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 Jan 23. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here. 

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

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

• what legal protections do founders need before approaching investors
• when to start fundraising (vs boostrap self-funding)
• free resources at StartupCouncil.org
• how much to pay yourself in salary as a startup CEO
• what expenses to include in a startup budget given to angel investors
• working with outsourced, commission-only salespeople for technical founders
• how to find smart investors that target your niche
• what due diligence to do on venture capital firms and angels
• how to raise money without an MVP or finished prototype
• and of course much more!

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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The Startup Office Hours livestream is the 4th Tuesday of each month at 300pm ET / Noon PT.  Questions and practice investor pitches are hosted LIVE by Scott Fox, CEO of the Startup Council/Angel Investor/Serial Founder/Author/Startup Expert.

You can watch LIVE here later on February 27:

https://www.youtube.com/scottfox

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

Subscribe to the YouTube channel here! 

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Submit your question about raising money for your startup, or practice your startup's investor pitch for friendly, free expert feedback:  https://www.startupcouncil.org/sohsrsvp

If your question or pitch is included for live discussion during the show, you'll get an email of special instructions on how to join Office Hours on camera.  And, you'll WIN FREE TICKETS to the next MasterMinds Startup Accelerator Workshop (http://www.mastermindsworkshops.com)!

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours are a free community service of the Startup Council. 

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for January 23, 2024:

0:00
we're here today to help you and Founders all over the world as well as many of my friends who are fellow Angel Investors to figure out how to find the
0:07
growth opportunities that can change the world hopefully make you rich and make the world a better place all at the same
0:13
time I'm Scott Fox I'm a Serial internet entrepreneur I'm the author of these books you see behind me I'm a uh
0:20
longtime angel investor and these days I run the startup Council startup council.org you invite you to go check
0:26
that out or a free community service group that I started kind of as my give back effort to help other Founders who
0:33
are struggling like I used to to find their way in the world learn how to raise money learn how to find customers
0:38
find that elusive product Market fit demonstrate traction uh find co-founders
0:44
and and most of all I guess find um problems that you can solve on a
0:49
profitable basis that uh makes the world a better place makes you happy and hopefully make some money for your
0:55
investors too so if that sounds like the right kind of place thanks for joining me today I do this once a month at
1:00
lunchtime it's lunchtime here in Southern California where I live these days and I'm just turning on the camera
1:06
here in my office to see if I can help you so if this sounds useful to you I'm happy to have you join me thanks for
1:12
being here I'd like to uh let's see you can come and ask your questions if you want to come over here founder office
1:19
hours.com and you need to turn on your camera and you can join me on camera and ask me questions about your uh startup
1:26
uh strategy uh marketing fundraising tactics things like that uh we can talk about pretty much anything I've been
1:33
doing this a long time so I'm happy to opine if that's helpful to you I do this because well a couple reasons um the
1:41
world of startup fundraising is a lot more difficult than I think it should be to be quite honest it's it's really not
1:47
fair there's a lot of gatekeeping on and the information is complicated but not
1:54
that difficult and the problem is there's such a disconnect if you're a long-term um expert in your field and
2:02
you're at the point where you feel like you could create a new business based on the expertise that you've built well
2:07
it's not that likely unfortunately that you also have expertise in the kind of
2:13
Arcane methodology of Silicon Valley and Venture Capital right those don't necessarily overlap if they do awesome
2:21
right but the problem is that I went to Stanford for graduate school and a lot of friends in Silicon Valley and I've
2:26
raised money and lost money for startups for decades now and it's hard for people to um to connect those dots right if
2:34
you're good at one thing it doesn't mean you're good at everything and I'm here basically as like I said kind of a give
2:40
back effort uh like my books right these if you haven't seen my books these are three books these are in English the rest are foreign translations Japanese
2:47
and Turkish and Russian and polish and Vietnamese right the books are all over the world but they're all my effort to
2:53
try to help you come from an outsider like I used to be to being an Insider
2:58
because the odds are you've spent your career um even if you're a young person you spent your life doing something that
3:06
isn't this so if you're trying to do this also it's like you know you grew up a swimmer and now suddenly you're going
3:12
to try to join the Olympic team you know for basketball like okay you may be a talented athlete but these are kind of
3:17
different skills and you might need a coach you might need to join a team that kind of thing so anyway that's why I'm
3:22
here to try to help you uh and we're going to spend the next hour hour and a half and you're invited to share your
3:28
questions uh if you have a startup pitch you want to practice we can do that for friendly feedback and by the way this
3:33
isn't just me talking I do this because first of all I think there's a hole in the market that I'm trying to help you
3:39
fill and hopefully it's helpful and I hope you would leave comments and likes and follows you know how that's all this
3:44
nonsense works on social media actually let me put that up let's make it official um there please uh oh here this
3:53
one like And subscribe please um and by the way I'm going to turn on the chat room in a second and I'd love to hear
3:59
from you if if you're on LinkedIn or YouTube or Facebook I need to know that all of those different uh channels are
4:04
working because sometimes we have different problems right and if you're watching this later in the archives of course these are free archived on
4:10
YouTube you're also welcome to like And subscribe at that point but the the reason I want to do this is to fill in
4:16
the holes a lot of people provide uh specific expertise and a lot of it's
4:21
frankly U but I'm here to hopefully answer the real questions you have to kind of fill in the cracks a lot
4:28
of people are trying to sell you services there's a lot of Consultants out there trying to um you know uh
4:33
consult which really means sales right uh trying to fill up your inbox uh and empty your wallet at the same time so um
4:40
this is a helpful hour and um brought to you by the startup Council right so I encourage you go over here this is a
4:46
free group that I started uh specifically to fill in the holes you can go up here and see different
4:53
services that we offer we have a an Investor's directory we have a place where you can list your startup to get
4:59
publicity we have a place where you can list yourself if you're a service provider like an accountant or lawyer or
5:05
a web development shop and you're trying to attract clients that's startup
5:11
helpers.com do org so that's where you should go okay so let's see a couple
5:17
disclaimers this session is being recorded and will be shared online so don't say anything
5:22
stupid um and this is all just made up okay this is just for entertainment purposes uh I'm a pretty qualified guy
5:29
I've been doing as long as anybody at this point and um I have lots to say uh
5:34
but it isn't necessarily right and it doesn't necessarily apply to your situation so hopefully this will be helpful to you and if it's not uh I'm
5:41
sorry uh it's worth what you paid for it I guess um but uh if it is helpful please like and share Etc and if not um
5:48
and even regardless you should consult your own legal tax accounting uh psychiatrist you all those other kind of
5:55
professionals that are important to making real world uh applications for the specific situation that you're in uh
6:01
this is just general advice from some friendly guy you met on the internet okay so let's get us going here now the
6:08
idea today is that we're going to take questions like I said so I'm about to turn on the chat room I can see that backstage is full already we've got room
6:15
for 10 people backstage and I see a lot of you are trying to join so thank you um I can only take the system can only
6:20
take 10 at a time and I can see uh Nadim and Amir and Frankie and Dave and kenlin
6:26
and Lauren and Nick and Nikki and Chris are the folks who are backstage so they're going to get the first crack at
6:32
answering asking questions and um when they're finished guys in the backstage
6:37
the people who I just named when you're finished please kind of like hang up the phone and then go watch on YouTube or
6:43
LinkedIn live so that you can allow room for other people to come in and ask questions okay and we'll try to get
6:48
through as many people as we can uh because this is Hope supposed to be fun and easy and friendly all right so
6:53
that's the vibe I'm going to turn on the chat room now the chat room is specifically for you folks all to say
6:59
hello um we're going to have the chat uh I guess I need to click the button here we
7:04
go let's click the button actually you know what hold on let's bring everybody on and we'll take some notes and let me
7:09
just review the chat room that these chats are are are um working good yes so
7:16
hello yes hello from France hello from
7:21
Hawaii uh from Orlando from Singapore from San Jose um Zurich Nashville great
7:28
we got a great crowd here today excellent all right so I'm going to turn on the chat room in a minute but first i'm going to bring all the folks
7:34
Backstage on camera for a second okay and those of you who are about to come on camera hold on I'm looking for my
7:40
notepad where did I put my oh it's right here um I W to I'm gonna just take some quick notes so if you could just tell me
7:46
real quickly what you want to talk about okay and what you're going to talk about so that I can just I'm going to take
7:52
notes and we'll figure out what kind of some order that makes sense for everybody all right so um let's see so
7:58
here we've got uh Amir and Nadim and
8:04
here is Frankie hello Frankie and here comes Dave and let's see here Lauren great
8:12
we've got some ladies in the house for a change this is good okay and not everybody's showing okay so let me hold
8:18
on let's see let's try like that there's a few more okay that's getting there uh
8:23
and Chris all right good crowd here all right hi everybody let's see and
8:29
somebody's got a lot of background noise so I'm gonna feedback so let's see
8:36
here Glen not Dave maybe that was Dave yeah Dave I'm gonna mute you until you
8:43
talk uh and then not Frankie okay maybe it's me right you
8:48
never know these magic internet things no not Chris not Lauren okay I guess
8:54
that's as good as we're going to do Dave don't worry we'll let you talk but you had some background noise there um
9:00
okay all right so hi everybody nice to meet you I'm Scott I don't think I've met any of you before um but I'm glad
9:06
that you're here so I'm just G to have you each uh chime in for a second and let me know what you want to talk about
9:12
today uh just the quick version okay not the whole pitch just like the 10 second I want to talk about fundraising I want to talk about you know why my dog left
9:19
me you know that kind of stuff just quickly and we'll get through that and um and then I'll I'll make a little agenda and then we'll turn on the chat
9:25
room everybody and everybody can contribute okay so Dave let me let you on first since I think you're one that
9:31
was having some trouble so let's yeah really loud da but can you just is it
9:36
better now I'm not sure why Fe is it all okay cool yeah so um my question is actually
9:44
or the topics I'm want to talk about it's it's fundraising and it's a two-part question around um I guess
9:49
what's advisable to uh to include in your fundraising budget in the budget
9:55
okay interesting it's usually the deck people ask about but sure we can talk about that similar yeah similar to that
10:01
okay cool gonna mute you back and I'm gonna turn off your camera don't be offended we'll be back to you okay cool
10:07
uh let's see who's next here let's up there at the top who's that Nadim Nadim go ahead hi everyone thanks for the
10:15
hosting that um event so U mainly my question is about my startup at what
10:21
point I would start uh into like looking
10:26
into getting uh funders and stop paying out of my pocket out of my salary um for
10:35
my startup yeah okay great question where and where are you today Nadim I am at the
10:41
already the business has form like the formation has been completed as domain
10:47
and license okay and I'm already uh planning a prototype to present sorry no
10:54
I meant geographically just where do you live ah where I live I said where where I thought where where am I the project
11:01
I'm in Arlington Virginia Virginia okay great nice to see you and we'll be back in a minute that's a great question okay
11:07
and then uh somebody got hidden there by the let's see okay who is that Amir hey
11:14
Amir nice to meet you where are you today hi hi Scott I'm in uh Los Angeles oh okay right nearby what did you want
11:20
to talk about uh yeah so I'm doing a hardtech startup and U I'm just starting to you know do my cold emails and um you
11:29
know filling out the incubator and accelerator um uh applications and I was
11:35
hoping to talk about our pitch decks and um was hoping that if there was time you
11:41
could roast my pitch deck and um and uh kind of talk about that okay
11:47
got it um happy to talk through that I do do deck reviews but I can't do them live it's many screens if you want to
11:55
pitch you can actually talk and pitch and we can talk through your through your pitch sure sure but decks
12:01
themselves do I do if anybody wants it I do do reviews over here okay so but that
12:08
that's a little more complicated okay we'll get back to you if and thank you okay and then we've got let's see who's
12:15
next here still full guys trying to join us Frankie is next on my list hello
12:20
Frankie hi there um so I'm here actually with Lauren we're both representing the
12:26
same company today um and are actually in an interesting stage of things we're
12:31
not necessarily a brand new business but we are acquiring a business um and so
12:36
any insight that you have in terms of maybe different ways that we might be able to navigate the startup space and
12:43
resources um around fundraising and capital because we do have two years of
12:48
background that we're bringing into this business um that so just any insight on
12:54
that in terms of being just in a a bit of a different position than just starting from Ground Zero not from
13:01
scratch okay cool that's interesting all right so we'll put you a couple questions in we'll do the basic stuff
13:06
first and then we'll come to you you ladies and I have to say it's great to have some women here I think last time or two months ago it was all guys and
13:13
that's fine obviously but it's kind of lame I mean we need to really support women entrepreneurs I'm glad you're here thanks for coming yes and I know Lauren
13:20
may have something different that she wants to bring in in terms of questions as well but that was just what came to my mind sure Lauren what's on your mind
13:27
anything different Lauren can you hear me okay Scott yes
13:34
there we go yes can you hear me okay Scott sorry my
13:41
my connection just went out okay
13:46
yes okay sorry we're gonna have to Lauren or U uh Frankie can you tell Lauren that we love her but we we got to
13:52
be able to hear her okay yes I will thank you okay and
13:58
then uh was sorry I can't see everybody's names uh kenlin Hi kenlin how are
14:07
you looks like you're muted kenin did I mute you
14:13
no no can't hear you no sorry okay um all right we're
14:22
gonna have to move on you can adjust your settings you're welcome to one more try can you talk I don't see your lips
14:28
moving no nothing okay sorry nice to meet
14:34
you Michael hello Michael for you
14:40
today hey I'm out of Irvine um sorry outside there's not too much back
14:46
background noise but I'm interested in hearing about what um legal protections
14:52
we should have in place before uh reaching out to investors okay excellent I'm going to have to mute you
14:58
that trck is yeah okay uh you and you actually thanks to Michael he actually emailed in earlier so I got to think
15:04
about that one appreciate that uh if any of you are repeat offenders here uh it really is helpful for me people email
15:10
and I can think about what you're gonna ask me so yes we'll get to Michael's question in a moment and looks like
15:15
we're up for Martin hello Martin nice to see hey Scott how's it going good nice to see you today
15:22
likewise I'm sorry I I didn't hear you what would you like to talk about
15:28
yeah so I've been uh I've had I'm in the B2B marketing space um had a company
15:33
that like we have clients and we're kind of we've been self-funded for the last
15:38
couple years and we're at the spot right now where we're looking at investing
15:44
into different platforms and building different Technologies to basically streamline our um our workflow and I'm
15:52
kind of at the at the point where it's um looking to bring on investors so I
15:57
kind of wanted to see what exactly I need to look for in an investing partner
16:02
or somebody that could actually it's not just about the money but somebody that can actually bring value into the company oh okay yeah that's a good
16:09
question excellent okay well thank you thank you both and Frankie for sticking around and let's see here okay so that
16:16
gives us a a table of contents as it were for today so thanks all those folks for contributing that should give us
16:22
plenty to talk about I'm going to turn on the chat room now too and you can see that there's lots of people here appreciate you all being here and uh the
16:29
chat will start showing up here in a second if you're on YouTube or LinkedIn or Facebook um there's someplace else
16:36
too I can't keep track of them all um but uh we will be talking through those and I'll be answering questions from the
16:41
chat room as well the most common question of course is how do I get to ask a question and the the number one
16:47
answer to that is simply um to come on camera or to put it in the chat room now the backstage only has room for 10
16:54
people and that's why a lot of you are struggling to get in because we have 10 people back there already already so don't take it personally uh those folks
17:00
will uh will work through their questions as well in the time that we have available and and hopefully we'll get to yours as well uh so um yeah
17:08
that's kind of the concept so let's just um you heard what we're going to talk about let me take a second and think
17:14
about where we're going to go in terms of the order of these notes that I just took some interesting progression there
17:19
from early stage to later stage mostly about fundraising which is the usual question we have as well as some questions about legal issues which is
17:26
another common one for us and let me just review the chat room in case anything's on fire that I missed and um
17:33
those of you who arrived early it looks like they won't display the chat unless you post again so you're welcome to post again if you'd like publicly um just
17:40
starting at the top here real quick um Chris and Nadim and Angel the folks that are that's a private chat you're in the
17:46
backstage chat so I can see you there uh but and I will get to that when I can but I'm really focused on the public
17:52
chat is what I'm talking about and that's over on YouTube or LinkedIn I think right do we have anybody from
17:57
LinkedIn here looks like everybody's from YouTube uh let's see uh hello rodri
18:02
hi Rachel um moresa and let me know where you're from folks too vikto is
18:08
from France H pasca from Hawaii uh Amin from Orlando laser pulse from Singapore
18:15
uh Eric and deepo from San Jose uh Bobby the the zoom link is um it's founder
18:22
office hours.com but the backstage is full right now and then moresa um let's see see I'll I'll get
18:30
back to that if I can hello from Zurich Athena hey hey Athena from Anaheim Atlanta from Nashville um let's see do
18:37
you want to book an appointment Renee says yes Renee yeah I do this I can these cost appointments cost money I
18:44
don't have any way to control my time except to um to uh charge for it so yes
18:50
you can come and book over here if that's helpful um and I only have room for a
18:55
few of those each month I do I spend most of my time at events like this where I can talk to lots of people and help lots of people at once so hopefully
19:02
this is helpful to you and by the way there's lots of archives of this on YouTube and on um on Blog Talk Radio um
19:08
this podcast I've been doing this on and off for many years um let's see YouTube
19:14
um hello Corbin um send questions uh pasca yeah you're doing that in the
19:19
right place there uh salil from Washington very cool okay soil that's a
19:27
good question about Ai and talking to VCS um let's
19:33
see uh Chris Portugal um so Chris let me address that Chris uh wants to develop
19:39
single family residences as well as town home communities and moresa wants to
19:45
build a real estate business that rents shared Medical Offices to doctors those are both fabulous ideas but they're
19:51
outside my expertise so I'm happy to talk about raising money in general but what we're talking about today really is
19:57
raising money from um high growth investors meaning really Venture Venture
20:02
Capital uh and angel investors who primarily focus on software and technology related Ventures so the
20:09
principles I think are largely the same but I we don't have time unfortunately to talk about real estate Ventures so um
20:16
I'll be skipping over that that's about as much as I can talk about it here okay uh Boston Heen Virginia Andre again hey
20:22
nice to see you and uh uh La also um
20:28
okay London great awes awesome okay so let's get going so that's um just want to make sure I have to check that make
20:33
sure everything's working sounds like you can hear me which is also often an issue let's talk about your questions
20:39
all right so um all right let me look at my notes here so Dave Nadim Amir Frankie
20:45
let see fundraising okay Nadem I'm thinking you're probably up
20:51
first okay well these are all good we you know
20:58
what Michael let's do you first because yours was um a sort of a preface
21:03
question about legal and then we'll go to Nadim uh and then probably Dave is my
21:09
guess okay we'll see how this evolves and um that's just to let you know so let's go find in my cute little control
21:17
panel here where did Michael there's Michael okay there he is hi
21:24
Michael oh you're muted sorry that was my fault not you yeah there we go okay
21:30
cool all right so um give us the quick version of your question again if you wouldn't mind and remind everybody where
21:36
you're from please yeah so I'm here in Irvine California excellent um my
21:42
question was legal should you have in place before reaching outs um I know there's
21:51
the typical ndas um and all that but in terms of you know should you have an LLC
21:58
should you have uh be trademarked all that good stuff okay so that's a totally legit
22:04
question and uh good foundational question and it's smart Michael's asking a good qu Michael's Michael's on the ball here he emailed me first and he's
22:11
thinking about what he should do before he acts which is two things in the right direction right so um legal protections
22:18
are frankly kind of few and far between in the Venture World The Venture world really if you're talking about Venture
22:24
investors The Venture world really runs on reputation um and as you mentioned already this is a big one a lot of
22:29
people make this mistake and it sounds like you've already figured this out Venture investors will not sign non-disclosure agreements we just see
22:35
too many deals it's the same way that Hollywood Studios won't um accept unsolicited manuscripts because then
22:41
everybody's GNA say hey I sent you a script for that new Mission Impossible movie right and then claim some sort of
22:46
ownership so investors are the same way we can't sign non-disclosure agreements because it would stop us from seeing all
22:53
the deals that we need to see to find the best ones so that's one thing it will make you frankly it'll make you look like an amateur if you ask for an
22:59
NDA and this might not be true if you have a real hard tech idea or deep patents or something like that but that
23:05
would still not be the first conversation you'd have several conversations first and then say hey we're getting to the point where I'm
23:10
ready to tell you about my secret sauce um but now we need to talk about an NDA and at that point you might negotiate
23:16
one but it's as as a rule it doesn't happen until at at all or maybe far into
23:22
the relationship so that's one two uh your question about corporate structure that's a that's a good one and this verges Nadim on your question as well uh
23:29
when to start fundraising so we'll get to you about that in a second but the um legal Protections in terms of corporate
23:35
structure are kind of up to you fundraising we'll talk about this more than that deem is really about building
23:41
relationships so you can start whenever you're ready to build the relationships
23:47
because no one invests on the first date right this is a this is like finding a long-term spouse right uh you're going
23:54
to have many meetings over time and if you meet with people who are interested in really early stage stuff they may be
24:00
excited to mentor and help you figure out everything including what kind of legal structure to have so there's no
24:07
clear answer on that if you're trying to raise you real money like you know $20 million or hundred million do for a deep
24:14
Tech or a Medtech startup or a a chip fabrication plant or something real money then you're going to need
24:19
corporate structure up front but you would have figured this stuff out before because you're already dealing in you know eight nine figure seven eight nine
24:25
figure amounts so that's a little different um a short answer for you would be it depends U but it also sounds
24:33
like you want to find good legal counsel and especially since you're here in Orange County uh we can make referrals
24:38
to the Orange County startup Council to several of our sponsors who are great who do this all the time and I would counsel everybody including our new
24:44
friend Michael here that you don't want to use just any attorney venture capital
24:49
is a very specific game and you don't want to use your brother-in-law who does divorces or your your sister who you
24:55
know does car accident insurance claims you know this is a thing and people that
25:00
do it do it all the time it's more like um surgery right you want somebody who does you know heart transplants every
25:07
day all day when you're going to get your heart transplant that's kind of dramatic sorry but um but the concept is
25:12
you want to find a specialist and uh we can help you actually anybody here if you want referrals we're happy to do that um it's important to find a good uh
25:20
partner for your legal needs was that helpful yeah apprciate it okay right all
25:27
right we're going to keep moving today I promised myself I was G to make shorter answers I'm a pretty good talker I try
25:32
to cover a lot of people today I would also encourage you Michael and anybody else who's here in Southern California to uh sign up for the Orange County
25:39
startup Council and we have events uh all the time in person and we happy to meet you in person and talk to you in
25:45
person at at the events that we hold we also do online uh things which you should go to Startup council.org
25:52
um where is that let me just put up that URL again this is where everybody should be going because we have all kinds of
25:58
services and lists come on uh huh well here's the events list
26:07
one this is a specific one uh we started the world's only calendar for free for
26:14
you guys of all the events that we can find that are only for startups only
26:19
online so if you don't live in a big city um and you don't live in Palo Alto
26:24
or here in Orange County or New York City or London you can check in on this calendar and get emails of events that
26:31
are for Founders you know free networking and training and Pitch competitions and all that kind of stuff
26:37
and this newsletter will fill you in all those so you can uh participate in the Creator Innovation economy remotely more
26:43
easily so that's one of the many sort of little services that we have um okay here's the more General URL okay that's
26:50
what I meant to say all right so let's move on to Nadim Nadim was next thank you Michael and Michael if you don't
26:56
mind a lot of people are trying to get on if you could hang up here and then go over to LinkedIn or YouTube instead uh
27:02
that would free up the backstage space for other folks to participate backstage who have questions because people are
27:08
knocking on the door okay so here comes Nadim hello Nadim um nice to see you and
27:14
where did you say you were today I'm from Arlington Virginia Arlington that's right DC excellent okay cool all right
27:21
so your question was well tell me your question again to remind everybody yeah like um I'm in the process of like
27:27
launching my startup but I'm still in the prototyping now to present to
27:33
potential cost clients um so I want to know at what point I would
27:40
start stop spending from my bucket and
27:45
look into fundraising point of the implementation
27:51
yeah no that's a great question and it's one every entrepreneur faces I I fought this battle myself I'm fighting it right
27:56
now I'm always building things spending more than I should on my own ideas right that's what happens when you're an entrepreneur it's it's it's a
28:02
delicate balance um there's no you know 100% answer right you you know your
28:09
situation better than I ever will but my general advice would
28:17
be well you need a budget right you need to you need to have some sort of plan like how much you need and when and
28:23
you're going to compare that to how much you're spending versus how much you have in the bank and that you're willing to spend right you don't want to lose your
28:28
house or spend your kids college money or something like that unless you're pretty certain that there's going to be some upside so this is a personal
28:35
calculation you need to use I think the answer is not kind of what you meant but
28:40
I think this is the real answer and it's what I alluded to with Michael a minute ago you really want to get out and start
28:45
fundraising now like yesterday because fundraising only happens when you build
28:51
a relationship the media loves to show that like people go to a pitch competition and they've been in stealth
28:57
for years and they come on stage and they pitch and suddenly you know the the money rains in rains down and it just
29:03
doesn't happen that way um the let me a quick question what kind of company is
29:08
it are you software or hardare ex software online platform for it's a
29:14
first time product like okay so I sent you an email about it it's called
29:24
Uh through the oh yeah yeah yeah sorry you did yes okay okay yeah oh yeah okay
29:30
TI my nurse I remember seeing this okay yes um okay well you could practice that pitch later if you'd like it sounds interesting but let's answer your
29:36
question first yes sorry you did I didn't realize that was you okay um okay so if it's a software thing then then
29:42
this is I'm asking because like I said earlier I don't have a lot of expertise say in real estate or even Medtech but
29:48
for software this is what I do so um you want to get out there and build relationships as soon as you can what
29:55
you're going to present to investors is budget that says basically do you have any Revenue yet no I I still in the
30:03
formation I'm creating a prototype uh that I guess I'm going to spend on like
30:10
which would help me in pitching uh for sure when I start pitching and yeah okay
30:16
got it so okay so if you don't have any traction yet what traction is what they call you know growth and revenue and so forth if you don't have any traction yet
30:22
the odds are nobody's going to invest anyway that's the fact people won't really tell you that but that's the truth these days there are way too many
30:28
software opportunities for investment that anyone is going to take that risk unless they already know you and like
30:35
you that's why people usually start with friends and family because they already know and trust you and they may not even understand the idea but they are fans of
30:42
Nadim and they think that he can make this happen whatever it is they don't maybe even understand but they're going
30:47
to make it happen and that's why friends and family are the lead investors in most early stage companies so you need
30:53
to start turning finding investors and turning them into friends not necessarily family you don't need to marry anybody but but finding friends um
31:00
and building those relationships so that they can see your growth and not everybody because this is confidential
31:06
stuff but those that seem interested that match the vibe um you can tell them and I would tell them the truth because
31:12
they're going to find out anyway like I'm funding this this much I think I have you know whatever six months 12
31:18
months two years worth of Runway left I'm looking for partners you know I know we don't have any traction yet but I'm
31:24
thinking in whatever you know 90 days we'll hit this Stone and four or five months we'll be here and at that point
31:30
I'm going to looking for some money and you know and then I would want to start you know covering these expenses which include me and that's that's just the
31:38
fact and there's a lot of um mystery around these things but honestly if
31:43
you're talking about in Angel Investors they're Partners they're not like a bank where you go in and you kind of like you
31:50
know I hope they don't realize that I lost my job I still need that car loan and I'm GNA like you know talk them into
31:55
something right this is is a partnership and um uh the sooner you find people
32:01
that want to join you on that ride uh and that you can be honest with the better off you'll be is that yeah yeah
32:09
very helpful thank you so much okay great well nice to meet you n excellent glad that was helpful I know when I
32:14
started raising money and even today um you know there's always bigger investors right and I know it's easy to be
32:21
intimidated by the folks that have the money especially if you don't and you're feeling pressured right you're trying to
32:26
make pay Ro or you know you're you're spending all your own money it's it's very intimidating um but we are people
32:34
too we meaning me as with my investor hat on right we're just there like especially Angel Investors most of us
32:40
want to help we're curious people we we're we want to know what's going on and we like to help solve problems so
32:46
you know if you have too many problems I got other things to do but if you have an interesting structure and opportunity
32:52
and problem solution set that that looks like it could be solved by your effort
32:58
that's kind of where we like to play right so um it's really about building relationships more than just doing 100
33:04
pitches and hoping something sticks uh so anyway this will all be in my next book if that helps um let's see so let's
33:13
let's keep moving here is this hopefully this is useful how we doing in the chat room let me just check in um are we people uh yeah looks like the viewership
33:20
is climbing not declining so that's good um let's see Long Beach uh let's see
33:26
Chris and uh B and Agnes I should have a show on Fox TV thank you Agnes um yes go
33:34
go tell fox or tell anybody else yeah I'm happy to do a show I've done a lot of broadcasting you might be able to tell but I I I like helping people and
33:40
this is this is a fun way to do it so I'm glad it's helpful to you guys let's move on to our next question and see
33:47
let's see here that's what we need and who was next it was going to be Dave Here Comes our friend Dave hi Dave so I
33:54
need to unmute you yeah okay hey so you still got some
34:00
background noise I don't know what it is but I can hear you so let's okay yeah I'm sorry about that I'm not sure what's going on it's kind of ambient like
34:07
you're is it are you using looks like you got Ed uh try these is that better
34:16
no it's the same it's all right apolog it's okay it's harder when there's a group of us
34:22
just the two of us we'll be fine okay so you wanted to talk about fundraising oh and what to include your budget was that
34:27
right yeah so um the gist is so I'm building um two different AI products and I built and launched the uh
34:34
prototype for one of them and I'm looking to raise money to continue building it and help with marketing and
34:39
growth the issue that I have is that I work full-time and I don't have any money for marketing and you know I've
34:45
done a few small social social media ads um gathered about 20 users but I'm you
34:51
know I need to do more of that and uh more Outreach and I'm looking to raise money to continue building and the time
34:57
frame that I want to uh and to grow so my questions are for the fundraising
35:03
budget and in the pitch deck one uh is it advisable to include marketing
35:08
expenses in the fundraising budget and if so how to present it how it should be presented and two um how do uh investors
35:16
typically view the inclusion of like a Founder salary in in the fundraising budget especially in the early stages
35:23
sure okay good questions um if you don't mind I'll take those in Reverse or salary salary is a fact um people feel
35:30
embarrassed like I was just saying it's intimidating to admit that you need to be paid uh but it's a fact so I would I
35:36
would disclose it I mean you got to include it right or you're going to go broke so um what you don't want to do is
35:41
say you know with your million dollars I'm going to pay myself half of that right that's not going to fly with anybody so it needs to be low like you
35:49
know I'm sustaining myself because I believe so much in the upside of the equity right so pay yourself I don't
35:55
know what Market rates are for ay guy of your talent and where you live but you know we're talking a few thousand a
36:00
month not you know not champagne caviar sort of rates and you can even if you're
36:05
doing a multi-year plan you can even have that step up you know you might start at three or 4,000 a month and
36:10
5,000 a month 8,000 a month you know but you're not going to go High um because
36:16
presumably things are going to kick in and you're going to do another fundraising round and you know that'll happen kind of naturally because the new
36:22
board will value your services because of all the customers that you've brought in right so that'll kind of work itself
36:27
out in the long run or the medium run anyway but in the short run um you you kind of got to be honest I think
36:34
nobody's going to um appreciate you know as an investor you're like oh this all
36:39
looks great and then you're suddenly like oh by the way I need to pay myself 100 Grand a year like wait whoa that throws off all the mechanics of the
36:45
financials that we've been running right investors eat numbers so you got to give us all the numbers or or we'll have ingestion and you don't want that um the
36:53
other thing to do that investors really appreciate is uh knowing how much money you have put into the company so you
36:59
should quantify this and some of that can include your own salary um so let's say I'm just making up
37:07
numbers here you put $100,000 in and um I don't know half of that was salary say
37:14
over the last two years whatever right that should go in that should be disclosed and discussed because it's a
37:19
common question I'm in Pitch meetings all the time with Angel groups that I'm in and stuff and people always like how much have you put in like people want to
37:26
know are you just expecting us to pay for your dreams or you actually have some skin in the game here right and if you're able to say well I put uh you
37:32
know over the last two years I put in about $100,000 half of that was for me to cover living expenses and half was
37:38
hard costs you know to pay developers or to buy server space you know whatever it
37:43
was um that will be appreciated and I'm going into this detail because we
37:49
generally will give more Credence to the hard costs than to money you pay yourself and this is why you're asking
37:54
right because there's a sensitivity about like how much do you pay yourself so if you say I've been working on this and I spent a million dollars on this
38:00
but it was all million dollars in in my own salary like okay well you're just living off your savings and then that's
38:06
not quite the same as I spent a million dollars because I had 300 people in Ukraine and India developing this
38:12
amazing AI platform right that's a different sort of cost are you with me it looks like I'm yeah yeah so yeah
38:19
exactly and so what about um to that point what about time cost because I was
38:24
I I I developed the whole thing so I was the develop you know it I didn't pay really much but I spent about like six
38:31
months developing it yeah on my on my time so that could be included equated
38:36
as money or no yeah it can but it's going to be discounted is all I'm saying right because it's you and we know that
38:42
you're getting double duty out of it so if you P spend 100 Grand on that that's fine it's 100 Grand that you don't have
38:48
anymore I get it but you're also you know paying for your lunches and your car payment and you know okay so it's
38:54
it's kind of it's not the same as if you wrote a check to somebody you know to Microsoft for Azure services or
38:59
something like that's a hard cost right so it's fine it's just it's not quite as good as having paid for someone else
39:06
does that make sense yeah yeah um okay so that's enough on that I hopefully that's helpful happy to follow up on
39:11
that if you'd like but let's talk about the other one because that's actually more to say on the other one because it's a more common question and a great
39:17
one um which was about marketing like so how how do you put do you put marketing budgets in a plan or a pitch and how how
39:24
do you frame that and this is a great one because usually done I think wrong um so I'm glad you asked um here's my
39:30
take on that so first of all if you're going to do marketing yes of course you have to put the costs in there everything needs to be there um you
39:36
can't really be spending marketing money until no that's wrong nobody's going to
39:42
want to invest in you to give you marketing money until you have demonstrated some traction like we're
39:48
not paying nobody wants to pay you to figure out your marketing may maybe a couple thousand
39:54
dollars or something you want to run some little tests but you know if we're going to give you 100 Grand we don't want to give you 100 Grand to then go
39:59
start marketing when you don't know where you're going right what you want to do is you want to present your
40:04
marketing plan in terms of Milestones so if you say we're raising a million dollars a million dollars is is an odd
40:11
number to raise I wouldn't suggest that to anybody which is another topic but it it makes for nice simple examples okay
40:17
but we're raising a million dollars and half is on uh development of the team and you know coding and so forth and
40:23
half is go to market for marketing okay so that 500 Grand that's not enough because that doesn't
40:29
mean anything right if you say okay I'm going to take your money I'm going to spend it on marketing okay of course you're going to give some detail do you
40:35
what do you mean by marketing do you mean you know going to trade shows do you mean buying ads on Google do you mean you know launching a podcast I
40:42
don't know what you mean right so of course you have to give it detail and here's my point what we really want to see is what's the ROI on that marketing
40:49
money because marketing money can just be blown right and this is why you're asking right you understand it's easy to
40:55
see marketing money as hey hey we all went to Vegas for the weekend and met people and networked you know right the money's gone um what we want to see is
41:02
Milestones so you should say of the 500 Grand we're going to do 50 Grand of testing in these ways and at that we're
41:09
going to generate this kind of traction and then with the next 100 Grand we're going to double down on whatever worked
41:15
and then we're going to convert you know hopefully that means we reach whatever 10,000 people and we're hoping to get
41:21
our customer acquisition cost from $100 a person down to $15 a person with a yield rate of 3% that kind of that we
41:29
want numbers right so if you can take your marketing plan and and this I see this all the time is probably my number
41:34
one complaint which is why I'm going off on this but this I see these pie charts all the time with your million dollars
41:39
here's a pie chart we're going to spend it you know 40% on marketing 40% on people and 20% on overhead well no
41:47
that doesn't tell me anything right this is my money you're taking money from my kids college fund and that's all you got
41:53
to say to me come on right you wouldn't say that to your mom right so got to be specific and put numbers on
41:59
it sorry that's one of my favorite topics so thank you is that helpful very helpful thank
42:04
you yeah and and we met before actually I'm nearby like a year or so ago I'm looking forward to coming to the event
42:11
soon so okay good you look familiar yeah okay yeah we've got another conference on the 21st and we'll probably have a
42:18
masterminds group before that so yeah thank you so much for the help yeah nice to see you too okay bye bye that was
42:24
Dave and see here so if you're tuning in late I'm Scott Fox uh I've run the
42:30
startup Council we're here to help you trying to be clever and answer questions for you that can help you accelerate your startup um if that's useful uh
42:37
we're here every month uh fourth Tuesday at noon Pacific is lunchtime for me and
42:42
trying to help you out uh and answer questions that are relevant to accelerating your business online if
42:48
it's useful to you uh hope you will invite your friends come on and subscribe and like and all that kind of
42:55
stuff the uh just a reminder this is not real advice this is all just for show um
43:01
and I'm trying to help but your mileage may vary you need to consult your own professionals uh all this is publicly
43:07
recorded and shared so don't say anything crazy or too confidential and if you haven't liked and subscribed yet
43:13
would you please uh trying to amplify the signal here for all the services that we provide for free uh over at
43:19
startup council.org uh just clicking on those likes and comments uh reposting all that stuff it really does Drive the
43:25
algorithms and um I'd appreciate your help so okay
43:30
so next up what do we got here so let see air and oh yeah okay and then
43:36
Frankie and Lauren okay um all right well any of those could go let's see let's go let's go to
43:44
let's see Frankie and Lauren I think might be our next stop there's Frankie
43:49
hello Frankie there if we can get Lauren back here too or did Lauren leave because her
43:56
mic wasn't working okay she's not there so okay well then I guess it's just me and
44:01
you um okay so why don't you remind people of the situation here okay yeah
44:08
so I'm actually I'm located in Portland um Lauren is located in San Diego
44:15
Portland Oregon yeah yeah so um we have just finished
44:21
the process of acquiring a women's clinic um and so it's a digital healthc
44:27
care platform and we're we have had funding
44:33
in the back you know in the background over the last two years we had investors and then but we're not taking any of the
44:38
financial assets of the company with us we're actually starting the finances over but in some ways you know we have a
44:45
a patient base we have providers with us already so that's what we're moving forward with and we have a membership
44:52
model so we have some Revenue that's going to be coming in on a monthly basis so what we've been doing right now is
44:58
we're in the middle of a a raising round that we're calling kind of a transition fund that we're looking for and so just
45:06
any advice that you could provide on this Unique Kind of transition that we're in maybe how much money we should
45:13
be looking to raise in terms of that transition but also other resources like
45:18
our incubators a good thing for us to be a part of if we've already kind of come this far in the process um how to what
45:26
types of VCS do we need to be looking for that would already like to see some
45:31
growth and some background um so things like that interesting okay well
45:37
congratulations on the transition I hope that's going to go well sounds exciting um just a couple qualifying questions
45:43
how much had they raised before had it been investor backed before yes it was
45:49
um there was two different rounds so one for 500 and one for 150 so 650 total at
45:56
all okay so not big money still early stage stuff okay and it's a dig it's a
46:01
clinic but it's digital so it's kind of a SAS business you're expecting to grow and scale digitally yes okay okay okay
46:11
interesting okay well so I that's a it's an interesting question I don't I don't think I have any great insights into
46:17
what you would do differently other than disclose you know what's going on um that things had been it's a reboot um
46:24
I've seen things like this and um it generally goes well when you position it
46:30
as essentially we got 650 Grand worth of development work for free right somebody
46:36
else's money was spent and so we're ahead of the game here right we're not seed seed stage as you said and that's
46:42
attractive to investors um the more common version of that is what we call non-dilutive funding which mean grants
46:48
right investors love companies that get grants from the government because they don't take government doesn't take Equity right so it's like free
46:54
development money I would put in that same category um so emphasizing that you
46:59
have essentially uh rebooted uh from scratch with the benefit of that previous uh investment is is good would
47:07
the previous investors be participating or have they been burned out any IDE so they're um they're going
47:14
to remain um partial Equity holders but um it wasn't a a monetary buyout it was
47:20
an equity bio okay so they're minority shareholders and you'd be raising it on top of them I see okay
47:26
yeah sense um I guess a lot of the opportunity then would be really targeting the investors the investor
47:32
base right the Women's Health and women's Tech uh Health Tech all of those
47:37
are growth areas um and especially with uh you guys as women Founders that's
47:43
that's just's a lot of people would be interested in hearing about it I think so I'm you're probably aware of you know
47:48
that but there are a lot of funds that are specifically targeting um those overlapping you know vend diagrams of
47:54
you know women and health and digital that's a that's a pretty good sweet spot you found there as you obviously know um
47:59
so I would be looking real specifically as much as you can have you seen startup investors directory this is a service
48:05
actually this is a service this is my fancy promo nice no I haven't seen that yet
48:11
we'll have to look into it check that out that's very my very high-tech uh that that never crashes this billboard
48:18
um but that's that's very built um specifically for folks like you actually
48:23
especially because I'm really a lot of my is supporting women Founders underrepresented Founders minorities
48:29
Outsiders like I used to be even though I look like a white I am a white male but I wasn't always affluent um here
48:36
let's see so this is a this is a service that we built specifically because so many people have trouble finding there's
48:42
so many investors and so much noise a lot of people claim not to be who claim to be investors who are not um this is
48:48
the only directory in the world that I think currently allows you to go in and search on almost 50 different categories
48:54
so you can filter down to find specifically investors who are looking for women and Healthcare and keyword and
49:01
location like really drill down and it um it's designed to connect the dots for
49:08
for folks like you who have something distinguishing right you're not just another you know white guy from Stanford
49:13
with a B2B enterprise software you know startup right um so hopefully that that
49:19
might be helpful um there's a lot of listings in there and hold on there was something else I want to tell I don't know it'll come back to me
49:26
I guess but um yeah so that might be interesting and there's a Code there that should I think it's free or it's 50
49:32
bucks or something we we'd priced it really as low as we could
49:37
um over here is another one this is actually just I'm clicking on the chirons I have here this is a whole page
49:42
of different funds that I'm involved in that are uh actually there's a women's fund uh that I'm an investor in LP in
49:49
called the Thai women's fund that you might look at um anyway so I I'm just kind of rambling
49:56
but I is that helpful um absolutely that's very helpful and I I think that
50:01
you know we've been looking around at you know incubators do we need to be in an incubator what are the the things
50:07
that we would get out of an incubator in this stage I think that that you know we're just trying to really be efficient
50:12
with our energy in this stage of transition and and so right try not to spread too thin but also wanting to to
50:20
take opportunities that might be helpful yeah yeah that thank you that was the other thing I was trying to give back to
50:25
the accelerator so accelerators and incubators are a great opportunity this is for everybody not just you I was talking about this with um what was that
50:33
oh yeah a company I'm advising the other day and they're trying to figure out whether to go that route and the here's
50:39
the short answer is I think you should look at incubators and accelerators everybody should of course you want to
50:44
look at the good ones and you want to find the ones that don't charge you a fortune there's a lot of people that masquerade and want to charge you like
50:49
10 grand and basically don't really do very much right or or they they take cash up front especially or they take a
50:56
chunk or both um also you know in the old days incubators were really about giving you office space but that's not
51:02
as big a deal anymore because we can work remotely as as you and Lauren demonstrate your remote Partners right
51:07
um so you you got to be careful um but I think incubators accelerators can be great because the number one challenge
51:13
at least in my experience the questions I always get that we're seeing today are about how to find investors and build relationships and that is something an
51:20
accelerator can really help you do so the biggest question I would ask after after you know the the price essentially
51:28
of the participation is who are your funders and how can you connect us and
51:33
um the key question is I've seen slides people will put up a slide you know these are the 3,000 like 300 funders
51:41
that we work with but the question is how recently have you worked with each of those and what has worked with mean
51:47
right because sometimes they'll try to make themselves look bigger than they are um so you got to do your due diligence is what I'm saying and the
51:53
where the rubber really hits the road is what is the valuation of your startup so in the context of the company I was
51:59
talking about the other day most of these incubators these days they'll give you 50 150 250 you know a few hundred
52:06
grand in exchange for some percentage of your company and that sounds reasonable especially if you haven't raised any money before although I know you're a
52:12
little different but this still applies you're looking you know would say you know 150 Grand be worth it to me and
52:18
that's the question right how much versus valuation so the valuation is your real problem right so the that I
52:25
was talking to the other day they wanted to do it and we were like yeah we should do that because then I know some you know we'll get you you'll meet all these
52:31
people but their valuation they're already valued at $10 million and they can't do that because the whole point of
52:38
the incubators and accelerators is the deals that they're looking for is early stage they want to give you say 150
52:44
grand for like six% of the company and generally that implies something like uh
52:50
more broadly speaking like they want to Value you at $2 million or maybe three so so if your company already has
52:56
expectations of being valued you know at five or more I don't know of any incubators and I could certainly be
53:01
wrong I'd love to hear from you guys in the chat um if I'm wrong about that uh you you will have already outgrown
53:08
incubators because they are generally exist because they want to give you a small amount of money for a big piece of the company and if you're already valued
53:14
too high they won't you won't have a match in terms of their price does that make
53:21
sense yeah okay cool yeah yeah okay K okay so that that was what I would
53:27
look at do your due diligence and then figure out what your valuation is because if it's above about three or four million bucks they're probably not
53:33
going to be any incubators that I know of that are interested um so all right all right well I guess we got to move on
53:38
but nice meeting you hope we see you again thank you so much okay yeah on to
53:45
our next that was Frankie from Portland hold on frankly there it is okay okay
53:52
everybody so uh I forgot to mention by the way I can see the chat room is busy and I appreciate you all being here I hope this is helpful we're almost
53:57
through an hour already wow um please have your um go ahead and talk to each other in the chat room um I'm not the
54:05
expert on all this stuff um I'm here because I know more than most people I guess uh and because I get around to
54:10
doing it but uh I don't know everything so please help each other you're welcome to talk to each other and cross chatter
54:16
post your LinkedIn right um go ahead and um you know Post in there how you can be
54:22
contacted or share your uh you know the the link to your beta test or your um
54:29
whatever it is you want to do I'm going to grab my LinkedIn and put it in for you here right now in fact um let's see
54:38
LinkedIn if you're not on LinkedIn these days by the way and actually this is a quick piece of advice um you guys got to
54:44
get on LinkedIn it is so much more valuable than it was a few years ago um I'm finding I go to try to find
54:51
companies and people on LinkedIn these days who are raising money and they don't have a solid LinkedIn presence
54:56
that's stupid you need to get out there and update your head shot and fill out the thing and have some friends and
55:02
followers it's it's the first place that everybody looks these days to validate that you're real so if you don't have an
55:08
active LinkedIn profile um it doesn't you don't need to spend money on it it's free right I you should really go out
55:13
and do that so um okay let me run through the uh uh chat room here for a
55:19
second oh Patty hey there's Patty as a friend of ours a woman founder um Frankie this is for you I think uh
55:25
Patty says emilene ventures. VC okay so Patty is a a funded founder who's a
55:32
friend of mine ours and Frankie gave the thumbs up Patty you can't see that so um yeah maybe you two want to connect
55:38
you're actually both healthc care CEO women Founders um okay let me just run back to
55:44
the chat room here for a second uh
55:50
um okay sorry lots of chats this is great
55:57
um okay Renee okay Renee you asked how to book a book with me I put that up
56:04
again there's that okay I'm just going to run through the chat here for a second and then we're going to go back
56:09
to some video questions um how do you ask a question looks like we've got we're full backstage
56:15
sorry um I'll get to the rest of those though uh salil from DC or Washington
56:20
State I'm not sure working on an AI platform I think we can put these up well hold on to effectively manage
56:27
diabetes a prototype that developed but he's using now moving to AI should be looking at VC's at this stage or grants
56:34
if hec's one recommendation on prep needs to be completed before talking to VC's so Cil this is the same answer um I
56:41
get this question a lot when should I start talking to investors the answer is yesterday go start making relationships
56:48
um nobody's going to invest even if you have a brilliant product unless you have
56:54
relation relationships the relationships are what Drive the Investments especially at the angel stage so um and
56:59
if you don't have investor relationships then at least have customer relationships because investors aren't
57:04
going to invest unless they can see the customers care about what you're doing so you need to find The Sweet Spot of
57:11
spending your time on what you're building but also getting out in the world I know as entrepreneurs we like to
57:16
hunker down and especially if you're an engineer or a Cod or type you want to just kind of hang out at your keyboard you know and build stuff and that's cool
57:23
I I I go into that mode for sure um but you have to pull yourself back in and
57:29
and socialize sorry you're in sales um so
57:34
the time is now I don't care how far along your prototype is or your MVP or your business plan or your pitch deck go
57:41
talk to people because that's how the relationships start and it also is how you get feedback and you need to adjust
57:47
course one of the most scary things that we see as investors is when you guys come in and you say I'm here it's time
57:55
for you to invest and we go okay great who have you talked to nobody okay who's
58:01
on your team nobody okay so what are you doing well I
58:06
built this great thing like but who cares other than you nobody okay sorry we don't have time for
58:13
that right you have to demonstrate that the world gives a before you could expect us to right so get out there and
58:20
mingle um that's why we have these services like I was saying if even if you live somewhere um in a in a you know not mainstream
58:28
city um I'm want to put this back up there again uh I can't find it but go go
58:34
sign up for that start it's startup events.org it's a free newsletter with all the events go to Virtual events and
58:40
meet people that's how this works you're not going to make it unless you get out there and mingle okay
58:48
uh moving along here okay um what's a
58:54
gross Market margin that the VC will be interested to see uh the more the better Christian um gross margins are great uh
59:01
what we want to see is not just one time though I guess would be uh to suggest uh
59:07
here we go uh gross margin needs to be sustainable right so there's a lot of people that can have a gross a good
59:13
gross margin in a limited environment so you sell it once or twice or even 50
59:20
times but if you're going to build a scalable World conquering company that tracks venture capital investment we
59:26
need to see a gross margin that sustains right and it might only be 20% although
59:32
better would be 30 or 60 or 80 of course but we need to know that it's sustainable once you really scale and
59:38
that's where a lot of people fall down you might be able to do it on a small basis but you need to scale that gross margin as you grow and keep it
59:46
going okay um I'm just hitting a couple more of these
59:53
um will I have a chat on Real Estate another time no sorry Chris I don't do I
59:59
don't do real estate I mean I do do real estate actually but I'm not very good at it uh that's not my expertise this is
1:00:05
really about software and and tech companies sorry about that but I'm sure there's a million people on YouTube go
1:00:10
just go Google that um okay maresa says uh I am working on software that is
1:00:17
working on Doctor Communications and connecting specialist to Physicians talking to doctors is not
1:00:23
easy help okay well we're trying martesa sorry I don't know what you need so I'm happy to uh yeah uh you got to give us
1:00:31
more than that happy you could book a call with me I guess if you'd like or something like that or post um be more
1:00:36
specific in the chat room and maybe somebody else can respond more specifically uh here's the same thing
1:00:42
Angel's asking this question again how early should a startup begin to look for investors now go now okay now um here's
1:00:52
Eric asking might you know of any upcoming events where you can pitch to investors sure uh I don't know where
1:00:57
you're located Eric but if you're in Orange County California I'm hosting at least two or three of them in the next
1:01:03
couple months myself and there's many more you need to get involved in the Orange County startup Council or if you
1:01:09
are not you're in Southern California go to Startup council.org and check out the calendar there we have lots of them all
1:01:16
over the world we're trying to help people by the way did you know that we have meetups in 40 cities around the world there's about 50,000 members of
1:01:23
the startup Council this is not really small as you might think of it if you're new to us uh but we do this all over the world all the time and if you're in a
1:01:29
foreign I mean non uh non if you're far how how do I say this if you're not in
1:01:35
Southern California but you're in any major city across the United States and most major C City capitals across the world uh there's probably a Meetup Group
1:01:42
there that we started years ago and we probably have people like you that you would want to meet so go ahead and check
1:01:48
out Meetup or um visit startup council.org for to see all our Meetup lists uh
1:01:54
uh uh this is a good one Chris U my question everybody can read this I think but you want to be the backend guy and
1:02:01
you want sales and marketing help that would look at sales on commission everybody talks about this and to be
1:02:06
honest I've even tried it myself it never works so
1:02:11
no um anybody that's good doesn't need to work 100% on commission so this is a
1:02:20
great idea but I just have never seen it work if there's anybody in the room that has experiences otherwise please tell me
1:02:27
or post on LinkedIn later where I can see it or or send me an email I'm easy to contact UM or Chris put in your
1:02:33
contact information I wish it were otherwise right but um salespeople that
1:02:39
are good they like anybody else they can be paid right why would they work you know on commission I I've never seen it
1:02:46
happen I hope I'm wrong B Pasa this is you're from Hawaii
1:02:51
right Aloha how can I speed up development process to complete in MVP a solo developer work full-time should I raise pre-product uh
1:02:59
well there's a bunch of questions in there but I'll cut to the chase I don't think you can raise pre-product I don't think that's a thing anymore people
1:03:05
think it is and that's one of the reasons I do this show times have changed I don't know that anybody's going to fund a pre product anything
1:03:11
unless as we talked about friends and family those people already know and like you so if you want to move faster I
1:03:17
agree you probably need to hire outside people you probably need to fund this yourself or find customers
1:03:24
the in between here there's friends and family but the other is customers who are so excited about what you build that
1:03:29
they might give you an advance against future services or something like that there that's an in between but I don't
1:03:35
see people funding priest product anymore uh unfortunately um let's
1:03:43
see let's see okay yes please call my agent happy to be on TV again it's been
1:03:50
a while um all right I will try oh she's going
1:03:56
to try thank you um where can I find Angel Investors hang in there uh Martin and whoever's next uh Chris Simone
1:04:03
Mariana Angel Investors Facebook no I don't think mathas I Facebook is not where I would go uh for Angel Investors
1:04:11
that's why we built startup investors directory let me put this up here again
1:04:16
startup investors directory is a customized directory whose link I
1:04:23
cannot find my goodness why is this so
1:04:30
difficult sorry guys doing everything the same
1:04:36
time there it is my goodness okay I'm gonna leave that up for a minute that seems to be the question over and over
1:04:42
um go there and search it's got 3,000 pushing 4,000 investors all early stage
1:04:49
folks with contact information and the critical thing is the startup investors directory it has has um their portfolios
1:04:57
like what have they already invested in all right those of you who are visual Learners there's the logo um it shows
1:05:05
what their portfolios are so here's how you use it you go and figure out what companies are like yours what does your
1:05:12
company want to be when it grows up okay go find those companies that were already funded maybe even went public go
1:05:19
use those as keywords over here and search and find out who invests in those companies because they did well and then
1:05:27
you contact them and you say hey I you know I have a company like XYZ company I
1:05:33
know you did well with that would you like to try again I mean it' be a little fancier than that obviously but that's
1:05:39
how you make friends because you don't know these people but you show that you have common interests and expertise and
1:05:44
say I'm building the next XYZ so here's what we're doing we'd like to raise some money would you like to talk right and
1:05:50
be friendly and out uh outgoing and find find the comps comparables that's what
1:05:55
they mean comps find the comps that will appeal to them and that's what you can do at startup investors directory.com
1:06:01
that's why we built it I mean because I because I people asked me this for years so finally I just went and built it
1:06:07
myself um Coen says how do you speak to the best way to reach out to those on your list sure that's right so how do
1:06:13
you reach out well it's just what I said cold emails don't work anymore that's the other reason I built this you can't
1:06:20
spamming doesn't work right we all we're all flooded you can't spam you have to make friends and how do you make friends
1:06:26
if you don't know someone you find something in common right now when you do that in the real world you're at a party you probably know someone in
1:06:33
common so you immediately say something like hey how do you know how do you know her or how do you know him or why did you come here tonight because you know
1:06:39
you have some common ground you need to find common ground so you go and you figure out who are the investors in your
1:06:46
space you don't just send out random stuff Spam spray and pray you figure out who invests in this space who's done
1:06:52
well who are are listed in in a directory like this or you can go to pitchbook or crunch base uh by the way
1:06:59
they'll charge you like 10,000 12,000 ridiculous and unfair gatekeeping
1:07:06
um but uh you can search figure out who the comps are and then email and you say
1:07:13
hi I see you invested in this company that's like our company we're building something cool a modern version of that
1:07:19
that's going to do even better right and therefore please come join our party and
1:07:24
you were friendly and you find that common ground and if you're smart you'll do a little more and you'll look them up
1:07:29
on LinkedIn and say ah you know you went to the University of Missouri well so did I or you know I see you're a big
1:07:35
49ers fan you know actually go Lions this year Go Go Lions but you know like
1:07:40
that kind of thing like find common ground you don't just say hey send me money you know um you got to make
1:07:47
friends so okay so sorry I'm getting through
1:07:52
here uh there we go rodri says uh rodri has
1:07:58
thank you rodri that's cool he says it's actually been very helpful he's been using it l thank you rodri that's helpful yeah we're trying to help um and
1:08:07
uh recommend that to all of you it's the only lowcost way to do this like I said they'll charge you 12 grand for access to this kind of stuff otherwise this is
1:08:14
I don't for I'm sorry 50 bucks or something like that
1:08:20
um oh this is a good one Athena thank you let me toss this and I think this was uh who asking me about budgets aan
1:08:29
no Dave yeah Dave um R&D tax credits that's
1:08:34
a good one um you might this is true for all of you actually um there's a thing called an R&D tax credit uh you should
1:08:42
ask your accountant or research this online there's a company called uh arus aard di IUS run by my friend Josh Lee uh
1:08:50
they will give you the government will give you money back for money that you have spent I think it has to be on
1:08:55
employees salaries so I don't know that it will work Athena you can correct me in the chat room I think it's mostly for
1:09:01
W2 salaries but if um but there may be more to it than that and yeah there's real money there uh available for uh
1:09:09
Founders who have invested in their own businesses okay I'm gonna do one more
1:09:14
here and um then we'll get back to the videos uh how can various stakeholders
1:09:20
in the business community plan for potential instability wow Sean that's a great question I think
1:09:26
that's Sean I wanted to put this up because I know you've come to these before um I don't have a good answer for
1:09:32
that uh and i h i gosh I hope that there's not a problem
1:09:39
um potential instability after the election cash in the bank I guess that's usually the answer right cash in the
1:09:47
bank yikes uh okay so let's get back to our
1:09:52
video here and we're already at 110 my goodness okay and you are watching free
1:10:00
startup fundraising office hours okay so next up was I think see did Frankie and Lauren so okay
1:10:08
Martin Martin you've been very patient um and then let's see here's Martin hey
1:10:14
Martin how are you good how are you good nice to see you Martin is a local person here um hang on one second so then Chris
1:10:21
I'll get to you as well and uh Marina if you're still around
1:10:28
um actually just one second Chris I'm GNA bring out hey Chris um can you just give me a quick version what what's your
1:10:34
question so I can work it in absolutely Chris from Quebec City here in Canada my question was about the
1:10:40
what does looks like the workflow with Angel Investors the experience when you do not have this network and you would
1:10:46
like let's say to get to get more familiar with those without having let's say without sounding to opportunistic
1:10:52
let alone salesy yeah excellent that's a great question okay cool we'll be right back to you okay awesome but let's hit
1:10:57
Martin since he's been waiting okay Martin go ahead all right so so I have a a B2B Marketing sales enablement company
1:11:04
um we've been kind of testing a lot of different markets for the last couple years and finally figured out like our
1:11:10
kind of our product Market fit on like who we work with and more importantly who we don't work with um and I guess my
1:11:17
my question is I've been I'm a solo founder I've been pretty stretched a little thin uh between deliverables and
1:11:24
um client acquisition so I'm looking at um automating and using AI
1:11:31
to um for my own backend workflow uh but this is OB obviously going to take some
1:11:37
Capital so um in between either trying to and also like with bringing in
1:11:44
capital like I can go to friends and family but none of them have like the expertise to actually help me push the
1:11:49
needle on growth of my business so I guess I guess my question question is I'm I'm leaning between either looking
1:11:56
for some sort of technical founder a partnering with some sort of uh development company or you know trying
1:12:02
to look for some VC funding um so I think that's kind of where my where my
1:12:07
question is is like yeah where do I go from
1:12:13
here that's interesting the one thing that you did say um that actually kind of got my wheels training was Advance
1:12:19
against future Services um and I thought that that was that that was a pretty good Point yeah well that that's a good
1:12:26
good way to get going when you actually have Services right so you already know have an expertise just like I was talking about actually so I guess that
1:12:31
was directed to you the uh the other thing I would be thinking about is I have rarely found
1:12:39
that's not that's not the right way to say it it's hard to find a co-founder right I think what you're really looking for is uh well let me back up so
1:12:47
investors who knows right you got you just got to beat the pavement and find people who are interested in this stuff
1:12:53
there's no way that I know to do that other than to get out and press the flesh um the startup investor director
1:12:58
that we built is the best I've come up with um but you have such a specific Niche and you're talking more about a
1:13:04
Services business rather than a product business right so I'm not sure it would be the right fit for you either but
1:13:10
you're certainly welcome to try right um what comes to mind for me is building on what you what you picked out in my
1:13:16
previous answer was I think I would be looking if you really want to scale the best way to scale is not to just have a
1:13:22
person but to have a team and if you could find another agency that was doing
1:13:28
the kind of stuff that you need done but isn't good at what you do I would bring them in as kind of like
1:13:34
not a co-founder Partners but like some kind of swap barter of services for you
1:13:41
know a good chunk of maybe of of equity but also you know like 10% of the company not 50 you know or something
1:13:47
like whatever makes sense to you but if there because there are people that do what you're saying lots of them and they
1:13:52
don't they're not good at what you do um so that to me would be interesting because there's a lot of people I and I
1:13:58
get pitches all the time just change your uh change your LinkedIn profile to say angel investor and you'll hear from
1:14:04
all kinds of people um but I hear from people all the time with different kind of AI services
1:14:11
that are looking to uh automate process like you're talking about and a lot of them are non us right um so that can
1:14:19
mean uh greater bang for your buck essentially in terms of uh man power you know or woman power so that that's an
1:14:26
angle I don't know if you've been thinking about that but I think I would be thinking about that rather than trying to raise straight Venture Capital
1:14:32
type money because uh I don't know enough about your business uh but it
1:14:37
doesn't sound like it's one that's going to progress down the traditional kind of go public or get acquired sort of thing
1:14:44
which means the VC investors aren't necessarily going to be interested anyway you're sounding like you're building an agency and I could be wrong
1:14:49
and unfortunately we don't have time to go into it although I'd be happy to see you again in the future one of our local events but you know if you're building
1:14:56
something that isn't going to become you know have 10,000 employees then a lot of times VCS aren't interested if you're
1:15:01
talking about you know a couple hundred person agency that makes you personally five or 10 million a year that's a
1:15:06
really good business but it's not a VC type business that's more of a partnership type business right okay you
1:15:12
may be find another agency and um anyway that's what comes to mind hopefully that'll spur some thoughts yeah
1:15:18
absolutely thanks Scott okay great nice to see you we'll be seeing you again soon
1:15:23
okay so um I saw a quick question in the in the chat room let me just answer this we're going to bring Chris on in a
1:15:29
second here um Michael said when you have masterminds meetings are they in person in Orange County yes so we have
1:15:35
masterminds meetings um once a month is depending on my travel schedule um and
1:15:41
the masterminds meetings are kind of like this but everybody gets to talk and so we have 40 or 50 people and everybody
1:15:47
brings a question and we work through the themes together and I moderate I don't do all the Talking I actually started this show because at the
1:15:54
masterminds meetings people kept asking me to talk more because I have a lot of background right um but the Mastermind
1:16:00
meetings are more interactive and I um we do and the answer to the question is I alternate they're in person and online
1:16:07
so they used to all be local and then during the pandemic they were all online and these days I do them once a month uh
1:16:12
in Southern California and once a month virtually online so the next uh local one in Orange County I'm targeting for
1:16:19
the end of the month we're a little behind schedule so I don't have the date yet um but either way if you want to get
1:16:24
on the mailing list we'd be happy to have you join these virtually this goes out to all of you worldwide and when we
1:16:29
do these we get people from everywhere right from from Australia and from Japan and Berlin and Mumbai and you know
1:16:36
Philadelphia and Miami everywhere of course just like this show um and then everybody meets it's a really fun
1:16:42
networking and very stimulating um so those and you can find out more about those I don't think I have a Chiron for
1:16:47
that actually but um it's masterminds oc.org um but you can go to the startup
1:16:54
Council website and find the services there and I'd recommend you come and Michael especially if you're here yeah
1:16:59
come come in person um okay I just wanted to hit that one quickly and then up was our friend
1:17:06
Chris okay here's Chris hi Chris hello everyone hey where are you today in
1:17:13
Quebec city in Canada Oh Canada cool nice to meet
1:17:21
youour uh so let's talk about you want to talk about how to approach Angel Investors did I get that right exactly
1:17:28
yes I'm still on the fence whether I should have Angel Investors or still remain with VC as in um we all hear
1:17:35
those horror stories all those those rumors where investors simply come in
1:17:40
well Angel Investors simply come in with some kind of sense of entitlement and they ask let's say I want 40% of the
1:17:46
startup I want 50% or I want I want to 80% of your company and so forth I would
1:17:52
like to to take those out and simply get to know what it really looks like the
1:17:57
other way around right right yeah there's there's a lot of predators out there um yeah so well I guess the place
1:18:05
to start and and steer me just raise your hand if I'm going off track because that's a pretty broad question but um
1:18:11
you're once you're aware of it you're already halfway you accomplishing your goal because as soon as somebody starts
1:18:18
talking like that you can pretty much end the discussion they're they're clearly not doing this the in between that's harder to sus out is there are a
1:18:24
lot of people who act like um I'm a I'm a bank I'm an investment banker I help broker these things or I'm a marketing
1:18:32
consultant and I F raise money for companies and stuff like that and they do that and then they want a chunk of it
1:18:38
even though they don't do very much now that can be a legitimate business but at
1:18:43
least in the United States you have to be licensed to do that you cannot raise money for a percentage that's not a
1:18:49
thing that you can do without being licensed by the SEC at least as I understand it again I could be be wrong but last time I looked um so if you're
1:18:56
talking to people you want to not talk to intermediaries you want to talk to actual investors so that's probably obvious but it's worth saying because I
1:19:02
see this all the time um you also don't want to sign a contract of any sort that um offers you some kind of
1:19:09
services in exchange for introductions that's kind of the same thing often those contracts have a a a claw back in
1:19:17
the sense that well actually I'll give you a story this happened to a friend of mine unfortunately who was too anxious
1:19:22
to raise money and he signed a deal with this company that saw him on an online pitch and uh he never heard of them I
1:19:28
never heard of them but they said he we're really excited about your company send us your deck blah blah blah blah okay great sign this little deal we'll
1:19:33
raise some money for you because we're gonna actually I think they even said we're gonna we we to go into due diligence we so we can invest we need
1:19:41
you to sign this thing then it turned out they wouldn't allow him to check references or anything and so he but
1:19:48
he'd already signed the thing bottom line there was a it cost him 9,800 $1 or
1:19:53
something because they had a fee in there that they had to recover their due diligence costs which is complete
1:19:58
they didn't do anything they did this tire they were doing this $10,000 at a time screwing Founders
1:20:03
right so um they had they had no intention of investing as far as I could tell um and unfortunately he had signed
1:20:10
it without talking to me basically um but so anyway that's the kind of Horror Story you're hearing I think so it's
1:20:17
really about due diligence um Google is your friend uh always ask for reference
1:20:23
uh go to uh established name brand events before you meet people um look at
1:20:29
places like the startup investors directory.com I was talking about ask your friends uh and everybody it's okay
1:20:36
to check references that's the thing that uh Founders are often very loath to do they don't want to offend anybody
1:20:41
they're so excited that they might be getting close to money they don't want to ask any awkward questions but anybody who's a legit investor has done this
1:20:47
multiple times sure talk to this guy talk to this guy you know or a girl you know and and uh they shouldn't be shy
1:20:54
about that if they are that's a big red flag is that was that on point at all
1:20:59
helpful absolutely thank you so much okay that was easy uh yeah happy to help
1:21:05
um that kind of thing we talk about a lot here so yeah come back again and um if you have more specific questions um
1:21:10
one of our masterminds uh workshops would probably be great for you too um the uh I guess the other thing I would
1:21:16
say just as a Parting Shot don't worry too much about that because it's natural it's the same as Michael's question at
1:21:22
the top of the show you know the his first question and I'm sure he has other questions but you know what are the legal protections people you you get
1:21:29
worried about protecting what you've got and and that's totally understandable I've been that same place right but if
1:21:35
you don't get out there you're not going to get anywhere and you will be better
1:21:41
off by learning from a couple of those bad encounters just don't say anything
1:21:46
right but learning from a few of the bad encounters will get you where you're going faster because if you guard things
1:21:53
too closely it will take too long and the most precious thing you have is your time and your time is not just um in
1:22:00
terms of hours but it's in terms of your spirit and your enthusiasm and if you know you can't spend you know today and
1:22:06
I'm just talking to you I'm talking to everybody right you you may have a world changing idea but if you spend the next
1:22:11
four years on this and never get out of your comfort zone you're going to run
1:22:16
out of enthusiasm even if you have the money right you've got to use your enthusiasm while you can and and and go
1:22:22
for it um and if you guard it too closely it'll wither and um and I'm here to help encourage you so hopefully
1:22:28
that's encouraging so there we go well thank you very much and especially thank you
1:22:34
for all this initiative and what you do for all the founders out there around rooll it's a truly appreciated and I'm
1:22:39
definitely signing up for all the other events thank you so much boss all right all right nice to meet you fair okay
1:22:47
let's move on so 123 all right we're going to need to wrap up here pretty soon um that was Chris let's see uh
1:22:55
let's see did did I okay um okay so
1:23:02
Chris um okay I'm trying to look in the backstage here okay Chris from New Zealand has
1:23:10
okay so Chris from New Zealand and then Marina if you want to turn your camera
1:23:17
on if you're still here um and we'll talk to you folks looks
1:23:24
like we're running out of time
1:23:29
um okay
1:23:35
and being employed in the same amount okay let's okay let's bring Chris
1:23:41
on okay Chris hey good day hi good day nice to meet you so you
1:23:48
had a uh sounds like you're well you're in New Zealand is that right uh yep that's correct yeah great great well
1:23:55
glad you're joining us uh so sales and marketing question was that what it was yeah you answered that already in terms
1:24:00
of just pure commission based sales and marketing but I guess more broadly if
1:24:06
you if you are do find yourself naturally gravitating to the you know the back end um I have a I guess you'd
1:24:14
call it a scale up now it's I've been doing it as a hobby but I do have some customers um and there's a database of
1:24:21
of customers who honestly I've not said hello to in in in years I guess because
1:24:27
I'm just you know I'm in the back end tinkering uh I mean partly perhaps is
1:24:32
that a motivation thing you know we just need to embrace that that um sales side
1:24:38
tips help yeah anything like that it would be appreciated sure well yeah so yeah I guess I did cover that already
1:24:44
but I guess the you're going to have to do things when you're an early stage founder that don't scale unless you have
1:24:51
infinite resources in which case you wouldn't be an early stage founder right so the things that don't scale are those
1:24:56
first five or 10 customers uh and it's probably you Chris sorry um you know
1:25:02
somebody's got to do it or you have no business um and what you need to do is
1:25:07
demonstrate some commission sorry some um Revenue in order to generate some
1:25:13
sales because that's what investors are going to want and it's also going to be kind of uh expected even if you can find
1:25:19
affiliate or commission-based salespeople they're going to know what what your track record is Right starting from scratch is a really big ask for
1:25:26
anybody right um at least if you could say I've closed whatever five deals of
1:25:32
an average this size and we made this much money on each that would say a lot
1:25:37
to investors and to salespeople because otherwise it's all just wishful thinking honestly we don't
1:25:44
know we don't I just met you I mean you seem like a nice guy but I don't know right and you can't imagine the number
1:25:50
of nice people that we meet who all seem to have good ideas right it's just it's really hard I'm not singing a sad song
1:25:56
for investors we're doing fine but it's you know it's it's a difficult business and it comes down a lot of it to
1:26:02
personality um and fit and um if the founder hasn't demonstrated that they're
1:26:07
going to go out and get it whatever it is the next guy will so I I hope that's
1:26:13
inspiring and not intimidating but it's the truth y yeah Co um yeah you're welcome
1:26:20
so um if uh if anybody in the chat room has other suggestions please please share them
1:26:25
with Chris um sounds like he's he's in a place where a lot of us sit um brilliant ideas um and I think the partnership
1:26:32
idea we've been exploring a little might also be helpful Chris looking at those initial list of customers and finding
1:26:37
out who's the most natural fit because being an introvert is not easy
1:26:44
um it's a being an EXT let put another way being an extrovert is natural to some people but for other people it's a
1:26:50
learned skill and practice is what does it and if you can start with the easy ones and do those and do them over and
1:26:56
over it gets easier right so you just it's the first ones the hardest so yeah I don't know if that's
1:27:03
helpful speaking from personal experience but nice to meet you hope to see you again next time yeah cool all
1:27:09
right and we gonna move on here and looks like Marina might be our cleanup here or we're gonna run out of time here
1:27:15
hey Marina nice to meet you where are you
1:27:21
today hi can you hear me yes hello I'm
1:27:26
calling from Paris from France oh okay can you hear me
1:27:33
yes yes so yes thank you very much SC it's
1:27:39
really has been great you repli to answer several questions I couldn't get exact answers on multiple webinar so I
1:27:47
will be your regular customer let's say um I'm a founder of um one digital platform which
1:27:56
is also facing which is also building something kind of digital clinic for
1:28:03
women uh it's not it's stage not exactly
1:28:09
not nvp yet somewhere in the middle uh I'm running run out of money
1:28:15
so basically still working out couple of solutions to continue but it's very
1:28:21
possible what I will still need at least until invest like to bring MVP life and also to relate to the
1:28:30
previous discussion you had I just really determined and starting right like now end of January to networking
1:28:38
Network and then to be to start going outside of their um my uh screen
1:28:44
research and development to build by myself social media to to do whatever is
1:28:50
possible to build community probably to build crowd for crowd funding for services possible because I
1:28:57
understand how the situation is really especially I'm being like solo founder female founder so
1:29:04
it's it's tough but I've been on the r Ro like years like with Incredible
1:29:10
obstacles I always wake up in the morning find solution and return to
1:29:15
bring it life so any any other advice you can give us today want to delay
1:29:22
much uh my basically probably if any special if there anything if it matters
1:29:29
to describe in any case what is kind of midterm MVP something is done like 3,000
1:29:36
line of codes some screens or it doesn't matter if there is no MVP no
1:29:44
MVP that doesn't matter it all what is kind of a lot of things already buil but
1:29:50
still not in ready or it doesn't make sense even to present on Peach because
1:29:58
if it's really like black and white MVP or novp and not was like even slides to
1:30:04
describe what has been bu so far okay so Marina I I'm having a little trouble hearing you there's a lot of background
1:30:10
noise what's your question uh my question is for example
1:30:16
currently I have question about MVP when it is not prototype but already Midway
1:30:23
MVP doesn't make any sense to describe it somehow in the deck or it's clearly
1:30:30
black and white MVP ready or no MVP I'm sorry I don't understand
1:30:38
you if you you have an m i I don't I'm sorry I don't understand
1:30:44
what you're asking me you have an MVP or you you you want to know if you need
1:30:49
one no no it's let's say half of the way towards MVP but it's not prototype
1:30:56
already it's it's not prototype but it's not MVP ready yet but to finalize MVP I
1:31:03
will need to raise a bit of money even it's angel investor not big SS so this
1:31:08
this is the question doesn't matter if there is something is done and to finalize it all together ah okay it
1:31:16
doesn't matter okay so okay I'm gon I'm going to mute you because it's the background is really noisy
1:31:22
um okay so I think what Marina is asking is um if she's raising money and she
1:31:28
needs like half of it to complete an MVP if now is the right time or not to raise is that more or less the concept Marina
1:31:35
just raise yeah okay that's about as good as we're going to do I think because I it's really hard to hear you um okay so I I'll try to address that
1:31:42
I'm sorry if this is off base um so an
1:31:47
MVP let me back up I don't know she said uh is a digital platform I think a health platform so first of all you
1:31:54
should probably connect with Frankie and Lauren uh who were on the show earlier as well as Patty bolbach uh who are some
1:32:01
other female Founders who are in the Women's healthc Care space or who are women Andor in the healthcare space so
1:32:06
you might want to watch the archived uh video later once this posts on YouTube um because uh as part of being a solo
1:32:13
founder one of the biggest challenges is being alone right so I heard that part of you your uh discussion clearly uh
1:32:20
finding support can be wonderful and we'll be happy to hear you uh at some of our future events and support you there
1:32:26
too in terms of an MVP I don't think you're going to be able to raise money unless you have an MVP um these day I
1:32:32
don't know what the market is like in France per se but uh software uh investment these days is
1:32:38
mostly done after there's uh at least a prototype and probably an MVP and even some traction there are so many software
1:32:46
opportunities available to investors like us that uh it's hard to get investors excited
1:32:52
um unless you already show that not only is the thing built but it's functioning enough that people are buying it um most
1:32:59
VC type money these days is used to add fuel to a fire that's already burning
1:33:05
not to start the fire if that makes sense so I would again I apologize
1:33:11
because it's hard hearing you and it's we're out of kind of out of time but um
1:33:17
I would focus on doing and this is actually answers a bunch of the people's questions so hopefully this is ful for
1:33:22
more than just you but I would focus on doing whatever you can with whatever you've got today to demonstrate some
1:33:29
kind of customer engagement so whether you actually have an MVP or a prototype or not talk to the people who are the
1:33:36
most likely customers of what you're going to build maybe you haven't built it yet but talk to the people who would
1:33:41
be the buyers and get their feedback see if you can get some kind of even small
1:33:46
demonstration of Interest or commitment from them like even just a quote saying uh I think you said you were in
1:33:52
healthcare so you're like the head of a hospital who says yes if marina built this we're interested you know or even
1:33:58
better if marina built this and it cost $10,000 a year we'd buy six of them right you know like some sort of this is
1:34:05
what I kind call kind of like faux traction like fake traction right it's not actually anything but it shows that
1:34:11
you've talked to somebody other than just yourself and this is what I was just talking about with Chris from New Zealand a couple minutes ago what
1:34:16
investors are really worried about especially with solo Founders that are pre-product is does anybody care about
1:34:23
this other than you is this even a thing we we don't know like we don't know you so you need to have somebody outside of
1:34:29
yourself say yes we think this is a thing we think it's going to happen and we would actually pay for it um so
1:34:36
finding that Nexus of potential customers or even actual customers who will actually pay money is what you need
1:34:42
to demonstrate and that's what you need to demonstrate even more than you need to demonstrate a product because as an
1:34:48
investor I don't this is kind of shocking to entrepreneurs product driven folks I don't care what the product is
1:34:54
I'm here because I want you to make money right so if you can show somehow that you have a path toward money I
1:35:00
almost don't care what the product is or what where you're at so um I I wouldn't
1:35:05
hit that too hard right because of course all of us have interests and domain expertise and so forth uh and the in between again is there may be friends
1:35:12
and family who already know you and trust you as we've talked about for an hour and a half now who might put in some money to help you get Farther Along
1:35:19
because of course it will be easier to get commit once you have an MVP that you can show those customers right so it's
1:35:24
really a ladder of iterations you have nothing you build a little something you get some feedback then you build a
1:35:30
little more then you talk somebody into investing a little then you build a little more and then you get a little better feedback and they commit a little more and you have to just kind of climb
1:35:38
up the ladder uh demonstrating traction even though you don't have a product until you actually do have a product um
1:35:46
so I don't know that that's kind of what I got that was a long answer anyway but was that helpful you're nodding anyway that's why I kept going so hopefully
1:35:52
that was somewhat useful um that's the strategy that I would adopt because investors really um uh we want to see
1:35:59
growth and revenues um that's really what it takes these days and I don't know um I haven't I was in France this
1:36:05
summer but I wasn't there on business um I don't know what the investing environment is like there but my sense
1:36:11
is that it's harder to raise early stage money in Europe than it is in the states and here even in the States you can't
1:36:17
raise with just a a pre-product MVP anymore so you need customer traction
1:36:23
and and revenue um in most cases so I be happy to be wrong but that's my
1:36:28
impression so okay so um I don't know was that helpful thank you yeah is it
1:36:33
useful a little bit thank you okay okay thank okay nice to meet you and I hope
1:36:40
that was helpful okay so we are kind of out of time here I think I think I'm gonna have to wrap up um let's see what
1:36:46
else we got here let me just check through the chat room here um and a lot of you stuck around today please uh do
1:36:52
I'm going to run through the chat room and respond to whatever else we have there if you um have not yet joined
1:36:57
startup Council you should it's free doing my best uh to um to create stuff
1:37:04
that's helpful to you um your likes and subscribes and shares if you're watching this later you can watch it on YouTube
1:37:10
or you can watch it you can rewind it and watch it faster you want to skip to the good parts um liking and subscribing
1:37:16
is really helpful I know it sounds stupid but little clicks make a big difference and I'm honestly doing this
1:37:22
to try to help okay so don't leave yet let's just run through the chat in case I missed anything else
1:37:31
okay okay okay okay this is Wade is chiming
1:37:38
in on this is about incubators uh if you're valued over a few million bucks you're too late for an incubator or
1:37:44
accelerator that's something that uh some friends of mine recently figured out so that's just sort of General uh
1:37:50
information for all of you here's my LinkedIn if that's helpful um please follow the startup Council actually
1:37:56
that's even more useful trying to build the audience there so if you can find startup Council on LinkedIn and say
1:38:02
hello that would be great um let's see uh let's see here what is the best
1:38:10
way to network well you're doing it Gus uh come out and say hi um let's see we talked about
1:38:19
this I'm working
1:38:26
okay this is a good one um it's too long to even say but um the
1:38:32
question is it actually runs out so you can't see it um but uh it's about grants
1:38:38
um grants are something we didn't talk about that you should all be looking into in the United States there are things called uh well there's lots of
1:38:45
them but there's the small business administration the SBA runs a lot of programs there are also the sbdc the
1:38:50
small Business Development Corp which has offices in most cities and they run programs free programs all the time
1:38:56
trying to help early stage entrepreneurs you should check that out I think there's uh the small business
1:39:02
administration has America's seed fund which is in its annual Grant competition right now uh sbir grants are there's all
1:39:10
there's all kinds of stuff a great place to look and learn about this stuff is challenge.gov
1:39:16
challenge.gov that's in the United States they will um they listings of all
1:39:22
the current Challenge and grant opportunities and it's a good way to keep track of if you're a founder of new opportunities that might apply to you
1:39:28
outside of the US I'm sorry I don't know so much uh and I certainly can't compare the Grant regimes in one country to
1:39:34
another as this person was asking um but I would encourage all of you to go look there is free money uh governments are
1:39:40
excited about what we're building and by we I mean us entrepreneurs uh we're the
1:39:45
people that are going to make a difference in the world because we actually build things and get things done so I would encourage you to go look
1:39:51
for uh grants in your jurisdiction um okay Renee says any uh
1:39:59
startup events in Orange County absolutely Renee um you need to go to OC startup council.org we have a community
1:40:05
calendar we publish all the events and I'm personally hosting multiple events every month right here in person in Southern California as well as traveling
1:40:12
I haven't talked about this lately but if anybody's overseas and you need a speaker I'd love to do public speaking
1:40:17
my last uh I was in Melbourne in Australia this fall I just got back from taipe um I'm happy to do speaking around
1:40:23
the world um I do conferences and Keynotes and panels I really do enjoy doing that and if you have a uh startup
1:40:30
ecosystem that needs advice or an angel group that's forming or a group of Founders or a startup convention uh let
1:40:37
me know happy to bring some of my expertise uh and energy to your jurisdiction if that would be helpful um
1:40:45
okay Nadim sorry you're still waiting here but you did ask this being employed in the same industry my started for last 10 years
1:40:51
helps When approaching Angel yes okay so this is a great Point Nadim I'm sorry we don't have more time to discuss this and
1:40:58
I don't think we got to your pitch either I apologize um but yes um domain expertise is a key thing that investors
1:41:04
look for so what I've talked about several times in the past hour or so is
1:41:09
that to build a company and attract investors you need to demonstrate growth and progress and a team uh of both
1:41:17
hopefully uh staff members but also customers and one of the ways to do that
1:41:22
it's all about establishing credibility and having expertise in that field is absolutely one of the big ones so if you
1:41:28
do have uh industry from industry experience that relates to your startup absolutely I would be very proud of that
1:41:35
and put that you know right up front um because any angel investor who's been
1:41:40
around or VC either has lost money by investing in someone who had a great idea but turned out didn't know the
1:41:46
market so if you know the market absolutely I would play that card have heavily and
1:41:52
often um let's see here
1:41:59
okay um okay yes
1:42:06
uh here's a good thought um mathas this is back to um Marina here actually um
1:42:13
make a video this is a good this is a good thought Maas is suggesting that um
1:42:19
you can if you can actually afford to build your full prototype or
1:42:25
MVP make it up and make a video of it make it look like it works because it's
1:42:30
really hard for people who are non-technical especially to imagine what you're seeing in your head as an
1:42:36
engineer or developer um if you can make a video you know a picture is worth a thousand words well a video is worth a
1:42:42
million words so that's a good tip and he's suggesting that um someone even did this um he's thinking that it might have
1:42:49
been Dropbox um um that actually did this because the MVP was too expensive but they convinced the investors with a
1:42:54
video so I have not done that myself but seems like it might be worth a try um
1:42:59
and uh perhaps that's a um that's a useful tip okay and that
1:43:07
might are we about out of time here I think we are so um if you have follow-up
1:43:13
questions you can post them on LinkedIn or uh on YouTube if you're watching this later you can post and I'll try to get
1:43:19
back to you or um maybe other people will as well you're all welcome to participate trying to help everybody
1:43:25
that's the whole um Vibe here at the startup Council if you're looking for startup funding this is a page I put up
1:43:31
to try to help if you want uh publicity for your meetups and your events like I
1:43:37
said this is the URL I was looking for earlier there are we have uh 40 or 50 meetups all over the world and you're
1:43:44
welcome to participate and we'll post things from your town in that Meetup if it helps to develop the community of
1:43:50
entrepreneurship and innovation in your town so if if you're watching this from uh you know Philadelphia or Mumbai or
1:43:58
Paris or Manila or Sydney um or Singapore we have meetups in all those
1:44:03
cities and be happy to help publicize the things that you're doing I should talk about that more that's kind of cool isn't it um so uh what else uh one last
1:44:12
commercial for startup investors directory and you should come and join
1:44:18
us oh yeah you can come work with me um yeah and that's it
1:44:26
okay all right how was a hour and 45 minutes of non-stop action I hope it was
1:44:31
helpful to you I'm Scott Fox from startup council.org here trying to do my
1:44:37
best to help you change the world for the better hope to see you again next month do this once a month so tune in on
1:44:42
the fourth Tuesday of every month at 3 p.m. Eastern 12:00 noon and Pacific time
1:44:47
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1:44:52
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1:44:58
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