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

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

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

The latest free lunchtime session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was March 18. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

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

StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox helped accelerate the startups and moderate discussion including:

• Niten from Laguna Niguel California started us off with an overview question asking what a startup needs in terms of product and traction to attract angel investors.
• Mauricio from Sacramento California practiced his venture capital pitch for his education to workforce pipeline software platform.
• Matt from Silicon Valley practiced the angel investor pitch for his jobtech and staffing startup.
• Discussion of why "getting just 1% of a trillion dollar market" is a BAD approach for convincing investors of your market opportunity
• Omid from Irvine shared the investor pitch about his new AI-enabled media aggregator service for feedback.
• Vamsi from Bengaluru wanted to know about starting an investment syndicate or angel group to pool investment capital from friends. (Answer for startup friends from India - join https://tie.org )
• Aaron from Los Angeles asked how to find investors for physical products when so many seem only focused on software and high tech startups
• Pradeep from Hyderabad practiced his pitch for an AI enabled HOA management platform for Homeowners Associations.
• Ruby from Newport Beach, CA asked about the value of and difference between Board of Directors and Board of Advisors.
• Tsira from Philadelphia asked how to attract US investors for her growing non-US company to expand into the United States markets.
• And everybody wanted to know the best resource to find early stage investors interested in their startups. Answer: Google + https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory......

And much more, as usual!

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

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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

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

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for March 18, 2025:

0:00

welcome It's time for Startup Fundraising Office Hours It's the free show for you Who you Founders

0:07

entrepreneurs the people that are building the next wave of products and services that going to make the world a

0:12

better place Hi I'm Scott Fox I'm the CEO of the Startup Council We're here tonight to help you advance your

0:18

business Maybe talk about some fundraising some strategy questions the obstacles that are slowing your growth

0:24

Who is us us is the Startup Council StartupConsil.org org is a community service group that I founded that

0:31

operates worldwide We're helping entrepreneurs from all over the world level up building on-ramps to the

0:37

internet economy the digital economy the world that you want to be participating in if you're going to make something big

0:43

that puts your dent in the universe Why well I believe that entrepreneurs are

0:48

the world's best shot at improving things You know the politicians aren't going to do it So the entrepreneurs

0:54

among us need to step out and make some noise We need to get together build the networks build the relationships that

1:01

you need to raise the money you need to bring your ideas out of your head and out into the world We're here to help

1:08

you every month during startup fundraising office hours And I'm here tonight to have you join me live We're

1:14

on YouTube and Facebook and uh LinkedIn live And if you're there please tell your friends and come on in We're going

1:20

to be bringing out the chat room and having everybody talk to each other and share your opinions and advice for each

1:27

other because honestly I don't have all the answers I've been doing this a long time but I don't have all the answers anymore than anyone does right i'm just

1:33

some guy you met on the internet So welcome to Startup Fundraising office hours and we're here to help So what

1:40

we're going to be doing tonight is taking questions from the audience and uh having people come on camera if they

1:45

want to practice their pitches or if they've submitted questions and I'll be trying to help them based on my decades

1:50

of experience So why am I the one with the microphone well that's a legitimate question I'm the guy that's running the

1:56

show and I've taken the initiative to try to build a community around accelerating early stage startup

2:03

entrepreneurship So welcome to the party and this is uh the focus of um most of my career at this point I've been an

2:09

internet entrepreneur since the 90s I raised my first venture fund uh venture round of funding for my first company

2:15

back during com 1.0 and now we're on I don't know 3.0 or maybe even 4.0 and

2:21

I've been doing it ever since So I've had some uh wins some losses and along the way I've helped and met a lot of

2:27

entrepreneurs all over the world and the Startup Council is the organization that I created to help you join the party

2:33

I've written these books behind me here uh over here The uh three in the middle

2:38

are in English The others are all foreign translations Russian and Japanese Vietnamese Turkish Polish and

2:43

so on So if you're here because you've read one of my books welcome I'm working on a new book that is specifically about

2:49

how to raise money So keep your eyes open for that And today we're going to be taking your questions and comments

2:54

like I said so that we can help you advance your startup dreams Um there's a lot to be learned and I'm here to help

3:01

share with you the benefits of my expertise over decades of doing this Uh since I graduated from Stanford in the

3:06

mid90s I've been an internet guy ever since So I've seen a lot of things done a lot of deals I'm an active angel

3:12

investor and over 30 companies now and an LP in a bunch of different funds and basically trying to find opportunities

3:19

that more than scale And that's really thesis of venture capital type investors

3:25

uh every on type of entrepreneurship is valid but we're really looking for hyperrowth opportunities That's what VC

3:31

investors and angel investors which is what I am are looking for So it's a special kind of language a special way

3:38

of thinking about the world and of evaluating business opportunities And I want to help you figure out how to do

3:43

that too That's what we're doing tonight So we got some people coming in in the back room to join us and uh they're

3:49

going to be doing their pitches and so forth And I want to uh bring in let's turn on the chat Uh we get people coming

3:55

in and saying hello from all over the world If you're checking in please let me know where you're from Uh Mark and Tandika and Vamsi and uh Nathan and

4:03

Abdul and uh you're welcome Abdul Happy to help That's why we're here And honestly that is why the startup council

4:10

is here This is an organization that I built I've got other things I could be doing obviously right but I'm trying to

4:15

help level up everybody I came from modest means and have managed to make myself kind of an insider now And I'd

4:23

encourage you to take the advantage of what we're offering here at startupconsil.org and go and join There

4:29

are seven different newsletters email newsletters you can get that can help you find investors that can help you find events to attend that can help you

4:36

well kind of everything that I was missing when I was a first-time entrepreneur So I've tried hard to build all that for you so that you can level

4:43

up and get farther faster All right So Laval is here and Doug from Toronto and

4:50

Kelvin also from Canada Omid from Orange County and uh let's see Ace Digital

4:55

Productions from Las Vegas and Cape Town All right great All over the world tonight And I can see backstage we've

5:01

got a Matthew and a Professor G They're going to be joining me on camera here in a second And I'd encourage the rest of

5:07

you if you are watching on LinkedIn come over to YouTube and subscribe And most of all we'd really appreciate your likes

5:13

and comments on LinkedIn and on YouTube because that this is all social media algorithm driven right and I don't make

5:20

any money doing this This is honestly a community service But when we do it it takes a lot of planning more than you'd

5:25

realize and more promotion and then followup and blah blah blah And I have a team of course and we'd love your support and spreading the word so we can

5:32

help more people That's the idea More people can be helped So people like

5:37

Monica from Dubai and Nathan is from Lagona Niguel and uh Nick from Palm

5:42

Beach Florida And yes um some questions are coming in here and Jagadish from India We're in we're in India Jagish

5:48

we're doing it you know that's a good point actually Guang Rick from San Diego Uh I'm doing it at night This is

5:54

nighttime for me right i could definitely be doing other things but I'm doing this at night now I've done it for years at lunchtime for me when it was

6:00

most easy But what I've started doing lately is doing them in the evening Why

6:06

so I can help you guys in India and Australia in the Middle East uh trying to reach other markets right there's so

6:12

much knowledge here in Silicon Valley and most people don't share it So I'm here to try to share with you and I'm

6:18

taking time on a Tuesday night to try to help you guys during your business day So we'd really appreciate whatever likes

6:25

or subscribes or references that you have uh to your friends Bring your friends in You can invite your friends

6:30

to join us right now In fact uh we're live on YouTube or on LinkedIn And of course you can come find me on LinkedIn

6:35

and say hello and follow the Orange County uh the uh startup council as well All right so we're about to get in and

6:41

I'm going to bring on a couple of our friends Um it looks like some of those people at least one of them I saw Omid

6:47

Omid you're at the wrong link You sent in a question or a pitch right so you need to go to the backstage link Go look

6:52

at the um sign up uh again on Eventbrite and you can get the the link because I can't bring you on camera to pitch if

7:00

you're in the public chat room right you need to be backstage like some of our other friends And that's a different link which apparently um Matthew and

7:07

Professor G figured out So I'm going to bring them on here in just a second But I just have to say a couple things First

7:12

of all this is not qualified legal or financial advice Please consult your own advisors This is free advice I'm just

7:19

doing my best to try to help you but I don't know you and I don't know your situation I don't know your business So

7:25

trying to help you and point you in the right direction but you definitely should consult your own professional advisors All right don't take this too

7:32

seriously This is for entertainment purposes only Also this is being recorded and will be shared online

7:37

worldwide So please don't say anything too confidential or anything stupid And

7:43

uh because it will be um located in the replays potentially forever right so

7:48

that's how the the internet works and YouTube And um speaking of that if you have questions and if you're one of

7:53

those people who's watching this later and you're watching it on YouTube you can comment on YouTube and we'll follow

7:59

up and try to answer your questions So this is not just a once a month show This is a kind of a all the time we're

8:06

trying to help you sort of business right uh not even business service So if you want to go over to YouTube or

8:11

LinkedIn even tomorrow or next week or even next month and ask something I will

8:16

try and my team will try to help you So that's what we're doing and that's the vibe Okay So I hope this sounds like

8:22

you're in the right place and uh and thank you Tandika for getting up early in uh Cape Town Yes that's early side

8:28

right uh this is we're hitting midday in India and Australia this time So okay So

8:36

yes if you can come online uh Vampy we we the the RSVPs for the online were

8:41

already distributed Those are um in people's inboxes already um you have to send it a question in advance otherwise

8:48

I just get overwhelmed and I already have a list of things and we're going to talk to the people who are backstage so I apologize for that but we will also go

8:54

through questions in the chat okay so Vampy if you want to put a question in the chat I'll try to address that as

8:59

well all right so let's get going enough uh pencil sharpening let's get going

9:05

here and I'm going to bring on some of our friends from backstage and we're going to ask them just real quickly what

9:10

they want to talk about and then I'll try to pull together a quick little um agenda A and like I said we'll take

9:16

questions from the chat room as well So go ahead and place questions there but I'm going to bring on and invite uh

9:21

Professor G and Matthew if you want to come on you got to turn your camera back on I saw you a minute ago Hi everyone

9:27

Hey there And there's Matthew Okay so we've got three of you anyway Hey guys So nice It's all guys tonight it looks

9:33

like All right so we got to get some you ladies next time So nice to meet all of you Welcome Can you all smile likewise

9:39

Matthew can you back up there you are Okay I see That's all right Let's try this one and

9:46

and I promise someone uh shout sales bricks is that

9:51

great All right Well nice to see you guys Can you give me a wave we'll just take a picture and share that around later All right Awesome Good to see you

9:57

guys All right So I just want to ask each of you what you want to talk about Just give me the super quick version and then uh I'll come back to you once we

10:03

figure out what the order is Okay So um let's see who's who here Matthew you want to go first sure Yeah Real quick

10:10

Where where you where are you and what do you want to ask about yeah So for me um I'm uh Matt I'm the founder and CEO

10:17

of Cipher We are a job tech startup based here in the Silicon Valley Um I wanted to uh I'd actually signed up to

10:25

give like a mini pitch um here on as well to I guess ask some insights on the

10:31

pitch I guess Perfect Okay we'll we'll come back to that in a couple minutes You're in the right place Um I we'll

10:37

kind of alternate those with the questions So um who else do we have here we've got Sorry I don't know all your

10:42

names Professor G That's this gentleman here Hey there Hi everyone I'm Marissa Gonzalez I'm a college professor and

10:49

counselor at Sacramento City College And I wanted to take a couple minutes to share the technology I've built to

10:55

ensure that students make it through the college and university pipeline and onto the workforce Very cool Okay that was a

11:02

pitch practice as well You emailed in right i got your Yeah Okay so we'll do that Excellent So we got two pitches and

11:08

then that leaves us with our third contestant tonight is Amid Hello Omid Hello Uh my name is Omid I'm in Orange

11:16

County California And uh I graduated with my PhD in aerospace But then I just

11:22

like realized something that I can just like do in entertainment industry So I just like came up with the idea of a

11:29

crossplatform uh AIdriven solution that is just like integrated a lot of things

11:35

into it So it's just like a pitch uh practice here Okay

11:40

Me and three of my friends that are also PhD graduate just started developing this app and Okay great All right so we

11:49

got three pitches then That's pretty straightforward Easy enough Okay so I'm going to I'm going to turn you guys off for a second I'll bring you back on in

11:55

order Okay in just a minute Um let's uh so that's what we've got um to to start

12:01

with tonight is pitches Uh which would be great Um if any of the rest of you have questions you can put those in the

12:06

chat room And uh also you can answer each other's questions One of the superpowers of this you know internet

12:13

thing is that you can talk to each other I'm not trying to hog the air time I'm just kind of the host of the party but you all are welcome to talk to each

12:19

other You can post your LinkedIn Actually I'll put mine up there too If I'm not LinkedIn with you go ahead and say hello Um where is it there we go You

12:27

can follow the startup council and you can follow me personally and we'll connect Please if you if you're uh

12:33

greeting me personally put a line in there about how we know each other because I try to I don't just I try to

12:39

screen people that they're actually real people So if you just say you know I saw you at startup office hours that's cool

12:45

That would help me uh find you guys All right So go ahead and talk to each other in the chat room I'm not hogging the air

12:51

time I'm just trying to help And especially once the pitches start please offer them feedback Okay So here's the

12:57

um the sit Well let's let's just let me run through the chat room real quick and then we'll do the pictures Let's see if I missed anything Looks like it's

13:02

working Apparently everybody can hear me That's good The uh we've got people here from YouTube and um YouTube and LinkedIn

13:11

which is great because sometimes that doesn't work So we're batting a thousand so far So I'm going to run through the

13:16

chat room What did I miss see if anything's on fire here Okay so hello Hello uh Tandika and Mark and Nathan and

13:25

Okay so Nithan has a question Uh okay That's a good one Nathan So stick around Um he wants to he or she wants to talk

13:32

about uh when where does a startup have to be in terms of product and traction

13:37

to engage angel investors That's you know what Nathan why don't we do that first because that will set the context

13:43

for our friends who are going to pitch Uh that's a really good question All right but hold on Let me just see what else is hiding here in the chat room

13:50

Hello from Toronto and Palm Beach Um let's see India DC Hyabad excellent Cape

13:57

Town Okay On YouTube Lake Forest Hi Ruby Excellent Um okay Good Okay Well let's

14:04

start with Nathan's question because that is um kind of a sets the stage for everything So Nathan and I apologize I

14:11

don't know how to say that or uh but I'll go ahead and I'll pretend I know how to say it So where does a startup

14:17

have to be in terms of product and traction to engage angel investors this is I I just mentioned I'm writing a new

14:23

book right this is like half the book because there are different answers in different situations Blah blah blah Okay

14:30

But I'm trying to summarize this and I'll I'll share with you kind of some of the insights I'm coming with from the

14:36

book Here you go A startup has can't just have an idea Those days are over

14:43

It's too easy to start a startup now with just an idea Anybody can do that And in fact anybody can all build a

14:49

website or maybe even use AI and generate something that looks pretty cool without investors So this is good

14:56

news for those of you who are startup founders because you don't need as much money to get started So maybe you don't

15:02

even need investors So I would seriously think about that right the paradigm has shifted Like 20 years ago you could kind

15:08

of maybe if you had an idea and you were smart and work hard maybe you could raise some money These days an idea is

15:15

not enough but you may not need the money So things are different right like think about what you're doing in terms

15:22

of how can you do this most cost- effectively because that's what investors are going to want to see

15:27

regardless So where does it start to have to be in terms of product and traction well it depends on the angel investor right if the angel investor is

15:33

your mom or your cousin or your rich uncle they're going to be much more sympathetic to you If it's an angel

15:39

investor you've never met well then they're going to be more like a venture capitalist or a bank in the sense of

15:45

trying to really make sure you're hitting some numbers that look like a legitimate growth opportunity Why

15:50

because they don't know you They don't trust you the way a family member angel would So you've got to start looking

15:55

like an investable opportunity right are you going to make the money that's

16:00

really what people are after Are you going to make the money and so let me give a couple quick more responses and

16:07

then we'll get to the pitches But in terms of product and traction first of all the product is really important but

16:14

the product isn't as important as the business Most entrepreneurs first-time

16:19

entrepreneurs especially that I see pitch they are understandably obsessed with the product and they need to be

16:25

because that's what they're building right they have an idea about something that nobody else is doing or at least not doing as well and maybe has never

16:32

done That's you know it's the key for them that's going to unlock everything So of course they want to talk about the

16:37

product But time out angel investors we're not really interested in your product We're interested in your

16:44

business The business How are we going to make money right so this leads to the

16:50

second part of this question traction So what's traction traction is progress What are you doing that is demonstrating

16:58

momentum So the easiest way to demonstrate momentum is to have of course revenue right if you have a bunch

17:04

of sales and you're growing real fast that's wonderful traction You probably won't have trouble finding investors of

17:09

any sort if you can demonstrate that there's a clear path to profitability and that I' for every dollar I put in

17:14

I'm going to get five or 10 or 50 back That's what investors are looking for Full stop But if you don't have that

17:20

what do you do well you still need a good product But the secret sauce is

17:26

drum roll talk to customers You need to show me that

17:32

customers care about what you're doing Not just you and not just your mom or

17:37

your rich uncle but that customers are interested in the solution and that they're willing to pay for it So if the

17:43

thing isn't ready and it's going to take a whole bunch of money and time you know you're in this chicken and egg situation

17:48

Yeah I know I'm sorry That's life You've got to figure out a way to talk to

17:54

enough customers that it looks like you have momentum anyway So what do investors want to see we want to see a

18:02

product that's working and that customers are excited enough to want to pay for That's what you need to attract

18:07

angel investors The more they're actually paying for it the better But that can be a slow start right so you

18:13

back up What can you do you can um you can demonstrate traction by doing a

18:19

customer survey or talking to a bunch of customers or getting people to sign up on a mailing list for pre-orders There's

18:26

lots of different ways I'll talk about all this more in my book but there are ways to kind of fake is the wrong word

18:31

but um kind of baby traction I guess baby steps right and you need to

18:37

demonstrate a bunch of those and keep communicating with uh with investors so that you can build a relationship enough

18:44

that they start to trust you and see that you're making progress They'll start to trust you the way your mom or

18:50

your rich uncle would That's how an angel investor will invest So you've got not just an idea not just a product but

18:58

a business that is developing and showing some kind of momentum and traction ideally with customers ideally

19:07

making money That's kind of the path Okay So this will set up our friends who are going to do the uh the uh pitches

19:13

here but that's kind of the context for what we're going to be talking about So we're going to listen to uh Omid and

19:19

Michael and um Emoritio talk about their companies and we'll give them some feedback Okay so everybody stick around

19:25

Let's do this together and we'll have um uh some feedback for them I will listen to them and you guys in the chat room as

19:31

well Please give them feedback Uh we don't have time to like debate whether it's a good idea or not That's a deeper

19:38

strategic discussion But we're going to keep these like under two minutes Okay guys like just a minute or two kind of

19:44

give us the concept and then I'll try to give you some tips on what you could or should say better or what you missed

19:51

that kind of constructive stuff about the format of the presentation And everybody in the chat room you're

19:57

invited to do that as well That's how we can help each other Okay so let's uh let's get do a couple of these And I can

20:03

see more questions coming in here um from uh Vampy and

20:09

uh yeah and Aaron and Okay Yeah we'll get to we'll get to those as well All right so guys backstage let's see who

20:15

who should we have first uh let's see who's in a weird time zone Um two of you are in You're all in California actually

20:23

aren't you okay so you're all in my time zone Okay so that's easy All right Well let's start with uh let's start with

20:28

Mauritio just for kicks because he's at the top of my list Uh first time I'm using this platform Scott So uh would I

20:36

have to go ahead and share here uh okay So sorry No these are verbal pitches only So I didn't say that part So we're

20:42

just doing a couple minutes just I've tried that and it's a it's a fair point and I apologize I didn't say that The um

20:50

whenever we start sharing and stuff things break right so we're just kind of going to do you just if and if you want

20:55

to stop I'll go to somebody else while you think about that But um the idea is just just hit some bullet points kind of

21:02

like your elevator pitch and hopefully that'll give enough feedback enough context for feedback from me in the

21:07

audience Is that okay or The more practicing the better I've learned over the years of doing Yeah

21:12

There you go Well you're a professor so you speak for a living right okay All right Cool Okay So ladies and gentlemen

21:18

here we have Morito from Sacramento and he's going to tell us about Inspir I think I'm saying that So um hi everyone

21:24

My name is Mauricio Gonzalez I'm a college counselor and professor for the last 22 years in the largest system of higher education in America the

21:31

California community colleges Um unfortunately what's happening in our workforce today is causing massive

21:38

deficiencies uh due to the lack of students completing college If you didn't know this already the California

21:44

community colleges has 2 million students that are currently enrolled 80% of those two million every single year

21:51

have a transfer to university goal Unfortunately it the success rates for

21:58

transfer students from community colleges to public four-year and private four-year universities is only

22:05

21% after the student attends community colleges for four years So in other

22:11

words our largest system of higher education is hemorrhaging students We lose

22:16

79% of our students over four years Now what does that cause that causes massive

22:24

workforce deficiencies California's economy which is the fourth largest in the world is now currently 1.5 million

22:33

bachelor's degrees short of economic demand And it's mostly because students

22:39

cannot figure out how to make it through the largest most accessible system of higher education which is the California

22:46

Community Colleges Now I've been in the industry for over 22 years I know the

22:52

people I know the politics I know the students I know the obstacles So what I did is I developed inspir and

23:00

inspir inspire me because if we can inspire people we can have them climb

23:06

mountains up that salary track up that workforce you know levels etc up those

23:12

degree and certificate levels So my platform is called Techco Guide It's an cool owl with sunglasses because that's

23:19

how I show up to work to meet my students where they're at so we can have real conversations about how they

23:26

specifically are going to make it through any certificate and college degree program that's offered through

23:31

the largest system of higher ed What we built is a free platform that's open to the public There's two pieces to our

23:37

company exposure and guidance We have 25,000 followers on social media that

23:44

have left over 100,000 comments on how we are helping them while colleges let

23:52

them struggle and drown Please follow us on TechGuide on Instagram on Tik Tok on

23:57

YouTube and on Facebook at Facebook Meta because you'll then see the types of content and the types of information

24:04

that not only our company provides the public for free but also provides the

24:09

tech guide platform to literally show students and perspect that means

24:14

perspective and current students that are in high school college or university how to successfully navigate a

24:20

bachelor's degree the most affordable way possible posible So the one promise we give our students is we're going to

24:26

tell you the truth on what to do how to do it when to do it and what to take in

24:31

order for you to finish your college degree that way I I not only live this

24:37

we're about out of time That was very very good Thank you Yeah Um okay So

24:44

everybody in the chat room obviously he's a good talker He knows he knows his stuff So that's that's always helps

24:50

right um and if you have suggestions for him would love to hear what you think he could do differently or better Not so

24:55

much like this is a good idea or a bad Well if it's a good idea I'm sure he'd like to hear that but this is more like

25:01

about like what could be different about the pitch Like what's what's missing right so I'll start there And um you're

25:08

obviously well spoken You have a nice way about you and that's a big benefit right it's it's a it's a blessing to be fluent in English right absolutely Um so

25:17

okay So I would say you fell right into the trap that I talked about You talked all about the product and zero about the

25:24

business I didn't hear anything about money So if investors So it was a good

25:29

pitch but that was more like a sales pitch right not an investor pitch So I would turn that around and if you had

25:35

two more minutes I would want to hear you The only numbers I heard were about

25:40

the social media share Well no you had a bunch of numbers at the beginning like that the retention rates were very interesting right that you identified

25:46

the problem solution nicely right the churn is massive and that that clearly represents a problem and for those who

25:52

don't know problem solution is a very common framework for these kind of pitches right um but you need to get to

25:58

the problem solution therefore money faster Um people I think would would identify with that and you come with a

26:04

lot of credibility given your history in the system So that's great Um but I would want to hear how does that

26:10

translate into the target market like how many of those students are there that you think are reachable and then what would they pay or is the who's

26:16

paying right I don't even know right is it And is it even software i presume it's software but you didn't say that

26:21

right so well you kind of did but um and I have to apologize for butchering in

26:29

inspir Okay Sorry All right My apologies

26:39

Inspe education technology to unclog the pipelines The guidance platform that's

26:45

open to the public for free is called Techo Guide Techo Guide Okay So well that would be easier for some of us to

26:51

say properly but I'm hearing you Thank you for the feedback I totally get what you're

26:58

saying now I wish I would have gone third or fourth because you would Yeah Yeah Well okay Well if we run out of questions we'll have you back We can

27:03

come back next month But that's the idea like get to the get to the business faster and then we'll know better

27:09

whether we're interested or not because the problem sol the problem is pretty you've got that and then it sounds like

27:14

you have a solution as well but entrepreneurs want to get caught up talking about what they're building yeah how many customers we have how much

27:21

revenue we're bringing in what our projections look like here in the future and then the last piece and you don't

27:27

have to be firm on this is what are you asking for right never take an opportunity like this without asking

27:33

because you never know who's listening And he did a good job Everybody did a good job You notice how he tossed in follow us on socials right that was

27:39

smart right because this is an audience right so always take the opportunity to promote your stuff And part of that

27:45

would be at the end we're looking for whatever you know $2 million blah blah blah whatever you know that kind of

27:50

thing And even if you're not looking for money as he may not be um at this point I don't know because he didn't get there

27:56

Oh we are Okay Okay Well all right But you can even if you're not you can always say "We're looking for you know

28:01

we're trying to hire this kind of person or if anybody knows anybody at Coca-Cola or NASA you know like target customers."

28:07

You can ask for connections and advisors And it's always a good idea to to you know milk the audience essentially So so

28:14

great Well thank you Nice to meet you And um we we're going to uh move on to our next contestant here and that was

28:20

Professor G from Sacramento Uh a couple comments in the chat room Ruby says

28:26

"Marita I would suggest to talk about how you make money and what's your ask." Well there you go Ruby Ruby's Ruby

28:32

nailed it We uh I know Ruby she she's a neighbor So um we go to the same meetups

28:38

it sounds like So um Okay And then Erin says "How is Techog Guide different from the academic adviserss already?" Council

28:44

Oh that's a good one So a differentiation question Yeah that's that's a fair point I think that would be worth addressing as well Okay So um

28:52

and anybody else that has questions you can um or I'm sorry comments put them in the chat And uh Mauricio you might put

28:59

in the uh um uh if you want to leave the backstage and go out to the public chat

29:05

you could enter your LinkedIn or your URL or something like that Okay All right So uh Praep Yes Okay Great You

29:12

want to practice your pitch as well Can you just type in the message there in the backstage chat what your company is

29:17

because I don't think you RSVPd right so I don't know who you are Can you tell me a little bit about what you want to talk

29:22

about in the backstage there all right So let's go on to um let me just see

29:28

what if we got any new questions that I want to address here because I thought I saw a followup from Nitten Uh because let's see

29:38

here All right Where'd it

29:46

go okay Sorry I'm just trying to scroll down here Well let me just Oh there it is Nathan

29:53

says "What is the best resource what is the best resource one can access to identify angel investors interested in

30:00

the space I'm focused on?" So that's a great question This is the number one question I get for years and I've been

30:07

doing this a long time This is always the question Um so thank you for asking it Uh there is no good answer Angel

30:14

investors are private right uh I'm more public than most because I write books and stuff right and I run this startup

30:20

council Most angel investors you don't know they're there So it's really hard to find them So what I would suggest

30:26

here's a couple Again this will be in my book Uh look at your local universities There's usually some kind of angel

30:32

program associated with them Google your town name or your county or your city

30:39

whatever and angel group There are usually angel groups at least in most major cities here where we live I think

30:45

you said you were here in Orange County as well uh Tech Coast Angels I belong to Tech Coast Angels We're the largest

30:50

angel group on the West Coast probably in America There's about 400 of us and we look at all kinds of stuff So uh do

30:58

your research Go Google is your friend and look for angels Um and those are two great places uh universities and then

31:04

angel groups And then another one is to look for something about you If you have any personal characteristics that are

31:12

um distinguishing about you like you're a woman right or you're a veteran or

31:18

you're an immigrant or you're black or you're Chinese anything right and and

31:23

look for angel groups that invest in that Traditionally angel groups were all geographical because everybody kind of

31:30

invested within about an hour of their house right but because of one of the few good things that came out of COVID

31:35

is that we can do this right so now angel groups are global and you can find investors who may be interested There

31:42

are angel groups that only invest in women and only invest in veterans and only invest in people who went to the

31:48

University of Kentucky or whatever it is right so again Google is your friend The other answer I have because I get this

31:55

question so often is I'm going to put this on the screen We built this for you

32:00

This is there is a directory of startup investors believe it or not called

32:08

startupinvestorsdirectory.com and I built this uh for you guys So this has about 3,000 early stage investors from

32:14

all over the world And it delineates their um investment thesis where they're

32:20

located their contact information and um their portfolio what they invest in what they don't invest in all this stuff And

32:26

it's all searchable So we built this for you That's one of the services of the startup council It's not free Uh we have

32:32

to cover our costs because it took years to build Um but it's I think well that

32:37

actually that's a free promo code I think So it's free for you I guess Um but it's normally $79 It's not $10,000

32:44

like Pitchbook for those of you who don't know The number one resource the real answer to Nathan's question is

32:49

there's a resource called Pitchbook Pitchbook.com And it costs so much that

32:55

they won't even say on the website how much it costs It's between 10 and $15,000 a year which is ridiculous for

33:01

early stage founders because of course they're not targeting early they're not trying to help anybody They're trying to make money and their customers are

33:07

investment bankers and and people like that right so they're not trying to help you So we are So

33:13

startupinvestorsdirectory.com might be useful to you guys And that code um I don't know if it's I guess it's free

33:18

Yeah All right So good for you Welcome Okay So next up we're going to do

33:23

another pitch and then I'll get back to some more Um uh okay So Pard no you're in the right

33:30

place Just talk in that chat room right here and tell me what your tell me what

33:35

your uh company pitches about please And I'll bring you on if I can Uh Thomas we

33:41

don't have more time This is going to run out And everybody you need to RSVP before the show right i usually take

33:47

these things at least uh 24 if not 48 hours in advance Sorry it's just just too hard to do um you know in real time

33:55

So if you want to prep for next month I'm happy to have you on So Matthew yes Would you like to be up next he just

34:00

asked me backstage If that's a yes then we'll bring you on Okay here comes Matthew How do we do this here we go

34:07

Bang There he is Yes There we go All right Go ahead So

34:13

two minutes no uh no slides just talk and we'll we'll give you some friendly feedback How's that sound

34:19

great Okay Hit it whenever you're ready Okay Well thanks all Um my name is uh

34:25

Matthew Gabriel I'm the founder and CEO of um Cipher We are a um job tech

34:31

startup based here in Silicon Valley and we're looking to um change the way that

34:37

um staffing um and um sorry for the

34:42

stuttering but change the way staffing is done uh for small companies and manufacturers throughout the United

34:48

States Um right now um as far as um as per May

34:53

of 2025 uh there have been about uh 150,000 layoffs um across various different

35:00

sectors Um many pe many job seekers are looking for work Um but in spite of that

35:07

uh many are also my my sincere apologies all uh many

35:13

are also going through difficulty in searching for jobs um due to phenomenons

35:19

phenomena such as ghost jobs and fake job postings Um BL statistics have um

35:25

for the previous year determined that as many as 24 million uh job seekers have

35:30

fallen victim to such scams and um they are estimated to have cost um the job

35:38

market at least um 50 billion in in in essentially damages And despite this

35:45

there's not been a lot of um mobility from the market to address these needs

35:52

Um we are looking to

35:58

um my my sincere apologies That's why you practice No worries Tell

36:03

me about the business though That was all product Tell me about the business Got it So we um at at Cipher are

36:10

currently building a um job AI powered job platform that will help um keep keep

36:18

scammers and other spoofery out of the interactions between um job seekers and

36:26

the firms seeking to hire them Uh we are currently have a platform in development

36:31

um and we're looking to get uh something released by um end of Q2 2025 Um right

36:39

now we already have some existing partnerships with uh companies such as um the LMS startup learning based out of

36:45

Atlanta as well as um several other nonprofit and business entities Um but

36:51

we're looking to forge new partnerships with those in the job tech space as well as um those who might be wish to work in

36:58

our our verticals Um feel free to contact us We we our social media is

37:05

scant the building but we are um on uh YouTube LinkedIn uh and Facebook and

37:11

we're also coming up with our new site which is cyrux media holdings at um.com which will be live soon Okay Well

37:19

there we go Right on time Thank you all Thank you all for your pace especially given my unexpected stutter Yeah no

37:25

worries Well that's why we do this It's not easy to do It's hard right so doing

37:30

it in front of you know a bunch of people you don't know is hard So um I don't be embarrassed at all That that

37:36

this is how it works That's why you practice So kudos to you for being brave enough to practice right um so sounds

37:42

like an interesting opportunity Uh again a lot about the product not much about the business So um we want to hear the

37:50

money right you didn't talk about how much money you're going to make how many customers there are how what they're

37:55

going to pay Um both you and and Mauricio if you're still listening there's a question for both of your your

38:00

type of companies Who is the customer right i you don't have to answer me now

38:06

but like you know is the customer an individual is this a direct to consumer play or is it school districts or is it

38:11

employers or is it I don't know right so that will help investors understand your business a lot better Like who are you

38:18

actually selling to because if you're selling direct to consumer that's a different you know approach You'd have to a lot of money for consumer branding

38:24

and marketing Like you need to buy Super Bowl commercials some someday you know as opposed to like B2B where you're

38:30

talking maybe to partners like you said Maybe you're going that route because you have a bunch of partners um and they

38:36

would do some reselling for you right so those are different angles that investors like to hear about So I wanted to applaud you for that because the

38:42

traction you have you mentioned which I I think maybe there's more but so it's early stage development and but you have

38:49

some partners um that to our earlier topic that's traction right like people

38:54

other than you think it's a good idea that's big right it's not zero to one is

38:59

the hard part so if other people are interested that that's good so I would talk more about that and how that's

39:06

going to lead to the money um and other than that um yeah a a little more practice and and you'll get it Don't

39:11

worry Let's see what the chat room says Anybody else have comments here um especially on LinkedIn land or elsewhere

39:18

says I think we come all around the world Um hello Z from Sweden and hello Trevor Yeah there you go So if you guys

39:24

have comments for Matthew go ahead and or Matt go ahead and chime in And um I

39:29

think you're you're on the way right so just practice And here here's the thing I do Um if I'm going to do a pitch I try

39:37

to have a few bullet points And if you pe first- timers will try to write like

39:42

on note cards and memorize it and then you'll get flustered and you and you'll lose it right give yourself like three

39:49

or four bullet points and then depending on how much time you have you can kind of expand or contract them you know so

39:55

your points are like what's the problem what's the solution why us and how we're going to make money And then like make

40:01

sure each of those is no more than 30 seconds if you have two minutes If you have six minutes then they can be a

40:07

minute and a half each right because you know this stuff you can kind of expand and get kind of an accordion you know

40:12

that's the way I think about pitches anyway Yeah Well thanks I really appreciate the advice Yeah I hope that's

40:17

helpful to you Hope to see you again Uh please uh like and share and all that stuff Trying trying to do our best to

40:23

help Um and yeah come over to startupconsil.org Make I guess you might be on your uh your our email list anyway

40:30

if you're here but if you're not come on over All right let's uh who's going to be next omid is uh do we do Omid yeah

40:36

Omid is next right and then we can do PIP So let's uh look at the chat room again here See if any comments came in

40:43

there Um okay Ruby I see your question Vampy

40:51

I'll get to you as well Let me just um Yeah Tandique I agree with that

40:57

comment Okay looks like Trevor and Vampy are talking to each other That's fine Go ahead guys

41:04

Um somebody's talking to an AI angel investor Well that's interesting Um look

41:10

here I'll put that up just in case anybody knows more than that I've been talking to No Cap first AI agent that's

41:17

an angel investor So I don't know I'm not sure what that means but if that looks interesting to you go check it out

41:24

Thanks for sharing that And then uh Sweden and South Africa Yeah good We got a nice global Yeah And just memorize

41:31

bullet points Don't memorize Right Oh okay That's exactly LinkedIn user I don't know who you are but we think alike All right Cool So let's go on to

41:37

Omid and then I will come back to some of these other questions And uh let's

41:43

see Yes No no cap Was that it can LinkedIn user or whoever put that in there um put that up again I'm going to

41:50

bring Omid in to talk to us and he's going to tell us about his entertainment

41:57

aggregator Hey Hello everyone Uh my name is Omid and I'm in Orange County

42:03

California And I wanted to talk about like uh my idea and pitch my idea to you

42:09

guys So I'm going to start uh telling you who I am myself because I think that's the most important part more than

42:16

even the product Who am I am I capable of doing that or no so I just like got my uh I have two masters and a PhD in

42:22

aeros engineer I was focused on computational mechanics multiscale modeling of materials from quantum to continuum level Then all of a sudden

42:30

when I was just like graduated from PhD I just like was uh trying to enjoy entertainment and then I realized

42:36

although I'm a techsavvy and I have just like spent all of my life like coding it takes me a lot of time to just like find

42:42

the good movie or something that would just like uh entertain you or just like capturing I would just start watching a

42:48

movie and after half an hour it was just like I realized I was watching the garbage So all of a sudden just like

42:53

real I realized that there there's a lot of potential I have already started like uh five startups Three two of them are

43:00

just like went uh bankrupt or just like didn't work out Two of them actually just like uh got to a point that I just

43:06

like made uh more than a million dollar revenue but it was back in my country So then I moved to US I finished my

43:12

education and then I came up with this idea But this idea became more interesting and this is a patent pending

43:18

idea It's just going to be patented We're just like file for the patent The whole point of this idea other than

43:23

being aggregated it would just like going to be contra content extracted So whenever you're just like watching a

43:28

movie or something and you see like someone is wearing a nice suit or wearing a very nice watch uh the app

43:33

just like goes and grabs and just like tells you what is the thing what is the watch that that person is wearing or

43:38

what is the suit that that person is wearing and it will just like give it to you Or if they're talking about something that you don't know anything

43:44

about the app would just like goes and just like uh the AI would just like recognize what they're talking to you and will list all the relevant products

43:50

What makes this uh interesting from business point of view is just like because 99% of the US house households

43:58

pay at least one streaming service and they're just like paying $46 per month and uh this is right now is just like at

44:07

$544 billion of streamings and it was just like grow to 1.9 trillion by 2030

44:12

So it's just like and this is just like video and I'm I'm not talking about the video It's just like goes over the music

44:18

video games and food and grocery deliveries and uh books So all of all of

44:24

them together you're talking about a trillion dollar like uh uh market that they're talking about And it has like 8%

44:31

growth per year which is amazing We're out of We're out of We're out of time Omid So same same idea Sounds

44:39

fascinating Way too much about the problem and the market not enough about the business You were just getting to it

44:44

right so it takes practice I hear you were warming up but this everybody does this so don't feel bad People warm up

44:51

They do all this warm up Just get to it This is business right Tell us we're going to make a billion

44:56

dollars in three years Go Right That's true Yeah So especially if you have a

45:02

very impressive academic background right you're used to a lot of proof points right step step step step

45:08

conclusion Turn it around Tell me the headline and then back it up I think

45:14

that would be useful for you as an engineer right very logical thinker but give me the give me the conclusion and

45:20

then you can impress me with the backup Um so um I'm sorry to cut you off It

45:25

just that that I was just it sounded like you're going the right way and you're smart enough So I'm sure you were about to tell me the numbers but what we

45:32

really need is unit economics what you have You're blessed by having a a problem that is more obvious to people

45:38

than our previous two pictures Matthew or Mauricio because like you said everybody subscribes to streaming

45:44

services right and we all think we're paying too much So you're not going to have to explain that a lot right just

45:50

kind of toss it out there You don't need to defend that That's not your PhD thesis right everybody's going to agree

45:56

right like this sucks Okay you got an answer Great How who's the customer how

46:01

does it make money when That's what that's what we need Yeah I have I have my business fly in front of me and I was

46:07

just like reading through that Yeah like yeah I didn't have enough time to just like get to there But yeah we just like

46:13

did an Uber just like kind of a thing hand out and just like get some sort of positive feedback initially and that was

46:19

the starting point for me and then I just like to two of my other friends that were just like PhD graduate in computer science and civil engineering

46:26

We started just like developing the MVP We're almost 80% done So and they're aiming to just like I think you're going

46:32

to be like a billion dollar like in a year something revenue maybe soon Great

46:38

Even even 1% of the market would just like be more than a billion dollar Yes Yes Okay But don't do that Investors

46:45

hate that That's a Don't take this the wrong way That's a lazy way to calculate

46:51

top down Like if we only have 1% of a zillion dollars we've got a zillion dollars right that's don't do that

46:57

That's investors will walk away You need to do it bottom up We have this many customers over this amount of time They

47:04

cost this much to acquire The average price is this with a gross margin of this Like build it from the bottom

47:10

You're an engineer You can do this right it's a very simple spreadsheet but build it from the bottom up and then I'll believe your numbers right okay That's

47:17

that's a better way to do it And it sounds like you've got more than more than got the chops to do that pretty easily Um so the only thing that I'm

47:24

just going to mention is just like should I just like because we are not just like a subscription based kind of a app So there's no hurdle or obstacle for

47:30

the people to subscribe It's just like free We are just like going to give commissions from affiliate markets basically Okay Yeah Well you need and

47:38

there are 15 ways of monetization that I just like came up with that we can just like do Yeah Yeah Uh from merchandise

47:44

sales ads uh premium model with add-ons like uh because we B2B because we have

47:49

an API that we will just like be able to sell data because all the data that I realized that all the data out there

47:56

from the APIs are just like super unstructured It's just like all over the place and we are organizing it in a way

48:02

that not only just like for movies for music for video games and uh books And

48:08

the last thing is just like a smart subscription that it would just like the app would just like subscribe and

48:14

unsubscribe automatically right just like gets to know who you are will just like do that Yeah that's that's

48:21

fascinating I mean and it sounds like your team could do that The normalization of that data would be a massive achievement There's no doubt

48:27

about it And there might just be value in the data set right there might be a licensing business But let me caution you You're

48:34

smart enough to think of 15 business lines Investors don't want to hear about 15 business lines We want you focused

48:39

And I wouldn't even say at least at first that it's more than movies Pick

48:45

your here Here's the here's the maximum I use that will also be in my new book What can make me the most amount of

48:50

money in the shortest amount of time with the least work pick that one and

48:55

then beat the out of it and show everybody that it works And then you can add this other revenue lines and other

49:02

media and all this other stuff because as investors when we hear we have 15 revenue lines and four different markets

49:09

we hear distraction right and you're going to have a tough time pursuing all those So find one and prove it like

49:15

become the king of whatever the first one is and then the money will flow right because you already you figured it

49:21

out and then you can cookie cutter it across the other both horizontal and vertical and that would be amazing So

49:27

does that make sense one thing like I'm just going to ask for the last question The only thing that they added the rest of like music and books was just like

49:33

because when you're just like watching a movie and you just like look for similar movies you love the movie so much and

49:39

just like saw what's a similar movies and the movies are garbage Again the similar movies are garbage too but maybe

49:45

I want to just like see similar music or similar books So the whole point of just

49:50

like adding those things was just like do uh like I was just like hoping of a AI agent that would just like go and

49:56

just like grab all the contents from all these different things and then we'll try to connect the movies with the music

50:03

with the books based on the content and not just like based on the title or genre It was that's why we just like

50:09

included but yeah initially we are only fa uh focusing on movies only Yeah

50:15

that's the initial part The MVP is on movies only That's it Yeah Yeah Okay I hear you If you have a new

50:20

interpretation of the market that's cool too right if they if it which by which I

50:26

mean what you said makes sense if it doesn't require a whole bunch more work to also do the music and also do the

50:32

clothes and also do the video game We already done with 75% of the MVP and

50:38

they already included most of this stuff Not to the depth but yeah just like the

50:43

structure is already established Yeah Right Right Okay Well so maybe you've got a new way of looking at this that AI

50:49

an AI agent approach can enable because as you know that's a crapload of data right nobody was able to do that five

50:55

years ago If you can do it that you defining a new market is a good way to be a billionaire But I was just like

51:02

hoping that because uh it's going to be outside of because out of the college right after college I started doing that

51:09

because I had a background in uh like entrepreneurship I started like two businesses So I'm just like looking

51:16

because uh I was hoping that it could just like uh attract investors So that's

51:21

the part that you're well uh you can call us nerd or whatever but you're just like stuck in where we can just like

51:27

find the people that are right people and we can go and pitch it to them because it has become very hard to get

51:32

your foot on the door and it's just like they don't even give you enough time to just like even pitch your ideas in a way that they would just like show what

51:39

you're trying to say So that's where we are just like having problems basically Yeah I I agree We're going to have to

51:44

move on but I will answer that question and because we still got to get to Praep and some other questions So I'm going to let you off camera but I will answer

51:49

that question It's a good question and congrats on the project you're making What what Omid is doing sounds pretty

51:55

impressive because you know if he can do it for entertainment media he can do it for a lot of other things So that's a pretty impressive team So how do you

52:01

find investors that are interested when none of them seem to be interested especially if you don't have traction in

52:07

your pre-product It's a big problem right the answer is research What you

52:13

need to do is this is another one of those things I call it a fox reversal Founders want to spend like I said 80%

52:20

of their time talking about the product and only 20% on the business You got to flip that Same thing with investors You

52:26

want to spend 80% of your time pitching and only 20% of your time researching them You got to flip that You got to

52:32

reverse it You got to spend 80% of your time just finding the right investors

52:37

Because if you get a bunch of nos it doesn't necessarily mean that no one's interested

52:43

It means that you're in the wrong room You didn't do enough research to be in

52:48

the right room with people who are interested Okay so you got to do a lot more research and don't waste your time

52:55

or my time as an investor by pitching people who aren't interested You got to double triple down on research before

53:01

the meeting Figure out every investor that you want to talk to or that you think you might want to talk to what do

53:08

they invest in not just that they you know they invest in media or they invest in AI That's not enough They invest in

53:15

agentic AI applied to media or they invest in medtech devices to cure uh

53:20

cancer of uh the veins or something you know specific right or or they invest in

53:27

women founders who live in the south who are doing things with beauty products I

53:32

don't you know whatever it is there are people there are investors in almost every niche these days And it's incumbent upon you as a founder to

53:38

triple your research so that you don't waste your time Right this is the biggest disconnect in the internet in

53:44

the uh startup ecosystem is the amount of time that's wasted in matchmaking So if you um want to find the right

53:50

investors like I said we built this thing and it's not perfect but I'll put it up again Startup investors directory

53:56

I built this because I know that everybody has this question and we built

54:01

it so that everybody all the investors that are listed there it shows their portfolio So what you need to do is go

54:07

and use the search tool say I'm an earlystage company in um aerospace

54:13

software and I want to find investors that do that and then find some and then

54:19

look what have they invested in Find similar companies right and like "Oh this oh these guys made a bunch of money

54:24

in a company that was kind of the equivalent of ours 10 years ago." Well what does that

54:31

mean they made a bunch of money They'll probably like to talk to us because we can make them more money doing the same

54:37

thing The pattern recognition you hear about with venture capitalists is exactly that Find people who already did

54:43

this Or if you can't find VCs think about companies that are active in your space

54:50

and who started those companies and are now retired Why because they got some money

54:58

and they already know this stuff They're going to give you the benefit of the doubt like your rich uncle might Not

55:05

because they know you like your uncle does but because they understand the business And if you spend your time pitching to investors who don't really

55:12

do your industry you're wasting your time But if you can find people that already know your industry it gives you

55:18

a big step up So anyway I hope that's helpful That's kind of my my take on

55:24

this Um that'll be unpacked more in future videos and uh view uh videos and

55:31

um and this book I keep talking about Okay so let's um talk through we Oh Praep is still here Praep I hope you can

55:37

hang on one more minute It's um kind of midday I think you're Are you in India because you've got it's middle of the

55:42

day there for you So um hopefully you're in India and because everybody else on California is trying to go to bed So let

55:48

me uh just look at the chat room Sure Thank you Praep Okay cool So we're gonna Praep will be the finale but let's just

55:55

zoom through the chat room because I know there were a few other things here that I thought were interesting and I promised to get to

56:01

Um let's see Vampy is volunteering to help connect businesses and investors

56:07

Um what's the procedure to start a company that pulls money from small investors and invest in startups and

56:13

other businesses that's called a syndicate Vampy Uh let me just put that up for a second I It depends a lot on

56:19

where you are Vampy are you are you in the States or are you I don't I don't know you So um the trick is that the

56:26

legal it's that's a legal question essentially but conceptually it's about just as you said pooling money and you

56:32

might call it a syndicate uh in the states those are often run on angelist.com for example or you can just

56:39

get a bunch of friends and start an email list or a WhatsApp group or something right and all agree to look at stuff or you can join organizations and

56:46

if I would recommend joining an organization depending on where you are again you could find a local angel group

56:52

or um if you're you are in India okay perfect so you should join TAI do you know about TAI uh TIE and it's the indis

57:00

entrepreneurs it's in six 50 60 different companies I'm a member of TAI myself and uh we do all kinds of

57:06

investing a lot of it in Indian entrepreneurs and all other things and if what city are you in actually let me

57:11

know about that too um but either way uh if you're folks listening to from India

57:16

tonight or this morning for you then uh go and look at at Thai and um there's

57:22

all kinds I was in Bangalore last month at their global summit um and uh and in Mysore and uh great people and a great

57:30

way to get connected um as a banker or anyone who's interested in investing That's

57:36

tie.org All right So that was a good one Let's keep moving here

57:41

Uh Beal Well I was in Begal Yeah Okay Vampy So yeah it sounds like you weren't there but I was There were about four or

57:48

5,000 of us at the uh international exhibition center Um and then we went to Mysore as well Mysuru So um yeah

57:56

Thai.org has a very active chapter in Bangalore and it sounds like you'd be a great fit So I'd recommend that to you

58:02

Tell them I sent you Okay so Aaron says "Uh angel investors seem to be focused

58:07

on technology and life sciences How to find angel investors to relaunch a patented golf tool swag item he sold to

58:14

a bunch of tournament sponsors." So um Erin that's a great question Um the rest it's too long to fit on the screen but

58:21

he says uh this he gets into the um the details of the market size and the rest

58:26

of his question which you guys can't really see Uh which is that there are 800,000 golf tournaments every year with

58:32

64 million participants So a huge growth opportunity and ROI So that's the idea

58:38

Um and he says the time is now because it could leverage social media that he didn't have 20 years ago Also good So

58:44

those are two things that I didn't say tonight which you guys should pay attention to if this is helpful One is

58:51

um point out why now What has changed if your idea is so good why hasn't somebody

58:58

done it already or why shouldn't you wait two or three or five more years why

59:03

now because investors are looking We have alternatives right where our money doesn't have to go to you It can go in

59:08

the stock market or another startup or I can buy a new car right like why now and

59:14

of course you already know we've covered why you and what the product is and that kind of stuff but why now is a big one that investors are looking for The other

59:21

one is investors eat numbers This is one of the themes from my new book investors eat numbers And if you've heard every

59:28

pitch tonight I've been encouraging them to give me more numbers If you don't feed us numbers we starve Investors need

59:35

numbers So you can't see it here on his uh popup here because the question is long but he started quantifying it for

59:41

me There are 800,000 tournaments 64 million participants Oh that's interesting That's a market I'd never

59:46

thought about So uh I think it's a useful question and it's a good way to think about it is to start quantifying

59:52

it like that So the answer is how do you find angel investors you're right Most

59:57

investors are not interested in golf swag They're interested in high growth hyperscaling opportunities usually in

1:00:03

life sciences or tech not because they're against golf Most investors do play golf at least here in the States

1:00:09

It's just that other things grow much faster and a physical product like you're talking about takes manufacturing

1:00:14

cost and um the unit economics are not as good as software generally uh because

1:00:19

it costs you whatever $50 to make it and you sell it for 100 bucks and there's a bunch of distribution costs and you'd be lucky to have a 20% or even 10% profit

1:00:26

margin right software can go like crazy right it might cost a million dollars as

1:00:32

opposed to maybe your $100,000 for your order of swag but that million dollars once it starts rolling you can add new

1:00:38

customers essentially infinitely with much higher profit margins And the same

1:00:43

thing with life sciences If you can get the medical device or the the new uh life science product through the FDA and

1:00:50

into the market it can be protected by patents if monopoly and it can print money for many years So you're right The

1:00:57

fact is most investors aren't interested So what do you do rewind the video As I

1:01:03

talked about 20 minutes ago more research It's not going to be easy because investors like me we're all

1:01:08

distracted by software Software is much easier right makes a lot more money faster Why wouldn't we want that right

1:01:14

i'm not interested in golf swag Too much work right um you got to ship stuff and print stuff and sell stuff and then

1:01:19

there's returns and you know there's sales tax and all this stuff right so you need to make this look really easy

1:01:26

with returns that look like a software growth hockey stick and triple your

1:01:31

research Again rewind Look at what I was talking about before Find people who play golf There a lot of rich people

1:01:38

that play golf That's your you're in because they play golf I presume you play golf You're already friends right

1:01:43

so you got to lean hard on that I wouldn't be bother going to most pitch competitions I wouldn't bother coming to

1:01:49

stuff like this even I mean I'm happy to help you but this is mostly software right you're kind of in the wrong room

1:01:54

Happy to help I'm not putting you off I'm happy to take the question right it's my books are all not just software They're for everybody right but um

1:02:02

uh it's a different class of investors It's probably not a VC play So go to go

1:02:09

play golf Go meet people at the club I think that's your answer All right we got to move a little faster here Sorry

1:02:14

it's already getting late here Um we're going to do Praep's Praep has been very uh patient here and then I'll try to uh

1:02:20

do the rest of our um questions in the chat room and talk to everybody There he is Hi Hello Nice

1:02:28

to meet you Yeah So I joined I joined a little late so I don't know what uh

1:02:35

basically uh I was working with the for

1:02:41

I can't understand you Can you turn up the volume or come closer to the microphone wait wait wait Let me check I

1:02:47

just put down Let's see Yeah Yeah Am I audible now it

1:02:53

sounds about the same but maybe it's better if you talk a little more Okay Uh am I audible now yeah I think so Let's

1:03:01

give that a shot

1:03:11

Anyway he's doing playing with his settings here Uh no That's better There's more

1:03:17

background noise but your voice is clearer Yeah So basically I'm from India

1:03:22

and from last 10 years I'm working with the real estate brokers and the home management company on west coast So I

1:03:29

figure out the gap between work with several SAS companies as a UIUX designer and they lack something they're not

1:03:36

complete really ha means home owners association or something like that

1:03:42

So what happened that if a someone is managing self-managed HOA uh they use several tools emails then a software to

1:03:49

manage the invoice and other things Okay I got I got to step you again What's a HOA it's home owner association Oh okay

1:03:55

In the states we say HOA Yeah I made this Okay Okay Well we're not going to

1:04:00

know what you're talking about if you Yeah Okay That's so about home owners

1:04:06

and I say okay So if you are in a self-managed community the people pay

1:04:11

for that depend $200 to $800 Okay And for management they use different softwares One software for the invoicing

1:04:18

reporting Second is for the polling Third is the WhatsApp or something for the messaging and fourth is the access

1:04:24

management software So I prepared an app I'm working on an app that club everything

1:04:30

with AI Yeah Yeah And just last Yeah Well last year fire broke out in the passive talis nearby areas Uh how many

1:04:37

communities were prepared with the utilities and the plan to evocation and the fire prevention no one right they

1:04:44

have no idea Okay So on my app people can set the priority what are the priorities security or the amenities or

1:04:50

the facility whatever else they can call they can set the features and then how can manage can go through that the

1:04:57

blueprint Second part is the access management That's more important part On the gate you can create create a key

1:05:04

Okay And you can invite the peoples or people can request the access to your property or the community and community

1:05:11

can handle that that where they will park how they will park Okay Who can come who cannot come if somebody is you

1:05:18

know mean somebody's banned from the community he cannot come You you cannot play on the key And 75% communities are

1:05:25

the self-managed Only 25% communities in US are managed by the property management companies and they charge a

1:05:31

big amount not small amount a big amount Yeah Okay So I want to save that money for the communities Okay I'm giving on

1:05:38

what is my cost and the other part Third part is the vendors If a community need

1:05:44

a gardener or the you know curator they can hire from the pool of my own nearby

1:05:49

available curators or the gardeners So service are available immediately They don't need to go for the lengthy process

1:05:55

of telling the community measures and then uh wait for the their responses If somebody's broken in my

1:06:02

house I can just dial up a request It will go through the right

1:06:07

channel and that can be applied everywhere where people gather and pay to be part of a community Mhm Everywhere

1:06:14

It's a club it's a golf course whatever else people comes there they pay more to

1:06:19

to be part of the community they can use this app Yeah Okay Is the billing access management plus facility management

1:06:25

right and main part is people can decide they can pull on everything in an instance Okay I think that's about

1:06:32

that's a couple minutes I get the idea That's that's a great idea Nobody's doing that I found that there are 10

1:06:38

apps for that No one is complete No one is perfect I found the gap Yeah that's interesting Well that's a big market for

1:06:44

sure So um interesting It makes sense Um yeah I own some real estate and that's

1:06:50

always a pain in the ass So basically I had some early traction I talked to several you know committees common

1:06:56

organization and they replied that if you have this app we'll be the only doctors as a test Okay I want to set the

1:07:04

pricing I don't know I never discussed that Never planned that what will the pricing but want to I want to keep it

1:07:10

minimum Yeah Okay And pay as you go It's pay as you go Not that you pay a

1:07:15

subscription Minimum subscription then you charge the you know according the other uses If you're not living in your

1:07:22

flat for two months is empty then price will be lower very lower and if there's

1:07:28

a tenant with a big family then price will be a little higher Right that the society can handle How far along are you

1:07:34

with this have you been 70%p is ready Uhhuh 50 committees already backed up

1:07:40

for the beta tester I want to give them for six month free trial then it will be chargeable Okay good And I'm targeting

1:07:47

California first because I know the market better Right All right Where where are you though i'm from the India

1:07:52

but I work mainly in the LA and the mostly with realtors in the Basu and

1:07:58

Tustin and Orange County Right Right Okay Great Okay Well so my feedback would be the there's a specific format

1:08:05

that startup pitches usually use I don't know if you know that or not Your your

1:08:10

delivery is kind of casual and friendly and that can that's fine Honestly most people do like what you saw the other

1:08:16

guys do more like problem solution market size you know chop chop Um either

1:08:21

one can work So this was a little more casual The big thing I would say is for American ears you need to talk much

1:08:27

slower because my the accent is just you have I know you in India you don't have

1:08:33

an accent To us you do And if you're pitching Americans you got to go much slower And of course ho I never knew

1:08:38

what a hoa was So you got to be careful about differences in the language right a you know communication uh

1:08:44

establishment something who can talk in place of me Yeah Okay Well the the other

1:08:52

thing that I liked a lot was you kind of broke it into modules of like the vendors and the services and you know

1:08:59

the that made sense like in terms of the different market segments that this would integrate all together right that

1:09:05

as a as a concept that that's clever Um and it seems like something target is that declutter the phone You should not

1:09:11

have so many apps for the same work You have one app that should work everything Yeah Yeah It's a classic classic

1:09:17

integration opportunity isn't it yeah I think you're on to something there That's great Um any uh suggestions in

1:09:23

the uh chat room for our friend Praep sounds if uh with his uh homeowners association integration opportunity

1:09:30

Sounds like a good one Um and there'd be lots of What what's interesting about this for those who are listening to

1:09:37

him it's obvious there's money here right because real estate there's money

1:09:43

Homeowners associations if you don't know anybody that's listening we pay every month to the group and then the

1:09:49

money is run by a local board of the residents but there's usually a property management company So there's these

1:09:54

layers of bureaucracy that are essentially it's kind of like a mini government and it's always a mess like they're suing each other and complaining

1:10:01

about the trees and it's constantly a mess and um the software is very

1:10:06

outdated So I think he's on to an opportunity there Of course the devil's in the details So if you do this again

1:10:12

I'd suggest um compressing the features and a little more about like the

1:10:17

specifics of how you'd make money but it sounds like you're about to get into some trials with people that would lend

1:10:22

to some traction which would be great to hear Good Good stuff That's exciting Well please uh join the startup council

1:10:29

and get on our newsletters and stuff if we can help Lots of stuff there I hope that was helpful to you Um and there's

1:10:36

um some questions coming in for you Hope to see you again I'm going to let you go so we can keep moving here and wrap up the show Uh Rishi says "How would it be

1:10:42

different from my gate app so you could figure that out take a look pretty deep I don't know about my gate." Um and then

1:10:48

uh let's see Let's try to uh roll through the chat room here and I will

1:10:54

address you Yeah And that Rishi's got another good one there What's stopping my gate from doing what you are doing

1:11:00

that's a great point So this is kind of the why now why me kind of stuff but um

1:11:05

competition right we haven't talked at all tonight about competition because most of you are at the early stages but

1:11:10

believe me investors are thinking about your competition all the time and um you need to be ready to address that right

1:11:17

so okay So I'm going to roll through the chat room here and uh see what we can do See we did Aaron Okay Ruby So if Ruby is

1:11:25

still here I'm going to talk to this So Ruby says "When it comes to um Praep you

1:11:30

can't you cannot reply in this chat room You can uh reply in the public chat

1:11:36

room." So you're backstage but if you go over to YouTube or LinkedIn you can post there and you could post u you know if

1:11:43

you're looking for help or investors or your URL or anything you want That's true for you meet as well If you want to

1:11:48

post stuff over in the public uh markets a public chat room thinking about

1:11:53

markets Um actually let me will answer your question next Let me do um let me

1:11:59

do Ruby's here Ruby says when it comes to adviserss and board of directors as a startup what is best to focus on when

1:12:05

growing the team when it comes for professional guidance and a stronger team um that depends a lot on the

1:12:12

situation Ruby you know this I know you know But um the uh adviserss generally come before a

1:12:19

board of directors A board of directors means that you have probably raised an equity round and people have demanded

1:12:25

seats for their money They want oversight on you and they are effectively your boss The board of

1:12:32

directors is legally the boss Even though you're the CEO and the founder and may even own a majority of the stock

1:12:37

they technically are your boss Advisors are more your friends right like I do advisory work and usually for some cash

1:12:44

or stock or something you know we have a call every now and then or I help you make some introductions that kind of stuff Again I know you know this but I'm

1:12:51

trying to be clear for everybody So um I guess your question what is best to focus on so

1:12:59

advisors are generally first because those are people that you contact to try to fill in holes in your existing team

1:13:07

So for example if you've got a really technical team and you don't know anybody in sales you might see if you

1:13:13

can find some adviserss who are from the industry that you're targeting because they know people at your target customers and those could be advisers Or

1:13:20

vice versa if you're a non- tech person you might want to get some adviserss who are very techy so they can help you

1:13:27

develop or evaluate the services that you're using to build the tech that is going to be the heart of your company

1:13:33

assuming it's a tech company obviously Um so that's kind of the vibe for advisors And then board of directors

1:13:38

like I said those tend to be kind of thrust upon you When people put in money they want board rights They want to be

1:13:45

able to vote on strategic decisions for the company So those you may not have as much choice on Generally as a founder

1:13:50

you might have yourself and a friend or a relative or your co-founder or something but then you'll quickly get

1:13:57

additional board members who were not necessarily your choice directly they were your choice in the sense that

1:14:03

that's who you chose to take money from and they get a representation uh a vote on the board of directors So I hope

1:14:08

that's helpful Um it's a good question Um Ruby's company must be growing That's always a good sign All right so let's

1:14:17

um great pitch at the beginning Okay that was some feedback Yep did that Okay

1:14:23

so a bunch of these questions I'm just scrolling back through and all of you again you can see this stuff if you want

1:14:28

uh later You can watch the replay and then you can watch it faster if I'm talking too slow I've never been accused of talking too slow actually

1:14:35

but if you want to revisit some of the topics you can certainly do that You can uh over on YouTube or comment later if

1:14:42

you have follow-up questions and so forth So um okay going through these

1:14:48

chats [Music] Um okay studying Yep these are good

1:14:55

advice your guys are giving each other

1:15:01

Uh okay Jagadish is offering to help people

1:15:07

Uh if a non US startup Okay let's see this This sounds like a complex one

1:15:13

Sarah Shaaba I don't wonder where you're from Sarah If a non- US startup has

1:15:18

strong traction in international markets does that traction still carry weight with US investors yes Expanding into the

1:15:24

US requires certifications and regulatory approvals which means additional investment is needed Yes So

1:15:30

how should one position this when pitching to investors how do you frame international traction as a compelling

1:15:35

foundation for entering the US market this is a great question Congratulations Sarah on your progress because obviously

1:15:42

you are looking at expanding outside of your home market into the United States That's a big step Um congrats Your

1:15:48

things are going well for Sarah So good stuff So um investors American investors do appreciate that absolutely traction

1:15:55

is traction The biggest difficulty for founders to demonstrate these days as I

1:16:01

keep saying is customer validation and secondary to that perhaps even more these days is distribution And the

1:16:08

combination of those means that you are growing because more people are buying your stuff and that's what we're looking

1:16:13

for Growth momentum that's our goal So expanding in the US does take a bunch of

1:16:19

money So how do you position that so first of all it's you should be clear everybody US angel investors don't

1:16:26

invest in foreign companies We just don't It's not because I don't want to I travel all the time

1:16:33

Like I said I was in Bangalore last month and um you know I was in Australia a couple months before that You know

1:16:38

like I'm interested in that but the tax laws here in the states make it virtually impossible or or useless for

1:16:45

us We just can't make money investing overseas So if you're going to raise money in the states then you need to

1:16:52

have a a US corporation and it needs to be headquartered in the state of Delaware and it's called a Ccorporation

1:16:59

So it's a this is a corporate format Ask your lawyers This is these are services you can do online but you need a

1:17:04

Delaware CC Corp before we will even look at it Some big VC firms may invest

1:17:10

if they are more sophisticated because like they already have an office in Bangalore or Tel Aviv or Tokyo wherever

1:17:17

you know they may be able to do this but angels pretty much won't touch it So once you have a US Delaware CC corp uh

1:17:24

then you can pitch just like you're an American company right so rewind the the video tonight and look at my tips for

1:17:31

finding investors that would be interested in you and you can start pitching them You just got to be aware that um the CC Corp is kind of a

1:17:38

threshold You need to cross that And then you need to be clear about the

1:17:44

revenue projections and how you think your expertise is going to translate because as you said there's a lot of uh

1:17:49

there's a lot of expense and uh it's probably not a good idea to suddenly you know rent a big suite of offices in an

1:17:55

expensive market and hire a bunch of people You kind of want to do this with baby steps In in past u years I have for

1:18:02

example served as an ambassador actually spoke on this topic exactly uh at the global entrepreneurship congress uh in

1:18:09

Melbourne Australia last year because one of my portfolio companies actually is based in Australia But I invested in

1:18:16

them because I found out that they were expanding into the US and had opened a US subsidiary that is a Delaware CC

1:18:23

Corporation So then they actually I invested but then they ended up hiring me back to be an ambassador for them and

1:18:30

helping them introduce them to uh customers and investors and stuff here in the states so that they could break

1:18:35

into the US market without hiring people full-time So they started here in California and now they're in California

1:18:42

and Denver and expanding nationally two years later Um but kind of baby steps is is the idea So there may be another book

1:18:49

about this in my future as well So um it's a good good question I hope that that somewhat is helpful Um so Omid asks

1:18:57

uh let's see can I get that one up there no hold on Omid says "What type of companies do I invest in?" Okay so this

1:19:04

is a fair question but it is not um there we go What kind of companies do

1:19:10

I invest in i invest in mostly in software uh scalable businessto business

1:19:16

sort of products generally speaking Um but honestly that's not as relevant anymore cuz I have done like I said 30

1:19:24

it might be 40 now different individual angel investments and I don't do them anymore It just takes too much work So I

1:19:31

actually am a limited partner in a number of other funds and groups and I tend to put money into the funds and

1:19:36

then the group invests right so I don't actually do direct investing very often

1:19:42

anymore So um that's the answer Sorry but just to

1:19:48

be clear I'm not I'm not pitching any of you I'm not looking to invest in any of you I'm honestly just trying to help you

1:19:53

find investors Um but that being said you know let me Hold on That That's not a fair answer Let me give you There's a

1:20:00

page on scottfox.com that talks about the different groups that I work with

1:20:05

Let me find it There it is Okay Sorry This is a better answer What this page says is "Sorry I don't

1:20:12

invest directly but here are links to some of the groups that I work with." And it gives criteria for what they are

1:20:18

looking for So you're all welcome to check out that page And um it includes like Tech Coast Angels which I mentioned

1:20:24

Um the Thai Angels which I also mentioned uh Expert Dojo is another group that I'm an investor in Um there's

1:20:31

some recommendations about crowdfunding platforms like Weunderer and um Start Engine where I also have invested Um so

1:20:38

if that link is helpful to you it might point you at least in some right directions And in general um I do these

1:20:45

shows at least once a month and those are designed this is designed to help uh help you find more opportunities like

1:20:52

that Okay so got a few more here Um Nicole we'll give Nicole a little

1:20:59

sunlight here She's an AI engineer building an AI phone agent for dispensaries My goal is of course to get

1:21:06

investment on board my first 10 dispensaries Okay that's a great goal That's a tactical goal I applaud you

1:21:12

That's specific right when investors here I'm going to take over the world and it's going to be a billion dollars and if we only get 1% of a billion

1:21:18

dollars we're like okay whatever I like this approach much better Um you're doing something unique

1:21:24

AI phone agents Okay In a specific market dispensaries and I'm focused on adoption which means uh validation and

1:21:32

customer outreach That's good And your goal is to find 10 of them Good Good for you Nicole That's that's the right idea

1:21:38

Like bite-size step by step and you can demonstrate that traction that uh people

1:21:43

will um people meaning investors would be um would be excited about Yraj says

1:21:50

"What are some commonalities for cold outreach pitches that you thought were great?" Cold outreach pitches do work

1:21:57

It's all about targeting It's about the research I was talking about earlier So a cold outreach should be short It

1:22:04

should be specific and it should be friendly and it should say something that interests

1:22:10

me What does that mean well it means not sending the same exact email to a

1:22:16

hundred or a thousand different investors You got to do the work guys You got to find and say something like

1:22:23

at least like you know I see you invested in this We're kind of like that and we're growing by this much a month

1:22:29

and expect to soon have a zillion dollars in revenue We're raising this much on these kind of

1:22:37

terms Would love to talk to you if this fits your investment thesis That's kind of it And you can attach a deck or a

1:22:44

link or a video or all those things Um and you just got to get to the point Otherwise I don't have time nobody does

1:22:50

to to read you know your your big story you know your problem solution your life story you know it's all lovely stuff but

1:22:59

you got to get the second you got to get the first meeting and get the second meeting before you can unpack all that

1:23:05

stuff So just get to the point and see if you can qualify us And the other thing to say is

1:23:10

PS If you don't if this isn't a fit for you do you know anybody that it might

1:23:17

interest ask right do you know anybody else because we all know a lot of people

1:23:24

And if you do that I might pause and think oh yeah you know that woman Sharon

1:23:30

Sharon does this kind of thing You know maybe I'll forward this to her And you might not ever even know about it right i probably won't tell you contact Sharon

1:23:37

because Sharon I don't want to invade my friend Sharon's privacy but I might just forward it to her Right And that can

1:23:42

that that would be a recommended tip All right Um you have Raj is back

1:23:49

with another one How do I apply ask for money Get advice Get Ask for advice Get money Yeah exactly right

1:23:56

Um sorry I'm just writing that one down Okay So uh yeah Well you said it If you

1:24:01

ask for money right away you're probably not going to get it It's going to take a few you know you got to date a few times

1:24:06

before you get married So yeah try asking for advice but don't ask Like I get these all the time Are you free for

1:24:13

a chat no I'm never free for a chat You think I

1:24:18

got nothing else going on i'm busy So that's why I do this so I can talk to a bunch of you at once I hope it's helpful

1:24:24

But no I'm not free for a chat But you say something like "Hello you know Mrs

1:24:32

PhD I see you know you're a noted expert in AI I'm working on this interesting thing in agentic AI Um I wondered if you

1:24:40

know about this or maybe here's a helpful research article that I thought we would both find interesting Offer to

1:24:47

help is even better than asking for advice right because then you're doing them a favor Um that that's even better

1:24:54

But I would be specific and customize it All right I'm going to move a little faster here because it's getting late

1:25:01

Okay so this uh she 86 Sean this is Sean right you emailed right i saw your email

1:25:08

We didn't get to it So thank you for posting this quick one How do business how much do business valuation

1:25:13

appraisals cost how do you find a law firm that does them and what documentation is needed for the appraisal all right let's take those in

1:25:19

reverse order Documentation that is needed everything Everything you've got uh

1:25:25

presumably you're early stage enough Um but specifically everything related to money So customer contracts uh

1:25:33

financials you know your bookkeeping receipts uh uh payubs uh contractor

1:25:41

agreements intellectual property agreements uh anything that affects the money So the more the better How do you

1:25:48

find a law firm that does them i don't think you do Uh this is why I noticed you emailed because law firms this isn't

1:25:54

a law firm thing This is usually an accounting firm thing So if you need help um there's a thing called a 409A

1:26:00

valuation That's a a section of the US Internal Revenue Code 409A and that is

1:26:05

an official product of a lot of accounting firms They will conduct a 409A valuation on your company If you

1:26:12

want referrals for that you can contact me through the uh startup council website and we can introduce you to some

1:26:18

of our sponsors who are very qualified at this sort of thing How much do business valuation appraisals

1:26:23

cost a lot more than you want to pay Um generally speaking the bigger fancier

1:26:29

the firm the more research they do and the higher priced their people are So it would cost thousands of dollars probably

1:26:36

If you just want something quick and dirty it's going to be much cheaper but probably not very well respected So

1:26:45

don't have a great answer for that but I hope maybe that points you in the right direction There are certainly firms that

1:26:50

we work with that do 409AS and I could put you in touch with those if you contact us through one of the startup

1:26:56

council websites contact form um and ask for um send some details of what your

1:27:01

question is and I can forward it on to some people All right Uh do I have a

1:27:07

preferred medium for someone to get in contact i just said that it's the contact forms on our website If you

1:27:13

really want um to do this uh sort of thing with me personally I have to charge for the time I apologize I just

1:27:19

not enough hours in the day That's why I um that's why I do these group things Um

1:27:26

but there is a page here work with Scott and you can uh I do uh video reviews of

1:27:32

your pitch deck Uh we can have private calls if you want Uh they're 500 bucks an hour which is mostly just to make

1:27:38

sure you're serious Uh and uh money back guarantee if you want Um that's fine but

1:27:43

work with Scott Happy to do that Um I only have limited room in my schedule for these and some but sometimes they do

1:27:50

advance to a point where I become an adviser to a company or even invest in the company Uh but uh you can read there

1:27:56

more details about that All right And wow it's almost 10:30 Yeah we're going to wrap this up So what else uh guidance

1:28:04

on setting up um guidance setting up health child

1:28:10

healthcare company in Dubai looking to put the business in UAE That's a great question Deep connection I I have to be

1:28:17

honest I don't know I'm I'm a licensed attorney in the United States although this is not legal advice Um but I really

1:28:24

don't know what the business regime in that those jurisdictions are Um so um

1:28:32

you'd have to talk to somebody in Dubai Um I'd happy to help you in the States but I I don't know in Dubai I was in

1:28:39

Dubai in December but didn't didn't get a law degree there Okay Uh Xi Huang Chen

1:28:45

says "We launch our app requires initial use We can continue growing on our own for a bit We could accelerate In your

1:28:50

experience should we focus on growing?" Whoops What's Sorry I'm trying to see the rest of this focus on growing

1:28:58

or better start fundraising now The answer is 110% now Now now not because

1:29:05

you need the money but because it takes time to develop the relationships that

1:29:10

lead to money So if you think you're ever going to raise money and this is true for everybody listening if you are

1:29:15

ever going to raise money start going to events where investors hang out now

1:29:22

Be friendly make friends build relationships and then when you see them again next month tell them a little more

1:29:28

about your company And another month after that or two months later hey good to see you again Tell them a little more

1:29:34

about your company That's how you get people interested It's not with cold emails right i mean it can it can work

1:29:39

if you do a lot of targeting like I talked about but now is the time to start fundraising If you're ever going

1:29:44

to fundra start yesterday Okay

1:29:50

Um Okay Okay I think we're going to have to wrap up here Is there a place to list

1:29:55

all of those events why yes Omid there is In Orange County you can go to uh the

1:30:01

Orange County Startup Council We have the only calendar of all the events for

1:30:06

startups in Orange County And uh sorry people are asking more about this Where'd that one go this one Actually

1:30:13

let me be more specific here These are specific services If you want me to review your deck I'll do a video and uh

1:30:21

share a video of me walking through your presentation deck These are really valuable honestly to get a investor's

1:30:27

perspective And if you want to talk to me directly that's each of those has its own website as you can see Um so yeah

1:30:34

sorry Omid Um you'll see startups.org and then there's also a site uh at

1:30:39

startupconsil.org We are going to relaunch that and it will be showing up soon is the short answer There's a

1:30:46

site at startupevents.org but we're going to consolidate that into the startups.org

1:30:52

site So everybody go to startupconsil.org and uh join all the email lists right so um please like and

1:30:59

share and subscribe if you had a good time Thank you all for sticking with me It's been fun talking to you and meeting

1:31:04

a bunch of you I'll be here again next month People ask yes we do this once a month And uh once I get my next book

1:31:09

finished I'll do it more often I I'm happy to help you guys Um but this is a free service so please like and

1:31:15

subscribe tell your friends Uh we'd like to help more people because this advice is is really applies to a lot of people

1:31:22

who don't know it And I know a lot of you are brilliant and you didn't get to go to Stanford like I did So I'm here to

1:31:28

help you know the benefits of my experience and my um expertise and I hope that it's helpful to you and um

1:31:34

look forward to seeing you next time and go to startupconcil.org Um deep connection it

1:31:41

go to the startup councsil website There's a lot of things there Yes Okay

1:31:47

All right So nice to see you all Hope to see you all again soon And like I said go like and subscribe And we will see

1:31:53

you all again in a few weeks And um hope you all make some wonderful progress on

1:31:58

your startups between now and then Don't be shy be confident go out there change the world Thanks for watching