Startup Fundraising Strategy Office Hours Replay!
Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders raise money for their startups.
The fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions answer financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice.
The latest free lunchtime session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was Nov 28.
To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.
Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month
Scott took questions from startup founders live on camera and via chat, including:
- what state or country to incorporate in to attract startup investors
- what to focus on in a pitch to attract venture capitalists
- how to demonstrate traction before your startup has revenue
- finding and hiring co-founders
- discouraging studies that show women founders get so little venture capital investment
- differentiation of your startup vs competitors
- and of course much more - including startup practice pitches from real #entrepreneurs!
To watch this month’s Startup Office Hours replay click here.
And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.
JOIN STARTUP OFFICE HOURS LIVE NEXT TIME to WATCH & COMMENT:
The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 300pm ET / Noon PT. Questions and practice investor pitches are hosted LIVE by Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council/Angel Investor/Serial Founder/Author/Startup Expert.
You can watch LIVE here again next month on January 23:
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Subscribe to the YouTube channel here!
Submit your Question in Advance >> Win Free MasterMinds Workshop Tickets:
Submit your question about raising money for your startup, or practice your startup's investor pitch for friendly, free expert feedback: https://www.startupcouncil.org/sohsrsvp
If your question or pitch is included for live discussion during the show, you'll get an email of special instructions on how to join Office Hours on camera. And, you'll WIN FREE TICKETS to the next MasterMinds Startup Accelerator Workshop (http://www.mastermindsworkshops.com)!
MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours are a free community service of the Startup Council.
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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for November 28, 2023:
0:00
so I'm here again this month to answer your questions uh discuss the pressing issues that you're facing as an
0:05
entrepreneur or maybe you're an angel investor or a service provider who's interested in helping startups those are
0:11
all the things that we do here at the startup Council which is at startup council.org startup council.org is a
0:18
free community service group that I started myself to help Founders around the world find Success Through digital
0:24
businesses mostly software but really anything that we can help you with I've been doing this a long time I uh raised
0:30
my first Venture Capital round back during web 1.0 after I finished my Graduate Studies at Stanford and I've
0:36
been investing and uh mentoring and helping early stage Founders now for uh
0:43
15 years probably in fact my first book uh internet riches came out in 2006 so yeah that's been more than 15 years now
0:50
so uh so those are my books I've written three books about entrepreneurship all designed to help you and uh they're in
0:56
English of course but they're also in many other languages around the world so if you are visiting us from another
1:01
country outside the United States welcome to you we're glad to see you here so today we're broadcasting live on
1:07
LinkedIn live and YouTube and Facebook and Blog Talk Radio as well so uh if
1:13
folks who are listening can let me know that you can hear me that would be super helpful um like to know that uh things
1:19
are working uh that the microphone is working I often screw that one up so if you're here and you can hear me uh in
1:25
the chat please uh give us a thumbs up or if you're backstage uh give me a little wave I can see Scout and May and
1:32
Daniel Muhammad thank you Muhammad yeah Scout you guys can hear me good and Danny says we can hear and uh Andy and
1:39
uh loud and clear 104 thank you Andy excellent so um I'm G to turn on the chat room in a minute I would love to
1:45
hear who you are and where you're from what you're working on and our goal today really is just to help accelerate your startup Vision uh you're here
1:52
because uh you have an itch right you have an itch to do something to Dent the universe as Steve Jobs used to say and
1:59
I'm here to help help you do that I've been doing this myself for a long time I still get very excited about early stage
2:04
ideas and uh it's an opportunity to change the world for the better right I mean that's really what startup uh the
2:11
startup world is about and I appreciate you being here uh please if you're thinking of it please like and comment
2:17
and subscribe all those things that help Drive the social media World um there's no money being made here just trying to
2:23
help you and I do this like I said as a volunteer uh trying to help uh everybody get online uh to come from sort of the
2:31
outsider situation that I grew up in to more of The Insider situation which I'm blessed to experience now this is
2:37
especially true for uh women Founders or immigrants minorities people who have uh historically been discriminated against
2:43
or underrepresented uh at least one guy is here for you and so is everybody else who you'll meet in the chat room shortly
2:50
so what we're going to do today is mostly talk about your questions this is a really a Q&A show uh I have a lot of
2:56
different kinds of expertise but I have to warn you in fact I should put that up on the screen screen uh this is not
3:01
professional uh legal or financial advice um where is that little
3:07
disclaimer right uh I know it's there okay I'm reading too fast here there it
3:13
is not qualified legal or financial advice so please consult your own professional advisors I'm just some guy
3:18
you met on the internet trying to do you a solid by helping you out with things I've learned but I could be wrong every
3:25
situation is different so really should talk to professionals about this while we're saying that we should also point out this is being recorded and shared
3:31
online so please don't say anything stupid of course um so let's uh let's oh
3:37
by the way I guess while we're at it uh you're welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn when I put up the chat room in a minute by the way go ahead and find
3:43
each other as well this chat room is not just for me I'm going to be talking verbally mostly the chat room is really
3:48
for you guys to talk to each other so I want to have you guys all make friends and build the relationships because
3:53
that's those relationships are what lead to uh Team Member recruiting finding co-founders and getting funded which I
4:00
know is what is on a lot of your minds uh let's see here have you liked and subscribed I said that one okay oh
4:06
we should talk about our sponsor um our sponsor is cake Equity cake Equity is a cool company if you're an early stage
4:13
founder cake I'm actually an investor in this company I liked it so much I put money in myself uh and what they do is
4:19
they manage the capitalization table and the stock options plans for startups and they do that worldwide so a lot of tools
4:26
either do one or another or only in the US only in the UK or whatever these guys
4:31
do it everywhere all the time and it's a really good service and you can get uh 20% it's free for up to five people
4:38
right so if it's you and a couple co-founders and you haven't crossed five people it's actually free so it's a really good uh sort of U growth Le
4:46
marketing strategy so it's free and then once you pay it's still very inexpensive only 20% uh you can save 20% off with
4:51
that code there OCS C20 and this is a great um replacement for example for
4:57
Carta which is much more expensive it's much easier to use blah blah blah it's very cool so go check out kod.com uh
5:05
let's see now to to ask your question you're going to hit this uh this URL but
5:10
actually looks like we're already full backstage and I apologize for that there's only room for 10 people at a time backstage and it looks like a bunch
5:17
of folks are there already so just hang on as we cycle through those folks will ask their questions and then they'll
5:22
leave and uh you guys backstage once you ask your question please leave and then go watch on YouTube or LinkedIn or
5:27
somewhere else okay because you're in the private back stage chat room and we're going to um need that space for other people to continue we're also
5:34
going to be maybe doing some uh pitches later some pitches to practice your pitch if you want to uh practice your
5:39
investor pitch happy to give you feedback on that and again it's not just me you've got a worldwide Community here of folks from all over the place to um
5:46
to join you so let's I'm going to turn on the chat room here for a minute let's see where people are coming from and uh
5:53
if you can introduce yourselves and let me know where you're from that's always kind of fun and uh so far I can See
5:59
it'll take a second there to to uh resolve but we've got Andy from Orange County California that's where I am hi
6:05
Andy uh Danny Dr Joe shatak uh the Zack attack is here thank you Zach for the
6:11
endorsement uh sahil would like to pitch okay we can probably do that later sahil
6:17
and um go ahead and keep talkingand let me know especially folks if is there anybody from YouTube here because I see
6:24
I see some uh chat from LinkedIn but I don't see YouTube other okay there's gin
6:30
ginoa ginoa is that how you say that and Toronto looks like you guys hey Alex nice to see you guys okay so yeah looks
6:36
like this is working on all our channels there we go yes and western states Larry
6:41
hi Larry nice to see you okay cool so that's working see this is all coming together just like that evil master plan
6:48
I had all right let me just make sure what El other my notes do we have here
6:54
uh we did all that okay good we're moving right along here I've done this a few times you might have noticed um okay
7:02
special deals on oh yeah okay so our other sponsors sorry one more second here let's get over here and let's talk
7:09
about well first of all we should just talk about the startup Council startup Council this is this uh logo here um
7:14
just behind me here uh startup council.org like I said this is a free service and it's basically me as a
7:21
Founder my name is Scott Fox I'm a Serial founder if you're coming in late it's my attempt to fill in a bunch of
7:27
the holes that I see for Founders because I've been a Founder I'm a Serial founder but I'm also an investor so I
7:33
see both sides of this and that's why I do this show because there's a lot of people and services that fall through
7:38
the cracks so startup council.org is my attempt to sort of plug some of those holes especially for underrepresented
7:45
Founders so it's free to join it's basically a bunch of newsletters okay trying to fill in information holes that
7:51
you need uh and these include services like startup investors directory.org and
7:56
National startups directories.com and startup events.org just go over
8:01
there and check right because what this will do it'll help you find investors it can help you uh promote your startup so
8:08
investors find you even better right um there's we have the world's only calendar of virtual events for startups
8:15
so if you don't live in Palo Alto or New York City or London or Mumbai you can uh
8:21
virtually participate we all learned how to do that during the pandemic right and you can tune in and attend virtual events all over the world and these are
8:28
all startup focused um for uh you learning how to network or raise money
8:34
or design things or HR whatever all those issues right and people submit including you by the way if you have an
8:40
event that you're promoting you can submit there and the listings are free and we're just trying to connect
8:45
everybody especially if you're underrepresented in the geographical sense right you live in the middle of
8:50
Kansas or or the middle of Nigeria uh and you don't get to go to the big uh
8:56
fancy startup events that you see happening in the big cities right so that's startup event.org anyway all of
9:01
those are at startup council.org and there's more coming all the time including a bunch of meetups I want to tell you about in a minute but I'm I
9:07
want to get on to the uh onto our show okay so now we're going to talk about uh
9:13
let me see hold on one more second here let me just make sure I've hit all the high notes and then we're going to get to our folks backstage I'm going to ask
9:19
you to come on camera in a second here and then we will I just want to hear a
9:25
quick introduction as to what you want to talk about and then we can um so that I can organize you know our conversation
9:31
here so I'm going to turn on the uh turn off the uh chat for a second but welcome to a startup Scout in Huntington Beach
9:38
and Ron in Portland Oregon uh sahil will cover the pitching later it's two minutes basically two minutes verbal
9:43
only up to two minutes that's all you but you have to have a camera and turn it on and join us backstage and there won't be room for everybody so sorry
9:50
this is a little complicated hello from Las Vegas with the only Native American female founded AI startup excellent nice
9:57
to meet you Danny and and um see other folks coming in now is there anybody
10:03
here from overseas well Ontario that doesn't C does Toronto doesn't there we go irm is in sakman Germany excellent
10:10
shantra and bellevie Washington oh in sahil you're from India right tell us where in India though Florida for now
10:16
Israel originally Iran nice to meet you Australia good Hey Stephen I was just in Australia last month Minneapolis San
10:23
Clemente uh okay good bunch of folks Nashville cool we got looks like we got the globe covered Daniels in leap Zig
10:30
Germany May and Los Altos um Richard says audio is not working oh his audio
10:35
is not working okay you guys can hear me obviously and London England there we go cool nice to meet you yes there you go
10:40
everybody follow there's Cynthia hey from Laguna uh everybody see what Andy just did there in the chat room you can
10:46
post your LinkedIn and say hi to each other and that's perfectly legit this is not my show this is our show I'm trying
10:51
to help you so if you guys want to connect absolutely go ahead and do that post your email addresses or your
10:57
LinkedIn or you know your uh your app store link whatever your podcast
11:03
whatever go ahead and happy to uh facilitate the relationships that drive our ecosystem okay so now I'm gonna
11:10
bring on our friends from backstage so may and Daniel uh hold on let me turn
11:15
off the chat turn off chat and the chat will be back so hang on guys uh let's
11:20
see so there's my friend muhamed so Muhammad there's Muhammad hey Muhammad
11:26
nice to see you and and hang on a second guys let me uh May and Daniel if you are going to come
11:32
on camera please turn on your cameras here's Journey okay hi Journey and um
11:40
sorry this is a little complicated let's just get this all um hold on guys just one more second uh gotta put that up
11:47
okay and there's Hubert checking in from Hong Kong hey Hubert and Vlad and
11:54
Richard and okay that's a pretty good group we got a bunch of you hold on a second let's
12:00
yeah okay getting there all right the room is full so and other people keep trying to join so okay there's may all
12:06
right and Daniel both okay good okay there we go okay hey everybody
12:12
nice to meet you all good to see you all right so let's just go around the circle uh real quick and just give me the quick
12:18
version I don't even really well just give me your name and where you're from but then also just the the 10c I'd like
12:24
to talk about startup fundraising or I'd like to talk about how to find a co-partner or just give me the quick version if you could and then we'll um I
12:30
can line them up and I'm going to take some notes and um that way we can line them up in a coherent order for our our
12:37
listeners and Watchers around the world okay so let's start let's see uh Richard
12:43
how are you nice to meet you oh you need to unmute though
12:53
Richard okay one second let's go to Tyler hi Tyler hello my name is Tyler
12:58
Bradley um I'd like to talk about uh fundraising I kind of signed up for a pitch but you know I have a couple
13:05
questions about um basically what to focus on in a pitch and how how muchto
13:10
focus on things you're going to do and kind of your vision and then what you've already accomplished and what concretely you have in place already cool that's a
13:17
good one Vision versus um accomplishments I guess you'd call that huh okay and where are you calling
13:24
from Tyler uh Minneapolis Minnesota Minneapolis okay oh I see your investor
13:29
pitch here right so Tyler is one of the Smart Ones who sent in a uh beforehand I really appreciate that thank you because
13:35
it gives me a chance to think about these things a little bit okay and then let's see let's go to Journey hey Journey nice to meet you where are you
13:42
from Journey okay that doesn't seem to seems
13:50
to be frozen let's go on to Muhammad hey Scott nice to meet you again so um I wanted to actually do a practice pitch
13:57
and I have a question about uh fundraising for startups like a cash 22 situation uh between investors and you
14:04
know customers and all that kind of stuff so interesting unpack that a little more for me cash trade what do
14:10
you mean by that like a cat22 situation when it comes to fundraising yeah sorry
14:15
investors want revenue and to get to revenue we need the funding so yes I've heard that story yes got it okay yeah
14:22
we'll definitely talk about that and uh who's this Daniel's nodding his head is that you sympathize with that issue
14:27
Daniel absolutely yeah we're somewhere stuck between preat and seat and a
14:32
semi-finished product and no customers got it okay so that's Daniel so is that your topic as
14:39
well yeah pretty much okay good then we can bring you guys together nice okay I'm moving around the uh the layout here
14:46
just playing with the toys while we talk but I am taking notes don't worry okay and then who we got who's let's go back
14:52
to Richard Richard is your where did he go yeah there he is is your microphone working now
14:57
Richard no oh too bad okay go ahead you can come back we'll be here for an hour
15:03
okay and then who is I don't know let's see don't know everybody's name here let's see Vlad hi Vlad hey how's it
15:11
going there you are okay hey nice to meet you nice to meet you as well my name is Vlad Fu and I'm currently in
15:17
Toronto Ontario I built an AI user chat platform actually right before chat GPT
15:23
released their own a similar product so I'm here to pitch my product and I'm also here to if I have as a question it
15:29
is um related to you know getting a competitor that has launched something
15:34
similar to me and how I differentiate myself after that oh yeah that's tough okay yeah it's a good question because
15:41
chat GPT with their new I believe last week they launched create your own GPT and I built this whole platform where
15:47
you can create your own but a little brutal ouch yeah and where are you
15:53
checking in from uh I'm Toronto Ontario Toronto Canada yeah yeah cool right you
16:01
and joury are you are you live or we see your picture
16:07
but okay I'm G to turn Journey off sorry Journey okay give more space for the
16:12
rest of you and that leaves who we got left Hubert hello Hubert hi um I'm running a B2B size
16:20
platform for the other uh people I'm a regular and my question is um a related
16:25
to marketing and sales m okay can you be a little more specific yeah so I was taught that uh
16:33
for potential clients I should create mockups uh for to help them visualize
16:39
what their platform will look like using our um SAS system but I don't know if I
16:46
should you know how many mockups I should create for them I'm a web developer and I have two full-time uh
16:53
developer working with me but none of us are designers so I actually need to hire full-time uh freelance designers to help
17:00
me come up with nice looking mockups and I don't want to you know just use web
17:05
flow because um you know these are not my design and I have to you know like
17:10
monetize them but I don't know if I'm you know investing in too much
17:16
of creating these mockups so want or to don't want to you know Overkill and come
17:22
across as too enthusiastic okay got it um okay yeah we
17:28
can definitely talk about that and then may hello may nice to see you again yes hi hi scull here everyone um
17:35
I'm Bas on my name is May based on Los AOS California and then I did the startup before but now I support
17:41
startups so I coach them and then um including especially women and then I
17:46
was wondering the current um investing landscape allocated to those under
17:52
represented um population in the past there's only 2% of money um you know
17:58
s you sent your question in didn't you thank you yes I did thank you so we can get to that as well all right we're
18:05
going we're not going to wor about this number but I still want to know thank you yeah yeah we can talk about it and
18:11
and again it won't just be me you might get some better answers from somebody else so all right so let me I'm G to
18:17
turn you guys off thank you all for uh your initial summaries and then we'll uh
18:23
we will be back in a moment here um with uh oh there's one somebody else just joined here who this
18:29
Melissa hi Melissa it looks like Melissa has two people hi hi Melissa and Danny
18:35
hello Danny Melissa what do you guys want to talk about well we have a unique
18:41
AI product that is just uh in our beta test and in our first round between seed
18:48
and startup funding uh and I'm looking to see if I can get some direction or
18:53
advice on how to proceed in Rapid time versus in what tends to be slow moving
19:01
time when we're looking at um private Equity or maybe potential Partners in a VC realm um we're trying to stay ahead
19:09
of the curb with our technology we're first to Market with it and we want to stay first okay got it that sounds good
19:17
too all right and so thank you we'll get to that and then Richard I'm G put you back on to you back is let's try your
19:24
microphone again yeah hear me
19:29
can you hear me yeah there we go there yes oh you can hear me okay perfect sorry about that uh okay so my name is
19:35
Richard I'm from Long Beach California Scott thank you for your time um I have a question on if you had the option to
19:41
incorporate a company either in the UK or in the US solely in the context of funding an investment where would it be
19:48
better to do that you know given that there are a number of other reasons as to why you would do it in either place
19:53
but just from an Investor's point of view I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts sure that's a good one and
19:59
uh we might even do that one first because that's an easy one actually okay but let me just turn you guys all off and especially since Daniel has his or
20:06
Richard sorry has his microphone working we can include him too and there we go
20:12
and there's a Okay cool so now for the rest of you that's what we're going to be talking about if that sounds
20:18
interesting to you please stick around we'll cover all that and I'd love your input as well I'm going to turn the chat room back on and then also please do
20:25
invite your friends if this sounds interesting to them uh like and comments and shares are how this works and um
20:31
just trying to spread the gospel here to help as many Founders as we can so if that sounds useful to you or your friends please let them know you can
20:37
come over to uh YouTube or we're live on LinkedIn and Facebook Blog Talk Radio
20:43
and something else YouTube I don't know close enough right a bunch of you are here so okay so let's get on with um our
20:50
actual questions and uh there's that Chiron there uh and let's turn back on
20:56
the chat and you can comment on LinkedIn and YouTube are where the chats um the chat feeds in here there doesn't seem to
21:02
be uh Facebook too actually I think um and those comments will show up and then
21:09
um okay and then back here and let's just welcome anybody new here uh let's
21:18
see Miami Australia Nashville Atlanta London Mumbai lagona another
21:25
Mumbai um let's see Hawaii
21:30
female imig um okay and yes Alex the room is
21:36
full that's right um it will be less full as we move along we're going to have each of these folks talk uh through
21:42
their question and then they're going to leave and that will allow new people in there's only room for 10 at a time all right so but you are welcome to be there
21:49
and um you can also put things in the chat room here because I can cover those a little quicker uh if you put comments
21:55
in the chat that are questions I will try to cover those as well all right so let me quickly uh look at what we where
22:03
we're going to start I think it's probably Richard's question right that was a an incorporation question is a great place to start usually so let me
22:10
just review here so we had Corporation fundraising fundraising competitor
22:16
differentiation sales and marketing fundraising fund okay a lot of fundraising no surprise that's why we
22:22
call this fundraising office hours right so I'm happy to have you guys here and
22:28
um let's see
22:34
here sorry I just want to make sure I didn't miss anybody y there's May submitted hers
22:41
um oh and Daniel this is yours I see from schwabish Hall Boton wartenberg
22:48
Germany okay about and there's Vlad as well good good
22:53
okay okay all right so I think let's like I
22:59
said let's go with Richard so I'm going to bring Richard on here and we'll start there and then we'll move through these
23:04
quickly apologies Advanced everybody we can't spend you know a ton of time on any one question because there's a lot of people here with a lot of different
23:10
issues uh and they're all looking for uh quick hit for help um oh Journey you
23:16
came back Journey okay so is your thing working I'm gonna put you back on camera I tried to talk to you and it seemed to be frozen hey is this working hey there
23:23
we go okay hey nice to meet you nice meeting you how's it going good so what did you want to talk about today I'm in
23:29
San Francisco and I'm not a coder but I have an i a very fleshed out concept for a pro uh Co something that would be both
23:36
extremely pro-social and also highly lucrative and I'm wondering if I find coders first or funding first if it's
23:42
possible to get funding to get a prototype built right okay that's a good question um okay I think we'll probably
23:48
do that second because that's an early stage question but let's just hang on nice to meet you and let's find Richard
23:55
here's Richard okay so here's Richard and I'm going to turn off journey and
24:00
Richard okay so now we're really getting going here so Richard what uh reiterate your question for the group would you
24:06
please yeah so for a little bit of context um having Founders in both the
24:11
UK and the US were struggling with the idea of either incorporating the company in either place and just understanding
24:18
that there's a lot of other variables um that come into play from an Investor's point of view would it be better to
24:24
incorporate the company in the US or rather in the UK considering of course there's probably more venture capital in
24:30
in the US but would an investor shy away from a UK company right I'm just curious
24:36
yes there you go so the answer is um you did it right
24:42
and then this is what I love doing this because usually people know right you know the answer the answer is you got to be in the US if you want to raise us
24:49
money if you want to raise money in the UK then that's fine um but us investors generally will not invest in the UK or
24:55
anywhere outside the United States because they're major tax incentives for the US in under us tax law for me to
25:01
invest here not overseas if I invest in a foreign company and again so I'm just speaking for myself here this is not tax
25:07
advice legal advice this is just some guy you met on the internet okay um but for example if and when I invest in
25:13
foreign companies for example cake which I was telling you guys about a minute ago cake equity which is that uh uh
25:18
stock options management platform um this is my big promo for them ready Tada
25:25
there it is T cake um I invested through a US company right so
25:30
they are in Brisbane Australia but they Incorporated and have a what is what
25:35
everyone listening to this needs if they're going to Bey to raise venture capital is a C corporation it's a type
25:42
of corporation based in Delaware in the United States that is the standard for venture capital and it's pretty much the
25:48
only thing that will work these days not because of the things can't work but just because they're a pain in the ass
25:53
and everybody's busy there's lots of deals and it will hurt you in trying to raise money if you don't have a plain
25:58
vanilla you know offering right because you want to spend your time talking about how much money you're going to make and the cool things you're building
26:04
and the people you're going to hire not about making excuses for why you have a non-standard corporate
26:10
formation how does that sound does that make sense that makes a ton of sense yeah thank you yeah so easy and quick
26:18
hopefully but hopefully that's helpful to you and everybody else um it's not because us investors aren't interested in other overseas it's just the
26:24
government the tax situation it's just it would be it's every every investment would have to be
26:30
in Uber to to make the money back for the pain in the butt that it causes so there you go if your partners have money
26:37
in England that could be a different answer right in your specific case there might be a general you know an alternative to that but again you should
26:44
talk to somebody who does this which probably means real legal council who does crossb stuff but most investors in
26:50
the United States are looking for us based Delaware sea corporations so cool
26:56
nice to meet you thanks for the quick one I appreciate that that's nice and right here from Long Beach hope to meet you face to face one of these days okay
27:02
so that was our friend Richard next we're going to bring up journey journey also I think has a fairly quick one hey
27:08
Journey nice to see you it's been minutes yes so um you said you're a no C you're
27:14
not a coder but you have a great idea basically can you unpack that for us a little yeah I think I have an idea for a
27:20
social media company that would lower political polarity and let people discuss ideas in a totally different way and would also be hugely profitable and
27:26
I'm thinking there Angel Investors that would be interested in funding this getting started but how to find them
27:34
okay interesting so um one I I would
27:39
question the premise you and I may want to lower the amount of political polarity but that's how so many
27:46
companies make money these days I that's how Facebook makes its money right so investors are looking for money so you
27:52
you said the other magic phrase though is that you still think it would make a lot of money so but I just had to say that okay because the money is the whole
27:58
point of investors right these are if you're talking about traditional investors if you're talking about what they call impact investors these are
28:03
folks maybe you know this but other folks may not impact investors or what we call people who are investing with a
28:10
a purpose in addition to or even instead of a profit motive so they might be investing specifically to uh Elevate
28:17
underserved minorities or some to solve world hunger or things like that that's an impact investor so if you think can
28:24
make real money go yeah sorry so that's really my question is I know it's a wild claim but I do believe this will do both
28:30
so where am I better off looking for support yeah well if if it really can
28:36
make money I think probably the place to start is to um if you can demonstrate in
28:42
even in a small way and I know this might be hard because this is a much longer conversation obviously youve
28:47
spent you're obviously a smart person you've thought a lot more about this than I have but if you can demonstrate
28:52
in small ways that there is profit potential here and I mean just in one-on-one interactions not you know
28:58
give me $55 million and I'll build this you know Global platform that then will make money but if you can demonstrate It
29:05
Anyway even real tactical like you know buy some ads on Google text ads or Facebook that suggest the sort of
29:12
activity you're talking about how many people clicked on those right and what percentage of those then signed up for your newsletter just some little
29:18
elements that show traction that show someone other than joury thinks this is a good idea that's how you demonstrate
29:26
traction and of course if you could actually sell t-shirts or you know something open a restaurant you know
29:31
those are physical ways but if you can find a digital version of those things that demonstrate people are willing to pay for this somehow that's how you get
29:38
investors attention if you don't have that it's going to be really hard for anybody to believe you right just full
29:45
stop right investors are in the business of making money so if you can't prove you're going to make money there's
29:50
plenty of other people are and their money is going to go there so then this is why you asked I think then I think you're back on the impact side of the of
29:57
the house and think I can Dem I sorry I think I can demonstrate traction I just don't know where to take it take the
30:04
traction Al what what you would do next you mean yeah actually finding people to approach yeah yeah okay that's
30:10
interesting so um so well if it's making a ton of money anybody will talk to you right and then
30:17
what you really want to show is growth so growth is what gets people's attention but you need to have um
30:24
Sympathy for the issue that you're addressing right like the the best people to approach if you have a diabet
30:29
cure for diabetes is diabetics right it's just kind of so who is interested in calming the political Waters like
30:36
where where's the money right where are people putting money already so I'm I'm just guessing here you might look at
30:42
foundations or um people that are buying ads I mean go click on a bunch of ads on social media and see who's paying for
30:48
those like at least when I watch TV or on the internet I see ads you know there's some right-wing stuff there's
30:54
some left wi stuff and every now and then there these ads of like the people kind of in the middle you know like the
30:59
the third way you know we're the regular folks in the middle figure out who funds those right um because there you know
31:06
what I mean have you seen ads like that they're yeah if you can do some research and figure out who's interested in the
31:12
middle uh that's where I would start the other thing to do and this may not be a great fit for you but we have a service
31:18
called startup investors directory.com which is here's another fancy graphic
31:24
startup investors directory.com uh just like it sounds and this is a new just
31:30
like this card says it's a new investor search engine to find the right investors for your startups and you
31:35
could go poke around there we don't there's like 40 or 50 different categories of investors and it shows their portfolios so you might be able to
31:44
I don't think we have a political investing category I don't think that's a thing but anyway maybe you could find some overlap in the different because
31:50
keyword search and all that stuff you could mess around in there and this is $39 we priced it at Cost uh where
31:57
pitchbook costs like $10,000 so just trying to do this to help people so if that's helpful that might be a thing to
32:02
look at and I guess this is a great one actually for the audience uh folks uh this is her name is Journey Journey
32:07
maybe you should put your linked in um I'm gonna ask you to leave the backstage chat you're in now come back into the
32:14
YouTube or the LinkedIn one and then put your um put your LinkedIn or your whatever kind of contact info you want
32:19
and maybe somebody else out there is interested in this and could help you especially if you're a no code person there might be a developer here uh
32:25
because Lord knows we could use a little less polarization in our politics so is
32:31
that helpful so helpful thank you excellent okay nice to meet you all right so that's our friend Journey from
32:36
San Francisco okay moving along here let's see okay so we got a couple um bits open
32:46
backstage and uh other folks can join us there but let's go okay let me go back to my notes so let me just say hi to
32:52
some folks in the chat room in case we missed anything important maybe something broke let's
33:00
see Evergreen Colorado Atlanta uh Hardware
33:07
software Hardware software okay New Zealand hey there good to see you good
33:13
day how how should oh let me give this one real quick Atlanta
33:20
Baltimore come on there it is how should an LLC startup decide between a lending
33:27
institution and investor hey Alis nice to meet you um I'm guessing you're from
33:32
Baltimore maybe that's probably not your last name but either way so a couple uh I had to pull this out because there's a
33:37
couple issues there just even in the way you phrase the question if you're a company looking to raise money from
33:43
venture capital and Angel Investors we won't invest in llc's we just won't you
33:48
because there's no voting structure or control or shares of stock uh classes of stock um so if you want to raise money
33:56
from professional invest investors in the startup space you need to be a C corporation and like I said earlier it's
34:01
probably a C corporation headquartered in Delaware then if you have that how do you decide between a lending institution
34:07
and an investor you probably know this but it comes down to the terms right what's the interest rate versus the
34:12
amount of equity that you'd be giving up to the investor what kind of control are they going to be seeking and um
34:19
especially in terms of lending you're going to need to have some Revenue first so how much revenue you have usually
34:24
dictates what kind of loan you can get so so there's a lot of factors there but um it sounds like you need to look into
34:31
incorporation as a C corporation if you want to talk to professional investors a bank or lender will talk to an LLC
34:36
generally um but that would more likely I'm thinking be uh a personal guarantee from you as the controlling member um
34:44
which may or may not be what you want to do so sounds like you need to unpack that a little bit I would go if I were you guessing you're in balore anyway
34:52
there is a great service called the Small Business Development Corp SBD C at
34:57
least here in the United States the sbdc is funded by us taxpayers and they offer free business Consulting for early stage
35:02
Founders and the sbdc I'm sure there's one in Baltimore uh there's also a group called score s r service core of retired
35:11
Executives and those folks give free advice because they're retired Executives and they want to help so I'd go talk to some folks like that or maybe
35:18
to a local University and get a little more clarity on your corporate structure
35:23
and your fundraising strategies there we go that's our friend Elana um okay so that I didn't mean to
35:31
click on that so let's do that no hold on hey Seth nice to know you're
35:37
switching but that wasn't what I was trying to do let's try this there we go okay well that's me so let's let's do
35:45
this one okay so next so we talked to Richard we talked to Journey let's go on
35:50
to um let's get into fundraising right that's really what we're talking about here so let's see Tyler
36:00
Vlad May okay let's talk to May on the big picture and then we'll get gradually
36:05
more specific okay so I'm thinking May Tyler Muhammad
36:12
Daniel uh Melissa Vlad something like that okay so what did I say May so may
36:18
so may has kind of a big picture question here and I think this hey may are you there oh you need to turn on your camera there we go oh sorry there
36:25
we go there um yes yes this is a much bigger picture and then um I myself as a woman funer
36:33
before and now I support women funders and then um in the past I have this impression the number like only 2% of
36:40
the whole pie you know goes to women um I know even today you know those number
36:45
won't impact whatever we're doing right but I still want to get U impal from
36:51
this whole landscape I know this also very challenging time right now yeah so I guess the answer I've got two two
36:56
answers to that one is I don't think things have changed the gatekeeping for women Founders is it's it's
37:04
it's ridiculous right I mean I don't even know where to start right I'm sure you don't either it's just it's
37:09
flabbergasting right um and I have to point out of course uh you know misery
37:14
has company you know with black Founders and Latin Founders and like a lot of people who don't look like me that's one of the reasons I do this show right
37:20
because it's it's the gatekeeping is staggeringly stupid for our society so I
37:26
don't think things have changed much um you know Co mixed things up in an interesting way because now people are
37:32
getting funding not necessarily in their own City because more deals are being done remotely that's good I don't think
37:39
that it has necessarily changed a lot in terms of female empowerment though which is a real shame uh so that's the bad
37:45
answer and of course if there's anybody in the chat room that's an expert about this please point us to some studies
37:51
that say otherwise I'd love to hear any sort of positive news in this space because uh I don't hear much of it on
37:58
the other hand though this is a this is a problem I have with the media and I think every entrepreneur should take
38:04
this to heart I need to actually put this in my next book statistics don't matter statistics really don't matter
38:11
the media loves these blanket statements about how the world is like we're in a recession we're not in a recession you
38:17
know does that matter to you you have a job or you don't right yeah your wallet might get fatter or thinner but this
38:23
comes down to you and especially as an entrepreneur founder and may maybe this is ful to you for your women Founders who get discouraged because I know
38:29
there's people on this call especially women who have felt excluded you know from the boys club um but it comes down
38:36
to you and so yeah it might be hard but the statistics don't matter it's your job as a Founder whether you're male
38:43
white straight male guy like me who went to Stanford right like whether I'm
38:48
you're me or you're you you're still you and you still got to make it right and I as a Founder had to make it too so yes
38:54
it might have been easier for me because of different blessings but it comes down to you and you don't have the choice right you got to play the cards you're
39:00
dealt and so I would encourage everybody not to feel too bad about the statistics because you know when the when we're
39:07
supposedly in a recession sometimes great businesses get started right and when things are great other people are
39:12
going bankrupt so the statistics don't matter a sample of a million people doesn't matter it's you there's one of
39:18
you you got one life you got only so many hours in the day and you just got
39:23
to move on so I'm not sure if that was helpful or love it love it um I know it's actually
39:29
there's amazing people you know I mean they enjoy every moment you know this is this is like you know we I think we all
39:35
do this just Empower them yeah okay keep going thank you yeah okay I hope that's helpful a tough road out there and you
39:42
know the work you're doing is important there's a lot of women that deserve and need more help so there are I should
39:47
point out there are some resources specifically for women there are I mentioned the sdc's a couple minutes
39:52
minutes ago again in the United States there are Regional WB EC's women business centers uh at least here in
39:59
Orange County California we have a new WBC it's about a year old and they are um I'm not quite sure how it's organized
40:05
but they're part of the sbdc I guess but anyway they're focused on women Founders
40:11
specifically and not just software startups but any kind of business you know pizza parlor or you know a barber
40:16
shop whatever um and the wbc's any of you who are women who are looking uh for
40:24
funding or for help you can Google that w bewell probably want to spell it out women's business centers and maybe
40:30
there's one near you that could be helpful okay so that was May thank you
40:35
for that question may and Richard and journey okay let's go over to Tyler so
40:41
Tyler had a question I'll let you tell him he can tell you his question I don't
40:46
need to tell it there he is hey T yeah my question was regarding with
40:51
pitching you know like it's great to have early progress and you get a few users and get that early Revenue which is good concrete things but for some
40:58
ideas like like my idea specifically kind of like forward looking like the vision is like the big kind
41:04
of that's like the the sexy the sexy piece yeah and and the progress is like
41:10
you know that's great what you've done um and so I'm wondering what to focus on in in a pitch like what what do
41:16
investors want to hear yeah that's a good question um the first answer is it
41:22
depends on how long the pitch is right because if it's 20 minute pitch you're going to have time to talk about all kinds of things if it's a two-minute
41:28
pitch you got to really boil it down to the essence right so in my experience and again this is one where people can
41:34
differ in the chat room can be your friend here so people that have suggestions for Tyler um can you know
41:40
give him some suggestions um back up just a little bit tell me or remind me where you're from and what kind of
41:45
company it is yeah so I'm from Minneapolis Minnesota and my business is
41:51
called uh fulfill and it's an online opportunity Marketplace yes where where
41:56
uh people that need stuff done meet people that can do stuff like gig work volunteer work and low barrier jobs
42:03
specifically right now know that because you said it to me sorry I'm doing a lot of things at once okay so like right now
42:10
we have the ability to get some gig work inv volunteer work on there um but down the road we really want this kind of the
42:17
the fulfilled vision is um a place where these doers people that are wanting to
42:22
do work and and you know make something of themselves are being sent opportunities to them constantly like
42:28
hey you know do you want to make $1 to4 doll more per hour here are some upward Mobility options here are some career progression paths you can take um to
42:35
kind of create a path to gainful employment for people especially those that don't have resources and connections okay cool well I guess we
42:42
might hear that pitch again later during the the we gonna see real time Improvement here watch
42:47
Tyler pitch in a few minutes okay so I would suggest a couple things
42:53
um generally speaking investors want to these these days um it's not about the idea there's too many ideas it's not
43:03
about trying to figure out how the order it used to be you could pitch an idea these days you need traction and that's
43:09
what we're going to talk about next with Muhammad and um Daniel I think um which means demonstrating some uptake by
43:16
customers so the thing you really need to be doing this is advice for everybody's talking to customers get feedback don't sit in your office or
43:24
your home office your bedroom or your mom's basement and spend three years building something and then expect to
43:30
unveil it without talking to customers what investors want to hear at the early stages is that you're talking to customers that the feedback is good and
43:37
then they want numbers investors eat numbers so all the good ideas and
43:42
Goodwill in the world and the song and dance won't get you very far until you have numbers so you need to figure out a
43:48
way to quantify and here's the key word put this all in caps growth the main
43:53
thing custom investors are looking for these days is growth because growth encap encapsulates all those other
43:59
things growth shows that you have a good idea and that other people care and that they're probably telling their friends
44:05
those three things together it almost doesn't matter what the business is if you can demonstrate recurring monthly
44:11
growth then investors are going to be interested and they may be in Aerospace they may be in software they may be in
44:16
Medtech but if you have those things that's what investors want to hear and the trick of a quick pitch is not to get
44:24
a check it's to get questions and to get the next date right so if you can seed
44:29
your pitch with a bunch of quick factoids and numbers that sound like you're making progress that's based on
44:36
customer growth not just internal metrics like you're spending a lot of money but you're actually maybe on the
44:41
way to making money I think that's what investors want to hear is that useful that that's that's good it uh like when
44:49
should I make first Contact like I'm I'm we like we just went live should I start
44:54
relationships now and then get to the point where like I have like a a pitch to them and start building relationships
45:00
or should I just start after we have um relationship uh the investors sorry um
45:07
yeah start yesterday um the only way to raise money days is it well ever it's
45:13
not just these days is through relationships and that's one of the reasons back to the previous point with May that women have trouble raising
45:20
money is because they haven't been maybe hanging out with the guys for decades
45:25
and you know you know playing baseball or you know whatever these masculine Pursuits were and so they don't have the
45:31
relationships necessarily and um the way to get investment especially at the
45:37
early stage is the investors are really looking at you and your team and your vision because you don't have a lot of traction probably right and what you
45:43
need to do is convince them that you're the person who's going to change the world through the vehicle of this startup and to do that they have to like
45:50
you and know you enough to trust you and that takes time there's no substitute for that right so the sooner you start
45:56
even just casually hello you know at a cocktail party have a lunch a coffee whatever just saying hello at events
46:02
every month for six months so they know you you'll gradually get through and build a relationship and that's
46:07
absolutely what's required so yes yesterday um another thing I wanted to say just for you because um and maybe
46:12
anyone else it sounds like you have a Marketplace business and Marketplace businesses are uh that's right isn't it
46:18
right you're supplying and demand you're trying to meet people or connect people the trick with those and um I want to
46:26
warn you about this because you're probably aware of this but I've built several Marketplace businesses myself um
46:32
it's easy to find Supply you need to work on the Demand right so it's it's
46:37
easy to find people who want something and are going to give and like they
46:42
might want an upgrade of $4 an hour sure plenty of those uh the trick for you is going to be to find the demand who's
46:48
going to hire those people so uh if you can figure and we don't have time to discuss it now unfortunately if that's
46:54
obvious to you fine move on on but maybe that's helpful to you or to others you know the trick with marketplaces is they
47:00
take both sides and just because you can find a lot of one side doesn't mean the other's going to show up and if if one
47:07
is easy then stop worrying about that spend all your time on the other side and some sometimes it's the supply other
47:12
times it's a demand right um but finding them both in some equal measure is difficult and that's why Marketplace
47:18
businesses are are challenging so I hope that's helpful thank you yes yeah okay
47:24
great well nice to meet you Tyler hope to see you again um go ahead and you know this is a good time to let's tell
47:29
Tyler and everybody else there's a one of the many services we're building here like I said we're building these fill-in
47:35
the blank Services I'm going to hold this up there but I'm going to try to find the caption to give you actually
47:40
the link this is a national startups directory captions let's see here hang on and this is a service that we built
47:49
where hold on I'm trying to get the URL with a with the launch code not that one
47:55
not that one man I build too many things there it is okay there okay so
48:04
National startups directory so this is a directory that lists startups hence the name and the idea is that you can just
48:11
come and post a profile of your startup and we've got 50 different categories of startups which include of course um you
48:18
know the different Industries and the stage you're at your geography but also things like whether you're black or
48:24
you're a woman or you're an immigrant or you're a foreign founder you're a rural founder you know you don't live in paloalto all these different things and
48:31
you can post your profiles here so that investors can find them and it's all searchable trying to get that to
48:38
focus well anyway you probably get the idea anyway so and uh with that beta um
48:43
I think you can I think it's free for a year we're just launching this so if you want to list your startup and help um
48:49
that way you'll get in our newsletters and we'll publicize that and try to bring investors to find you that's the
48:54
idea so again trying to fill in a hole to standardize a place where invest where um early stage Founders can
49:01
affordably post themselves so that investors can find them without you know waiting to get uh in an article in the
49:07
New York Times or something like that okay cool so hopefully that sounds useful to you because that's why we
49:13
built it okay now I'm gonna bring on Muhammad and I think Daniel it sounds like you guys had similar questions and
49:21
let's um let's go let's see Muhammad why don't you start and then Daniel you can chime in um along the way absolutely
49:27
thank you so much Scott so my name is Muhammad CEO of cloud architect which is cloud architect as a service I'm based
49:34
in Los Angeles um my question is we are getting into a situation where we're
49:39
trying to get to investors and obviously they ask for Revenue when we try to get to customers and we need a lot of
49:46
marketing efforts and for that we need funding right so I have onboarded a few team members like marketing guy sales
49:53
guy they they keep asking me it Tak takes money to get money right so unless we spend money in different marketing
50:00
efforts we're not going to be able to you know get to our customers that we are looking for so I'm getting into this cash 22 situation I don't know what the
50:07
right way is to move forward because obviously there's no funding without customers and customer no customers
50:14
without the marketing efforts which re yeah that that's tough and Daniel is
50:19
your question similar or do you have a different yeah it's a little bit different it's a little bit different yeah so maybe just go ahead with M at
50:26
first okay okay so um yeah so the catch22 is yeah it's it's a real thing
50:32
there's no doubt about it especially these days 20 years ago it was a little easier maybe to get funding for an idea
50:38
or uh if you had a couple letters of intent or something but these days people really want to see growth and
50:44
growth suggests that there's already traction so uh two things I guess one is
50:49
to change the room you're in like try to talk to different investors that's to
50:54
say but but you know maybe you're find earlier stage investors do more research on the investors this applies to
51:00
everybody people's I don't know somehow the the Zeitgeist is that you as a
51:07
Founder you find a list of investors and then you spam them all right and and not that you're doing that but I mean that's
51:13
kind of exaggeration for effect right but it's like all investors are the same and you just hit them you know because
51:18
you have such a good idea and that's obviously not true investors are different especially Angel Investors because we're individuals right personal
51:24
checks uh and then are different because they each have an investment thesis of some kind so a lot of times there are so
51:30
many investors out there but we tend to talk to the people that we meet at a conference as opposed to actually
51:37
sitting down and doing the research and I think you could spend more time um researching like really who does this
51:45
like this specific thing and who else has done it before and not only uh VC
51:50
firms but who are the the founders who have had uh luck in this space and exited because guess what they had good
51:57
luck they gave them some money you know they're probably a good ready for something new um Angel groups like find
52:02
the Specialists and spend the time to look at their portfolios look at companies like yours that have maybe you
52:09
know hit it big time gone all the way to you know thousands of employees and gone public look at their SEC filings uh you
52:15
can there's a a database a government dedicated excuse me government database called Edgar and you can look at the
52:22
filings of public companies figure out who their shareholders are see if you can trace back who the original investors were and and and that's you
52:29
know that kind of research it seems to me like Founders spend like I don't know like 70% of the time on Outreach but
52:35
only 30% on research and it really has to be the other way around because there's so many new investors these days
52:41
and they're getting increasingly specialized because of competition so if you spend 70% of your time on research and really find the right people you get
52:48
in the right room and that's what you need to do and this is true for everybody I know people have similar questions you know how do I raise money
52:54
if I'm a a female or how do I raise money if I you know have this kind of tech or it's it's about the research and
53:00
I'm sorry to do this but that's why we built it that's why we built this right go look and I Muhammad you probably know
53:06
about this because you've been here before but but go look at these things and it doesn't have to be this one you know but do the research okay so that's
53:12
one answer sorry it's a long thing but it's a it's a thing for me that's why we built this the research is important the
53:18
other one is um you got to make up some traction you don't haveany money you got to look like you're making money
53:24
anyway and don't mean fake it I don't mean doing anything ethical but you need to show small wins like we signed some
53:32
letters of intent or we have um you know just real quick is your customer is it
53:38
B2B you're kind of a B2B SAS product yeah so are do you envision having like
53:44
five big customers or 5,000 small customers so currently we're focusing on
53:49
uh startups because they are the ones who can really benefit with our services right get up to speed faster the right
53:55
way uh in in in the cloud so but we are also uh looking for smbs at this point
54:02
but for right now we're not focusing on Enterprise their sales cycle is too long and I want to get some early traction
54:08
with these smaller companies first that's a good analysis I agree with that okay so you're talking thousands of customers hopefully right as you grow so
54:15
I would be figuring out some kind of pilot that you can run inexpensively as possible where you demonstrate anything
54:22
right like like I said earlier like we took out we spent $100 on um LinkedIn
54:28
ads targeted at this you know and whatever you know we we played with it and we we had a a 4% clickthrough and we
54:36
got it up to a 14% clickthrough then we ran another $100 of ads and with we
54:41
spent you know $200 and and then you know 30% of those converted and it demonstrates some kind of funnel that
54:47
shows if you if I had a million dollars including some of your money Mrs
54:53
investor right that we know what to do with it right and so look if we put 100,000 in instead of 100 we would get
55:00
you know and and again investors eat numbers and that's the only way that I can think of to answer the question that
55:07
we addressed earlier which is what do investors want to see they want to see growth and uh even if it isn't money yet
55:13
it's at least progress that shows you're engaging with customers other people think this is a good idea are willing
55:19
enough maybe their purchase intent hasn't come all the way to cash but at least they clicked on something they signed up for a newsletter they maybe
55:25
join waiting list for the beta of your product um they took a 15minute sales
55:31
call with one of your reps you know whatever they put down a deposit like anything that shows people are excited
55:37
about this because that's what investor that's what we're worried about right like you seem like super bright guy and what a great team and I really dig this
55:44
idea I'm from the industry I get it but does anybody else care that's that's the
55:50
question and the thing is we don't need thousands of customers only 50 customer customers would make us to a good
55:56
profitability you know at this point because our burn rate is fairly low at this point good but thank you for it was
56:03
very helpful you're welcome but let me caution you there I don't want to hear you say that as an investor I don't want any business that only has 50 customers
56:10
right don't do that right yeah the fir you talk about the first 50 but I want to hear about 5,000 or 50,000 right no
56:17
of course of course yeah that's the intent but I'm just saying to get to profitability you know where we can
56:22
sustain the business to a point where you know we can start the growth process that's about 50 customers or so okay
56:29
good good good yeah good all right well nice to see you let's uh stay here if you want
56:35
to mute maybe you want to chime in on Daniel's perspective here too go ahead uh Daniel yeah so uh thank you Scott I
56:42
already took some of your uh answers from mohamed's question that could somehow work with us uh the difference
56:49
is we are building a um a pretty complex B2B solution for warehouse management
56:54
system systems so our customers are logistics companies and normally they don't like just for fun sign up and try
57:01
new things that's not happening so they want a secure operation it has to work
57:06
and it has to work from the beginning um the the um the issue that we have with
57:11
we are in a little bit more than discussions there's a certain commitment from three
57:17
Enterprise customers actually who are really who really understand um what we
57:22
are going to do different in the market without solution um first of all it will be open
57:27
source there is no open source warehouse management solution in the whole industry um we will run it through the
57:35
customer processes and we can change it within days so if you want to change your operation we can do it in days
57:41
today if you do that with another WS system it takes like months so um every
57:46
investor understands that which is pretty good they all like yes I totally agree on the problem statement I under
57:52
agree I agree on the technology but you don't don't have revenue and we need the problem is we need 1.5 Millions to get
57:59
the software to the Readiness yeah to really onboard customers the three
58:04
Enterprises I just talked about they want to do proof of concepts with us but without money I can't do any proof of
58:11
Concepts yeah right now and we have 200,000 in the company already through Investments okay but we're not going any
58:19
further right now I wish I had a good answer for you um
58:27
the reason I do the show is to tell the truth um because a lot of times people won't tell you straight I think you're in trouble I mean there's that is
58:35
exactly the problem if you want to build something that takes a million and a half dollars and it won't work until you do
58:41
that I I don't have an answer for you except the ones I just said research the hell out of people that might be
58:47
interested you know so um maybe you know don't go to trade shows and spend I
58:53
don't know what you're doing right but don't spend money flying around no we don't do that no no yeah like sit at home and just research the out of
59:00
this figure out who that know somebody right um because that's a big nut to
59:05
crack um another angle might be um uh industry trade associations like maybe
59:12
there are some trade groups that you could join or uh you know that know a bunch of people um and I've seen
59:19
effective work done by startups where they don't have a lot of money but they go to a trade assoc Association and
59:25
spend maybe $5,000 or $10,000 and become a sponsor and that way they get to be part of The Insider Club of the people
59:32
that run the trade Association and they know everybody that kind of thing that that can that's an angle maybe that people don't think about yeah I know um
59:41
you know yeah the fact that you have three interested are they
59:47
competitors um no not necessarily no well maybe they could do something together maybe there's a way to pitch
59:54
them you know to partner up especially if it's open source maybe that would be
59:59
a you know an approach that they would like that's that's an intriguing angle for it to be open source um and then I I
1:00:06
guess I would have to lean on going back toward Angels who have experience in this in this industry you know there've
1:00:13
got to be you know sap there in Germany or you know some people that know they
1:00:18
will definitely try to prevent us from entering the market rather than helping us I didn't mean sap itself I meant
1:00:24
alumni of sap who don't work there anymore right good point have a whole
1:00:30
Mafia of people that left who' doing other things that that that might be an angle
1:00:37
I mean it's a network it sounds to me like it's a networking game unless ideally you know you can find a way to
1:00:43
do a proof of concept that is you know a million dollars less than what you're talking about and that's up to you as a
1:00:48
technical architect I I don't know if that's possible um but uh I mean we can we can probably reach the first levels
1:00:55
of proof of concepts with like 500k that would be doable but in the all all we do
1:01:00
with that is prove that there is a product Market fit and we after that we
1:01:05
still don't have a product but maybe that is enough to uh to to convince the
1:01:11
next level of investment then yeah way go that is usually the case things if
1:01:17
are more incremental than we want them to be right in life but especially with investment that that's probably true if
1:01:23
you lowered your ask I'll say one thing you know a million and a half is too much for any Angels if you lowered it if
1:01:29
you could lower it to 500 might get a couple Angels involved uh and well here in Germany it's more 100K for an Angel
1:01:36
that's not much more than we you get here if you get maximum of two or three in the end and that's not really bringing us anywhere unfortunately well
1:01:43
that's the same here in the States but I was meaning more like groups of angels for example here in California I belong to Tech Coast angels and we have 400
1:01:50
members so when we put our money in it's easily 200 up to a million uh 200,000 to a million between all of
1:01:56
us we do you know be 25 or 50 at a time but all is one investment um so that's
1:02:02
may I may I add something to that what you just mentioned because if I lower my ask um I mean we will definitely not be
1:02:11
have any profitability after that I mean all we have is still a semi-finished product yeah so Angel Investors
1:02:18
investing in that my my my experience Talking to Angels they wouldn't I I
1:02:24
agree but I don't know what else you're going to do right yeah gotcha unfortunately I don't have a better
1:02:31
thanks for the effort yeah yeah exactly right you got to be careful right so um
1:02:36
demonstrating some progress is better than demonstrating no progress right so because otherwise you just gotta go home
1:02:43
um which would be really frustrating one more quick thought and then we need to move on is uh and you've probably thought about this but this is for other
1:02:48
folks in similar situations uh is government grants uh local at least in
1:02:54
the states we have different regions and States you know in Germany I know you have different business councils around
1:02:59
Germany um there might be government grants especially in the defense industry if there's application for all the warehousing that defense that's
1:03:06
where we got the first 150k pro gotta yeah yeah exactly well I guess I
1:03:13
was on okay last thing can you say something motivating before I leave don't quit I mean who else is gonna do
1:03:21
it the world is waiting for you Daniel they're waiting for you and solution if this is something you're a smart guy if
1:03:26
this is something you believe needs to be done it's going to take some effort it's going to be more painful than you ever expected but I think shifting your
1:03:33
focus to steps um it's probably the way for so but uh glad I'm glad you found us
1:03:41
and hopefully you know happy to talk to you again if it's helpful absolutely it was thank you very much Scott have a
1:03:47
great day to meet you and thanks for staying up late Daniel's up late it's in
1:03:52
Germany Okay cool so so that was uh our friend Daniel all right who we how we
1:03:57
doing here let me check in on the chat room we did a a power uh a bit of a
1:04:03
power Q&A there let's see if we got a bunch of you here thanks for checking in
1:04:08
looks like people are connecting that's good go ahead and post your LinkedIn if you'd like
1:04:15
um any suggestions on where to connect with Partners or co-founders this is from Gary yeah this is a common question
1:04:22
so let's hit this real quick yeah uh partners and co-founders are uh they're all around you and you never know until
1:04:29
you ask so the trick is to get out and go to events that's the only uh thing I've found why combinator has a service
1:04:36
that does some pretty good matching kind of a match.com dating kind of thing you fill out a profile and it actually is
1:04:42
helpful because it sends you emails and it's free it sends you emails of people that might match you uh I can't remember
1:04:48
the name of it but maybe somebody could put that in the in the chat room that's the only credible service I've found
1:04:54
although I haven't looked lately so other people may have better ideas but the real answer is to find people that you get along with who are probably
1:05:00
already in your orbit or one or two degrees removed so I would like I said
1:05:05
go to as many events as you can in your geography but also online you could go to Startup events.org I mentioned that
1:05:12
earlier startup events.org it's our calendar it's the only worldwide calendar virtual events only for startup
1:05:18
Founders and find some people there and then face-to-face events of course are great as well the trick is uh this let
1:05:25
me caution is that you maybe you don't need a co-founder or a partner you might just need to have the courage to do it
1:05:32
on your own so be careful when you invite people in as co-founders and make sure you really talk through the
1:05:37
expectations and put it on paper who gets what what if things go well but also what if things go wrong because in
1:05:44
most cases you don't really need a co-founder as much as you're feeling kind of lonely and scared and you want
1:05:50
somebody else to take some of the load which is legit man I mean mental health is very important right but
1:05:56
um you may not need a co-founder you may just need a technical lead or a mark head of sales or something like that and
1:06:02
I suggest based on lots of experience that you engage with those people on a uh fractional or temporary basis and see
1:06:10
if they can grow into the role of co-founder or partner before you really uh give away that kind of title or that
1:06:16
kind of equity all right let's see uh Brenda says she has
1:06:22
six million views of something I can't figure out I don't have time to look but I'm curious
1:06:27
congratulations let's see here um can we connect on LinkedIn yes oh Journey okay
1:06:33
so and Andre would like to connect with you there that's good thank you Andre for the support here's an interesting
1:06:39
one Brianna says how does broken does oh how broken down does the financial Prof
1:06:44
for need to be in firstand alone business if I don't have customers yet membership basis solving how do I
1:06:50
ballpark create some traction so creating traction is a different thing but of Financial performas they don't
1:06:56
really have to be super broken down everybody that's involved in an investment conversation knows that
1:07:02
they're right it's it's compounded assumptions but what we're looking for is that you've taken the
1:07:08
time to think about it and that you know what's important in the business right what are the big cost factors and what
1:07:15
are the revenue drivers and if you can show and that's why we ask for it over time because you want to see three or
1:07:20
four or five years of projections if this goes up then this goes down why or
1:07:25
if this goes up then this goes up oh then why don't you do more of that right that's what we're trying to see so the
1:07:31
numbers and of course they have to be realistic relative to your industry but it's not so much about down to the last
1:07:37
penny sort of idea it's more just kind of a a sense of scale like how big do you think this business can be and also
1:07:44
what you think it's going to take to build it to that scale so um broken down
1:07:50
this as a scale Brianna I guess I'd say medium there's not a a great answer there but
1:07:56
something like that is um is what people need to see we need to know that you're paying attention that you have a clue
1:08:01
about financials uh because you're going to be spending my money to build something that you think is important so
1:08:07
I want to know that you know how to run the business and that's really the vibe we're looking for um having perfect
1:08:13
financials is often a stumbling block because you'll run into investors who have like a CPA background and they
1:08:19
really want to get into the Weeds on the details of it but that's not fair to a founder especially if the founder is not
1:08:25
also a CPA the friendliest Angel Investors and Venture Capital investors will be
1:08:30
looking for uh Trends you know indicative Trends this looks like Brianna or whoever it is is understands
1:08:38
what's going on here yeah they weren't perfect but we can see that she's thought about it the the trend shows
1:08:44
growth based on reasonable assumptions let's talk some more and maybe we can work on it together that that's how I
1:08:50
would see that discussion advancing okay let's
1:08:58
see uh let me just hit this one real quick and then we'll go back to on camera official workwise says how do you
1:09:04
get funding for a startup nonprofit charity this is UK based so I understand
1:09:10
if you don't have the answers thank you for that uh official work-wise yeah I'm not UK based so I don't know but I I'm
1:09:15
gonna answer you anyway because you can't get funding for a startup nonprofit charity that's an oxymoron
1:09:22
funding in this world the world we're talking about is to make money so um I'm
1:09:29
sure it's wonderful but you're in the wrong room um nobody's going to give you I'm just trying to be clear again I do
1:09:34
this to try to help people nobody's going to give you money to start a charity who's an investor somebody might
1:09:39
give you money to start a charity who's a foundation or does impact work right like some other charity right or a
1:09:46
government grant like government grants are really good for this stuff um but investors are not investing in Charities
1:09:52
what we do is we make money by in investing and then we give it to charity those are different things very different worlds and a different you'd
1:09:58
have to find a different office hours because I'm not a nonprofit expert I've done a lot of nonprofit stuff but um that's not a we're this is about
1:10:05
for-profit businesses um and um you probably need to get clarity on that if
1:10:10
you're going to go out and um uh try to raise money or or um you know build your
1:10:17
I'm sure it's a wonderful um cause you've got going on but investors are not the way to be looking for that okay
1:10:24
so let's go back to um let's see we did Muhammad we did Daniel Vlad and oh my goodness it's 110
1:10:31
already so we gotta get on to some pitches here pretty soon okay so we're gonna do Vlad and Hubert and oh let's
1:10:37
talk well we'll come back to that let's see so it's Vlad still here okay let's talk to Vlad Here Comes Vlad all right hey Vlad
1:10:45
nice to see you just one second here let me do a little more housekeeping so we've got we're going to be doing some
1:10:51
pitches here and it looks like um let's see Tyler wanted to
1:10:56
pitch and and okay so if we have a little room backstage guys if you want
1:11:02
to do pitches so um do this and we do a two-minute pitch it's just um it's just
1:11:10
verbal no slides or anything up to two minutes it can be just one minute and if it's your first time that's fine if we're here to give advice and you'll get
1:11:15
friendly advice from me and everybody in the chat room and we'll just tell you kind of give you the Investor's perspective on what you're building okay
1:11:22
all right so go ahead V nice to see you hey thank you for having me so I'm also actually G to be doing a pitch so maybe
1:11:28
I'll just kind of I don't know if I should just maybe give it a little background but well okay actually let's just save
1:11:34
you for the pitch then sorry did you want okay yeah you did say that I'm sorry my notes doing a lot of things at
1:11:40
once here okay let's see and then Hubert had a question let's go to Melissa here I think she had and then Hubert will do
1:11:46
you and then we'll get to the pitches so this is Melissa hey Melissa so you have question about funding getting funded
1:11:52
faster everybody's question sure sure well for for me I'm in a place where I I
1:11:59
have the metrics I I have the numbers I have the product out there I had an
1:12:04
alpha round that demonstrated over 70 million registered users um in a week's
1:12:10
time I had over seven billion page views so I have the metrics um It's really because I was willing to take it in the
1:12:16
chin and give my product away for free um and I learned some beautiful things
1:12:23
in that Alpha round it's now have me in a blind beta test with some interested
1:12:29
investors more like friends and family level right now but as I'm projecting as
1:12:34
CEO going forward and wanting to raise do a cap race it gets me very
1:12:40
comfortable as I launch back to the general public so I don't take it in the chin like I did in my first round of
1:12:46
azure bills um AI is very expensive um but I also don't because of the Sens ity
1:12:54
of timing in the this market and the AI Market um I want to make sure I'm not um
1:13:02
slowing myself down by going I don't know how do I say that
1:13:09
going into a route that might uh make it a longer term process um being Native
1:13:16
American being a woman I instantly went to um other firms potential private
1:13:23
equity firms or VC firms that focused on that but looking at that process I'm
1:13:28
going well that's two or three months out and I'm I plan on being in version four of my tech by that point so it
1:13:35
moves slower than I want is if I have all of those things proor or term sheets
1:13:41
investor agreements operating agreements I have I have everything I'm a Shiny Toy
1:13:47
um how do I make that more appealing and is there a VC
1:13:54
process or a private Equity process that is um in a faster Channel than what it
1:14:00
is appearing so far that's a really interesting question well first of all congratulations on all your progress
1:14:06
that's damn impressive that's really thank you well done um what is your background are you an AI techie or what
1:14:14
well I I have a team I have a team and like uh I think somebody and mentioned
1:14:20
earlier what do I do if I have this great idea well I think you find an exceptional coder and you bring them on
1:14:26
board and you you make them part of your team nobody can do this by themselves uh
1:14:31
I simply had a problem that was a part of my initial another company that I
1:14:37
have and uh realized that there was some code that I could have developed that
1:14:43
could solve a problem that is not being solved right now currently with AI um we
1:14:48
have the only technology that can analyze um right now I'm only launching images to the public um that can analyze
1:14:56
it in real time on multiv vectors and to tell you if that product or that content is actually real or fake um and so I'm
1:15:04
in the the business of detection uh protection and authenticity of content
1:15:10
and ensuring the safety hopefully our our first initiation I believe will go
1:15:16
aside from GP will go into the fintech area to ensure people's uh the protect
1:15:23
uh their wealth is protected and their money management is protected wow that sounds very timely and I can see why
1:15:29
you're in a hurry because that stuff is moving in that space for sure okay well
1:15:37
unfortun I don't have any great answers for you but um let me just recap so I understand so you you you looked at the
1:15:43
the female and the Native American route and that was a little too slow is that kind of yeah it it is and you would
1:15:49
think that if it was a a firm or set of firms that that we're really specifically looking for those markets
1:15:56
and there's not many many there's not many of us uh as far as women and Tech um and I I think that in my mind that
1:16:05
should have made me stand out and it didn't make me stand out as much um and I'm I'm hoping that I could
1:16:13
uh I don't know find a better way to make me shinier than um the way I'm
1:16:18
doing it yeah okay interesting well I usually it's the other problem right
1:16:25
they they they go too broad and then they I recommend they go to the niche and you started with the niche which was smart oh no I didn't start with the
1:16:31
niche when in my Alpha test I actually um offered up the ability to analyze
1:16:36
text code images um audio files video files and then we were going to go to
1:16:41
live stream but that Alpha test like I said I took it in the Chen and I learned a lot of things from that test that
1:16:49
taught me that it was better to start with the most viable product out there
1:16:54
the thing that nobody else is doing you can get products to analyze text and
1:16:59
there are some products out there to analyze code but there are really are not products out there that can
1:17:05
successfully analyze an image and tell you if it is actually real or not or if
1:17:10
it was human generated or AI generated and I felt like even though I actually
1:17:15
already have the completed code and I could go live with audio and video I felt that it was best to have one
1:17:23
exeptional product right now to demonstrate um that I have potential growth for whatever investor I bring in
1:17:30
and I can show what those numbers and metrics were when I went in my Alpha test how much are you trying to
1:17:37
raise a half a million would be great um I I would be very happy with 150 right
1:17:44
now 150 puts me in version four by the beginning of the new year version four giving access to fintech at live audio
1:17:52
and video stream to protect again the consumer or the bank institution is that
1:17:58
the real person am I talking to my investor or am I talking to my client in
1:18:04
real time and we've we've learned to um create the API so that these
1:18:10
institutions can house that internally not externally U they don't have to give up their information I can houses inside
1:18:18
and everything stay proprietar and safe to them Brian says get your butt on Shark Tank ala I tried I've I've I've
1:18:26
applied several times but I I guess again I don't seem too shiny um I don't
1:18:32
I believe in asking sorry sorry we're gonna need to move on a little faster so I I don't have a lot of good ideas but
1:18:38
let me give you what I got which is um man so if it's the amount you're
1:18:45
talking about is Angel investible so that's good right you're not talking for five million just out of the gate right
1:18:50
and you have numbers so it sounds like you should be getting attention um I guess the number one thing I would
1:18:57
do is go to the Bay Area right that's where things move the fastest I don't know how much time we've spent traveling or in person in the Bay Area but thing
1:19:04
that's where the highest velocity of deals is and there've got to be pitch competitions or women's Founders
1:19:11
networks or something that you could get a little Edge in the door um Angel groups there in particular come to mind
1:19:18
like a band of angels uh which is the biggest probably the original Angel group um uh Thai the Thai women's fund
1:19:27
tie that's the Indian entrepreneurs East Indian not Native American Tha Indian women's fund
1:19:35
um moving that fast is is tough the faster of ones that I know of but I
1:19:41
belong to Tech Coast angels and we look at things all the time and the fastest we ever move is probably six weeks um
1:19:48
but the trick with in that case maybe this is a piece that would be helpful for you but as you look at different Angel groups some invest each individual
1:19:56
Angel like everybody does due diligence and then each individual invests separately which is fine but it can take
1:20:01
longer others have a fund and so then they do the due diligence and then everyone who's in the fund votes and
1:20:07
then those move faster because then they can write like a $200,000 check at TCA we do both of those so but
1:20:14
you might want to look you could go to Tech Coast angels.com and apply and see I okay that's helpful but um if you can
1:20:21
find an angel fund that has a fund that's probably going to be faster than
1:20:26
individual Angels um I would I would rank prospects for you as Angel groups
1:20:31
that have as fund as first then Angel groups in general and then individual Angels because individual Angels you
1:20:36
have to talk to each you know lunch with each person right but groups you can present um and especially if there are ones that are women centered or Native
1:20:43
American or AI centered I mean AI I guess the way you might maybe that's it maybe the way to move fastest here is to
1:20:48
focus on AI because that's where things are poen I ran into a friend a colleague a month or so ago and she said how are
1:20:55
you doing you if good I'm good I valuations are really coming down she said really valuation I thought valuations are going up I said that's
1:21:01
because you're doing AI right and she said yeah yeah because the world is bifurcating right and if the AI stuff
1:21:08
might be really where you need to play and that again is Bay Area stuff another quick thought then we got to move on is
1:21:14
U you probably know this but anybody who doesn't if you're using Aur like you said or people are using AWS they often
1:21:20
have uh programs where they give free credits to people that are good potential customers and I don't know the
1:21:25
aour one so well but the AWS one is called activate and historically they
1:21:30
would give out up to $25,000 at a time of free credits to early stage Founders that they thought were promising so you
1:21:36
might research that on the Microsoft side to see if there's something that they could um help you with your
1:21:42
bill yeah that's excellent I appreciate that thank you okay well I hope that's helpful I wish I had I'll think about it
1:21:48
um happy to see you again if you need more help or like I said I've said 10 times go sign sign up of our email lists here maybe something there will spark go
1:21:55
do some research uh at this startup investor directory.com maybe that'll maybe there's somebody there um but I
1:22:01
would really be looking at alumni um in who know the space that's I think the secret weapon so sounds great I'll go
1:22:08
right at it thank you so much nice to meet you Melissa good luck nice to meet you that was exciting I hope she does
1:22:14
well that's a she's in a hot hot space very cool great to see the mix of people we have here isn't it that's that's the
1:22:20
really fun thing about the startup Community the startups are important to me because they collect people that
1:22:25
actually do things not people who talk about things well some of us talk a lot but we actually get things done right
1:22:32
and it's entrepreneurs that are really driving progress in the world these days and I think it's important to uh support
1:22:37
each other okay let's go so now we're gonna do pitches so I think we've got um
1:22:42
so Tyler Vlad let me just bring you guys on here so Tyler Vlad Melissa just left
1:22:49
let's see Alex Hubert hu Hubert did you want to pitch
1:22:55
today are you here just for the uh questions oh the question okay no
1:23:00
worries you've been here plenty good to see you um and then Alex there's somebody named Alex backstage with your
1:23:06
camera off I'm not sure what you're if you want to pitch you can join us otherwise we just got two although we
1:23:12
could probably squeeze in another one so let me put back I actually don't know that I'm gonna be able to pitch because I actually have a meeting with an angel
1:23:18
investor in four minutes okay you can practice there okay sorry we took so long Tyler I hope that what we gave you
1:23:23
was helpful that's no problem I really appreciate the input thank you okay best of luck okay yeah these run long
1:23:29
sometimes um okay so let me put the caption back up and if anybody wants to join for another pitch or two we could
1:23:35
probably squeeze that in all right so let's try with our friend Vlad here and then we could be finished I think um
1:23:43
let's see uh okay so Vlad has gonna okay so whatever you want to talk about Vlad
1:23:50
but we um give it a minute and a half for 2 minutes and oriented towards investors and we'll be as friendly as we
1:23:57
can and everybody else please listen and offer suggestions in the in the chat room what we're not going to do is
1:24:03
debate his business model because we don't have time for that we're going to presume that it's a brilliant idea um we're just trying to see how he's
1:24:08
framing it and um presenting it to investors so more uh critique would be more like what did he leave in what did
1:24:15
he what should he leave out um you know they talk too fast that kind of stuff and help him with the style as much as
1:24:21
the content okay Vlad That's the uh Preamble go ahead great hello everyone
1:24:26
my name is Vlad feru like I said I'm currently in Canada I'm originally from Romania and I developed an AI user chat
1:24:34
platform I've been uh very passionate about technology for the last decade I built several startups and this is kind
1:24:40
of the first time I'm doing things on my own but I have a really solid technological stack which I just want to
1:24:46
highlight first before I even move on I with one language I'm able to compile it and it works on Android iOS and and web
1:24:52
so I coded one time and I can deploy it everywhere and over my career I've developed a lot of tools just to
1:24:58
generate full create update delete features that work on every platform so I like to express myself now now now
1:25:05
that I have these tools I when AI came out the first thing I did is I wanted to play around with it so I I developed my
1:25:11
own AI user chat platform um it's called impact a.ca it's live right now and it's
1:25:18
essentially lets you create your own AI user in minutes with no code you can create your own Community invite the
1:25:24
people you want and you can even train your AI users on your files and allow other people in the community to train
1:25:30
the AI user on their own files and you can also integrate into your own website or even your own application maybe you
1:25:35
want to do AI but you don't have the technal know how you can create an AI user and then just embed it via an
1:25:42
iframe into your uh app and um yeah kind of the question I had before as a side
1:25:49
pitch is I you know I do a geek geeking out in my coding cave and I'm trying to get out now and show it to people and um
1:25:58
now that chat GPT launched their own cuss create your own GPT it's been a little rough for me because I literally
1:26:04
launched and then they launched theirs and uh so I'm just kind of I'm looking
1:26:09
here for advice feedback and not it's not a full pitch how it should be I know
1:26:15
but but yeah okay great um congratulations on on that that sounds
1:26:20
exciting um let's talk about the pitch and then we can talk about differentiation a little bit so
1:26:26
pitch-wise you're a good clear speaker you're friendly of a nice way about you so you're going to do fine it just takes
1:26:31
practice right so um the main thing is that you want to turn the pitch around and talk less about the product and more
1:26:37
about the business right you didn't say anything about money zero right and that's all I care about as an investor
1:26:44
it's not all I care about my wife would um but you know it's that
1:26:50
everybody needs to remember this isn't a product fit pitch you're not pitching a customer you're pitching an investor and their priority is money and money is
1:26:57
numbers so more numbers and that's fine you know but so the content other than that was good lots of stuff I'm not
1:27:04
quite clear what an um an AI user training is for so you probably need to
1:27:11
get out of the geek this a little bit and give me some use cases you know just an example or two you know this kind of
1:27:17
customer at this and and you frame it in terms of a customer that helps us Envision the money as well this kind of
1:27:22
customer in this kind of corporate situation is doing this kind of task you
1:27:28
know and they're like oh okay like we need some case study um
1:27:34
and I've been working with a few universities kind of getting them to try check it out upload their course
1:27:39
materials and invite their students but it buil such a general piece sometimes I wonder if I should make a niche you know
1:27:45
grab that copy paste template and then one for learning one for this one for that and that might be the answer to
1:27:51
your differentiation question anyway right uh because a lot of this is about branding and marketing as much as functionality so it's going to be hard
1:27:58
to differentiate if you have such a general tool um uh yeah that's a good point and
1:28:07
even and then one other thing is I don't I'm at a weird place because I'm very technical like I I'm very technical and
1:28:12
I have all these things but I don't know if getting an investment is the right thing it's almost maybe getting
1:28:18
customers first would be better before approaching investors than I could you know I have those numbers theyy
1:28:25
absolutely no absolutely I mean if if uh if I could take what you just said and repeat it for an hour and a half that
1:28:31
could be the show right get customers first and don't raise money at all if
1:28:36
you don't have to the media makes it sound like raising giving away part of your company is some kind of success
1:28:43
story it's not it's a tool right you don't want to give away any of your damn company right unless there's a reason to
1:28:48
do it that will make the company much much bigger in which case you gave away a piece but the pie got so much bigger
1:28:53
that you do better anyway right um traditionally for thousands of years people funded based on debt they only
1:28:59
had loans right and now you don't hear about debt at all but that's really what makes up most of our economy venture capital is a vanishingly small fraction
1:29:06
of what really drives um business creation that being said it's a really
1:29:12
good tool if you have something like yours that you can find the niche get the customer adoption show that then
1:29:18
investors are because it can scale like crazy and that's why I've so much attention because you know a good SAS
1:29:24
product boom you know you can you can literally take over the planet and make tons of money um so yeah so this is
1:29:31
getting into your differentiation discussion a bit I guess but um pitch-wise I would think more about the
1:29:36
business like who's the customer and then every who the customer how it grows that's the other thing go to market GTM
1:29:42
like how is it going to go to market like you said you're talking to some universities ideally you work with these
1:29:48
universities and then how does it spread say to other universities right just some thought about that um so concept
1:29:55
business go to market which otherwise known as distribution and then there would be an ask and you might be too
1:30:01
early for an ask but generally if you have the chance you always want to say something like at least you want to say
1:30:06
we're raising money and ideally you say something a little more specific so people have some idea like we're raising whatever it is you know $250,000 at a $2
1:30:13
million valuation but but we're flexible you know just kind of give get an investor a ballpark because you know we
1:30:20
don't know if you think you're Sam Alman or you know you're you know I don't know what you're thinking right you might
1:30:25
think you're worth a dollars in which case we don't have anything to talk about um what about product hun or
1:30:31
anything like that is there any place you suggest maybe I put my product out there and I haven't even showed anyone
1:30:36
that's another part i' created all School Tech and I haven't even tried showing it to anyone yet as much you know which I should do more of yeah you
1:30:44
absolutely should do more of um I haven't used product hunt myself I've certainly been involved in with it here
1:30:50
and there um it seems to be good for techish stuff I I guess I'd have to beg ignorance though I there's probably some
1:30:56
blog articles about that for you if you do that though I think your initial instinct is right though I wouldn't
1:31:03
reveal the whole thing you've built like pick one really small Niche and put that
1:31:08
on product hunt and just see how that work right rather than giving away the whole store and just say you know we're
1:31:13
targeting whatever it is you know auto mechanics in Canada or what something like something um so that you don't give
1:31:20
away too much and that might give you some good feedback actually in terms of differentiation strategies because
1:31:25
you're right with what they announced recently I would bet that that was pretty uh probably gave you a heart attack yeah
1:31:32
yeah yeah but like with anything you know I've always I'm looking for that General pattern of success you know I
1:31:38
think good patterns are like a math proof that should apply in many things so I've always tried to build my stuff
1:31:43
too generally but in a template like manner because you know authen every app has the same stuff all things are
1:31:49
General everything takes payments similar so if I can differentiate those
1:31:54
different pieces you know like what's a successful pitch de what's a successful pitch what's a successful you know all
1:32:00
these things that's right like that systems approach to this is is exactly right because it is pattern recognition
1:32:06
and that's what investors are doing too right when everybody complains you know that they can't get funded it's like
1:32:11
well that's because we don't see the pattern and what you're doing we're looking at other Su similarly successful founders with similarly successful
1:32:17
businesses with similarly successful growth and distribution strategies you know it's like how do you like these and
1:32:22
yes we needed something different obviously but it's but you got to have like 80% of it if it's if it's 100%
1:32:28
different than everything else we don't nobody's gonna invest we don't even know what you're talking about right so you
1:32:33
gotta you're you're right you gotta educate yourself so and and the the last thing I want to say is I have the Cool
1:32:38
Tech that I was talking about my tech stack it allows me to yeah code it one time deploy it everywhere and then I can
1:32:45
generate a full feature hey you want a task database I run my script it creates the list page the create page detail
1:32:51
page it works on mobile on desktop and then oh you want another price so I've streamlined all of those really
1:32:58
complicated processes and it's kind of just not not playing with other
1:33:04
technological stuff and being focused on one which is hard yeah that's really impressive I mean I'm not teching enough
1:33:11
to barely understand what you're saying but that sounds damn impressive the problem is that that's techy enough I'm
1:33:18
not sure who the customer is right so most investors aren't techy enough to appreciate that so exactly yeah you need
1:33:26
to spend some time maybe the answer to your differentiation question is figuring out some use cases where this
1:33:32
can be uh demonstrated as valuable right so who are the like I don't know think
1:33:39
of three or five customers and uh I took a great Course once at Stanford called
1:33:45
um designing your life or something like that anyway one of the valuable things about it was prototyping right so you
1:33:51
pick three things and and then think what are three questions or goals you can have in each of those three right
1:33:57
and then go do them like small things right not like you know raise a million dollars but like talk to three people in
1:34:03
this industry you know or buy a book and read it about that you know like digestible things but give yourself a
1:34:08
plan towards commercialization and break it down and that kind of customer research can also help you with your
1:34:13
differentiation because in doing that if you're able to find I don't know what you know whatever is yoga instructors
1:34:19
are the perfect market for this you know but especially ones who live in western Canada or yeah whatever I'm making that
1:34:26
up obviously silly but you know like if you can find a niche and find people that are excited about this that's your
1:34:31
customer base right and then that's what investors want to see is like oh there is a base and then you can expand from
1:34:36
there they land and expand um but that takes a lot of customer interaction it sounds like you're overdue on some of
1:34:41
that as you admitted yeah for sure for sure okay cool well nice to meet you I
1:34:47
hope that was helpful happy to see you appreciate all the feedback thank you so much yeah you're welcome nice to meet you okay so that's our friend Vlad from
1:34:55
Toronto and uh looks like we better be wrapping up here hold on we got Roberts backstage here Robert did you want to
1:35:01
wave your hand or do you want to pitch or you no okay you're just here watch okay nice to see you I think we
1:35:07
connected recently on LinkedIn nice okay so that was um okay so I guess we're gonna wrap up the show I had a special
1:35:13
offer I wanted to tell you guys about actually this is really cool and it's free um something I just thought of the other day it actually goes with my shirt
1:35:20
actually I'm wearing a special t-shirt today can you see that all right I'll tell you what it is in a minute um and you're all invited okay but first let's
1:35:27
just look through the chat room real quick um let's see chat let me roll back through here okay um see I answered that
1:35:37
answer that okay uh Alanta says her the last name is actually Baltimore sorry
1:35:43
okay all right hope you don't live in Baltimore that would be very confusing I hope the answers I have were helpful
1:35:50
though Jin says what about age do investors favor working with younger Founders yes um and I'm getting older
1:35:56
myself and this drives me nuts um there's no doubt about it um there's age discrimination nobody will admit it but
1:36:02
people want to do that there are a couple structural reasons for that the simplest one well one is you know
1:36:07
they're maybe more open to new things they're more in touch with current trends blah blah blah but the other
1:36:13
frankly is they're cheaper this is a fact that well not always of course but
1:36:18
uh younger people have fewer oblig ations right they don't have mortgage car payments you know kids in college
1:36:24
whatever it is medical issues as as often as older people so they can work cheaper and they're willing to work you
1:36:30
know and live on you know a Ramen basically right so yeah that's the thing
1:36:36
but again the answer is well two things one is I have seen studies and I think this is a matter one of those things
1:36:42
where you can find statistics to prove most anything but I have certainly seen studies that say the average age of
1:36:47
successful Founders is actually in their 40s or even 50s so I don't know where those numbers come from but that so it's
1:36:52
arguable right whether it should be younger for Cutting Edge stuff yeah it probably is younger people that's just a fact because it's brand new stuff Who
1:36:59
would know it right like I was a genius back in the 90s I was way ahead on on internet stuff right now I'm an older
1:37:04
guy I don't even use Instagram right so what am I supposed to know um but um the other thing is this
1:37:11
goes back to what I was talking with about women Founders uh and age is the same
1:37:16
thing the statistics don't matter it's you what are you going to do right right I mean you can lie about your age I
1:37:22
guess you get plastic surgery but you're you so is it easier for somebody else yeah but what are you going to do right
1:37:30
so uh you know buck up and go to the meeting anyway I mean you know partner with some younger people I guess if you
1:37:36
want to try to fake it but you know if you've got something to bring to the world it's your obligation it's your duty to do that that's why you're here I
1:37:43
want to help you do that go do it okay uh let's see how about this
1:37:49
one let's see our team is globally distributed any concerns about that from an investor
1:37:55
perspective yes for sure that's a good one life of H um globally distributed teams are a concern for a couple reasons
1:38:02
one is the intellectual property ownership we want people to know that it's really locked down and if it's an
1:38:09
IP based company meaning uh patents trademarks copyrights mostly patents in this case then having it dispersed
1:38:16
around the globe is a risk so it happens all the time so I'm not saying it's a fatal flaw but it's something you should
1:38:22
have documentation that really really really covers that anyone who works for you transfers ownership of their work to
1:38:28
the company and this is true just in the United States it's true everywhere right investors want to see that locked down
1:38:34
uh casual Agreements are not good when you have intellectual property the other concern of course would be uh Financial
1:38:41
back and forth uh in terms of you know currency risk or taxes uh things like that if you're in an unstable country
1:38:48
with an unstable government or currencies you know there's lots of risks around that but generally distributed teams are an increasingly
1:38:55
common thing so it's not a uh problem I would say it's a concern is strong it's
1:39:01
something we would pay attention to so just be careful do it right um another plug from my friends at cake equity.com
1:39:07
they manage stock option platforms uh stock option plans worldwide and this is
1:39:13
one of the reasons they do that because it means they can issue stock options globally and have them um be legally
1:39:20
compliant in all jurisdictions and that's not an easy thing to do so that's cake equity.com um let's
1:39:28
see so Brianna wants to find more female investors um yeah I don't know Brianna I
1:39:34
agree with you as you've heard a couple times on the show I agree I think it's a problem um you just got to look I mean
1:39:41
or be one I that's the other thing there are programs now that support uh female and minority
1:39:49
entrepreneurs into becoming investors I don't have them off the top of my head but you can certainly Google that it's a
1:39:55
common discussion topic in startup land and I would encourage you to do that if
1:40:01
you're aggressive enough to want to do that more power to you absolutely there need to be more female investors
1:40:08
absolutely agreed uh let's see
1:40:16
okay let's see don't okay well that's a nice as an optim mytic note from Seth
1:40:22
you are your finest asset there you go uh yeah Danny is supporting yep thank
1:40:30
you supporting Brianna about that thank you Danny yep
1:40:41
yep okay so this is interesting uh hadti asks I'm a soul Tech founder how to skip
1:40:47
preed round and jump to seed what's the minimum required Revenue number customer for B Toc business the how the answer is those are all
1:40:54
madeup terms what matters is how much are you raising there used to be more defined um
1:41:00
categories for preed versus seed but those really don't exist as much anymore
1:41:06
partially because different kinds of businesses raise different kinds of money right if you're creating biomedical devices or a Pharma product
1:41:13
pharmaceutical like drug research versus Hardware like new kinds of chips or Aerospace you're building new airplanes
1:41:20
or Rockets versus software or websites or apps I mean these all have different kinds of startup Capital requirements so
1:41:26
the terms don't mean that much anymore I wouldn't worry about whether it's preed or seed or whatever figure out how much
1:41:32
you want to raise and um there's no minimum required or number of customers you're thinking that this is all defined
1:41:39
and it's not it depends on your business your situation and the investors you're talking to and how much you need so go
1:41:44
ahead figure out what's realistic and um and that's your pitch you know you're
1:41:50
probably want to raise more than you think you need to last longer than you want but it can't be so much to
1:41:55
intimidate or Scare Away investors based on the amount of traction you have there are no set answers
1:42:01
here um okay let's see okay I hope you all are reading the
1:42:07
chat here because there's some good stuff thank you all for contributing to each other
1:42:15
um okay sorry I'm just reading here we're almost done here I want to tell you
1:42:21
about this thing I'm doing um let's
1:42:30
see oh this is nice okay so Seth says he validating what I was saying the most
1:42:35
recent opportunity I had to pitch for a partner investor was from very tailored Outreach on LinkedIn to someone who has
1:42:42
had very notable success in a related industry that sounds familiar Seth thank
1:42:47
you that's pretty much what I was saying right it resulted in a posit positive connection and planned inperson followup
1:42:53
so 70% understanding the right people to reach out to and 30% Outreach so this is partially the problem also that Brianna
1:43:00
is talking about a lot in the chat of being frustrated by the men uh the male dominated uh folks you know it just
1:43:08
requires more research the like I had someone on the show a year or so ago I
1:43:13
remember it was a young woman actually and she was so frustrated about not being able to raise money she kept getting turned down and I said well how
1:43:20
many people have you talk to she said four I was like four that's
1:43:25
like you do that over lunch right I mean you need to be talking to 40 or 400 investors especially if you have
1:43:32
something new or off the beaten path or you're an unproven founder you got to really buck up so Brianna I'm with you
1:43:38
on the female thing uh female investors but I don't know how many people you've talked to either if you're getting
1:43:44
offended you know by the gatekeeping and you've only talked to 10 or 20 people that's you're just getting started you
1:43:51
know it's not this is how that works right so you're going to have to talk to lots and lots and lots female and male
1:43:58
and um it's a numbers game unfortunately so um Inu I like this one is this where
1:44:04
I ask people to invest in my company sure Inu you can ask everybody uh I don't think that's going to work though this is just for practice uh and
1:44:11
hopefully uh it was useful to you I suggest you watching this for the other videos that are on our YouTube
1:44:18
channel uh um okay okay just uh man a lot of questions
1:44:25
today sorry I'm not going to be able to get to all of them we're going to have to wrap this up but I wanted to tell you about
1:44:32
um okay oh somebody asked if they can talk to me directly so um yeah so I do
1:44:38
some of this I don't have enough time to talk to everybody actually Inu this might apply to you as well let me show
1:44:44
you this page though I have a page I put up to try to help
1:44:49
um let me find it and I'll explain what it is darn it where is
1:44:55
that so many things I want to share with you guys there we go okay so people ask me like will you invest or will you meet
1:45:01
with me and and I'd love to uh I just don't have time to meet with everybody right I have a life and given the
1:45:07
profile that I have I get all kinds of inbound all the time right so I don't do coffee I don't do quick Zoom meetings I
1:45:13
don't look at pitch decks uh I try to do my helping in group settings like this
1:45:19
and give it away for so everybody can participate this page though has some recommendations so this lists the angel
1:45:26
groups that I'm part of it lists um like our masterminds workshops which I do um
1:45:32
uh we charge 20 bucks for those or they're free if you bring a question those are a smaller version of this where everybody comes on camera we work
1:45:37
through things together or I do some private coaching calls or um Pitch Deck
1:45:42
reviews each month but I charge $400 uh for those because I don't have time to do them otherwise so if you really would
1:45:48
like to work together I'm happy to do that but you can find information for all of those things on that page or or click around on scotf fox.com happy to
1:45:56
um happy to uh you know work with you I just I have to manage my time unfortunately and given my books and
1:46:02
stuff I just get lots and lots of people um who want to talk to me so okay okay
1:46:08
so um let's see I'm gonna just wrap this up
1:46:14
here there's there's vlad's LinkedIn I'm going to click on that vlod let's uh get in touch
1:46:21
and okay fantastic great start uh I got oh I got inu's name right cool okay so
1:46:28
here's what I wanted to tell you so this is the last bit of the uh of the show today but I had an idea the other day
1:46:34
and I think this is really cool we run meetup groups we meaning the startup Council if you're not on these email
1:46:39
list yet you should be because we send out all kinds of free information trying to connect everybody but one of the
1:46:46
things that we also have is we have meetup groups in 42 different cities ities around the world in 10 different
1:46:51
countries wither 50,000 entrepreneurs this is why I don't have time to talk to everybody 50,000 entrepreneurs worldwide
1:46:58
and generally we've used those meetup groups mostly to publicize the startup council's events of its own right but I
1:47:05
realized the other day that we could publicize your events so if you are in one of the cities where we have a meetup
1:47:12
group and these are most of the major world capitals uh and secondary cities as well across the United States um then
1:47:19
and you have a startup event that you're holding there you can send it to us now and we'll publicize it on our Meetup in
1:47:26
your city so if you're in Berlin or um Dublin or Sydney or Perth or Manila or
1:47:35
um Singapore or Philadelphia Atlanta Chicago Seattle Vancouver Toronto Miami
1:47:42
La um Paris you know you get the idea right we have them all across the world Mumbai Hyderabad Bangalore um then we
1:47:50
will post those for you to try to help you build the community in your town okay so the uh link for that is actually
1:47:57
this is a brand new thing so I haven't um I do have it here okay cool I'm gonna put this in the chat room and then we're
1:48:04
gonna wrap up here but wait for this link because I hope this could be helpful to you guys so this is not
1:48:10
surprisingly this is at startup.org meetups and if you go to that page then
1:48:17
you will see all the 40 cities um Amsterdam so forth right um Lisbon then
1:48:22
um we'd be happy to happy to help you out and um post
1:48:28
your events okay and if you're doing virtual events you can post those with us as well through startup events.org so
1:48:33
that's what we had for today it was great to see you all thank you for being here I got to go get some lunch it's been nice chatting with you uh and I
1:48:40
hope this was helpful please hit like And subscribe follow us on LinkedIn follow us on YouTube please tell your
1:48:46
friends all that stuff this doesn't work without your help I'm doing it for free free hopefully you can take a second
1:48:52
click and like comment every time you see us do something if you could do that it would be super helpful in amplifying the signal so that we can get more
1:48:58
people on the road to internet riches uh together I'm Scott Fox from the startup
1:49:03
Council join us at startup council.org leave us those comments and stuff would really super appreciate it thanks I hope
1:49:09
to see you we'll be back um actually next month is Christmas so we might not so anyway get on our mailing lists and
1:49:15
we'll let you know if there's if we reschedule that and either way we'll be happy to see you on LinkedIn oh I forgot that talk we've got a bunch of LinkedIn
1:49:21
groups you can join now too we have LinkedIn groups where you can talk to each other free I forgot about that oh
1:49:26
well try that follow us on the LinkedIn page and uh you'll see notices about
1:49:31
that there excellent thank you all nice to see you hey Vlad nice to see you nice to see you good to good to see you and I
1:49:39
gotta go Gotta go eat some lunch Andre nice to see you as well and I hope to see you guys again next time tell your friends sign up for the email lists the
1:49:46
end bye now