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 session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was May 27.

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Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

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

StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox helped accelerate the startups fundraising process with friendly discussion and advice about raising money from angel investors and venture capital firms including:

• Ilias and Kriakos from Cyprus asked about investor strategy to support their food waste reduction app startup
• Tina from the UAE asked about raising money for her coaching business, and Joyce from Santa Barbara asked about funding for her music - neither are typical VC businesses (we discuss why plus some alternatives)
• Mya from San Diego pitched her "GPS for Cell Therapy" imaging startup (and did a great job)
• Ketan from Bengaluru asked what is the #1 thing that angel investors look for in a new startup
• Pachet from Mission Viejo CA pitched her B2B2C service to help patients increase access and save money on specialized maternity and related services
• Omid from Las Vegas was back to practice the pitch for his AI media analysis and shopping startup (getting better every time!)
• Wesley from Toronto wanted to explore strategy for his idea around a new AI forward workflow and project management tool to help project managers and entrepreneurs more quickly organize and manage their work
• Rajat from Auckland NZ shared his challenges around a new financial management tool and how to grow the team and select the best partners

And (as usual) everybody wanted to know the best resource to find early stage investors interested in their startups. Answer: Google + https://www.StartupInvestorsDirectory...

And much more, as usual!

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

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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

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

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for May 27, 2025:

1:49
that you invest in a startup Also this is being recorded and will be online everywhere So don't say anything crazy
1:54
or too confidential because it'll be available for other people to watch later So like I said I'm a longtime
2:00
serial internet entrepreneur and I'm here to help you This is volunteer work that I do uh we moved this uh time
2:05
around here and there and tonight we're doing it late at night so that we can help those of you on the other side of the world especially those in Australia
2:12
and the Middle East and India and those kind of time zones But uh we're open uh
2:17
all hours of course on YouTube So if you missed this or you uh can't stay up any later go ahead and uh visit the YouTube
2:23
channel and there's replays there of lots of previous episodes that are full of valuable information that is based on
2:29
real questions from real entrepreneurs just like you So I'm here to help Like I said just like it says up there I'm
2:34
Scott Fox and we'll be uh taking your questions here in just a second So let's see what we've got going on tonight I'm
2:40
going to turn on the chat here and like I said you can join in anywhere from around the world We'd love to hear from
2:45
you I'd love to hear where you're from and what uh what you're want to talk about tonight And of course you can talk
2:51
to each other The chat room is full uh fair game for all of you to make friends The networking part of this is a lot of
2:57
fun because the thing that most founders think they need is money but what they really need is support Of course the
3:02
money is important too But the support of fellow founders people who understand what you're working on can be really
3:08
helpful So let me know if you can hear me and um give me a thumbs up or um
3:14
comment in the chat room That would be helpful I'm getting a bunch of highs here So we've got hi from Harry and uh
3:20
John and David and Stephen and Omid And those are all good folks Nice to hear
3:26
from all you Let me know where you're from too It looks like I'm looking at the little icon So those are a bunch of YouTubes Anybody here from LinkedIn yet
3:33
Or is the LinkedIn not working tonight That would be frustrating but I hope it is Um let me just see if I can check I
3:38
can't really check that So if you're out there and you're watching on LinkedIn will you please type in a comment and let us know So okay And uh Omid yes Tina
3:48
says "Yes." Okay Yes I guess you can hear me Looks like you're on uh YouTube as well Okay Yeah we'll be talking about
3:54
the money there UK UQB912 in just a minute That's really the focus of a lot
3:59
of this So uh Tina's from UAE Excellent Okay And Salman nice to see you And
4:04
there we go Ganesh thank you That's what I needed Somebody from LinkedIn Okay So this is working All right So Omid asks "Where is the link?" The link Omid was
4:12
uh in the emails So it's a little late now if you don't have those emails because we need these you need your
4:17
questions in advance But omid I know you've been here before and I think you sent something in So you should have
4:22
that email in your inbox Yeah you're in Las Vegas to talk about Iceloth You've been here before I've got your your
4:28
thing right here So go look in your emails and find the link and then join us backstage We've got several people backstage already That includes looks
4:34
like Maya and Sebastian and uh well actually you know what I'm going to bring those folks on and we're going to
4:41
um have them just say hello and just give me a real quick uh overview of what
4:46
you guys want to talk about Okay Um I'll bring you on camera here so that we can prioritize the show and we'll make a
4:52
little agenda There's Ed checking in from Arizona Stephen thank you LinkedIn Joyce from California Yep a lot of us
4:59
from California right Okay So here comes uh Kuracos and Sebastian and Maya Okay
5:07
Hey guys nice to meet all of you So let's just go around the circle real quick and just give me the quick version
5:13
not the pitch or anything just a really quick version of what you'd like to uh talk about tonight And hold on Do we get
5:20
another one there Looks like Kon joined too Hey Kton turn on your uh camera and then I can bring you on as well Okay so
5:26
who wants How about you Maya What What's your question or pitch tonight Um I was thinking uh to get a feedback
5:35
in a way if we do a quick two-minute pitch and it would be great to get feedback from you as well as other
5:40
entrepreneurs So that's great And I think you emailed you sent in a form right I did Medtech sort of person as I
5:47
recall Yeah Right Okay Yeah All right That always helps me Thank you for for pre-registering It's it's hard to do
5:53
this without a little rehearsal Okay And where are you Where are you tonight I'm in San Diego San Diego Okay Okay Right
6:00
nearby Okay Cool Okay And Sebastian how about you What's on your mind
6:06
Hi thank you Scott for having me Sure I am from Texas and I want to have get
6:12
some feedback for my pitch It's less than two minutes Okay And that that would be uh my main focus for today Okay
6:19
Did you send in a form I did not Okay All right Well you got the link somehow
6:24
so we'll let you pitch anyway That's cool Nice to meet you Where in Texas are you Um Dallas Dallas
6:30
Okay we've heard of Dallas All right And then uh I'm guessing our late night guest here Move you down here so we can
6:36
see your cracks Is it You're in Cypus it looks like Okay So you're in the middle of the
6:41
night You're That's commitment Good for you man I mean the middle of the morning Yeah
6:46
All right Well nice to meet you So did you want to um You had a question it looks like Is that you Yes Okay So maybe
6:54
we'll start with that get the question going and then we'll start doing some pitches especially since um since or
7:00
Ilas I guess you go by Ilas if Ilas is up it's what time is it for you
7:06
It's 7 o'clock in the morning Okay All right But still we you can he's going to be a little late Sorry about that He's
7:12
gonna come All right Well we'll get started with you Thank you Sebastian and uh and Maya We'll be back to you in a
7:19
couple minutes And sorry we're gonna stay there And it looks like a couple
7:24
more people are backstage Oh Peset Okay hold on Let me bring you on And Kan you turned on your There we go Hey guys nice
7:31
to see you We had quite a crowd tonight Okay so let's um let's get everybody here This is great I love having like a
7:37
group photo Can we everybody like smile and look excited to be here That would be really Yay All right cool Thank you
7:43
guys All right so um Kan nice to see you What's What's on your mind tonight
7:49
So I have pitched last time so this time it will be a question Um okay I just
7:54
want to ask uh what are the main things a investor is looking at when people are
7:59
raising a seed fund So this will be a questioning for the night for the morning Sure We got a bunch of people
8:06
emailed that question in too So we can use you as a as the example and uh P
8:13
nice to see you Hi nice Okay this lighting is bad I'm sorry
8:19
Um but yes I have a pitch that I' I'd like to do and receive feedback on mine
8:25
please And thank you And I did submit a form That's right I did see that Okay cool So you're here Excellent Okay Well
8:31
thank you guys So let's get started I promised we'd do Ilas first because it's uh he's been up very early but we'll
8:37
come back to all of you in the next few minutes All right And there we go Okay
8:43
Hi nice to meet you I've always wanted to visit Cypress It's on my list So someday we'll get together in person But
8:49
for tonight or this morning anyway why don't you tell us what's on your mind
8:56
So say I had this idea that is being eaten meme I work in the restaurant industry sir and there was a common uh
9:04
thing that was happening a lot of food waste being wasted due to bad tracking inventory stuff like
9:12
that So me and my friend we created a program that um it's about inventory
9:21
tracking You download to your phone You take a screenshot of the supplier paper
9:27
that uh gives you or a photo and it's been added analytically to the inventory
9:34
your inventory Great Great Okay and uh you can schedule donation for food to
9:41
the local food banks We are currently partnership with some food
9:46
banks and uh yes this is a startup that we want to make Also there's going to be
9:53
alerts that the food is going to go bad or expire in this amount of time
10:00
Uh we have a little trouble because we are from Cypus and it's a bit hard to
10:06
find investors to pitch the startup Yeah Or to talk because it's a small country
10:14
Uh I would like I would like to ask this if we how can I more go out to
10:21
investors globally so we can get more opinion Yeah And okay well yeah happy to
10:28
talk about that It sounds like a lot of people have that kind of question tonight and we usually do That's our most popular topic Um I guess my first
10:35
question for you let me ask you a couple questions and this is for everybody who's looking for seed funding Uh
10:40
especially if you come from a smaller market like Cypress I'm wondering is this for Cypress only or you what's your
10:46
target market Uh target is nobody Okay So that obviously so that is the right answer
10:52
for venture investors right They want a big market Um but then of course you're exposed to a lot more competition So I
10:59
don't know we don't have time to get into that but I would be curious about that and that would be something you'd have to address if you're pitching The
11:06
next question I would have is how do you expect to make money from this It sounds like a lovely idea Is there money here
11:12
or is this more just kind of a hobby or nonprofit Well it's going to be based on
11:18
subscription but who's going to pay every month It's a restaurant that's going to
11:24
be Okay So it's a business to your B2B sort of thing Okay Um because that obviously the again great idea but you
11:31
need a customer to pay right And that's exactly what this sort of thing has usually been done by nonprofits right So
11:38
okay So then the trick is of course to convince the restaurants to pay for something
11:44
when they're probably going to think that them giving the food is their contribution right Have you actually
11:50
talked to many restaurants yet Yes I've talked to the some restaurants
11:56
in Cyprus They actually like the idea and we have some pre presum but we
12:04
are still on the early still okay still very okay Yeah that's fine I just my my
12:10
point is it's for all of you who have questions like this It's really important for us investors to to know
12:16
that you've talked to actual customers right because your idea about how it make might make money isn't as good as
12:22
it actually making money of course So um if you can get out the more customers you can talk to the more interesting it
12:27
will be to investors So um okay well let me just answer your question a little more directly then now that I understand
12:33
it a little bit I think we're going to go through this a couple times tonight because Kitan uh from Bangalore also has
12:39
a similar question but I think the the the main question is to spend a lot more
12:45
time on research than on outreach Most people tend to um focus on they'll get a
12:52
list of investors and then they act like all investors are the same and we're really not Every investor has a specific
12:59
investment thesis and you need to figure out uh who's going to be excited about
13:04
this as an investor just as if you're doing sales right Um this isn't like going to a bank and getting a loan for a
13:10
car Any bank will do and as long as you've got good credit they'll give you a loan right This is not like that This
13:15
is very personal especially at the early stages because it's going to be angel investors and that means it's a personal check So they're going to have to really
13:22
um vibe or or support this mission that you have because you have kind of an impact mission which is a the investor's
13:29
way of saying that has some social benefit to it which is great Um so first of all I would spend a bunch of time
13:35
looking at um what kind of investor funds this And how do you do that Well
13:40
you have to Google is your friend You can subscribe There's a system called Pitchbook Um but Pitchbook costs like 12
13:47
to $15,000 a year Probably outside your budget Can you move on camera Ilas I'm
13:53
only seeing your your ear Well there's two of you there I see Okay
13:58
Sorry You got a partner there Let's see There we go How's that I didn't I see one ear Hi there Yeah What's your name
14:07
Amelas I'm Okay You're alias and he's carus Okay
14:13
great Nice to meet you both Um so it's it's a lot about research and finding the right
14:19
people and founders get really frustrated because they go to a conferences and they go to events like
14:26
this or or they pitch they send in applications to incubators and stuff
14:31
and the problem isn't that their business is bad it's that they're in the wrong room So this this is not a really
14:39
good answer I know it's a frustrating answer but the answer is however much time you were going to spend on research
14:44
triple it Find the people who care about what you're doing so that when you send
14:50
out 10 or 100 emails half of them actually care right And to do that some
14:55
other ways to do that are for example to um find companies like this that have been funded before Figure out who their
15:01
investors were Find people that have made money in restaurants or some related field that have money but maybe
15:11
also it shows on their LinkedIn profile or they're posting on Instagram that they support charities similar similar
15:16
to yours right It's like this personal networking thing It's you really it's almost like dating like you're trying to
15:22
find somebody that you really fit with And that's true because an angel investor at an early stage company
15:28
you're going to be together for years You maybe the rest of your life and and honestly most investments these days
15:34
last longer than most marriages So you got to really do your research right Um
15:40
so that's all kind of big picture Is this helpful or is this stuff you already know
15:46
Yes Helpful Yeah Okay Okay So a couple more then So
15:51
um the trick is to find people Everybody has a different niche And that's really
15:56
what I'm saying is all investors are not the same Drill down and find the ones that fit you the best This is such a
16:02
recurring problem that we actually built a directory And I'm not selling you on
16:07
this but I get this question every time So we built a directory to try to help
16:12
And um you can use it for free with that promo code startup investors directory
16:18
Um and it has 3,000 early stage investors all over the world with keyword search and all different kinds
16:24
of um ways to search basically Uh and I don't know you know food food savings is
16:30
not a thing but there's there's u like sustainability would be a more general category right That might fit for you
16:37
guys Uh you could try that Um and similar things like that it it's really
16:42
where you're at today is about the research more than even the pitch because if you can find the people that
16:49
sympathize with your cause maybe they've had success there before they will give you more of the benefit of the doubt
16:56
right Like as if it was your mom or your uncle right They they know you They don't I'm sorry they don't know you like
17:02
your family but they do know the industry And that's what you need that initial step up some familiarity with
17:07
the problem you're solving and some sympathy for the solution you're creating so that they will you it can
17:13
get you to the to the check to the money faster because otherwise they're they
17:18
don't know you they don't know your business they don't know the industry they don't know anything That's a really hard equation to solve for right So okay
17:26
So that's kind of a long answer I hope that was helpful Do you have any follow-up questions
17:36
Well let me say one more thing Everybody in the um chat room I don't have all the answers here That's my answer I know
17:42
that a lot of you are also raising money or have raised money or are investors too Please give your suggestions for
17:47
these guys too They're working hard to solve a good problem And I'm sure that um you know especially since they're in
17:52
such a specific area um being in Cypress and also in a specific market then uh
17:58
you can share information and it won't even be competitive right So help each other out there Um we also have these
18:04
LinkedIn groups I always forget to talk about these but we have three different LinkedIn groups that you can join and
18:10
and continue these conversations afterwards if that's helpful So that's what I got for now I hope is
18:17
that helpful I hope so at least point you in the right direction
18:23
I think so Yeah Okay Great Well nice to meet you guys Uh crowdfunding Okay No there's a good one Let me address that
18:29
for a second Uh Tina posted in the chat room That's a good point Tina Um I don't
18:34
know if crowdfunding and guys I'm going to take you off camera and move on here but let me just address that Uh GoFundMe
18:39
and crowdfunding Yeah Uh well Harry that's a good question What do they need funding for You're right We didn't even
18:46
get into that but I presume it's product development and outreach That's generally what it is at the early stage
18:51
But that's a that's a legit question We just don't have time to do them all But let me mention that um back to crowdfunding for a second That's a big
18:57
thing at least here in the States I don't know how big it is in Europe but uh you can build a community and then
19:05
have that community fund your operations right So if you have for example a
19:10
restaurant and people love your restaurant they can all chip in $100 and pretty soon you have $10,000 and that
19:16
might enable you to buy the new pizza oven That kind of thing right But you can do that with equity as well at least
19:21
here in the US and you can sell shares in your company so that people get an equity upside hopefully if the things go
19:27
well So okay let's uh let's go on here Let's um I'm going to I'm going to
19:34
practice some pitches here as well So let's just let me run back through the chat room here and see if I missed
19:39
anything that was too uh too dramatic or important Uh I want to have you mention
19:45
by the way that the startup councsil or this website uh we just launched a new
19:50
version and it has a whole bunch of new services for you guys that to join and
19:56
you can join and be a member and put up your profile and that will help investors find you We have blogs and
20:01
newsletters uh that will help you publicize what you're doing The main
20:06
problem that I see for early stage companies well like I said is finding investors So we built a directory for
20:12
that And then this is a directory for you so that people know you exist And that's really the problem when you're an
20:17
earlystage founder right You have a an idea that's going to change the world but you don't have the budget to tell the world So the startup council uh
20:25
website the new website is a publicity platform essentially a business development opportunity for all of you
20:31
So I would recommend go going to check that out All right let me scroll back
20:36
through the chat here so I don't get too far behind Um okay so who's here Where
20:42
are you from Let's see Okay So the YouTube
20:49
camera link uh Tina I think you're like Omid both of you we sent you the link in your email or or it's on the
20:55
registration that you did when you signed up before If you can find your way back I'm happy to bring you on
21:01
camera Um I can't do it right now though that that we did all that beforehand So everybody if you want to be on camera next time read the emails very carefully
21:09
because the links are in there Um but you have to RSVP It's a separate link Okay Joyce says "I sent in a question
21:15
but I can't get my Facebook to work." Okay Um okay Sorry Joyce I don't know
21:20
what you want me to do with that Um I I can try to answer your question if you put it in the chat room Um let's see How
21:27
do you know if an idea is a tarpit idea or not That's a good one I mean I hadn't heard it called a tarpit That's That's
21:32
about right though I was just in Los Angeles last week I I live in Southern California so that's not a surprise but
21:38
I drove past the Labraa tarpits which are a very famous set of tar pits right near here So I was That's funny that you
21:43
say that because I just saw them last week So how do you know if an idea is a tarpit or not That's a really good
21:48
question and I think that might cut to the heart of a lot of the questions here So let me talk about that for a second A
21:54
a tarpit you know I mean I like that That might show up in my book Tarpit I'm going to write that down
22:00
Um a tarpit the idea of course is is that you fall in and you get stuck and
22:06
you can't get out and and it's a black sticky mess and you're unhappy that you
22:12
spent your time that way right So to avoiding that I think there are a couple
22:17
fairly easy steps Well easy is the wrong word Simple to explain hard to do First
22:23
is if you want venture money the market has to be really big Has to be really
22:29
big because a venture capital firm requires like a 50 times or hundred
22:35
times their money which sounds crazy It sounds greedy right But the problem is if they have like a hund00 million fund
22:42
and they're planning on losing 90 million of that right off the bat because nine out of 10 startups fail
22:48
that means the ones that are left have to way outperform so that they can beat their competition and beat like the S&P
22:56
500 or the public equity market indexes or whatever it is they're competing against right So if you have a really
23:03
good idea but it's only going to be like a $10 million a year idea I know that sounds like a lot of money to a founder
23:09
especially if you're broke That's just not big enough for venture It's just not right They need companies that are going
23:14
to go public That means it has like a billion dollar valuation or a 10 billion dollar valuation They're hunting for
23:21
unicorns They're looking for meta and Google and Uber and crazy you know new
23:26
medtech ideas that cure cancer That's what venture capital is for If you have
23:32
a business and it may be a wonderful business but it's what we call more of a lifestyle business like say um you
23:39
you're going to open a pizzeria a great restaurant fantastic right But unless that p unless you're going to sell like
23:45
a billion dollars of pizza out of that restaurant it's just not appropriate for VC money But it may be appropriate for
23:52
lots of other people You can get loans the Small Business Administration here in the United States different angel investors like the family the
23:58
crowdfunding that Tina pointed out There are other ways to raise money That's what my new book is going to be about by
24:03
the way Um but VC may not be for you So that's one tarpit So if your business
24:08
isn't really going to be huge it's probably not appropriate for venture
24:13
capital money in which case don't come to stuff like this because we're talking about VC money right And that might not
24:20
be you're in the wrong room right This is what I was saying to Kirkus and Ilas right research who you're talking to
24:27
first and go to those parties not to that party Okay Second have you talked
24:32
to customers And uh this is my big concern with a lot of you guys and I think Omid I read your um because you've
24:39
been here before I saw your Yeah Right This was you right So
24:45
Omid is a great guy He's been here before He says his MVP is 70% complete
24:50
with prototypes built um for product extraction Da da da The founding team includes three PhDs with expertise in
24:57
software AI and systems I mean amazing stuff This guy is ready to roll Congrats Amit Omid on on all the practice that
25:03
you've had uh or progress Sorry My concern though when I read that and this is your
25:08
question have you talked to customers And I think we've talked about this before so if this doesn't apply to you I
25:13
apologize but you asked So the biggest way to avoid a tarpit is to get out of your office and out of your head and
25:20
stop working with your team who are all convinced that you're right and go talk to 10 customers Even better talk to 50
25:26
or 100 or a thousand customers and get people excited and figure out what they would pay That's what investors are
25:33
going to want to see This is the answer to a lot of your questions everybody too about how to raise money with the early stage If you don't have customers well
25:40
could you have customers What do those potential customers say You think you have a great idea and maybe I even
25:46
believe you but that doesn't matter until you can show me a list of a whole bunch of customer names who are all
25:53
ready to go and say you know we're going to pay whatever it is $100 a month or a million dollar whatever your price is I
25:58
don't know that customer validation is the key thing these days because anybody
26:03
can build stuff and as you all know AI is building stuff even faster In fact Omid and his team they're AI guys They're building AI stuff They know
26:09
right So how do you go faster is by validating with customers And that's the best way to avoid a tar pit And I'm
26:16
guilty of this I know this the hard way My first company I had the best idea in the world It was going to change everything I convinced my family I
26:23
convinced several venture capital firms for three years This is 25 years ago right Well almost 25 years ago So it
26:29
does it's not relevant anymore But we were way ahead of the market And I never talked to customers I just kind of
26:35
assumed if we built this super cool thing everybody would show up And that is a fatal mistake It pretty much
26:42
bankrupted me Took a bunch of my family's money and the VC money was gone right Um and three years of my life So
26:49
um that's my advice to all of you Talk to customers more than you talk to each other That that's a key a key insight
26:57
that I want to share with you from personal experience Um yeah So I guess I should move on but
27:04
I can talk about that all day Um and uh that's what I would caution all of you to focus on Okay Um let me go to back to
27:13
the chat room here Let's see Uh yeah chat room
27:19
Okay All right Going back through the questions here
27:28
Uh okay Padmaser we'd be happy to have you pitch but that would be next time You
27:34
need to register in advance We've got a full stack of people backstage who already registered You can find the RSVP
27:41
links in all of our marketing emails Okay Tal What if I I am in advance seed level and need investment to build
27:47
talent and funding high costs faculties What should I do if I'm not having the product ready yet Talk to customers
27:52
That's the answer You need to demonstrate traction Stop building things Stop hiring people Stop acting as
28:00
if your premise has already been proven Go prove the premise the assumption
28:06
right Go prove that customers are interested and not just that they would like to have it but they will pay for it
28:12
That's what you need to do All of you you got to stop building and talk to customers That's that's the answer We
28:18
can talk more about that but um Okay So okay So Tina and Joyce you have similar
28:25
questions here Okay So Joyce says uh Tina says "Is it common for coaches to
28:30
find investors I'm a coach and interested in exploring this." Yeah Tina I saw your your your uh email And Joyce
28:37
yours was similar right How to find Let me put those on the screen Actually here's Joyce's How to find investors for
28:45
music And here's Tina's How to find coaches for investors
28:50
And then we're going to do some more pitches backstage everybody I'll get there in a second Okay Um okay So the
28:56
answer is no In both cases uh investors is a broad term And part of
29:04
my mission with this show is to help everybody understand that investors is not a thing That's like saying doctors
29:11
Like um my foot hurts Do I go to a chiropractor Do I go
29:17
to an eye surgeon Do I go to a gastroenterenterologist No you go to a foot doctor Right So all investors are
29:23
not the same any more than all uh doctors are the same So investors are
29:29
possible for anything They usually start with friends and family like I was saying people that already know and like
29:34
and trust you or have some sympathy for your industry For example Tina coaches right Other coaches who have done well
29:41
might be interested or understand this or or people who have been clients of coaches quite possible And Joyce for
29:47
music same idea Who's really into your music Right this might be a crowdfunding opportunity like Tina had pointed out
29:53
actually Um neither of those are business models that typically raise venture capital Why Because they don't
30:01
tend to build a billion-dollar business Uh I think you would probably be hardpressed A simple way to think about
30:08
this it's hard to predict the numbers the revenue right But if you look at your business do you think you could have say within 2 three four years a
30:16
thousand people working for you That's what it takes to have a billion-dollar business These days with
30:22
AI maybe it's only a hundred people working for you But I've never heard of an artist a musician who had a hundred people working for them making more
30:29
music right There might be roadies on the tour or something right It just doesn't scale that way And same with
30:34
coaches Coaches is a service business Unless you turn the service into a product that you can sell repeatedly a
30:41
million times that's not a software technologybased business which is what most venture capital firms invest in So
30:48
there may be investors out there for both of you but you're in the wrong room That's not what we do That's not what I
30:55
do That's not what my books are about Venture capital gets all the press but
31:00
it's actually for a very narrow slice of people like OM's business right They're building an AI powered I forget what it
31:06
was It's a media thing Um brand partnerships and
31:12
uh live sports commentary translation AI voice dubbing that's software right
31:18
That's what gets or Maya who we're going to hear from in a minute She's a medtec sort of person right That that stuff can
31:24
scale like crazy And by scale I mean grow So if you don't see an obvious way
31:29
uh to have a hundred or 500 or 10,000 employees that's probably venture
31:35
capital is probably not for you That doesn't mean there aren't investors out there It just means that I I don't know and I'm not your guy So um happy to help
31:43
you think about how to pitch investors but it's you're in the wrong room So I hope that's helpful by telling you the
31:49
truth Otherwise a lot of people just lead you on and that doesn't serve anybody's purpose Okay so I hope that
31:55
was helpful Let's get back to the chat room Let's see Who did we have back here Um uh Kyakos and Sebastian Maya I think
32:01
I said Maya was going to be next So let's bring Maya on Maya was gonna I think she has a
32:07
medical thing Hey Maya Nice to see you Hi Thanks San Diego Is that what you
32:13
said Yes I'm in San Diego Great Nice to meet you Thank you So nice meeting you as well I was at the face to face with
32:20
Taco's uh angel vent I mean Tesco venture group So I saw you were
32:26
moderating and uh MCA so it was great to see that Yeah Didn't get a chance to say
32:32
hi but nice seeing you again Yeah you too That was fun The the Price is Right game show that I ran right Yeah Yeah it
32:39
was awesome Oh good Good Well thanks for I'm glad this brought you here Okay so you want to practice a pitch right Yeah
32:46
I can I can have a quick uh twominut uh pitch going if you're ready Okay Yeah
32:52
let me just tell everybody how this works Um sounds like you are ready which is great But I'm going to put two minutes on the clock on my phone really
32:59
Um see timer And the idea with these for everybody is that there's no slides It's
33:05
just verbal Two minutes is a very artificial amount of time right It's longer than you would get in an elevator
33:11
It's probably shorter than what you would get at a pitch competition It's just for practice to give everybody starting with Maya And we have lots of
33:18
examples of these on my YouTube channel like you heard And she's just going to talk And then the key is I will tell her
33:24
what I think but we'd also really love to know what you guys think For those of you who are out there who have suggestions and we probably don't have
33:30
time to debate the business model especially since she looks like she's she's going to sell therapy which is pretty fancy stuff I probably don't know
33:36
much about that anyway But what we can all do is help her uh with constructive
33:42
suggestions about what she might have left out or what she should say more of or less of or or even simple stuff like
33:47
we couldn't hear you right All of those are useful and that it's hard to do by yourself So that's the the menu uh for
33:53
Maya and then for uh Sebastian and the other folks who are backstage Okay All right Does that sound good Maya Sounds
33:59
great Thanks so much Scott Okay Here she goes Whenever you're ready Hi everyone
34:04
Uh my name is Matthew I'm a co-founder and CEO of Visel GPS for cell therapy We
34:11
are developing invivo imaging analytic solutions for customers with cellbased
34:17
therapy in solid tumor oncology autoimmune diseases and regenerative
34:22
medicine application Wow Unlike the standard of care very invasive biopsy or
34:29
PCR where tissue scarcity also has been an issue Viscell delivers users real
34:37
time cell location information inside the body for safety and efficacy
34:43
assessment of these product during the translational and clinical trials Um
34:50
ultimately accelerating product development and improving patient outcome Uh our disrupted technology
34:58
includes patent pending image uh patented imaging contrast agent that
35:03
label the cell therapy product which can be visualized by standard MRI available
35:09
in most clinic while piggy banking onto the existing imaging workflow of
35:14
treatment response Additionally there is an accompanying uh
35:19
analytical solutions such as radio mix or image driven analytics that we provide to the customer So our business
35:26
model is a B2B hybrid uh offering of
35:32
supply and the services to the cell therapy developer while establishing
35:38
uh strategic collaboration for long-term value creations So we are in early
35:44
commercial have signed a research collaboration agreement with a top 20 farmer and currently raising prea uh
35:52
convertible note to support our commercialization effort and fund our uh
35:57
GMP product production for a customer cell therapy trial and
36:03
wow thank you that was like perfect timing My goodness Thanks So Mia must
36:09
have done this Have you done this before That was very good Thank you Few times huh Okay Yeah Well that that's what it's
36:16
supposed to look like Everybody I I we set the you set the bar really high tonight You're going to make everybody scared
36:22
Thanks Scott Very nice job Very nice job Mia Okay So everybody in the chat room
36:27
if you have suggestions especially I think what might be helpful here sounds like she knows what she's talking about
36:33
and I didn't and you probably don't either So I think we can help her with jargon and like kind of making it a
36:38
little simpler for those of us who don't have medical degrees right So let her know what you think was not clear
36:44
because there's a lot of big words in there which is fine if you're talking to a group full of doctors but if depend
36:49
again you have to know who the room is right So okay So here's some of my thoughts I thought it was very good Seriously very good Um and you're right
36:56
on time as well I kept thinking of things Oh she didn't say that and then you said it Oh she didn't say that Oh then you said it So you've obviously
37:02
done this before Um but if I was going to offer some suggestions it would be the um you I think it would be helpful
37:09
and this is true for everybody to have an anchor phrase at the beginning that is in plain English We this company does
37:15
this for this customer with this result like because I didn't hear the word I
37:21
gathered it was an imaging solution I don't think you said that till like halfway through And for those of us who aren't doctors I really wasn't sure what
37:28
you were talking about or how you were going to identify these cells until actually I cheated I looked at what you
37:33
emailed I s and I saw it said imaging contrast agent and I say "Oh it is imaging." I thought so So say that
37:39
sooner Um just the word imaging that would be helpful civilians Um and u if
37:46
you can don't read uh try to my tip for this and again this is for everybody
37:52
who's listening maybe this helpful You don't want to read you want to learn
37:57
this like it's your life story right So think of four or five points whatever
38:03
they are that you can expand and contract like an accordion depending on how much time you think you have just
38:08
like you know your life story right If we're just in an elevator you're going to say "Oh I do this I grew up in San Diego." And you're done But if we're in
38:15
a car ride together for half an hour you're going to tell the same story but spread each point out much longer right
38:22
and just know what your four or five points are and make sure you hit them and squeeze as appropriate to the time
38:28
available And that way you'll sound much more fluid and and you will know it well enough that if some the problem when
38:34
you're reading is if I suddenly had a question it might throw you off right And then you can really lose your your pace especially if you're on stage or
38:41
something and you're reading you're like ah you can really lose your lose your way So I would take your pitch because
38:47
it was very good figure out what the bullets were and then anchor those in your head and just try to work your way
38:53
through and with practice because you obviously know how to practice um you you'll nail it pretty well Uh some
38:58
points just on the positive side as well Uh I like you mentioned the standard of care immediately because anybody that's
39:04
had exposure to the medical system even if you're not a doctor you understand that they have ways of doing things and
39:09
you actually are aware of that You're working within existing workflows So that addresses some of the go to market
39:14
issues which of course are really big here You did get around to I was going to ask you who the customers were You
39:20
said that You said it in kind of a fancy way though that with words that I'm sure are correct but I didn't really know who
39:26
it was You could simplify that a little bit like these kind of clinics that and and then of course more numbers is
39:32
better Like if you could say these many clinics with a typical these many a
39:37
contract would lead this many patients a month for this kind of revenue If you can do any kind of unit economics again
39:43
depending how much time you have right But internet economics are critical for us because investors eat numbers and the
39:49
more you give us numbers we'll start doing calculations in our head and that's what you want us to be doing because then we're calculating we're
39:55
that's buying behavior right we're thinking oh I see that and this fits like okay so if the margin is this then
40:02
right that's what you want us to be doing uh and if you don't feed us numbers we starve and we tune out um so
40:10
I'm trying looking at my notes uh you mentioned the top 20 pharma as a trial or partnership That was great And she
40:16
also said everybody she ended with what they're actually doing a pre- convertible note Now this night this this session nobody's this is just
40:23
practice right Nobody's actually raising money or writing checks here So you can get in trouble theoretically with the
40:28
SEC if you pitch in public This is just practice though so it's okay And um but
40:34
of course in the real world you'd want to say like what a valuation or an amount you know the mortgage again the
40:40
numbers because um if I love it and your valuation's a million dollars I'm in If I love it and your valuation's a billion
40:47
dollars I'm not in Right So those are critical points Um okay so I don't know if any of that was news to you but I
40:53
thought you did a really good job as hopefully some of that was helpful feedback Thank you That was that's very
40:58
helpful especially the rhythm of fluid part because like I I I I am a little
41:04
bit exhausted so I wasn't basically like uh you know being fluid so and and the
41:10
starting with the imaging too the plain English part also really helpful So thank you Yeah you're welcome And I
41:16
think that we're getting similar comments Let's just look at the chat together Um the uh let's see
41:23
here Yeah somebody said uh
41:28
Sorry Yeah So these are questions for you Uh you know John says "Are you speaking with medical doctors or
41:34
potential investor Like who are you targeting?" So obviously that's what I was talking about earlier You know how can you target so you don't waste your
41:40
time And and then Venit says what I said Opening was a bit technical right away and was hard to follow So you lost a
41:46
bunch of people I think if you can you know dial it back how would you tell your 8-year-old nephew what you do
41:52
Because the visual aspect of what you're doing I think is you you're way you have a real advantage compared to a lot of
41:57
medical devices or something which is really hard to understand It sounded to me like you're talking about like a
42:02
really like an X-ray kind of microscope to find these tumors and stuff like use
42:08
language like that like simple language right like it's not you could say it better than me but something like it's
42:14
not really this but think about like as a superman vision so you can find the tumors really easily like or some
42:20
metaphor that everybody can get and then the rest of us will then we can ride the train with you Uh Joyce says my hubby in
42:27
medicine so new enough to understand well agree once you said imaging then I got it Yeah So that's the key Uh Andre
42:33
Hey Andre Andre says the best fundraising podcast in the nation Thank you Andre
42:38
Agree Thank you Um and then Joyce I think promoting the non-in Yeah non-inv
42:44
I agree with that too Joyce Good comments here The non-invasive is highly appealing for everybody whether they're medical or not Right So that all good
42:51
points Cool Well nice to see you Mia I hope that was helpful and good luck Thank you That is very helpful All right
42:57
Well that was Mia and we're going to keep moving here uh with whoever's next
43:02
Thank you all See that's how this could work So all of you by the way go ahead and put your uh LinkedIn or your
43:09
websites or um uh I'm trying to find mine to put it up there Go ahead and
43:15
share your contact info right This is not the show isn't about me It's about all of us And I can't find my LinkedIn
43:21
but I'm on LinkedIn I promise There it is Um so go ahead and you can say hi Tell me who you are because I I get lots
43:27
of LinkedIns as you might imagine Um and uh go ahead and post yours in the in the chat room and make friends with each
43:33
other I'm not trying to gatekeep here The whole point of this is we're not gatekeeping Trying to help you all connect So um okay So let's go on to our
43:41
next person in the background So okay So I think Okay it was Kitan and Pache Okay
43:51
So Kitan you had a question I think Let's talk a little bit about that and then we'll have um let me toss a couple
43:58
of these other ones out here This is a page I put up about funding recommendations A lot of times people
44:04
they get excited and as they should right Um and I'm happy to help I just can't help everybody and I can't invest
44:10
in everybody So this is a page I put up that details some of the groups I'm involved in I rarely invest directly in
44:16
companies anymore I mostly invest through groups that do the due diligence for me I don't have time to do dil do to
44:21
do due diligence myself I'm already an investor in 40 plus different companies Uh so I kind of had my fill Uh but that
44:28
page scottfox.comstartup-funding will give you some maybe some helpful links that
44:33
would be useful Um and uh actually while I'm clicking on things how about this too Please like and subscribe That
44:40
always helps We're trying to build this audience so that we can help more people just like you And that's why this is free And even little comments you know
44:48
help drive those algorithms So we would really appreciate that And then of course Startup Council like I said So
44:53
this right here I'm pointing at this logo here behind me We spent a lot of time and money building this system for
44:59
you and it's brand new There's like literally no members yet You'll still see test posts and things like that So
45:04
go ahead and and sign up and we'll be happy to to help you uh take advantage of that All right So next we were going
45:11
to go Sorry I got to put up the right
45:16
Chiron here Okay there it is All right so then we're going to go backstage and we're gonna bring on who is next Kitan
45:22
Yes there we go So this is Kan Hey Kitan Nice to see you Nice to see you Scott Uh
45:30
so first thing is thanks for conducting this event in the morning So we are happy to have you in the morning from
45:35
India Yeah that's right I moved to when I was in Bangalore in December we almost saw each other November December
45:42
whenever that was um yeah I'm very impressed with anybody who hasn't been to India lately or ever Wow Get get on
45:49
over there So I moved this I used to do this some of you know like he does that I used to do these at lunchtime That's easy for me Uh but I thought we would
45:56
try to help Uh there's a billion and a half Indian guys and gals uh coming coming to the market So they need the
46:02
help too So yeah Anyway happy to be here So as we discussed Yeah Sorry to cut you
46:09
out Please go ahead What was that
46:15
You were speaking something I I thought I cut you out Oh no Go ahead What What kind of question do you have Yes Uh
46:22
first of all I am CEO of Milo.ai and we are working on a platform for content creation Uh it's called only creation
46:29
which is connecting marketplace for marketing agencies hospitals all the
46:34
branding industries as well as the influencers So my question is as we are raising our initial funds so what are
46:41
the main circumstances a investor is looking at for a seed funding in the initial stages is it the sales or is it
46:48
or is it whether the penetration of the market or is it only the idea what is it exactly yeah well it's you know I'm
46:55
literally writing a book about that there's not an easy answer and you're smart you're a smart guy you know that's not a simple question but um
47:02
unfortunately it's a combination of all those things that that's the trick and especially folks who have like a
47:08
mathematics background or or engineering they kind of want it to be an equation A plus B equals C right And it's not It's
47:14
like A B C and D Mix them together with a little bit of F and sometimes some G Uh and it it's it's pretty relative um
47:22
and frustrating in that way But I guess I would to to try to answer a little more
47:28
specifically The first thing is well they're not first they're concurrent really But I talked about market size
47:34
It's got to be a big opportunity and it has to be scalable to get there So it
47:39
can't be services don't scale Like I was telling Tina like coaching is a one-on-one thing or even a small group
47:46
thing unless you can turn it into a product Investors will look at your projections and even if they go to like
47:52
zillions of dollars businesses that require more
47:57
people constantly to grow are expensive So like consulting and coaching and
48:02
maybe agency type businesses are don't tend to get venture funding because for every dollar they make they have to
48:09
spend like I don't know 90 cents to hire another person and that just isn't as attractive Um again there may be
48:16
investors for that but it's not venture investors Venture investors technology investors like me were looking for
48:21
things that can scale like crazy So it's both of those But then it's also the combination of someone who is personable
48:27
and well spoken and who listens and can adapt to feedback because nobody wants
48:32
to work with a jerk right This is really can be like a marriage Um and um it can
48:38
be a difficult there's ups and downs right So you want to have somebody that you like spending time with Um I would
48:45
say a number of the firms that I've invested in those people are my friends now Like it you know we didn't meet each
48:51
other socially We met each other through business but we've really gotten to know each other Um shared experience is what
48:56
builds trust right Um and then I guess the market the go to market strategy is
49:02
more important than ever So I'm not these aren't separate things They're all have to be present and that's what's
49:08
really hard So for you I would be very concerned about go to market like how are you going to acquire customers
49:14
because that's really what proves everything So if you don't have anything you can sell yet can you at least get
49:21
discussions from people who say they are interested If you have something minor you can sell can you sell a few If you
49:27
have something major can you sell can you sell more Like it's this kind of ladder and the more you can demonstrate traction the better And the customer
49:34
validation is is I don't know probably 80% of the game these days especially at
49:39
the early stages So that was a long answer I know you've heard me talk before so hopefully some of that was new for you Is any any follow-ups or anybody
49:47
else have things in the chat room too I have some follow-ups Uh yes but I
49:54
won't keep it so long I want to take a private uh private tutoring after this Definitely I'll go with that Uh thing is
50:02
uh we did a validation Uh we took some testimonials from the customers We did some marketing and we gathered the
50:08
traction Uh so right now we don't have the converted customers but we have
50:13
something to show to the people or the investors that these are the people who are interested and if with the right
50:18
setup we can uh target these people and make a business out of that Is that what
50:23
investors also be looking at Yes that exactly that's that's good
50:28
stuff You you still so yes period absolutely the more you can demonstrate
50:34
that the better The trick then is that people do that and then they get frustrated because they demonstrate a
50:39
bunch of that and then the investors still aren't interested Right So just as your friend So the next step of course
50:45
is is actually the step you should have done first which is fig and maybe you did I'm just saying in theory is to make
50:52
sure that you're talking to the right investors And that's where it goes back to this research I was talking about The number one inefficiency that I see in
50:58
the startup ecosystem is that founders pitch before they know who they're talking to They just start pitching
51:04
everybody Right Uh it's like a guy who you know he turned 18 now he's going to date everybody and just because he's a
51:09
boy he thinks every girl is interested You know that's not a thing You've got to do your research right Um and uh so
51:16
uh so my if you have that traction initial uh validation demonstration yes
51:23
but find people who are going to care right So you might have a great validation from a bunch of u I don't
51:28
know people who like to eat fish but you're not you're selling hamburgers not fish right So that's not going to help
51:34
right You've got to find the people that match your your niche Yeah
51:40
100% Okay Uh that's answers my question and definitely you can go with other
51:46
people as Okay Okay Great Well it's good to see you Thanks for sticking around I know you've been to a number of these um
51:51
and appreciate you showing up and and commenting on LinkedIn and stuff He's a all of you We we do a lot of work on
51:57
LinkedIn If you're not following Startup Council on LinkedIn we're ramping that up more and more In fact it's going to start featuring actually you guys can
52:04
get in on this if you become a member at the starter council Then your blog po
52:09
you can post blogs posts and things and they'll go out in our newsletters and they'll go on our LinkedIn and stuff like that to help you all get more
52:15
publicity That's the the point of the platform we're building All right so that was Kan What time is it Almost an
52:22
hour here All right let's uh let me just check the chat room and see anybody had any more comments or suggestions uh for
52:29
Kitan or for for Mia Um uh GPS for cell therapy Yeah John that's
52:35
right She did say that GPS for cell therapy She said that and I didn't quite get it but now that I have more context
52:41
you're right That's good Um may maybe say that slower Mia like it's G It's
52:47
like GPS for self or finish the thought I guess GPS for self therapy So we have
52:52
the tools that can help you find your way to the uh bad tissue that needs to
52:58
be surgically removed non-invasively Non-invasive GPS like there's something
53:04
there Just like unpack it more It's not obvious unless you break down why that connects but you're that's a good
53:09
metaphor I agree Okay Uh let's see what is next here Let's see who else Pache is
53:17
backstage as well And um anybody else who has questions I got a good crowd
53:22
here tonight watching us And if you want to put some questions in the chat room we can handle those before we uh wrap up
53:30
as well But trying to change let's see that's not it But yes come and join us
53:37
on YouTube And there's too many buttons here Sorry guys Hang a second Where's the There it
53:44
is Okay Okay So Pes is gonna come join us and P There she is Okay Oh and here's
53:50
Wesley Okay So hold on Let's hold on Let's bring a couple of you guys on Wesley you just showed up I don't know
53:56
what uh let's have Wesley And so you're backstage Wesley and Omid And and here's
54:03
Pes as well but let me just hear from um Wesley what you would want to talk about And we'll bring Pesh on to do her pitch
54:08
in a second but Wesley what's on your mind Yeah I I uh so this is my first time at the Star Console It's it's uh 1
54:16
a.m by me So apologies if I'm a little bit tired I'm uh so I'm I'm an EM So I'm in I'm in
54:23
software and I I manage teams So I've been working on this um this app and I guess my my question
54:29
is like how do I put together a business case for a problem that I that I I think
54:35
there's some validation Basically what I'm working on is it's like a visual it's it's a tool for those who
54:42
have lots of interest in projects on on the go Um but it's it's like a it
54:48
combines like a sort of visual workflow So think about like make or anything then a lot of these workflow tools it's
54:54
kind of like a a visual workflow tool where um you can how to explain it Uh well I can come
55:02
back to you can talk about that but think about how you want to frame that and and we can come back But nice where
55:08
are you It's 1:00 a.m I'm I'm in Toronto Toronto Okay great All right And Omid so we kind of covered your uh a little bit
55:15
Did you What did you have another question or what did you want to do Uh I just wanted to pitch my idea one more
55:21
time Oh you want to practice Okay cool Yeah Okay Well we we'll get both of you guys in a minute Let me let me uh let's
55:27
handle PE here She turned off her camera though Are you still there Pash
55:32
I sure am Okay Can you turn your camera There she is Yes it's a little blurry but I am here Okay just a second And
55:40
that Oh that's the wrong way All right hold on Uh goodbye Wesley Goodbye Omid
55:46
We'll be back in a minute Okay cool All right so you want to do the two-minute pitch I sure do All right let's do it
55:52
Whenever you're ready go ahead I'll turn on the timer Okay awesome Well thank you
55:57
Scott for allowing me to practice And hello everyone My name is Pashe I'm the founder of Mind Maternity We are a care
56:05
coordination company where we help families unlock the financial resources necessary to access comprehensive
56:12
pregnancy and postpartum care And so what we're doing and we actually have an
56:17
MVP out already and we've been able to service a number of families and we have
56:22
a five-star rating in doing this Um but what we do is we help individuals understand how to leverage their
56:29
insurance benefits their company EAPS which stands for employee assistant programs how to leverage any government
56:36
programs and um actually community resources So taking from all of those different aspects to create a what we
56:43
call a comprehensive experience And I use the word and highlight the word comprehensive because you know we're
56:50
aware of the maternal health crisis within our nation but when we dig into the research of it what we're finding is
56:56
that there are resources available out there but there are barriers to getting to those resources or it's unknown
57:03
resources to our community And so what people often think is oh well if my insurance company doesn't cover this
57:10
benefit then I'm out of resources But that's not the case And so right now our
57:15
model is a B2B TTOC So we're working with private practices that already have
57:20
established relationships and partnerships with doula associations nationwide midwives um OB clinics We
57:29
also are actually starting to um you know conversations and pilot programs with local and state government um plans
57:36
And so what our goal is at the end of the day is to make access to these care
57:42
um available to everyone nationwide And so that is where we're at and that's
57:47
what we're focusing on Okay Is that it Yeah that's me
57:53
Cool Well done Okay Cool So everybody who uh heard that please chime in in the
58:00
chat room if you have suggestions for her about different things or more things or things she shouldn't say uh
58:05
all the the useful things that you would like if you were in her seat because it's brave It it takes some guts to do this you know on a worldwide basis and
58:12
you don't know who's watching So good for you Okay Um Okay So sounds like a
58:18
great product and I've heard this before right We've met I think or somewhere Do you come to some of my workshops Yes
58:23
I've been to your Irvine Irvine um chats I don't know if you all you still have them in person but I went to them when
58:30
they were in person Yeah Yeah Those are good old days Um so yeah Well nice to see you again So the um the concept is
58:38
obviously very good Unfortunately I didn't hear much about the business So like as your friend the access to care
58:45
obviously a thing Everybody's frust Everybody hates their insurance company resources Um uncovering money
58:53
all of that makes sense But as an investor I I don't know how you make money I didn't hear anything about what
58:59
we call unit economics Um B2B TOC sounds like makes sense but it's really it's
59:05
actually scary to investors because it means that you're actually dealing with two different kinds of customers So it makes it a lot harder Not that it isn't
59:11
a good idea logically but it means that you're selling in two different directions at the same time which is
59:16
hard Um it's easier if you sell you know just to consumers or just to the
59:22
businesses right Um so everything you said makes sense but
59:28
without numbers it was hard to appreciate how big it is you know like how big is this market which um I would
59:35
so let me try to be more specific It would be helpful to give a case study probably right For example our first
59:42
client was Robin and she had this issue and so we talked to Blue Shield and we
59:48
talked to whoever's on the other side you know and and they figured out that she could save $78 a month on her
59:55
prescriptions or I don't know I don't know what the vibe is but that kind of thing right because that would bring it
1:00:00
down to like we can start to see how you actually make money because what you gave was kind of a product vision pitch
1:00:07
which is totally cool but it didn't I couldn't make an investment decision even if I was writing a check right
1:00:13
because I don't know how much you're going to make how big the market is and how you make money does that make sense
1:00:18
yes definitely so a lot more numbers is the short answer right give me numbers
1:00:23
um I think everybody would sympathize with the goal so you could probably spend less time on that if you had two
1:00:30
minutes I I looked at the clock You spent over a minute before you even kind of got to the specifics of the business
1:00:36
It was kind of about these are the problems And I agree there are problems but I think most people kind of get that
1:00:42
I mean anybody who has insurance in America knows how goofy it is right So I would think about like how can you say
1:00:48
that much more quickly and then add in the second half a lot more numbers about
1:00:53
what this is who the customer is you know how much do you make from each transaction and the life of the
1:01:00
relationship you know like all just like I said numbers numbers numbers would help us understand not just that the numbers are
1:01:08
important but it also it shows that you have thought through the numbers right and that's what we need is is is part of
1:01:13
it is a credibility check for you as a CEO If I'm going to write you a check um and again we're not doing that tonight
1:01:19
This is just practice but you know we need to know that you can handle the money right And a pitch like that makes me wonder if you have if you know how to
1:01:27
use a spreadsheet and you have to know how to use a spreadsheet as a CEO So of course Yeah So I sorry if that wasn't
1:01:33
more encouraging but hopefully it's helpful Oh no Because I have all this information I just didn't speak towards
1:01:40
it So the exciting part is I I can answer all your questions now I just need to know how to integrate it into my
1:01:46
speech Okay perfect Well that's great Nick Great Good Yeah it's very encouraging I don't do this to be discouraging It's the opposite Um yeah
1:01:53
Okay Well then great So yeah I would look at the two minutes and kind of like I was saying with Mia earlier figure out what your four or five or six points are
1:02:00
and then make sure at least four of them have numbers right Um and and also leading up
1:02:07
to an ask because you didn't get to any kind of ask right Whenever you have an opportunity just tell people what you
1:02:12
want Even if it's not money right We're looking to hire this person or we need an office like this or does anybody know
1:02:18
Anthem Blue Cross you know or Kaiser Permanente or I don't know whoever it is your dream client right Just ask every
1:02:24
time whenever you have an audience All of you guys listen whenever don't never turn down an opportunity to pitch because you never know who's in the room
1:02:30
And then never fail to ask for something so that people can follow up They don't know We don't know what you need unless
1:02:36
you tell us right Nobody's a mind reader So um Okay Well I hope that was helpful It was nice to see you Absolutely I
1:02:43
think you're making progress too That's great That's really Thank you Yeah All right Well next we'll bring on Thank you
1:02:49
for coming and we're gonna go move on to Let's see Omid and Wesley were backstage
1:02:56
I think Let me just check in on the chat And uh looks like uh our last comment
1:03:01
was that Andrew Tate is a trillionaire So maybe we can do better than that Anybody got a better
1:03:06
comment We're not not big Andrew Tate fans here I don't think So um let's yeah
1:03:13
well okay I got through all the chats I guess let's go backstage again and who we had uh Wesley and Omid right so where
1:03:22
is okay so so Wesley uh Omid wanted to practice
1:03:28
his pitch let's do that and then Wesley if you can frame your question or your pitch we'll we'll do that after that
1:03:34
after Omid okay nice to see you again Omid welcome back thank you very much
1:03:40
this is Round three or four You've been here a few times right Yes I have been here a few times Yeah I'm trying to
1:03:46
crack like how to pitch and get some sort of feedbacks and see if our idea is
1:03:51
tarpit or no Yeah Right I love that phrase Yeah Okay Well go ahead So okay I'm
1:03:58
going to start Uh hi I'm Omid one of the co-founders of Isl We're building an AI powered crossplatform
1:04:04
uh across mobile smart TV and web that makes content movies sport music podcast
1:04:10
books and games far more interactive and intelligent Right now media is passive You might see something interesting in a
1:04:17
scene or hear something mentioned but there's no easy way to act on it at the moment is changes that we use multimodal
1:04:24
AI to extract products locations and context from whatever you're watching or listening to and overlay it directly
1:04:32
into the content in real time If you're watching a football match in another language we can dub it in instantly with
1:04:38
clone voices If you're watching a movie we can identify the outpace tech decor or anything that you watch on this
1:04:44
screen It even works offline for example off a screen You can just like take out your phone and point your phone camera
1:04:50
at some someone's outfits or record part of a conversation and they'll resurface
1:04:56
related products and services instantly close to your home Wherever you're located you're just looking to resurface
1:05:02
that We initially validated the idea of serving around 20 random users and the response was overwhelmingly positive
1:05:08
That feedback gave us the push to build this Our MVP is 70% done with working
1:05:14
demos The app is free to use Monetization uh uh happens through affiliate commerce uh brand partnership
1:05:22
and advertisement and promotions or in app upgrades as well the premium features that we're going to provide Uh
1:05:28
we are targeting uh currently $150 billion market of AI growing over 20%
1:05:34
annually We are a team of four PhDs right now uh mostly in a field of
1:05:40
computational and computer science I love your feedback All right good job We got about 15
1:05:46
seconds to spare So that's You've gotten way better at this That was for sure
1:05:52
Need to tell this guy's a PhD Um yeah So nice job Sorry I'm just writing some notes so I can have something clever to
1:05:58
say Um okay So anybody that's listening that has suggestions about that I'm sure he'd love the feedback um both about the
1:06:04
product and about the pitch Uh because the product sounds like it has great applicability to all of us really Um
1:06:11
okay So what would I say So I would say you're getting better So seriously that's that's that's good And practice
1:06:17
makes perfect right Um the question that hit me this time actually was the name I sloth I sloths imply slow which and
1:06:26
they're kind of cute and fun but I'm not sure that's a great name So you I don't know what you want to do with that But so a sloth means lazy So we are trying
1:06:34
to make things easy for people so people don't try or just like work so much to get to things My SL means I just like go
1:06:41
lazy I just like don't want to just like I realized that for finding any product I had to do minimum of 15 uh clicks in
1:06:50
isol we do it in two clicks or three clicks like we reduce it down by 90% of
1:06:55
the number of clicks that you need to do So basically it's a physical uh like the
1:07:00
principle of like minimum energy that is all over the place So we're trying to Yeah I like that actually So that you
1:07:08
you that was a great answer So I would put that into the pitch Not as long as that right If you have don't have much
1:07:13
time but you could say it's we call it I sloth because X Y and Z And it give people the because it frames the whole
1:07:20
thing I like that actually because making things easier for people Everybody gets the convenience principle
1:07:27
right And I like what you said there which you didn't I don't think you said it during the pitch We're reducing the clicks by 97% That's a metric everybody
1:07:33
would get right Like I I'll probably be watching TV later tonight like this remote control for this and then this
1:07:38
one to switch over here and it's it's such a pain in the butt right So that makes a lot of sense Okay I I I'll buy
1:07:44
that Um and you should make sure you have a cute logo that makes him look lazy and
1:07:49
but we just actually just like trademark it trademarked our logo and I don't know
1:07:54
if you just like go to my LinkedIn it's already there I don't know I just like got like some positive feedback on it
1:08:00
but I would just like love any feedback that you can provide as well Yeah sure Okay Well let me just talk about the pitch a little more So that was a good
1:08:06
answer I mean that's an example of of branding right You pick something that isn't obvious and you make it your own
1:08:12
Like Amazon it used to mean a river in South America Now it means something completely different right So um maybe
1:08:19
iceloth can be that as well Okay So what I liked about this pitch is um well you're you're good and good and fluent
1:08:26
You like I was telling Mia you you're just ready to tell it You don't you're not reading notes You're just you know it right And that just comes across as a
1:08:33
passion and enthusiasm which is investors appreciate I like that you had a lot of examples Um you had several
1:08:38
because you have such a wide potential for this technology You said you click
1:08:44
and get the TV the translation or you can get the clothing the link to the clothing and like like the specifics
1:08:50
like that bring it to life because otherwise it's hard to understand right And and unfortunately I sloth doesn't immediately tell you what it is right
1:08:56
Isn't like uh batteries.com that sells batteries right it's you've got to explain it So having those examples is I
1:09:02
think key Um on the flip side as an investor I get a little concerned because you're doing multiple things And
1:09:09
you know better than I with four PhDs I'm sure you've thought about this but I'd rather see you really do one
1:09:15
really well and make a zillion dollars and then fund the others right Trying to do several things at once unless these
1:09:22
are truly a 99% overlap on the back end um that's a lot of distraction And even
1:09:28
if it is technologically possible those sound like separate sales forces to me
1:09:34
So if your business model is what you said it is uh affiliates and then maybe some e-commerce and some partnerships
1:09:40
and this and this then you're doing that like translating football matches is a different market than pulling up fashion
1:09:46
links to sell with with Sheen and Timu or you know H&M or whatever I mean each
1:09:52
of those is a different sales force So that concerns me like for you like as
1:09:57
your friend like maybe you should narrow it down because it's going to be hard for anybody to believe that you can pull
1:10:04
that off without a sales team of at least 20 people right Uh and maybe a hundred Um so that's just a strategic
1:10:10
concern The $150 billion AI market sounds great I think you need to break that down a
1:10:16
little bit just because investors we hear this all the time AI is huge you know like give me something more specific And I think really you're
1:10:22
talking about the content market in some ways right No I'm talking about the AI in media Otherwise the the media itself
1:10:29
is going to projected to be $3.2 trillion by 2028 The media and
1:10:34
entertainment industry in total Okay Yeah AI in media is right now is $150
1:10:41
billion and it's projected to 20% annually Grow 20% annually So okay Well
1:10:46
add that 20% annually because I don't think you said that I did that Yeah Did you Okay Sorry I'm doing two several
1:10:52
things at once Um then I think you need to explain a little more what you mean by media and entertainment and why it
1:10:58
applies to this Um okay You know we're looking at specifics We're looking at film We're looking at television We're
1:11:04
looking at you know and in these markets AI is being applied Again you only had two minutes so this is for the longer
1:11:10
pitch right but um unpacking that so that people can see the relationship there because as investors we hear this
1:11:16
all the time I swear to God I hear this six 10 times a week U our market is a
1:11:21
trillion dollar market If we only get 2% of it we're all rich Like okay that that's that's a fantasy right What we'd
1:11:28
rather see than top down is bottom up right So that's top down It's trillion
1:11:33
dollar market 2% we've got a ton of money What we'd rather see is unit economics For every one partner or
1:11:40
customer we sign we make a $100 Our margin is typically 60%
1:11:46
uh you know boom boom boom and then if we can sign a thousand customers with this kind of margin we make this kind of
1:11:51
money Growing them from the bottom up for the projections is a lot more believable because it shows that you've thought about it and and it will force
1:11:59
you to grapple with well can we really sign a thousand customers Because that's my concern for you is you're going to have such a huge salesforce to execute
1:12:05
on all these things at the same time It's going to be hard to manage and it's going to be expensive if we narrow it down like because right now we have
1:12:11
narrowed down to only movies and TV shows We are not just like delving into all those things We have the capability
1:12:16
and we have already have the initial working uh back end for them but we are not going to just like working on it We
1:12:22
are focused on the TVs and movie shows and just like fashion right now as of now because and like makeup like
1:12:29
hairstyles those type of things Okay To enter the market with that but then because we already developed some like
1:12:35
initial like working technology we can just like later on integrate it into the final Okay Well then I would talk about
1:12:42
that as um the lingo we usually use is our beach head market is fashion and our
1:12:47
first customers we expect will be this kind of partner and this you know like give me a few because you give a lot of
1:12:53
great examples but give me take those are all content use case product usage
1:12:59
not business usage right so who's the customer that's paying for this because that I didn't hear you know is it
1:13:05
Netflix or is it H&M or is it me the app user you know like we need more Oh yeah
1:13:12
Okay The B2 Yeah we are we're aiming B2C for now But yeah B2B is another way of
1:13:17
just like making market But our initial thing was just like go to B2C But yeah Netflix because Amazon is going to do
1:13:24
that at some point in time I'm sure that's one thing that I know based on the trend they're aiming for Sure it
1:13:30
makes sense Yeah Yeah and uh Netflix is going to fall behind if they don't do something like that because then Amazon
1:13:36
is just going to monopolize the whole uh industry So Yeah B2B is going to be
1:13:42
later on APIs and all those things But yeah well you have a complicated pitch
1:13:48
but it so it's a lot to squeeze into two minutes so it may not be fair but those are the the suggestions I would have um
1:13:54
if you can uh a little more on the business side and if you can make it
1:13:59
sound like you're going to focus on one thing first rather than because it just sounds dispersed even if um okay I have
1:14:06
just like one question here that I just like asked a tarpit question it's like okay so uh as a PhD you're taught to
1:14:13
just like doubt every step of the way that you're doing that's the whole point of science and doing those things so we
1:14:19
are doubting what we are doing is like actually a good idea or no So I was just like wondering if you have I know it's
1:14:26
like very rap it's not just like you cannot come up with a like formula journal formula for everything Sometimes
1:14:31
like ideas like repetitive or duplicate ideas like Facebook might just like become like what it is sometimes like
1:14:37
much better ideas like don't get any tractions I know that but is there any metric or is there any sign that we know
1:14:43
that our idea is actually a good idea or based on like numbers are just like saying it's a good idea Numbers are just
1:14:49
like saying something about it But I I would I would say it's customer feedback Um but they have only 20 random users
1:14:56
Well that was actually I'm glad you brought that up because I wrote that down 20 is great but 200 would be better
1:15:02
I mean I think it's time for you to talk to more customers That if this is a tar pit the way to find out is see if people
1:15:09
pay for it Either even if it's a a very elementary version like get out there
1:15:15
and I mean it's going to be painful right Um but somebody smart said uh if
1:15:22
how does it go If you're if you're not embarrassed by your first beta version
1:15:28
you waited too long to release it right You got to get it out there and and see
1:15:34
what people think Um so your suggestion is we finish the MVP we release the beta version and then we just like get the
1:15:40
feedback that would be the like what we need to do or just like how if he if he
1:15:45
should proceed with the idea or not That's basically what you're saying Uh yes but even before that I'm saying I
1:15:51
wouldn't even work on the MVP anymore I would stop working on that and talk to more customers 20 people isn't enough
1:15:56
And I would guess that you have talked since you talked to those 20 you've probably made some progress and have a
1:16:02
different way to talk about it or a better way to frame it or maybe new UI that you would show them uh even if it's
1:16:08
just mockups in Canva or something you know um customer feedback is what you need Absolutely So I I don't know that
1:16:16
investing more in the MV if if you're asking the question I suspect that you are concerned And if you're concerned
1:16:22
you're right to be concerned So stop you know talk to people who and um and I
1:16:28
know it's tough because you're probably I'm guessing here but you're not really from the content industry perhaps right
1:16:34
So you need to talk to people in that industry Um although I guess you're thinking more you're going to talk to
1:16:39
end users uh people that would download the app Yeah I guess so You'd really
1:16:45
Yeah it's a longer discussion I guess But I think customer feedback is what you need That's that's the thing that
1:16:50
validates everything And and by the way if you have a thousand customers who say
1:16:55
they're willing to pay for something that's way better than having a completed prototype right If you come
1:17:01
into an investor meeting and say "I've got this really cool thing and it works great." and I say "Well who who cares?"
1:17:08
And you say "Well me and my team and my mom." Like okay right That's not enough But if you say "Well it it I got this
1:17:15
thing It's about 70% finished but I have a thousand people that are interested in seeing me finish it." That's interesting
1:17:23
But that that's that's just like again is verbally they say we're verbally interested For example let's say just
1:17:29
like go find thousand random people on the street because I don't know what else It's just like either survey monkey
1:17:36
or something else that they can do But let's say you just like go and find thousand people randomly on the street and they say verbally they're interested
1:17:43
But then again it is not statistically necessarily which just like mean traction You're being an engineer you're
1:17:49
being a PhD Yeah it's not statistically significant but you got to do it anyway You got to do things that don't scale
1:17:55
sometimes And we need people and and by the way there are ways to do this Um you
1:18:00
can buy ads on Google or Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram right and drive them to a survey Exactly Right You can
1:18:06
set up a landing page and or you know uh and then test the hell out of it There's all kinds of ABC testing tools uh and
1:18:13
run some variations and you can get statistically significant numbers if you want Um but any the key here is I'm
1:18:20
disagreeing with you a little because anything is better than nothing right Okay 25 is better than 24 200 is better
1:18:27
than 26 right anything is more because what investors are not going to fund is
1:18:33
stuff that people come and think they've built something cool and nobody else cares right You got to have validation
1:18:39
from the outside Um and you can do that with you know $100 on on text ads on
1:18:45
Google uh and see if you can get a hundred people to show up and and and start
1:18:51
um a a concept that might be useful for you to explore is the net promoter score Have you ever heard of NPS
1:18:57
This is for everybody that would be useful NPS is a a very useful metric Um
1:19:03
earlier in my career all of us I guess in tech we used to do just what you said We send out a big survey right And and
1:19:08
you hope people will fill it out and you try to give them a gift card or something you know so they'll fill out the survey and it's really hard to get responses And of course once you have
1:19:15
the survey you don't want to ask one question You want to ask like 40 questions and nobody's going to complete it right So it's it's this chicken and
1:19:22
egg thing Anyway the net promoter score is kind of a a catchall for that And the net promoter score generally asks one
1:19:28
question And you can Google this I won't I I'll mess it up But the concept is simply you ask one question Would you
1:19:34
recommend this to your friends And that's it And you put on a scale of one to 100 And any product that doesn't have
1:19:41
at least an 80 consistently you're in trouble And that's it And that's a
1:19:46
pretty easy question you can get out of people right As opposed to a five-page survey with all these demographics and
1:19:51
stuff right And it's a simple way And I might have bungled that a little Probably somebody in the uh chat room
1:19:56
can correct me But that's the kind of idea right Is this useful enough that you would pay for it and recommend it to a friend the end Uh and send out a
1:20:04
thousand of those and hopefully you get 800 yeses and and you can there's a lot of good blog posts and videos about that
1:20:10
But that's kind of the maybe the tool that you were missing that might be helpful for you Okay Thank you very much
1:20:16
All right Well nice to see you again and good luck It sounds like you're making progress Your is getting better for
1:20:24
sure All right so that was Amid from Las Vegas Um Anime says "Great advice
1:20:30
Validate quickly." Yeah thanks Anime Rajat says "Unfortunately participation link is not working." Um I think it is
1:20:37
but we're about finished here anyway Rajat next time um come in early and you can get the RSVP link through the
1:20:43
signups on Eventbrite and Meetup And uh everywhere we publish this if you read in the promotions down to the second
1:20:49
link there's a second link and uh you can uh you can sign up and join me on
1:20:55
camera here Uh Venit says "How do you differentiate from Google Lens?" Oh that's interesting Um yeah that's
1:21:01
probably for you Omid That's a good point Uh Google Lens is starting to be a pretty ubiquitous product I've been
1:21:07
using it myself It's pretty cool Um and John says um hold on here John says and
1:21:14
then Wesley if you're still here we'll get to you next Um how do I do that There it is John
1:21:20
says "I'm creating an AI app." All right hold on Let's just put this up here To
1:21:26
help e-commerce companies whenever I try emailing companies see if they would be interested no one responds Yeah Um okay
1:21:33
Yeah that's true Um I Yeah people in the chat room you
1:21:39
might have some suggestions here I guess my question John will be to or my
1:21:44
suggestion would be to stop emailing Maybe go to a trade show or a
1:21:50
conference or uh go eat lunch at the place near the company that you're targeting Maybe you need to meet some
1:21:56
people in the real world Um it's a pretty broad topic AI app to help e-commerce companies but
1:22:03
um m and maybe you need to narrow down your target customer like who is it
1:22:09
specifically the buyer for that I gather it's in the e-commerce company right who
1:22:15
is it is it the marketing department or the sales department or is there somebody in charge of conversion or a data analysis or HR you know I don't
1:22:22
whatever it is um and get real specific about that find them on LinkedIn and nicely stalk them and uh get friendly Uh
1:22:30
I don't think a spray and prey approach of just emailing people works anymore Well you're telling me it doesn't work
1:22:36
so I guess that's the truth Um you probably just need to be a little more creative I mean there are certainly people that would say uh you you should
1:22:43
go and um Well there you go Is that your question as well Yeah Best way to contact end users Yeah I was just
1:22:49
telling you I guess some people would even say that you need to go and do something uh creative right like figure
1:22:55
out who they are and send them flowers right Do something they wouldn't expect Write them a post like a mail like send
1:23:01
them an actual letter Everybody's so surprised to get real mail these days They would probably visit your website
1:23:06
if you sent them an actual letter Um and Harry has a good reply here too If uh he
1:23:12
says it's just a numbers game as well right If you've done a 100 emails the 101st could be the email you get back
1:23:17
That's right I remember a couple years ago I started doing the show and I had a young woman on and uh she was so uh
1:23:24
disappointed that her company was getting no traction with investors and she had put all this time into it or
1:23:30
everything and um you know to pitch the investors and nobody was reacting and
1:23:35
and I I felt bad for her and I said well so how many investors have you pitched Three I was like okay well
1:23:43
that's your problem Three investors right I mean you can't get three people to agree on anything That's Yeah I said
1:23:48
try 30 or 300 right Uh and if you do all the research that we were talking about earlier that would be even better Okay
1:23:54
so Wesley we're going to take Wesley and Rajat if you're backstage I I'm sorry we're kind of out of time but if you can
1:24:00
just type it type in the little chat room back there Rajat tell me what your question is and and we'll see if we can squeeze you in Okay Wesley we're back
1:24:06
Did you uh wanted to uh talk about your uh project management app
1:24:11
Yeah I I'm definitely um a little bit rusty on the This is not a pitch I'm I'm very much like early sort of
1:24:18
pre-validation stage I put the link in the chat Uh it's called obuslabs.com Um and uh yeah I guess my
1:24:26
my question is so I've I've built a scrapbooker to
1:24:31
basically reach out to a specific set of people folks on like like near diversion
1:24:36
folks um solo entrepreneurs people have like a lot of who like have personal professional projects on
1:24:43
the on the go um essentially it's like an AI forward project management tool um
1:24:50
that will kind of imagine you have an idea for a project you have the the timelines you give it enough context it's using LM in the background um and
1:24:58
you give enough information it'll actually break down the the phases for you the the timelines and the some
1:25:03
initial tasks Um and uh and the the idea is you can
1:25:08
sort of like um it's like a an AI psychic So you might have your you know think Jirro or think you know any sort
1:25:15
of like task management tool um you have basic you know you check tasks off but
1:25:20
it's sort of like it'll um you know it'll kind of say hey like
1:25:25
you you're blocked on these these tasks or you can kind of like speak to it like uh like an LM and it'll have direct
1:25:32
access to your tasks and and you know project phases and updated on on the fly
1:25:37
So it's kind of like um like so like vibe coding but like Vibe sort of project management Yeah
1:25:43
that's interesting So what's your question That's a That's an interesting idea So I I guess it's like I I know
1:25:49
like I I I've gotten some some good feedback so far but it's and I've built a couple of kind of MVP or I guess yeah
1:25:57
prototypes but I'm trying to figure out the specific like projects There's so
1:26:02
many kinds of projects There's personal professional projects There's um and I
1:26:07
like the the ICP that I reached out to on LinkedIn They're just all all over the place So I guess it's like how how
1:26:14
much feedback would be enough for me to narrow down like for me like the TAM is is huge Um and I think something generic
1:26:22
enough where it's like it doesn't really matter what project you're working with as long as the the the workflow is simple and the tool kind of works as is
1:26:28
But I know like depending on the project uh you might need a very specific kind
1:26:34
of you know things that relate to the project that you're working on So like if you're a contractor you need certain
1:26:40
things you know certain like yeah add-ons tools or if you are like a creative or if you're somebody in tech
1:26:48
like it's just very different kinds of projects but it's very generic you know so far Well I would So if if that's kind
1:26:56
of the question like kind of like how to proceed that's kind of how to narrow it down Is that kind of what you're asking
1:27:02
Yeah It's like it's like say I speak to you know 60 people So far my ratio is like for every five people I reach out
1:27:08
to I get one person who's interested and you know have have a chat in a session
1:27:14
and so far the feed feedback's been great but um you know is the end result
1:27:19
going to be just a generic project management app or is going to be like jobber like like an app for contractors
1:27:26
or or an app for so I guess like when like at what point do I know you know this I'm ready to sort of
1:27:33
yeah dive dive in and yeah because I'm very much doing a lot of coding and I'm I have the
1:27:40
you know I have this the skills have a design background and coding background so I know how to like like build it and uh right but it's mostly just like
1:27:48
well here here's what here's what I would do just in case it's helpful and I don't have an answer here right um but here's what how I think about
1:27:55
opportunities like that and everybody in the chat room as well if you have suggestions for Wesley please chime in because this is a this is a life
1:28:01
question as much as a business question in some ways Right So one thing I would do is think about the people that you
1:28:07
would most like to work with and whose projects you would most like to be around because if this works you're
1:28:12
going to be spending a lot of time with them right So if you love to ride Harley's and there's some overlap with Harley project management you know
1:28:19
that's that's a way to go you know and you said neurode divergent that narrows it But you also mentioned like personal
1:28:24
versus professional or you know is it exercise projects or is it construction projects Like think about like I mean
1:28:30
for you Wesley like as your friend I'm saying like what do you who do you want to be when you grow up right like like
1:28:36
how does this fit into your life because a lot of people you could look at this as I want to make the most money and that's a totally legit way to go but
1:28:42
that also can create a job for you which you might end up hating even though it makes you rich but you know there's
1:28:47
trade-offs there Um so that's one thing I would do is think about who's the ideal customer profile for you like as a
1:28:54
guy like who do you who do you want to work with right Um the second would be
1:28:59
once you to the razor that I often use is especially for things that you can
1:29:06
kind of spin up quickly and test which it sounds like you can is um what will
1:29:12
make the most money in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of
1:29:17
effort on a repeatable basis most amount of time sorry most amount of
1:29:24
money shortest amount of time least effort repeatable basis So that's like a
1:29:29
filter that you can run things through Um and that may that may not create the
1:29:35
next Facebook but it may create the next thing that you want to do that addresses people that you want to work with that
1:29:40
makes you the most amount of money and the least least amount of work which is another at least in my world that's something I'm always looking for
1:29:46
Um and especially that last one for you I'd have a little concern about the repeat use because the projects may or
1:29:54
may not again depends on what kind of project you target You know how often are they going to do this right Um is
1:29:59
this a one-time thing They're going to it's to build a house a custom home Well how many custom homes do people build One or two in a life right Uh and that's
1:30:06
a small section right As opposed to I don't know a diet which changed every week or something right So repeatable
1:30:12
use would be something I'd be looking at Um and I would um try to use those kind of filters
1:30:19
crossed with your own experience and then talk to as many people as you can until you start to get what you're looking for is kind of that net promoter
1:30:26
score idea I was talking about a minute ago of like yeah I want that And like the majority of people want that And
1:30:31
these are people that would have ideally a a paying use and maybe even a recurring use And those all start kind
1:30:37
of a vin diagram where you're starting to overlap a bunch of circles where you find something you like to do that's helpful but people like it enough they
1:30:43
want to pay for it on a recurring basis and you enjoy doing it That sounds like a thing for Wesley without giving you
1:30:51
any specifics at all But maybe that's a helpful framework No that that's that's a good one I think
1:30:56
especially the the enjoyment aspect because I think for me it's also like I think especially in the the the era that
1:31:01
we're in it's like uh you can you can prototype things so quickly and you can
1:31:07
you can build things so so quickly but I think it's like is a problem that spend yeah time as well Yeah that's right
1:31:14
Because I mean you with your skills you probably have a good job already right So it's not like you need another job Um
1:31:20
you want to do this because it's something you enjoy or or or maybe it makes a billion dollars too That'd be cool Um but I don't know if you can see
1:31:26
in but these books behind me I'll take you off camera here but these books behind me that's those books are about I
1:31:31
wrote these I'm working on a new one It's about fundraising but these are about my personal journey uh when I left corporate America and started building
1:31:38
websites So this is a different era right We didn't have any AI but it was when I the the uh the razor I was
1:31:44
talking about the most amount of money least amount of times because I had so many different ideas for little websites right And put up dozens of them and
1:31:49
figure out which ones would work the best So these are full of well these two anyway Internet Riches was the first one
1:31:54
and then Click Millionaires is kind of a this was 2006 this is 2012 because they're old now but the strategy of how
1:32:01
to think about that and prioritize your own lifestyle choices um is something I haven't seen in any other business books
1:32:07
right how to make money by doing something that creates a lifestyle that you want Um so if you're interested that
1:32:13
Click Millionaires it's in a bunch of languages but in English it's on Amazon stuff Um I'd give you one but I the
1:32:18
publisher controls the rights Um but you can get it on Amazon It might be useful for you because you're kind of at that point Um so I hope that's helpful Uh
1:32:26
that was our friend Wesley and we got one more here and then we're going to wrap it up So Rajat is coming on Where
1:32:32
are you Where are you today Rajot Hi Hi Scott um really nice and u like really
1:32:38
learned a lot in like last half an hour of listening to you itself Great I'm really excited to be here first time Um
1:32:44
I'll I'll try to be quick because I know that you're running short of time as you just mentioned Um I'll give start with
1:32:49
little bit of my introduction I have been um living in New Zealand for like last seven plus years I'm a financial
1:32:54
adviser by professional licensed professional I've been working as a wealth manager as well So um um while
1:33:01
working I realized that a lot of the firms in New Zealand are very traditional and still follow the base or
1:33:07
you know um very traditional method of paper and getting the questionnaire and allocating a fund right um so spec I I I
1:33:14
was a portfolio manager I have been a dims um in the simp service discretionary investment management service and all those things um one of
1:33:21
the main problem is digitalization New Zealand does need digitalization right um so what I started doing and how it
1:33:29
started you know my interest in this is um I started creating tools I already started to create tools um for
1:33:35
rebalancing I did like you know automatic rebalancing like every six months so investor comes in he has
1:33:41
25,000 50,000 100,000 we invest the money I would invest the money in different stocks according to strategic
1:33:47
asset allocation model like how much should go in Australian how much should go in US how much in Europe right now
1:33:53
every six months because market moves right so we still need to do rebalancing move back to what we already decided
1:33:59
right so this process was really cumbersome so what I did is I developed an MVP uh for the company where I was
1:34:05
working um and prior to them um and I worked really well reduced time by 70%
1:34:10
save million dollar in a year um and like you know after that like I literally sold the intellectual property
1:34:16
rights to that um and then I started working on something else um now what
1:34:21
I'm working on I already developed like 70% of the MVP um is Kiwisaver Kisaver
1:34:27
is a retirement u scheme in New Zealand right like everybody has to be involved over 18 years it's elig it's it's a
1:34:33
mandatory scheme right um and what it does is it's simply a fund again like
1:34:39
you know it's mandatory fund 3% contributions required from the person 3% is contributions required from the
1:34:45
employer right now the problem is there are two problems that I'm trying to solve and I think I' I've solved it like
1:34:51
on how what I'm what I'm trying to build um so there are over over 250 50 funds
1:34:58
QV saver funds right now for a layman person like which fund to go in is
1:35:03
really difficult right and the process is cumbersome and a lot of the times what happened is these advisers which I
1:35:09
was myself I will advise to a person go in this fund and I will keep getting the trail commission without providing the
1:35:16
service and more often a person doesn't even know he has an advisor like you know I for example you come to me you
1:35:22
say which fund should I go to I will say like go to XY Z fund right and I have
1:35:27
done the all the paperwork You won't hear hear from me from next next five years I will keep on getting commission
1:35:34
You won't receive any service which is sad situation So I was really frustrated by I'm a very ethical
1:35:40
and moral person right Um and this is what I've seen in the industry and I was like this is not right Um we got to find
1:35:47
a solution Um so the solution so okay and at the same time I do understand the
1:35:52
struggle of financial advisor as well because it doesn't really pay much you get like 05% So there's a problem from like you
1:36:00
know advisers are not incentivized to do this this thing because a lot of task is there and not really much revenue So
1:36:07
they are more going to go into like you know go with this one go with that one and that's it and forget so um what I
1:36:14
did is now so so what's your question Okay sorry So my question is I developed
1:36:20
um this MVP I quit my job because I'm started working on this almost full-time um because I could do so
1:36:27
Um and I pitched the MVP to my last employer and he was really excited about
1:36:35
it Um though the demand was a little bit too much He said I want skin in the game
1:36:41
and stuff like that um like about 50% because you know you got this idea while
1:36:46
working here in the industry and but that's industry knowledge I'm MBA um I have I'm qualified advisor and
1:36:53
everything so um you know he said like I want and at that stage it was nothing done it was just a discussion or 10% I
1:37:01
started working on it created some MV prototype so I was like now this sounds not right because from the very onset if
1:37:09
you start getting that feeling um And as you mentioned just like you know in a
1:37:14
couple of chats you had before So I was like no um I'm happy to more discuss
1:37:19
this later down the track when something is developed I'm not selling a baby which is in the egg right Let it develop
1:37:26
because that's where the you know things grow I better have a bit of business sense I believe Um let it grow and then
1:37:32
we can talk like because I got to see what you are bringing to the table Right So the question is
1:37:37
um um though interestingly another colleague
1:37:43
what's the question Rajat what's the question um how do I select how do I select the partners and should I even
1:37:50
select the partner at this stage when I can like you know I'm getting help from my family she's in IT I do have IT
1:37:57
background as well myself so it's interesting I do have um I can develop I can um I have extensive finance
1:38:04
qualifications I'm I'm doing almost 90 80 90% of on my own Um 10 20% help from
1:38:11
my sister and she doesn't want anything Um but but I'm but I'm more than happy to involve her in at that later at this
1:38:17
stage Um but it's like you don't really want to talk about because I'm really passionate about what I'm doing right
1:38:23
I'm I'm spending about So the question is how to partner how to pick a partner or how much equity to give a partner How
1:38:29
to pick a partner Do I really need to pick a partner at this stage um do I really need to raise capital because I
1:38:34
don't feel like I need to raise capital So the my strategy I want to confirm if my strategy I'm going to tell you my
1:38:39
strategy in one minute if it's good or not So my strategy at this stage is develop I'm I'm 80% 70% done in
1:38:46
developing the MVP My strategy in next like next two months get the MVP fast Um
1:38:51
I do have strategic partners already couple of firms or two firms at least um that they want to use it u because I
1:38:58
have been in the industry so they want to use the product So I believe my plan is in two to three months develop MVP
1:39:04
give it to them right for free as a facilitated partner um get feedback improvise no need to raise funds at this
1:39:11
stage no need to get officially anybody officially involved at this stage once um facilitated partner has provided
1:39:17
feedback and I've evolved into a stage where I can go more scalable at that
1:39:22
stage think about partnership ad equity and all those sort of stuff because right now I'm just passionate about
1:39:29
doing what I'm doing I I and I can do it all by myself with a little bit of help from here and there Um freelancer and
1:39:36
stuff like that like you know asking questions to people especially people like you like you know who can help me with the you you are helping me with a
1:39:42
little bit of like you know guidance side IT person like really complicated problem problem I have connected to APIs
1:39:48
of government database and everything like that all by myself So yeah I think you're on the right track if if that's
1:39:54
your question So um the longer you can wait to raise money the better And if you can never raise money that's even
1:40:00
better because you own 100% You're totally right about that I mean you you know finance right So if you can keep
1:40:06
from diluting yourself I totally agree with that What especially for venture capital what you're looking for is it's
1:40:12
kind of like jet fuel but until you've built the plane nobody's going to give you the money anyway right And so then
1:40:18
you take off So um I think you're right get the prototype going demonstrate some traction and the more you can do on your
1:40:25
own the better valuation you'll get and the less equity you'll give up Absolutely You're 100% right on that But
1:40:30
right now like the person I am is like I just like grinding hard Good Sounds like you're making progress That's great Well
1:40:36
I'm glad you showed up tonight I hope that's helpful Uh and if you have follow-up questions I forgot to say this to everybody Anybody has follow-up
1:40:41
questions you can post them on the YouTube replay or on on the LinkedIn replay and we can we'll try to address them there as well So hope to see you
1:40:48
again next month as well And I hope that works out Sounds like you've got the right kind of track record People want to work with you So that's that's great
1:40:54
Rajat Congrats Yeah that's awesome All right Well nice to meet you and uh that
1:40:59
was our show for tonight I think So thank you all for sticking through Uh the replay will be there later if you
1:41:05
want to watch it back at double speed or um slow down if I'm talking too fast I'll be here again next month And we're
1:41:10
always online at startupconsil.org trying to help you and founders like you all over the world So if that sounds
1:41:16
like fun please come and join us It's a new website like I said lot of events and services and um your profile and
1:41:22
publicity tools for you there and we're doing it all at cost or very low cost or free So community service on your behalf
1:41:30
uh from me and uh the startup council So hope you're having a great day or evening wherever you are and we'll see
1:41:35
you again next month if not sooner Thanks for watching