traditional fail to deliver any results
1:41:42
within about four months and this is where we come in as blobfish we offer a
1:41:47
platform that's based on voice AI that offers personalized lifelike role play
1:41:53
play and coaching as well it allows sales professionals train lifelike sales
1:41:59
situations and gain skills and also boost their confidence and this is the
1:42:05
feedback we have heard from our customers as well um we are working now
1:42:10
uh on creating a platform that on the one hand offers companies a chance to set up their personalized personas and
1:42:16
scenarios completely uh independently without our involvement and on the other
1:42:22
hand we're working to create create a coaching experience that feels true and personalized with coaching tools with um
1:42:30
actionable insites and not just simple metrics like some of our competitors are doing um we are the perfect team to do
1:42:37
it because we have deep expertise in both Ai and also coaching sales teams um
1:42:45
this combination offers us the insight into the industry and also the skills needed to create it we are very young
1:42:52
but mighty in the four months of our existence we have conducted dozens of uh
1:42:58
user interviews we have rolled our uh out our MVP we have also already rolled
1:43:04
out our B2B MVP which is a platform just not a scalable version of it we have
1:43:10
also signed our first client got our 3,000 uh recurring Revenue annual
1:43:16
recurring revenue and we are also discussing with our first client
1:43:21
expansion into to their um parent company uh we have been talking to a
1:43:27
couple other clients and potential um connections with sales coaches as well
1:43:32
to distribute through their networks so we believe that blob fishi can be uh the
1:43:39
true uh door into that scalable personalized future of sales training
1:43:46
and we're currently raising our preed at uh 200,000 with a 7 million cap and and
1:43:53
uh we're doing it in safes you're doing it in what sorry safes a safe
1:43:59
safe okay well great nicely done how you've done this a couple times I'm
1:44:05
thinking a couple yeah we've been talking to oh we've been doing a bunch of sales
1:44:12
calls and also a lot of and some angels yeah yeah well good well good job that
1:44:17
was very nice also I had an edge to be fair I've heard your feedback to everyone else so kind of tailor things as well throw
1:44:24
in some numbers that we had but I actually never used them before so that was very helpful already for me good
1:44:30
good yeah that's one of the things in my new book is investors eat numbers that's one of my that's my new catchphrase
1:44:35
investors eat numbers if you don't give us numbers we starve so anyway um okay so a nice job so you have a very
1:44:42
outgoing friendly personality that definitely helps your English is my kind of English so it's easy for me to
1:44:47
understand great you speak very clearly everybody else you can't underestimate how difficult it is for us investors if
1:44:53
you guys don't speak up have a good microphone and use precise diction we just can't hear you right and that hurts
1:44:59
everything so she's an example who didn't do that so good job um so companies very interesting I I think
1:45:06
that's that's exciting um the failure of sales training is a known thing for sure she did a nice job of uh explaining I
1:45:12
particularly I hope everybody noticed right at the beginning she had a sentence I tried to write it down where she explained the whole thing which gave
1:45:19
me an idea what was going on because like I said I don't know I never met her so what is she going to talk about could
1:45:24
be anything so she said something like we're an AI application that's revolutionizing the training of sales
1:45:31
representatives and call centers okay at least now I know you're not biotech you're not a space company you're not
1:45:37
you know agriculture I don't know sounds like you're a software company in the sales space I I may not like that but at
1:45:43
least I know what it is right and that's what we need you all to do like give us a chance so to understand where you're
1:45:48
going before you head off at 60 miles an hour so that was good um the failure of sales training you explained it well the
1:45:55
role play coaching sales team through AI um thre on some other nice uh numbers
1:46:01
they've been at it four months that gives me a sense of how old this is um dozens of interviews oh good they're
1:46:06
talking to customers nice that's good um about 3,000 in revenues I wasn't clear
1:46:11
whether that was one time I think you said recurring but whatever you could be a little clear about that but I wrote it
1:46:16
down anyway because it's more than zero like even $5 is more than zero and that's what we want to know like does
1:46:23
anybody other than you think it's a good idea right is anybody actually willing to pay for it because even people that think it's a good idea may not be
1:46:29
willing to pay for it right so that the fact they have $3,000 of revenues I'm not sure how why what but it's $33,000
1:46:36
that's a lot more mathematically that's infinitely more than zero so that's good um okay and then precede round that
1:46:43
helps me understand how old you are well a four months 200 on a five seven million safe got it okay so really
1:46:50
nicely done couple things that I would add again Depending on time um you
1:46:55
mentioned the team a little bit you have a background in coaching sales teams and AI that's interesting coaching sales
1:47:01
team is a good um skill the AI is the one that's really hard to find good people for though so if you have people
1:47:07
with impressive degrees or they worked at some big company you might just drop those buzzword in uh same with the sales
1:47:14
team coaching too but it's just the AI is so hot like that would help be helpful if you have that um the big one
1:47:20
I guess well also sector I was surprised and this may just be me or I may have missed it I was trying to take notes
1:47:26
usually a company like this would start in a particular sector like you specialize in know gym memberships or
1:47:31
cars or Healthcare I don't know what it is but something if you have that I'd be interested to hear because um it
1:47:37
demonstrates obviously that you have gone to Market and talk to somebody and you have a re there's a reason you chose
1:47:43
that which is good but it also may be that I have a background in that space and then I'm more interested right it
1:47:48
gives me a chance to be more interested if it's in healthcare well I'm a doctor okay interesting right that kind of thing could help you get more attraction
1:47:55
the big one is why you um even personally I've seen dozens of companies
1:48:00
like this so you may have a hundred billion dollar winner here but I've seen so many of them at this point that um
1:48:08
you you got to spend some time on that like who else is out there what are they doing why are you better um and it
1:48:15
doesn't have to be a lot but at least you have to acknowledge it and here here's my going into advice mode I guess
1:48:21
is all advice but um I would say something like you may have heard pitches like this before we're confident
1:48:28
that we are differentiated I don't have enough time right now but we could certainly explain why later like even if you don't have anything else to say at
1:48:34
least say that so that people know you're thinking about it because we see a lot of entrepreneurs especially if
1:48:39
they're from industry like you're from the sales team coaching world that's the only world you know
1:48:46
well you know that's we need to know you've thought about this and and that you're aware of the rest of the planet
1:48:51
right so that that was your biggest hole and that's your biggest risk I would say just as your new friend as an investor
1:48:57
there are lots of companies like this and you probably know this so telling one from another is dangerous so two
1:49:04
thoughts for you one is the traditional VC Angel VC route may be what you're doing and that's totally cool that
1:49:11
suggests that you're building towards a company that's going to be large enough to take public or get bought or something like that right meaning that
1:49:17
you're going to go from zero to hopefully a 100 million or more in Revenue companies like this
1:49:23
may be scalable like that because the AI is going to do all the work awesome but just as likely to me might be it ends up
1:49:30
that you end up specializing in I don't know Automotive Sales let's say or some specific market and it's really good but
1:49:37
it only grows to 20 million a year or something like it isn't big enough to really be a VC backed company but there
1:49:43
are other investors who would be fine with that right or you might be able to um give them a share of Revenue or
1:49:49
something right and what VCS are dismiss as a lifestyle business like that's not
1:49:54
good enough can still be a lovely business for you as the founders right if you're only doing 10 million a year in revenue and 8 million of that's
1:50:01
profit that's a pretty good life you know you don't need to money and turn into Google right so I would be thinking
1:50:07
as a Founders you know which of these paths are we doing because it's kind of a different set of events and different
1:50:13
Club of people definitely and in that regard I actually have a question so we
1:50:19
have thought about it we want it to be obviously big uh kind of kind of venture backed and we
1:50:26
have thought of some exit strategies yeah that could potentially bring a lot of money we have thought of companies uh
1:50:34
how we could connect with them as well some some of them we might have some personal connection to as well so would
1:50:41
that talking about how we're thinking and where we'd like to go and how we see the end of it bringing money to
1:50:48
investors would thathelp within a pitch it would but it's that I think is the
1:50:54
wrong solution the right solution is to not have the meeting with the people
1:51:00
that aren't going to do what you want to do right so I wouldn't put all that in the pitch because investors will think
1:51:06
well they don't really know what they're doing they haven't decided and you're early enough it's okay right I mean you can practice but I'm saying like if you
1:51:12
got up to like you know three years in you know and a bunch of money in you gotta kind of choose a Lane right and
1:51:18
then I would be avoiding one set of those meetings right we are doing this and then put that version in the pitch
1:51:24
don't put both versions in the pitch and try to talk to everybody because they'll think you don't know what you're doing or maybe have two pitches and you talk
1:51:31
you right to these guys going this way and these guys are going this way out until you figure it out it's fair I mean
1:51:37
like you don't know right you if you could tell the future you'd already be rich right so um yeah does that answer
1:51:43
your question yeah I think that's a good strategy so all right well there you go uh kitan is still awake in India he says
1:51:50
wonderful pitch Bravo thank you thank all right well we're GNA wrap up here was nice I'm glad you made
1:51:56
it on camera happy to see you again hope we'll see more and uh like I said you would also qualify perhaps with 3,000
1:52:03
might be a little light but you could get there Tech host angels.com would be um you could yeah application in the
1:52:09
process okay all right great all right nice to meet you where are you did you tell me are you're in Delaware right no
1:52:15
the company's in Delaware I live in London you're in London okay so you're so they're the co-founder he lives in the states the Companies Incorporated in
1:52:22
the States but I work from London oh okay it's close to 10 yeah yeah all right not too bad okay well nice to meet
1:52:29
you hope to see you again nice to see you too thank you all right that is our new friend Paulina another interesting
1:52:35
company pretty high quality uh portfolio today I wish we could you know on one of these days I'm
1:52:40
going to start we'll put some money behind this we'll start investing in people that would be super cool but not
1:52:46
today okay um okay kitan I see your message there
1:52:51
yeah you can uh I was yeah let's send me an email you can we're happy to follow up on that
1:52:57
okay so let me just run through um the chat see if there's anything else I can help anybody with uh and then I'm going
1:53:03
to go eat lunch and some of you are going to go to bed and the rest of you can just go back to work so let's see
1:53:09
here um interested in this okay servus Marketplace okay some
1:53:18
many you guys are connecting here that's good good um
1:53:24
okay I don't see anything on fire here hundreds of thousands of dollars for patents okay yeah Annual fees well those
1:53:32
are good points who are we talking about with patents that was early on in the evening uh I don't know you can find him
1:53:38
in the replay yeah so by the way the replay uh is available and you can all watch it and um I think I agree with
1:53:45
Kenny Kenny says he's got to go to the next meeting um and I think I probably do too and it looks like everybody else
1:53:51
is just being helpful here so nothing on fire and um hope to see you next time I
1:53:57
do this once a month to answer Adu ad adami Shea wow adami okay yeah we
1:54:07
once a month that's the idea I didn't do last month because it was August and I was out with my kids on vacation but um
1:54:13
third I think it's third Tuesday of every month has been our plan and you can watch the replays if you thought
1:54:18
this was useful you can go back and watch the replays there's dozens and dozens of this uh on YouTube and you
1:54:23
could watch the old ones and it's basically a free Venture MBA if you wanted to watch them all so thank you
1:54:29
all for being here I appreciate your time and your attention and I hope it's helpful to you please like And subscribe
1:54:35
and tell your friends and join these mailing lists over here startup council.org we built it for you we want to help and I hope I'll see you next
1:54:41
time thank you all for being here and uh oh by the way I'm going to post this when we're done please like And
1:54:46
subscribe and comment the comments really Drive things just say you know loved it or hated it whatever you don't like my haircut I don't care what ever
1:54:52
but the comments really help and that's how this whole thing works you know the social media world all right so good to
1:54:57
see you all thanks for being here until next time I'm Scott Fox I'm the CEO of the startup Council and wishing all the
1:55:03
best to you in your startup thanks