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

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

This month the fun, friendly live video Q&A sessions welcomed startup investor pitch practices, plus answered financing and strategy questions from entrepreneurs from all over the world with FREE expert startup advice. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.

For November's free Startup Fundraising Office Hours, StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox took lots of questions from startup friends worldwide.

Startup Founder Discussion TOPICS This Month

These mostly focused on helping startup founders accelerate their fundraising process to raise money from angel investors and venture capital firms including:

  • Surya from Riverside asked about "red flags" that turn off investors, especially for edtech startups.

  • Josua from Germany practiced his investor pitch for his startup that's working on AI-enabled documentation tools for the aircraft industry.

  • Ken from Brisbane Australia returned to share the updated pitch for his international Artificial Intelligence AI educational opportunities marketplace.

  • Courtney from Los Angeles asked for tips on finding local angel investors.

  • John from Orange County asked if investors believe the financial projections that startups provide. (Hint: NO)

  • Ashley from NYC asked how do you know when it's time for your #startup to scale.

  • Maria Kristina from the Philippines asked for practical tips on how to find and get the attention of boutique investment funds in the next 30 days.

  • Sumanta from Bengaluru asked how to find SMB customers to test and give beta feedback on their new B2B software products.

  • Surya with another question: How much traction is needed before angel investors will consider investing in a new company?

  • Nithen asked how to book Private Coaching Calls with Scott Fox to get some personal mentoring for his startup (Answer: https://scottfox.com/workwithscott )

  • SikeTechz from Vancouver wanted to know how to split his team's efforts between product building, marketing, and fundraising.

  • Plus, Scott answered many questions from the live chat, too, as well as sharing the excellent input from other viewers who offered suggestions, feedback, and advice for each other.

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.

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

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

Plus, get details on StartupCouncil.org's worldwide network of Meetup groups that can help you to promote YOUR local startup events in YOUR city, too.

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

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

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

You can watch LIVE here later this month on December 16:

https://www.youtube.com/scottfox

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Subscribe to the YouTube channel here!

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

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

0:00

office hours. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Scott Fox. I'm the CEO of the Startup Council. We're a worldwide community

0:06

service group that's here to help you accelerate your startup. I've been building startups for decades now with

0:12

uh varying luck, but on the whole, it's been a positive experience. So, I'm here to share my expertise with all of you

0:18

for free to try to help accelerate the rest of you. It's my thesis that the

0:23

world is uh underresourced in the sense that there are so many people out there

0:28

who deserve to take their own shot at entrepreneurship and take advantage of all the tools that are available now

0:35

online to build your own businesses. Now, these can be small lifestyle type businesses, but they can also be major

0:42

worldspanning global empires based on software or AI these days. And we're

0:47

here to talk about all of those, especially if you're interested in raising money for those kind of businesses and that kind of money that

0:54

comes from venture capital, venture capital, angel investors, maybe some debt or banks as well. Those are all

1:00

areas that are my expertise. In fact, I'm working on a new book about that stuff. But we're here tonight to take your questions from all over the world.

1:06

And we'll be here for an hour or so and we'll see how many people show up and how many of you have good questions. So,

1:12

uh, this is a friendly, safe space to ask the questions that is really hard to get answered sometimes. And I do this

1:18

for free because I want to help everybody do this. And that's actually what we do at startupconcounsil.org as well. Startupconsil.org is a community

1:25

service group that I started um, uh, 2018 uh, here in Southern California

1:31

where I live and we help support and connect all the resources in our local area. And we offer services like a

1:38

directory of entrepreneurs, a directory of investors, a map of where everybody lives and works, uh a jobs board, a

1:45

calendar of all the events, that kind of stuff. And now we're expanding that globally at startupconsil.org right

1:51

here. So if you haven't been over there yet, then go check it out. It's startupsil.org.

1:56

And it's, like I said, it's a community service. We do charge a little bit, but we just do it at cost. Um because I

2:02

found we used to give it away for free locally and we just found that people valued it more if they've paid a little

2:08

bit and I think it's only $20 right now, right? Uh we're just in a pre-launch phase. So if you haven't been over there

2:14

yet, uh go check it out and if you're a startup, we'd be happy to uh link you into the community and connect you with

2:19

resources. uh a lot of my friends, experts, fellow investors, uh we're all there and uh trying to accelerate

2:25

everybody to make the world a bigger, better, more profitable place that also makes a difference in people's lives.

2:32

So, um thanks for those of you who are joining. I'm going to turn on the chat room here in just a second. I'd love to

2:38

hear where folks are from. We've got a couple people backstage already. Looks like we've got uh let's see, Ken is back

2:45

there and we'll have him uh come on. He had a question. And I think Ken wrote in, he's one of the smart ones who

2:51

follows directions. Thank you, Ken. And he has an investor pitch he wants to share with us. So, if you have an investor pitch or a um question, like I

2:59

said, then uh we'll be happy to hear and happy to help you as much as I can. So, we're going to get going here um in

3:06

general. So, let me let's turn on the chat and uh people can start uh let's

3:12

see, how do I get that? There we go. So, here comes the chat and comments will just show up there. So, we're live on

3:18

LinkedIn live. We're live on YouTube and we're live on Facebook. So, it looks like so far we've got a couple people

3:24

from um from YouTube and and from uh LinkedIn and another LinkedIn. Great.

3:29

Okay. So, it sounds like things are working. Can you guys hear me just in the chat room? Just say yes or nothing like or say no if it's a no. I

3:36

appreciate your feedback there just to make sure everything's working correctly. So, uh who am I? So, the reason why am I doing this? So, I am a

3:44

longtime serial entrepreneur. I don't know if I said that already, but basically I have started and uh raised

3:50

money and lost money for decades now. I was in graduate school, lucky enough to be in graduate school uh at Stanford in

3:56

the middle 90s. And hey, the internet hit big, right? And now Palo Alto is kind of the center of the world. Thank

4:02

you, uh Joshua and Menon and uh Isaiah. Um yeah. Okay, the yeses are rolling in.

4:08

Great. Awesome. So those of you who are in the chat room, I'm glad to see you here. Go ahead and put in your where you're from. I'd love to hear where

4:13

you're from. And you can enter your questions as well. And if we have good ones, I'll invite you backstage as well.

4:19

If you'd like to actually put in your question and if you want to come on camera, let me know and I'll post the

4:24

link and we can figure out how to get everybody. Uh Ken gets to go first because he RCP followed the instructions. Um okay. So yeah. Anyway,

4:31

so I have been u uh building companies for a long time. I I've written these books. Uh maybe some of you here because

4:37

of my books. The three in the middle are in English. The others are foreign translations. So, uh, Vietnamese and

4:43

Russian and, uh, Polish and Turkish and so forth. And I'm working on a new one

4:48

as well, which is about fundraising. So, that that should be helpful to all of you. And I hope you'll support that when it comes out next year. And but mostly

4:55

what I do why I do this is I've retired a couple times and I just find that the early stages are so exciting and you

5:03

know, the expertise I have can really help people, right? So, that's why we're trying to scale this with startups.org

5:08

org and with these office hours on YouTube. So, um if you have friends, uh who are out there and who could use this

5:14

kind of help actually, um please invite them to come join us too, right? This is free and it's fun and uh we'll have

5:20

people on camera here and we'll talk about stuff and we'll we'll solve some some big issues, okay? So that you can

5:25

get what's, you know, between your ears out into the world and to hopefully make some money and make a difference. So, um

5:32

okay, so a couple just couple quick qualifiers. Um, this is uh not qualified

5:38

legal advice or financial advice you should rely on. I'm just some guy you met on the internet who I'm doing my

5:43

best to help, but uh no liability accepted and no warranties implied, etc. You should consult your own experts to

5:50

get more in-depth, right? Where this is just kind of a friendly casual conversation. Also, this is being

5:56

recorded and will be shared uh worldwide. It's already obviously those of you who are here, I see we got Bangalore and Ireland and Los Angeles

6:02

and Vancouver and the Philippines, right? So obviously it's online, right? So don't say anything stupid. Um don't

6:08

put too much confidential information uh in the chat room. Um but uh welcome your

6:13

questions and happy to um share what I can to help all of you. All right, so

6:18

we're going to get going here. Um reminder that you should visit startupconsil.org. Oh, I forgot this is this is actually a special occasion. I

6:25

don't know how much you folks know, but uh this is actually global entrepreneurship week. Global

6:33

Entrepreneurship Week is a worldwide occasion that's sponsored by my friends at the Global Entrepreneurship Network,

6:39

which is a fantastic organization and there are chapters in 200 countries around the world. So, if you haven't met

6:45

the Global Entrepreneurship Network people in your country yet, you should. We have an amazing organization and we

6:52

have these great global entrepreneurship congresses. Um, I spoke at the one in Melbourne a couple years ago. Uh, this

6:59

year was in Indianapolis. Um they often have events in Cape Town like they move around Riad and Manila so forth. So u

7:06

this is a fantastic organization and it's a nonprofit and we really encourage all of you to get involved and let me

7:13

just share with you actually the um I think this will work. I've never done a screen share on this system so let's see

7:20

if I can share this screen. You all know what a screen looks like but let's see. There we go. So that's their website and

7:25

I put the URL on the page. It's jenglobal.org. jenglobal.org.

7:31

That's global entrepreneurship network global.orgw

7:37

global entrepreneurship week. And the reason I'm showing you that is because there are tons and tons of events

7:44

happening. Um, can you I think you can see that when I scroll down. Yeah, you can. Okay. So, look at that. 10 million

7:50

people, 40,000 events, 200 countries, and we're happening right now. So, this is part of that, right? We're doing this

7:56

for global entrepreneurship week. I do this anyway, but we're calling today a a GEW event. And whatever country you're

8:03

in, there's probably stuff happening that you can participate in. So, look at this leaderboard here on the right. Um,

8:08

thousands of events from Ethiopia and Jordan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, UK, Paraguay, Pakistan, Batswana, Sagal. I

8:16

mean, there's countries on there I've never even heard of, right? And this is a great event. So, um, if you have not

8:21

yet heard of Global Entrepreneurship Week, then you should go and check this out. Uh it's a resource for all of you

8:27

that I think would be a positive influence in your life. It's a great group of people. Uh and you saw their

8:32

logo there and I'm even wearing I put it on. Yeah. See, I've got this is my pin from Melbourne or no, this is from I was

8:38

in Detroit with um uh Jonathan Orman's, the chairman of the global uh the founder, president of Global

8:44

Entrepreneurship Network. Um and uh it's just a great bunch of people that

8:50

100% dedicated to helping you all succeed. So, okay. So, check that out. Oh, then sorry that was the thing.

8:56

They're actually giving away free tickets to the next Global Entrepreneurship Congress if you go over

9:03

and join on the website and it's free. You just got to set up a little profile and it can help you promote your company, right? So, why not do it? Uh,

9:08

and if you do, you'll get free tickets to the next Congress. I don't know when and where that is yet, but it'll be soon and it'll be in some cool city

9:15

somewhere. And it'll be like three or four days of amazing speakers and um

9:20

like we had Mark Cuban last time um and and me and a whole bunch of other people, Jeff Hoffman. Um so, okay, so

9:27

enough commercials. Uh you get the idea. All right, so let's get to our content tonight, which is really designed to

9:34

help all of you accelerate your startups. So, we've got a couple people um backstage. We're going to start with

9:40

our friend uh Ken, like I said, and Bobby, I don't know. Uh, there's someone named Bobby backstage. So, you'd have to

9:46

turn on your camera, Bobby. But if you could also, there's a separate chat room for the folks backstage. Bobby, can you

9:51

please enter what you want to talk about back there in in the chat room so I can figure out where to uh put you in in the

9:57

flow of the show. Next, I want to give you all the uh let's put up the link.

10:03

I'll just make this easy this time. This should be the link. Yeah, you're not going to be able to type that, though.

10:09

That's an ugly ass link. Um, what's the best way to do that? I'm not sure quite

10:14

how to how to uh I think we have actually we used to

10:22

have Hang on. I think I made a simple link for that because it's so

10:28

Hold on. I think it's founder hours.com. There we go. Okay, try this guys. Founderoffour.com.

10:35

and I think that will redirect right to the uh on camera uh backstage link. All

10:41

right. So, if you'd like to join us, you can do that and um we'll try to bring your uh questions uh on even if that

10:48

even if we can't figure out how that works. Okay. So, let's um let me just review the chat room here, make sure

10:54

nothing's on fire. Um and say hello to some folks. So, we've got people from

10:59

all over the world. Thanks for joining. Uh, so mendan and Joshua and Hares Hares

11:05

from Software Hub. Excellent. He put his LinkedIn profile in there. That was a good idea. Harishes, go ahead everybody. Put your LinkedIns and meet with each

11:11

other. I don't have all the answers. I'm just convening this little party. So, if you'd like to all meet each other, go

11:17

ahead and meet each other, right? I mean, that's that's perfectly acceptable here. And by the way, when we start

11:23

talking and we have questions and pitches and stuff, please chime in, right? I'm we're not here I'm not here to lecture. I'm just here to help. Okay,

11:30

Mitch. Um, first- time co-founder. Mitch, I think I met you recently, right? Uh, at SoCal Startup Day and then

11:36

you guys can hear me. Awesome. Uh, Kikas from India. Joshua's from Germany. Um,

11:42

how do you find angel investors? We can come back to that one for sure. Sed Oran from Kurdistan. Awesome. Good. Nice to

11:48

meet you. Bangalore. Suresh. Uh, Isaac from Ireland. Menon from LA. Vancouver.

11:54

Riverside. Philippines. All right. I better go a little faster here. Okay. And I put the link back in the uh chat

12:00

there for crazy startup guy if you want to uh Oh, no. I thought you said you wanted to pitch. Never mind. Okay. And

12:06

then Kumar is a founder of Doorbox D. Excellent. Seeking investment. Okay. Good. All right. Well, good. So, we got

12:13

a good crowd here and we're going to bring this to life here by bringing on my new friend um Ken. And Ken wanted to

12:21

talk about he wanted to practice his pitch. So, let's make sure that that is the right Ken. Uh, I think there's

12:28

probably only one Ken showing up here from Brisbane, but let's see now. How do I Hang on, Ken. I see you. But, um, need

12:36

to rearrange the screen a little bit. Every time I do this, they've rearranged the interface. So, let's see. Okay. Oh,

12:44

yeah. Please like and subscribe. That would be awesome. Uh, so that we get more support so we can do more of this.

12:49

We're supported by sponsors mostly. So, the more you guys share this, the more we can tell the sponsors that people are

12:55

listening. So like and subscribe and comment, please. And in fact, if you're if you are watching this later in the

13:01

replay on YouTube or LinkedIn or something and you have a question, go ahead and put it in the comments and we will try to uh follow up and answer you

13:08

there also. All right. Oh, there's Ken. I see I just saw how do I get you next to me? Let's see. Hey. Oh, there we go.

13:16

Okay. Hey, Ken. Hey, Scott. Hi. How are you? All right. You've been here before?

13:22

Yes, I did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Nice to see you again. Can I try that again?

13:27

Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're Good day. It's a morning in in Australia, right? It's afternoon 3 PM.

13:34

Oh, 3 PM. Okay. All right. Cool. That's perfect time. Can I share my screen?

13:40

Uh I I don't usually do that because I I've when I just did it now was the first time I've ever done it. We just do

13:45

verbal pitches here. I'm sorry. Can you just talk through it? I'm always afraid it's going to crash the system and then we'll lose everybody. Right.

13:52

So, um Can we just do a a verbal? And so Ken has done this before, but let me give

13:58

everybody the the vibe here. The vibe is friendly and helpful. So we I'll be friendly and you all be helpful. I'll be

14:05

try to be helpful, too. But Ken will give us a two-minute pitch, verbal only, as you just heard. And I will have some

14:12

feedback, but I really request all of you to offer feedback, too. Right. This is he's being brave and and pitching

14:17

this. In fact, this is his second time. He's back for more. So, I guess we were nice to him. Um, but if the rest of you have suggestions about how we could

14:23

improve the pitch, we'd love to hear them, right? And you can put those right in the chat room and that would be really helpful. And like I said, if

14:28

anyone else uh wants to join us backstage, uh you can do that. Uh I'll put the link. It's founder office

14:34

hours.com. That should work, I think. Okay, Ken. So, uh we do this for two

14:39

minutes or so, and you don't have to use all two minutes, but if you if you'd like, that's uh that's what we're going

14:44

to try to do, just like last time. So, I'm I'm pulling up my phone. I'm going to put on a little timer here. And uh

14:50

looks like you want to talk about uh your global education and mobility AI startup. Very cool. Okay. So I'm ready

14:58

when you are. Perfect. Thank you Scott again for giving me the chance. Uh so

15:04

this is Ken. I'm currently in Australia. Many years ago I work for Nvidia and

15:09

Jensen was my boss. So in a recent interview Jensen mentioned that N media

15:15

is a platform enabling artists to build the success on top of it and this is

15:21

exactly what I'm building. Uh so IMEI is an AI power global education and

15:28

migration and mobility platform. uh every year millions of people moving

15:33

across the border either as an international student or migrant or um

15:39

foreign workers eta and they have

15:44

the process has been costly lengthy and complex I was one of them I've lived in

15:50

six countries before moving across the border many times and feel and that's why I'm building this platform kind of

15:58

like do doing is the same with um migration agent, migration attorney or

16:06

education agent but without the cost of it. So um this is going to be enabling

16:11

everybody to use the platform and apply for either visa or university program or

16:20

even accommodation uh without the the pay that I mentioned about uh as to uh reach out to a human

16:30

agent they can also um have the option in our platform as well. So the platform

16:36

actually we build one of the world's first multi-user with AI uh like

16:44

people wanted to move to a new country either study or migrate chances are they

16:50

need to bring the family in for the same discussion um and maybe the parents or

16:56

maybe the child etc. And our platform enable that uh for uh a group chat with

17:03

the AI as well. And if they want to invite a real human agent, we also

17:09

enabling them to have the same conversation. So that's been two minutes. You want to

17:14

finish up or are you are you done? Yeah, just the last one. So this is a B2C and B2B. We also enabled the service

17:22

provider like universities and schools to provide uh the the the the service

17:29

through the platform as well. Thank you. Right. Okay. Excellent. Well, nice to see you again. Thank you for that. I

17:35

have a better idea of what you're doing than I did last time. So, you've definitely made progress. Nice work. Um

17:41

excuse me. Everybody who's listening to that, please jump into the chat room. I know a lot of you are there. Uh what did

17:47

you think of that? what could he do better or differently? We don't have time to like debate the merits of the

17:53

business itself. We're really just trying to help practice the pitch because pitching is like anything else. You you the more you practice, you

18:00

develop a muscle, right? And you get faster and better and clearer. So that's why Ken's smart. He's taking advantage

18:05

of this free opportunity. So why not, right? Um so if you have suggestions for him, um and questions about the business

18:11

are fine, too. Especially if you are somebody who could help him, right? if you are in this industry, uh, please put

18:17

your contact information in there and offer to help. That that would be fantastic. That's what we're trying to do here. So, okay. So, what did I think

18:23

of the pitch? So, um, I'm the the guy with the microphone. So, um, so I

18:28

thought it was, like I said, it was clearer than last time and you got to the point faster. I have to say though,

18:34

there were wasn't a single number, Ken. We need numbers. this what you did was

18:40

almost 100% a product pitch not a business pitch. So, you talked to me

18:46

like or us like it was you wanted us to use the service, which

18:52

is a totally legit pitch, right? But that's a sales pitch. An investor pitch, it's got to be about the business. So, I

18:59

would have wanted to hear more about um how how big is the market in in numbers,

19:06

right? Because you've said I remember this from last time you said and this is not a market I know, right? Because I'm an American. I grew up in America. I

19:11

went to school in America. I'm spoiled, right? So I I bet it's a big business, but I need numbers, right? And any

19:17

investor will. So how big is the market? How many people can you serve reasonably, you know? Uh and don't do

19:24

one of those like there's a billion people and if we get 1% we have a big business. Investors hate that. You have

19:29

to do it kind of from the bottom up and say like um we what we call is unit economics. So what is what are the units

19:36

and what are the economics? We sell. So what I would like to hear is something that shows your unit economics because I

19:43

don't know how you make money. The closest you came was you said we're like migration agents or attorneys. Okay,

19:49

that so it's service based. I kind of got that but again I don't know how those folks charge, right? So is it a

19:56

success fee? Is it a subscription? Is it and is the product soft? Like we need

20:01

you to talk about the business in with numbers. So, I would have liked to hear

20:07

um we think there's a market of and I I'm making numbers up, right? There's a market of 3.6 million of these people um

20:15

worldwide and 500,000 each year in Australia where I live. So, we're going to start in Australia. So, if we have

20:20

500,000 of them, we're going to sell a product with a typical price of $199 and

20:26

they're going to renew that every month. And we figure that we can c, you know, recruit whatever a thousand of those

20:31

people. That's $200,000 a year. you know, like like see what I'm doing is like a plus b plus c so they can see the

20:37

numbers because that's what investors are doing. We're doing spreadsheets in our head immediately. Not because the

20:44

idea isn't fascinating, but because it's business for us, right? So, we're really looking at this like I've got a thousand

20:51

places to put my money. Is this the one that I really want to, you know, get involved with? Because especially angel

20:57

investors like me, we don't want to just give money. We want to we want to help, right? So it's you got to educate us a

21:03

little bit and numbers would be a huge step forward for you. Um and then just another super super small question or

21:10

suggestion the name of the company AI me I it's not it's hard to hear and I can

21:17

see it in writing because you had uh you had you know written it to me. I I wasn't sure what you were saying. It's

21:24

just a lot and I you probably don't want to change the name of your company, but um it's a lot easier if you have a name

21:29

that people can understand easily like, you know, Amazon, Yahoo, you know, like

21:35

a word that people know rather than initials that are an acronym that probably stands for something amazing,

21:41

but I don't know quite what you were saying, right? It's just not as memorable. So, that's a small point, but if you're early stage, you and you come

21:48

up with a a brand that's more memorable, I'm I think that will help you. So, does

21:54

that seem fair those points? Is that useful? Yeah, perfect.

21:59

Okay, great. Well, let's see what Yeah. Yeah. Just I didn't have enough time to to talk about the numbers. I I

22:07

think I I should Exactly. Right. No. And we hear that a lot. I actually hosted Sorry, I have to get a drink of water.

22:12

I'm gonna cough in all everybody's ear. Sure. Uh sorry.

22:18

Um, I hosted a conference just two weeks ago where Sorry,

22:27

okay. Uh, throat malfunction. Anyway, sorry about that. I hosted a conference two

22:34

weeks ago and we had founders on stage and they had paid to pitch actually. Um,

22:41

not a lot but um, but uh, and it was three minutes. Yeah, three-minute pitch

22:47

and five minutes questions. And pitch competitions are increasingly moving that way because the investors, we want

22:56

to hear the concept and then we want to know what we want to know. And it used to be like when I started being an angel investor like eight or 10 years ago, it

23:02

used to be like 12 minute pitches and three minutes of questions. And like everything else in the world, everything

23:08

is getting shorter shorter attention spans and it's more about questions than pitch. So I would suggest um because you

23:15

said what everybody says two or three minutes it's not enough. It is enough. You have to practice and you need to put

23:21

the numbers first. If you're talking to investors like if you're talking to your friends and family to get them to contribute you know it can you you got

23:27

you got an hour to talk and they're interested fine. But if you're going to be in a pitch situation you got to get the the story out and the numbers fast.

23:34

And then because otherwise all we're going to do is use your Q&A time to ask

23:39

for the numbers which is what we did multiple times at the conference, right? So that will chew up your Q&A time. So

23:45

if you if you give us good numbers, then we'll get into more of the why are you doing this or or you know why do you

23:52

think this is a good market and all the things that you really want to talk about. But for us the numbers are first. All right. So let's see what the uh chat

23:59

room thought about all that. And Ken is being very brave here. I'm just picking on him. Uh, but we appreciate him

24:05

participating. Um, okay. So, uh, so Damian says, "I'd like to hear about

24:12

the market size and return on investment." Yep. Sora says, "This is a good pitch. I loved how you explained

24:17

the problem, but it would have been better if you talked about how many customers would love to use it to make it stand out. That sounds fair to me."

24:24

Agree. Mitch says, "Uh, the numbers missing. The most compelling part to me was you're relating the product to your

24:29

personal experience." And I agree with that, too. A lot of good pitch. It's entertainment to a certain extent,

24:35

right? So, a lot of it is about making it relatable and personal because investors are sizing up the founder as

24:42

well, right? And um you know, Ken's a nicel looking guy with a good smile and he's well spoken, so he's easy to like,

24:48

but then it's got to go to the next level of like what are the what are the numbers, right? So, all right. Uh,

24:54

anybody else has um suggestions there or especially if you have um ways that you might be able to help Ken, please put it

24:59

in the chat room and I think we'll hopefully Ken, I didn't it didn't turn you off. I hope that was helpful to you

25:05

and we'll get to see you again. Yeah, that's pretty good. Thanks. Thanks, Scott. All right. You're welcome. Nice to see

25:10

you again. Alrighty. So, that was our friend Ken from Brisbane. And uh I love

25:15

Brisbane. It's been a while since I've been there, but um there's a company I'm actually an investor in a company based

25:21

in um uh the Gold Coast. uh just near Brisbane, Ken. So maybe I'll get out there and do some events or something

25:27

sometime, meet you in person. Okay, so let's see what else. We got some other people back. Who else was backstage?

25:33

Somebody's named Trevor was coming and going. Uh oh, there's looks like Sesh is back there now. Okay. Um let's see.

25:42

Okay, Sesh. Did I don't know if you wanted No, sorry. I'm clicking on the wrong thing. This one. There we go.

25:48

Sesh. All right. Sesh. Okay. Okay. So, Sesh N, you're backstage. If um you want

25:55

to turn on your camera if you have a question or um I can uh we'll bring you on camera. If you're just here to

26:01

listen, that's fine, too. But um I need to turn on your camera if you want to join me live. For the rest of you, if

26:07

you want to come and uh chat in person, it's founder hours.com. I think that

26:12

should work anyway. Office hours.com. I haven't tested that lately. Uh there. Okay, Trevor's back. So, Trevor, can you

26:18

put in the chat room what you wanted to talk about? I want to address some of the questions that came in the chat. Uh

26:24

because people have been piling in and asking good questions.

26:29

Let's see here. Um um so far Hares is the only one I think who put in his u

26:35

his LinkedIn. So I think some of the rest of you should do that. Let's see. Okay. So Courtney

26:42

Kumar trying to see what questions we got so I can answer them in a good order. Um

26:49

okay. Hey, I'm going to start with that one. That's a good one. Okay, Surya. All right. So, um,

26:56

okay. Suresh and Bobby, you need to turn on your cameras if you if you want to join us. Okay. Okay. So, Surya says, uh,

27:04

as you guys can see, hopefully, as a new founder, what's the biggest red flag you see in early stage edtech pitches? Okay.

27:11

So, that's a good question. It's good for a couple reasons. One is red flags are good to know. I actually do a talk.

27:17

talk. I do a lot of public speaking and one of my most popular presentations is

27:22

uh 10 found uh 10 investor myths

27:28

basically like what are things that startups think about investors that are wrong right so we think differently than

27:35

normal people I guess right it's a very specific industry so asking about red flags is another lens on that same issue

27:41

but I also like how Seria asked specifically about early stage edtech pitches which is great because that

27:47

focus is it a lot more because not all investors are the same, right? Investors

27:53

in late latest late stage aerospace companies who have very different interests and criteria for investment

28:00

than say an earlystage medtech investor or a uh middle stage SAS uh consumer uh

28:07

app, right? I mean they have different criteria. It's different money. It's not like going to the bank and getting a car

28:13

loan. as long as you have good credit and a steady job, you can get a car loan from a bank, right? That's not how it

28:18

works in startup land. So, being specific like Surya is here and asking about edtech pitches is a good idea. So,

28:25

um what's the biggest red flag? Okay, so let's see. Um

28:33

well, I guess we already covered one, which is no numbers, right? You have to have numbers. If you don't give us

28:38

numbers, investors are going to fall asleep, right? or look at something else because we've heard so many pitches that

28:44

are essentially a dream and if you can't quantify the dream then why you know

28:50

there's just there's somebody else who will basically right it's a very competitive landscape and it's also

28:55

because we have to know that you understand numbers well enough to make the case so that we can make the case to

29:04

our bosses right venture capitalists are not usually just writing checks

29:11

out of their own pocket on their own says. So they are usually part of a group or a firm and that firm has raised

29:17

money from other people what they call limited partners and those limited partners have given them the money for a

29:22

specific reason. We want you to invest in women founders or we want you to invest in latestage aerospace companies

29:29

or whatever it is, right? They have a specific mandate. So the sooner you get to the point and let us know what you're

29:36

doing and who you're doing it for and if you have any revenue that will help us immediately to know whether we should be

29:43

listening to invest or whether we should be listening to help or whether we should be going back to our phone until

29:50

you finish pitching and when the next person comes on. Right? So you got to give us those numbers quickly. In my new

29:56

book, as I said, I've got a book coming about raising money and I'm calling this an anchor phrase. You need to give us an

30:02

anchor phrase as soon as you open up because you need to help us get the

30:08

context right. So you need to say something like like for Ken, you know, uh we're working with I'll probably get

30:14

this wrong Ken, I'm sorry, but something like right uh we are serving uh

30:20

crossborder international students starting in Australia who are looking for programs in this and this and this.

30:27

Our business model is that we charge the customers a monthly uh you know

30:33

subscription fee and we have sponsorships from these other folks. So far we've made this much money. Great.

30:40

That's more than a phrase I guess. But like that helps me understand like the world that you're in, right? And whether

30:45

I should care because I know what I care about. And if that's something I care about, I'm going to listen even closer. And if it's not, I'm going to do

30:51

something else. And that's using everybody's time better. Okay. So for edtech pitches to for sura's question u

30:57

particularly with edtech pitches so what are the red flags the biggest red flags I see in edtech and it's it's a it's a

31:04

common one so I'm glad you asked Syria is there are just so many of them and

31:10

most of them don't really do the research as to how many other people are

31:16

doing similar things or have tried similar things and already died.

31:21

EdTE is seems to be one of the most popular places for first-time founders

31:27

to start because I I guess our educational systems are all kind of

31:33

broken, not keeping up with modern times, right? And there are so many kids with different learning modalities and

31:40

and needs, you know, that there's different ways to address education, right? And then there's public education

31:46

and private education and corporate education and training, right? lots of kinds of edte stuff. Um there's it's

31:52

such a big world that there have been so many companies and most of them have failed, right? I mean, I don't know how

31:58

long the rest of you have been at this, but uh it was probably what 15 years ago. There were mukes, a mult multi-

32:05

online courses, something or um you know, like Udemy and um Corsera and you

32:11

know, big companies. Um but none of that really has reached the promise that it could have. And I don't know, sorry, if

32:17

you're talking about really big globe spanning uh educational tech or you're talking about like just uh something

32:24

more narrow like uh um like I know a company that's teaching Hindi to

32:29

American kids, Americanborn Indian children, right? And so they have a you know a very specific niche. All that

32:35

stuff has been done so many times. So please go look so that when you walk in

32:41

uh and pitch investors you are able to have a good answer when we say what about this company what about that

32:46

company what about this company because most of us have been burned in edtech it's a it's a it's a difficult sector so

32:54

you really need to do your education homework okay so I hope that's I hope that's helpful um that's a longer

33:00

discussion honestly but um and hey everybody else if you have suggestions please say what you think you know what

33:07

What do you think would be red flags? That would be the biggest one in my mind. Um, crazy startup guy. Yeah,

33:13

that's a good point. YouTube plus Corsera plus Dolingo is a great answer. That's right. Yeah. So, that's a that's

33:20

a perfect example. I'm going to put up our YouTube channel if you're not there already. Actually, it's grown. Look at that. It says join 20,000 subscribers.

33:25

We actually have 30,000 subscribers now. So, we need to update that. But, if you haven't hit our YouTube channel yet, a lot of you are on YouTube already, but

33:32

please like and subscribe and all that stuff. It really does drive, you know, the flywheel so we can do more of this.

33:37

But, um, crazy startup guy is right because, uh, sorry, and everybody who's doing edtech,

33:44

it would be great if your solution was better and cheaper and faster and more elegant and probably includes AI.

33:51

Awesome. That's all cool. But if you're going to make money from it, you've got to demonstraably show to customers that

33:59

it's going to be better than the free stuff that they can get as he suggests or she he suggests, I guess, YouTube

34:05

plus Corsera plus Duolingo, right? Like, so look at the alternatives, right? The alternatives are not all multi-billion

34:12

dollar corporations, right? It's it's what anybody can do on their own cheaper. So just be careful. All right.

34:20

Um Okay. So, who else is backstage now? Uh, Ken still there. Sesh, Bobby. Okay,

34:27

Joshua is on camera. Josh has his camera on. So, let's see what Joshy wants to talk about. Or Josh, I'm going to bring

34:34

you on. And, uh, Hi there. How are you? Good morning. Um, I think my camera is

34:40

freezing. It looks Yeah, I tried it several time, but

34:45

Okay, no worries. Uh, no. Yeah, good morning. Uh hi, I'm

34:51

uh from Germany. Excellent. Yeah, I just like um want to to pitch uh

34:57

my idea and um happy to get your feedback also like really critical

35:02

feedback because for me it's like a critical critical feedback is the best best thing what you can get.

35:09

There you go. To enlight your perspective. Exactly. Right. Awesome. Okay. Well, yeah. So, your camera's frozen, but

35:15

that's okay. I can hear you just fine. Hopefully everybody else. Can you guys hear Joshua as well? Um there you have a

35:21

good picture from me. Yeah, that's a better picture. Yeah, the first one you looked angry.

35:27

Let's do that one. Okay, cool. All right, so two minutes and uh verbal

35:32

only obviously and folks in the chat room please listen and give him feedback as he goes. Okay, go ahead.

35:38

Okay. Um yeah what I'm building right now it's like um the first livable uh

35:44

organization structure um what we having right now in company structures it's

35:49

like you are really slow most of the knowledge what you have out data um

35:55

there's only one exception in the aviation in the aviation if one mistakes happen everything is documentation and

36:02

it's never happened again and that's the kind of idea what I have like okay how we can getting the knowledge out of the

36:09

employees with all the mistakes what they're doing that stuff like this never happened. Um especially here in Germany

36:17

we having a quite a challenge uh the next uh 10 years there's over 10 million

36:22

peoples what is going in retirement especially in German middleshand

36:29

German middleshand have over two billion um euros what they're generating and

36:35

there's like a lot of really really valuable knowledge but no way for documentation

36:41

and that is like where where where I'm starting it's like giving the people um

36:47

tool what they can just like using to like how we are talking right now

36:52

putting on all the sorts what they're having inside a system the system structure all the knowledge and based on

36:59

this the system is learning with you like a kind of a founder um you're talking with them it's learning it's

37:06

saying okay this kind of mistakes we have and if you're starting a new project you're having all the mistakes

37:12

on one um on one place all the stuff what's going good and based on this you can starting the new um the new project

37:21

um yeah and uh on this way it's like also to enable people to go AI first

37:28

everybody talks about AI first AI first it's not about the process it's about

37:33

the humans process we're having the problem that process has a lack of

37:38

knowledge yeah if you don't have the knowledge how to set up a process how you how you want to set it up and yeah,

37:46

that's basically what I would uh what I'm doing right now. Okay, thank you.

37:51

You're welcome. Awesome. Okay, so everybody in the chat room um we have a nice smiling picture

37:56

of him uh and we could hear him just fine. So if you could hear that and have some suggestions, please go ahead and

38:02

chime in with um updates for him how it could be even better next time because it was fine. Okay. So um so I think uh

38:10

uh it's a good idea. I mean, you're right. Um, aviation is missionritical stuff and the documentation. Yeah,

38:17

absolutely. Um, so it sounds like it's a kind of a knowledge base and then I figured it was AI, but you didn't get

38:23

that till the end. So, you might want to say that sooner that it's art artificial intelligence and and it would it sounds

38:29

like it would um grow like kind of learn in real time too, which is very

38:35

interesting. Um, so I guess pieces I would want to know. Uh, you're pretty early, right? So, you don't have numbers

38:41

yet probably, but you did throw out a one a couple about those uh was it two

38:47

200 million two billion euros or something. Um, you know, more numbers is good. Uh, so I would look at the size of

38:54

the market and so forth, but what you really could do even without a whole lot of personalized numbers is to talk about

39:01

who the customers are so that investors could get a sense of how you were going to make money. um you've established the

39:08

uh the need for the thing pretty well. So, who's going to buy it, I guess, is the is the question, right? So, um who

39:16

who's going to buy it? Are they individuals? Are they companies? Um do you are there is there competition in

39:22

this area? That kind of stuff so that we can kind of understand the landscape. And this is why researching investors is

39:30

important because if you walk into a room full of investors who already work in aerospace, you're not going to have

39:36

to explain nearly as much as if you walk into a room full of me and my friends who don't who don't do aviation documentation, especially in Germany,

39:42

right? So, you always have to adapt your pitch. Um, the other thing I would say is I would and we don't have time now,

39:48

but and it's a short amount of time, but this is kind of what I was saying with Ken. You have to practice how to get all this out quickly is um how

39:58

why you like are you an AI expert or are you an aviation engineer or you know I I

40:05

don't know, right? So some reason to think that you're the guy to do this. Because when we invest, it's not just

40:12

that we like the idea, it's that we like the person as the solution to that problem. So that person and ideally a

40:19

team of people like, "Wow, these people are they're going to go and crush this, right? This is these are the ones, you

40:24

know, because it's a bet." Uh and uh you know, nine out of 10 startups fail. So

40:30

um we're looking for the the one, right? Um so okay so I was was that helpful? I

40:36

I hope so. Yeah definitely. Um yeah about like my

40:41

customer to be specific it's like the companies were having problem to hiring new people um right now and um yeah

40:49

where the people all the people are going and the knowledge is gone. Yeah you say around 45% of all the knowledge

40:56

of of a position is always in the employee. I mean you have it you

41:01

probably also have it like you're having a lot of different projects you know and it's like a lot of things inside your

41:07

head and normally you must write it down or stuff like this with my system you just like can everything what you're

41:13

having in your mind just throw it in the system structure it like okay like my

41:20

focus for example right now is saying okay it's sales no problem um and but I

41:25

have something else some other information what is going through the process but the system is saving living it and later it's saying you oh yeah we

41:32

have like information about like the development and the product plan and like here you have it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is

41:39

I'm sure that would be valuable. So it's probably a business sale mostly, right? Because there aren't individuals bu

41:44

building aerospace building planes, right? Um yeah. So any anything you

41:50

could do to quantify that would help investors grasp it even quicker.

41:56

Cool. Yeah. Let's see. Did anybody in the chat room? Let's see. Did anybody have suggestions about uh what you were saying there?

42:02

Let's see. Um time used up to explain AI first

42:07

concepts and such things can be cut down and rather be used to pitch deep on

42:14

vital business. I'll put this on the screen there. You can uh let's see such things can be cut down.

42:22

Okay. So I think Sesh is suggesting the AI first concept. People kind of get that. Maybe you could get more to the

42:28

specifics of your business. Okay, that seems reasonable. Um,

42:34

okay. Guess that's all the comments we had there. So, uh, that's

42:40

okay. So, that will do it, I guess, for our friend Joshua. Uh, thank you, Joshua. Hope this or am I saying your

42:46

name right? I apologize. Yeah. No, it's it's perfect. Yeah. Thank you for for the opportunity also. Great

42:52

what you're doing here. Yeah. Um, I think for a lot of people it's helping you. And then uh yeah, I also want to

42:59

give the room to other people and um happy to hear more from you right now.

43:04

Excellent. All right. Well, nice to meet you and we'll um see who else we can bring on camera here. Sesh or Bobby, if

43:10

you want to join us, that would be fine. Or in the meantime, I'll take some more questions from uh the chat room. And

43:18

let's see here. That's me. You know that

43:24

uh

43:30

Yeah, sorry. One second. There we go. That's the one I was

43:35

looking for. All right. So, let's see what else we got in the chat room. So, I had skipped over some questions earlier

43:41

because um well, Surya says, "Thank you because that was helpful." Good. Uh leading with numbers. Yeah, that's

43:47

that's uh it it's it's really important

43:53

because a lot of people will tell you to it's about storytelling and it is about

43:58

storytelling in the sense that you want to make a connection with the audience whether it's one person or an auditorium

44:04

full of people at a pitch competition. But this isn't bedtime and you're not eight years old, right? We're not

44:11

looking for stories. At least I'm not. I've heard so many pitches. Get to the point. It's a business, right? So, um it

44:18

helps if you can wrap the numbers in a story for sure, right? Because it's more memorable and entertaining and engaging,

44:25

right? Uh and if you can make yourself a sympathetic figure and and gather our sympathy for solving the problem that

44:31

you've decided to dedicate your time to, absolutely. But a great story and no numbers, no thank you. I'll take a bad

44:39

story or no story with good numbers every time. So, um, anyway, I hope

44:44

that's clear that that's how investors think, right? We're not looking for entertainment. We're looking for deals.

44:50

Okay. So, I'd save this one. How do you find angel investors? Because this is probably the number one question we get.

44:56

And this is Courtney, uh, I guess from the Los Angeles area, which is near me, but the the tips are kind of the same

45:02

all over the place. And, um, uh, the idea for finding angel investors is this

45:10

would be part of my new book, too. Sorry to tease you, but um in the time we have available, I guess I

45:18

would say what's the short version? It's relationship driven. So unfortunately,

45:23

it's not as easy as doing a Google search and you know finding 50 people and then emailing them all and you know

45:30

half of them are interested. It just doesn't work like that. So it's really about research. And I said this a couple

45:35

times already, but um in the new book, I'm doing something what we call fox reversals because there's a bunch of

45:41

things that I think entrepreneurs get backward. And this is a perfect example.

45:47

Uh everybody's probably heard of the 8020 rule like 20% of the action gets 80% of the returns and something like

45:53

that, right? I'm simplifying that. And in my simple

45:58

analysis, founders tend to spend about 80% of their time on outreach and only

46:04

about 20% on research, right? They figure, you know, I've got this cool thing. It is so cool. Everybody's going

46:10

to be amazed. I just have to get out there and start selling it. And I'm pitching is what I mean. I'm just got to

46:16

reach as many investors as possible. And I know they're not all going to say yes, but a couple will because this is so amazing. and they start spraying it

46:22

around and they get no good response, right? It will take you a 100red, 200,

46:31

300 pitches to raise venture capital money. Now, if you're just trying to raise $50,000 and you have some rich

46:37

friends and family, this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about venture capital like we do in Silicon Valley,

46:43

right? where you are raising um hundreds of thousands of dollars and less than a year or a year and a half later you're

46:50

raising millions of dollars and a couple months or a year after that you're raising 10 or $20 million right and

46:55

you're growing to be a billion dollar company that kind of pitching you have to do a lot of research first so this is

47:01

your answer what industry are you talking about

47:06

and who's good at that and here's the key who's made money in that industry before right angel investors are not all

47:14

the same. So, if you're talking about angels, angel investors who like um I don't know, you know, sporting equipment

47:20

or angel investors who do automotive or angel investors who do uh medical devices, like those are totally

47:27

different people. So, how do you find them? You go to those areas either online or even better is at events and

47:35

you make friends. That's how it's done, right? It's really, you know, these days you can run a bunch of searches online

47:41

and get more and more detailed, but the fact is your research is where you can

47:46

have a competitive edge. So, if you can find a hundred people like in the next 10 minutes who are angel investors

47:52

online, right? But you would be much better um your time would be much better invested spending a half an hour more

48:00

and finding only 10 as opposed to 100 investors who are in your industry. And

48:06

here's the other key. You don't ask for money, you ask for advice, right? If you ask for money, you'll get advice. If you

48:12

ask for advice, you might develop a relationship that turns into money. So, those would be two of my suggestions.

48:18

Okay? Research the hell out of your investors. Find people who have made money in that sector before and then go

48:25

and ask them for advice and who they know. That's the other part, right? Not just their advice, but who do you know

48:30

that might be interested in this or could also help me. And be friendly. You got to be nice, right? We're busy. all

48:35

of anybody that does this, we are busy. That's why I do this show because I can't talk to all of you individually. I

48:41

try to help all everybody at once, right? So, that's how I would do that. And I I'd be remiss if I didn't point

48:46

out that we've actually built a website for this, a service that is called uh

48:52

the the very clever name of startupinvestors directory.com.

48:58

So, I'll put that URL. Here it is. And um this is a service that we built

49:03

precisely because this is the question I this is the first question I always get. How do I find investors? And um here's

49:09

the that's the logo, right? It's just like it says there investor search engine to find the right investors for

49:16

your startup. And there's a code there even on that card if you can see it. SID launch. And um it's not free because it

49:24

took us years to build um but I think it's I'm sorry I don't know $99 or

49:29

something like that. It's not like a million dollars. Um because the other great resource for

49:35

this stuff is called Pitchbook. And PitchBook costs 10 to $15,000

49:42

a year, which is it's not startup friendly, right? It's not made for founders. It's made for investment banks

49:47

to, you know, sell each other stuff basically. So this one is founder priced. We do it offered at cost like

49:54

everything we do. And um you can go check it out startupinvestorsdirectory.com.

49:59

And it's it's the only one like it that even has um filters. So you can look on

50:05

some personal characteristics because a lot of the research about investors is not just what sector are they in but

50:12

sometimes they have personal relationships that you can build on. Right? So you can search on our website

50:18

on startupinvestorsdirectory.com. You can search by uh investors who are interested, for example, in female

50:24

founders or black founders or immigrant founders or veterans or LGBTQ founders

50:29

or um uh firsttime founders or rural founders, right? Like and find people

50:35

that vibe with where you're coming from and that will get you much faster towards raising money because you'll

50:40

have things in common, right? And that's what I'm really recommending. How do you find investors? You find people that you

50:46

have stuff in common with who share your interests and your passion for this issue that you're solving and ideally

50:52

they're rich because they've already had success in this area. That's my formula for finding investors. So, I hope that's

50:59

useful. All right, moving along here. Um, please like and subscribe if this is useful to you. We're going to share um

51:07

share this uh you know on YouTube and everywhere uh so other people can benefit. And if you would like and

51:12

subscribe and post your follow-up comments there. In fact, if any of you are commenting um here, I'd love to have

51:18

you comment on the YouTube page as well because that would be really helpful. So, oh, Courtney says, "Thanks for

51:23

addressing the question. You appreciate it." Great. I'm glad that was helpful. That's uh that's uh uh something I've

51:30

thought a lot about. Okay. So, Damian's got a bunch to say here. Let me see what Damian's chiming in here about. And uh

51:39

Okay. Damian has given us a little lecture here. Thank you, Damian. Let's see. Um,

51:48

okay. I'm the reason these out of order, I think. Okay, they're not quite making

51:53

sense. Four P has a four P's pitching framework. Passion, people, profit, and

51:58

process. Yeah, that's very good. When you frame your vision through these four lenses, your pitches become clear,

52:04

relatable, and powerful. Yeah, I agree. That's a nice framework, uh, Damian. I hadn't heard that one before, but I

52:09

think that's right. Um, let me double click on a couple of those. The, um,

52:16

the profit is the numbers that I was talking about, right? And then the process is how you scale it. That's what

52:21

we want to know. Uh, people is who's your team and why you? We kind of talked about that already, but the passion, we

52:27

haven't talked much about tonight. And that's I I think um Damian, you put that one first, which I think is interesting and probably accurate because even if

52:35

you have all the other ones, right? If you don't have any passion, if you're not excited about what you're pitching,

52:41

if you're not like don't seem like someone who's going to, you know, chew right through the competition, then

52:47

you're not going to raise any money. You This is a bit of a show. A pitch is sales. And I'm sorry, you know, you

52:53

might not like sales, but you got to be ready to impress people. And that passion for solving the problem is

53:00

critical because especially at the early stages, what are we betting on? You probably don't have any or much revenue.

53:06

Probably don't have much in the way of patents or customer relationships. Probably don't have much of a team. It's all about you, right? So that passion is

53:14

critical. So, okay. So, what else we got here? Um,

53:20

and thank you for that, Damian. That was good. Good stuff. So, I'm going to scroll back here a little bit. Um, yeah,

53:25

we hit the hit that one. Um, let's see. Kumar, thanks for introducing

53:32

yourself and Venet and Dave from Orlando and uh, June B, a first time solo tech

53:40

entrepreneur here. Great. Love to help you. That's actually what my first three books are about. These are kind of old now. The the middle one is 12 years old,

53:47

but that might be useful to you. It's called Click Millionaires. I give the profits to charity. I'm not trying to sell you books, but in case that's

53:52

useful, this is about um my journey from being a corporate executive and figuring

53:59

out how to actually you can see the subtitle, work less, live more with an internet business you love. Right? So,

54:06

this is my um couple hundred pages effort to uh to help you guys to help

54:13

the world with this and that's why it's in a bunch of languages around the world, right? Um, so a little a little

54:19

dated like I said now in terms of some of the specifics, but the strategies might be very useful to you because it's

54:25

a lot of it's about like how do you think like an entrepreneur as much as the specifics of what you're building.

54:31

Okay. Okay. And I hit Siri as one and Damian had some um

54:38

Okay, here's a good one. John says, "Do you believe startup financials in particular the revenue projections?"

54:45

Absolutely not. Of course not. That's why you asked, right? You know that they're made up, right? Absolutely

54:52

they're made up. But are they critically important? Absolutely. You cannot advance in investor

54:59

discussions without financial projections. So, how do we square that circle or whatever they call it? Um,

55:05

here's what we need. We need to see financial projections not because we

55:10

believe them, but because they demonstrate that you know how the business works. This goes back to unit

55:16

economics like I was talking about earlier. What are you making? How much does it cost? How much you going to sell

55:23

it for? How much does it cost you to acquire each customer?

55:28

And then if it works, yeah, we want to see the hockey stick of growth, right? But we know that that that is, you know,

55:35

a rough prediction at best. I mean, it's assumptions compounding on assumptions, right? So, anybody that takes them

55:40

literally is stupid. But the fact that you can think about it and explain it and your assumptions are critical

55:47

because we need to know and we're giving you money, right? Not giving, we're investing money with you, right? On the

55:52

assumption that you're going to return it back many times over. So, we need to know that you understand those

55:58

financials. So, I absolutely you do have to understand uh projections. Uh I

56:03

remember my first company, I was very frustrated with that because I I didn't like doing the projections. It's all made up. Everybody knows it's nonsense,

56:08

right? But now that I'm on the other side, it's really kind of a test to be frank. Uh, John Frank frank John to it's

56:17

really just kind of a test. We need to know that you know that you're paying attention to the metrics and the things

56:22

that we know are important. Uh, but you need to tell us that you can do it and that it how it applies in your specific

56:29

industry. Hopefully that makes sense. Good question. Thanks for that. Okay.

56:34

Um, so then we did this. Okay. Uh, crazy startup guy says he's looking for a

56:40

technical co-founder uh for an edtech platform. Okay, well, we had some edtech questions here, so

56:45

hopefully you guys can connect. Go ahead and put your LinkedIn in there. You you're all welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn, by the way. I'm very active

56:52

there and um happy to connect. Please do. I get a lot of requests every day.

56:58

So, please put a quick note in say, you know, I saw you at startup office hours or something just so I know that you're not a bot and I'd be happy to connect.

57:06

And um the uh the LinkedIn platform is is a really useful place. Any of you who are not active there, especially if

57:12

you're founders, you need to be. I I meet founders all the time. I don't know

57:17

what they're thinking, but they're they're like their their profile is out of date or they only have like, you

57:22

know, 87 connections or something like LinkedIn is the Facebook for business. You need to be active on LinkedIn. Your

57:29

stuff should be updated. You should have a decent photo. You should have a real logo for your company, etc., etc. like

57:35

make it easy for people to find you and tag you so that we can invite you in and have you participate. Um, another quick

57:42

um point about um about co-founders is that actually at startupconsil.org

57:49

we have classified ads that are for co-founders. So, I haven't found a good

57:56

solution. Somebody in here actually asked, "How do you find co-founders?" It's really hard. It's really hard

58:01

because you have to line up the alignment on so many levels is critical, right? Your timing, the amount of

58:07

resources you have, the amount of time you have, your interest in the subject matter, your expertise has to be complimentary. You know, it's very

58:14

complex dating process. Um, and I haven't seen any services that really do

58:20

it well. Y Combinator used to have a co-founder matching service that was pretty good, but it seems to have died.

58:26

And I haven't found I haven't looked real hard. If any of you have suggestions, please put them in the chat room. I'd be curious because I, this is

58:32

another question I get a lot, but we actually put on startups.org, if you come and join, um, you can post an ad

58:40

for co-founders, right? And say, you know, whatever. I'm an edte startup and I'm looking for this and this and this and and I I can't guarantee anything,

58:47

but if you know, get the word out and maybe somebody can find you, right? So, that's

58:52

why we build it. It's really a publicity platform for you guys to help you connect with each other more easily.

58:58

All right. So, what else we got? All right.

59:04

Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay.

59:10

Crazy at crazy startup guy. Wow. He has over 20 WhatsApp groups. Okay. Good for you. Crazy startup guy. Um, happy to

59:17

hear that. Um, there's lots of ways to connect these days and certainly could build an audience on on uh on WhatsApp.

59:25

That makes a lot of sense. Congrats. Uh Joshua says, "Amazing to see you already." Oh, me? I'm already I've been

59:31

on YouTube a long time. Yeah, I've been doing shows like this on and off since 16 years. Oh, at least. Yeah. Yeah, at

59:39

least. Yep. Um, okay. This is Sesh says,

59:44

"Highly confidence building for new entrepreneurs." Oh, good. That's that's the idea. You nailed it, Sesh. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I don't

59:51

think that there is a deficit of talent. I don't think there's a deficit of um of

59:58

uh ability. Uh I'm going to write this down. I like the way this is coming. I'm going to put

1:00:04

this in the book. Um deficit of talent, ability. What what there is is a a lack

1:00:09

of connections, right, and to resources. And um it's not

1:00:15

even a lack of capital, right? People think it's about the money. It's not really about the money. I know it's easy

1:00:20

for me to say I have some money, right? But um the capital will show up. If you

1:00:26

are building a real business and you're growing and you're especially if you get profitable,

1:00:33

investors will come to you, right? It's the same like in the music business like

1:00:38

how do you know you have your band and you want to play this big stadium? Well, have a couple hit records and then you

1:00:45

know the concert promoters will come to you. You don't need to chase the concert promoters because they're not going to

1:00:50

book you until you already have a couple hit songs, right? It's the same with with venture capital. If you just put

1:00:56

your head down and build uh and build those connections, build the

1:01:01

relationships, then um the confidence will come from your own success. And

1:01:07

that's like catnip for investors. We really that's why I do this. I want to increase your confidence and have you

1:01:13

worry less about the capital. Like just get out there and kick some ass.

1:01:18

Leverage. Yeah. Okay. That's a crazy startup guy says. Yes. Leverage. How do you know when to scale? Ashley says,

1:01:24

"This is a good question. Um, scaling should be well, you scale whenever you

1:01:31

can. The problem is if you scale too early, then you will lose money with every sale and you'll put yourself out

1:01:37

of business, right? So there's a lot of books, blogs, and YouTube, you know, stuff about product market fit." And the

1:01:43

PMF framework essentially boils down to you want to try things until you find a

1:01:50

formula that means you can sell stuff for more than it costs you and people

1:01:55

want more of it. And there's a lot of variations, right? You might sell do loss leaders for a while and try to make

1:02:01

it up later. Okay, whatever. But from a simplistic point of view, product market fit and when you want to scale is when

1:02:08

adding money will turn the flywheel even faster. You

1:02:13

don't want to add a bunch of money like raise money before you're ready to scale because then you'll just spend it on

1:02:19

overhead and travel and uh you know stuff, right? Hiring more people that

1:02:24

you don't need. Like you want to figure out what your machine is. It's like you're building an airplane, right? You

1:02:30

don't put jet fuel into the airplane until the plane is built, right? Once you know you can fly, then bring in call

1:02:38

us, right? Call us investors and we'll put the we'll give you the jet fuel or the rocket fuel so that your rocket can

1:02:43

take off. But if you try to take off using jet fuel and you only have a you know an old wooden biplane, you're going

1:02:48

to crash. So there's a bunch of mixed metaphors there, but hopefully that's helpful. Right? Look for when you're

1:02:54

having repeatable sales and ideally even when people are coming to you. It

1:02:59

doesn't mean that everything has to be perfect. That's not what I'm saying. It can be broken. It can be ugly. Uh it can

1:03:06

be incomplete. But you val the point is validating the interest from an audience

1:03:11

who will give you the money to buy what you're producing. Right? So that's why

1:03:17

for example I always get a question and people are so frustrated because like investors especially smart uh smart uh

1:03:23

founders you know are like well why do I need co-founders? Why do I need a team? I've got this. is like well we want to

1:03:29

know that you can convince someone else right you may be you know brilliant you

1:03:35

may be Albert Einstein squared right but if you can't even convince one other person then why would we believe you

1:03:41

right it's about scaling about execution not just the idea so it's a complicated

1:03:47

equation um that's anyway that's why we that's why I do these show okay so um

1:03:53

what practical steps okay now the questions are coming in fast and furious Please invite your friends if there's

1:03:58

anybody out there that can benefit from this. I can't do this all night. It's after 10 o'clock for me. Um, but I do

1:04:04

this at night specifically so we can reach you folks in Australia and India, the Middle East and and here in California, it's not so bad, right? Um,

1:04:11

but uh if this is useful to you, please like and share and and invite more people. Okay, Maria says, "What what

1:04:18

practical steps can a founder take in the next 30 days to get on the radar of boutique funds?" Okay, that's

1:04:24

interesting. Practical steps. Well, you could speak at a conference. That's that's the if you can find a conference

1:04:31

where that industry is gathering, those are high impact, high leverage opportunities for founders. So, I don't

1:04:39

know what kind of fund it is, right? Or what kind of uh field, but again, research is your friend here. So, you

1:04:46

know, are you in the hardware? You have you're designing new semiconductors or you're designing a new way to deliver

1:04:52

flowers. I don't know. But there are specialty associations and podcasts and

1:04:58

online forums and Reddit groups that are active and they are looking for deals,

1:05:04

right? A lot of funds have junior people who all they do is scour the internet

1:05:11

looking for signal, right? A signal of somebody who's doing something unique and valuable. LinkedIn, right? They're

1:05:18

all over looking for, you know, I'm a I'm a early stage flower investor, right? So, I'm looking all the time, you

1:05:26

know, where are people doing the cool next generation stuff in the flower industry. And uh that's what I would be

1:05:32

looking for is events where they're hanging out. That's the highest impact because you can meet a lot of them at

1:05:37

once. You could also do uh public relations like talking on a podcast or posting in a Reddit group or uh sending

1:05:44

on a newsletter or blogs or LinkedIn groups where pe where those people gather. A lot of my theory is about um

1:05:52

you want to sell wholesale not retail. By which I mean if you go after

1:06:00

individual one at a time that's great if you can connect right but if you can

1:06:05

reach a bunch at once wholesale that's better right because you can move faster and this is all about speed all

1:06:12

about speed all right Maria I hope that was helpful you can give me a follow-up question if you'd like let's see says I

1:06:20

built an MVP for AI powered product for small and medium businesses how can I

1:06:25

get help to reach out to potential customers and try out our product for free and give us feedback. That's a good

1:06:31

question, Samantha. Um, is anybody else talking here or just me? The rest of you who are listening, please, please, uh,

1:06:38

chime in with suggestions and stuff. Um, oh, look at that. Sesh already did. Good

1:06:44

job, Sesh. I work with them. Connect and provide details. We may find some sage. Good job. Thank you. This is this is

1:06:50

what I want to happen, right? I can't answer all the questions. I'm sure you guys have a lot of expertise. Okay, let's uh I'll try to I'll take my stab

1:06:56

at it, too, but thank you, Sesh. Okay, built an MVP. How can I reach out to potential customers? Um, well, my last

1:07:03

answer I think would be a decent one. Find out where those customers are online and is it a Reddit group or a

1:07:10

Facebook group or um is there a probably on LinkedIn? Is there a conference that

1:07:17

you could go to or an association you could join? And then you need to make a a favorable offer, right? What's in it

1:07:24

for them? Right? I know businesses are busy, right? They're not here to be your test subjects, right? What can they get

1:07:31

out of this? If they take time and give you feedback, what are you offering? And I don't know, you know, it could be

1:07:36

money. It could be a gift card or it could be cash or it could be a t-shirt. I I don't know, whatever. You know, what

1:07:42

is um what's applicable in your industry? A great way to do this, by the way, is if you host your own podcast. Um

1:07:49

back when I was writing my second book, uh this one, E- Riches 2.0, 0. Um, that

1:07:55

was a marketing book about how to use social media back when social media was new, 2009 or so. And, uh, I started a

1:08:02

podcast so that I could talk to people and you know, you can get a lot of places

1:08:07

with very important people by inviting them on your show as opposed to just calling and saying, "Hi, can I talk to

1:08:14

you?" or "Hi, can I take you to lunch?" But if you say, "Hi, I have a interview opportunity for you." You get a lot

1:08:20

farther faster. So figure out, work backwards, right? What do they want? What can you offer them? Even if it's

1:08:26

just, you know, a gift. I don't know. Uh what do you have that you can offer to make it worth their while? And um the

1:08:33

first few are going to be clunky, right? You you, as Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator says, you need to do things

1:08:38

that don't scale. So don't think that you need to set up some fancy system where you get a thousand, you know, beta

1:08:45

customers for feedback. The first few can be manual. uh and you can, you know,

1:08:50

go to their office, make it easy for them, right? Bring them coffee or whatever, you know, the currency is in

1:08:56

your industry and uh and and honestly try to make friends because if you can convert three or five early stage

1:09:04

customers beyond feedback to actually be paying customers and then into evangelists or ambassadors for your

1:09:10

program and your products and your services, that's really what you're after because those people will help you

1:09:15

sell to investors, too. All right, I hope that was helpful. Um,

1:09:22

all right. Okay, I think we're going to be wrapping

1:09:27

up here, but let's see, there's another couple questions. For startups led by students, how much traction do you

1:09:32

expect before you consider investing? Uh, h

1:09:38

well that's different in every case, right? And it also depends on how much you want, you know, how much you're looking for. So, you know, if you're

1:09:45

looking for, I don't know, $500, that's a different conversation than 50,000 or 500,000, right? So, um, how much

1:09:53

traction? Um, I I think that's very circumstantial.

1:09:58

I'm not trying to dodge the questions. As you can see, I try to answer questions as candidly as I can, but um,

1:10:04

more is better is I guess the only answer I could give you. But, let me expand on traction for you a minute.

1:10:10

Traction usually means revenue. So if you have profits and revenue and all

1:10:15

that, awesome, right? And growth, that's great, of course, right? But if you have

1:10:20

that, you can probably go to a bank and get a loan and then you don't need to sell your equity. And that's what I would recommend. Venture capital is only

1:10:26

for a certain kind of business, right? So if you can get um if you have revenue traction already, it's going to be

1:10:32

easier to get attention for sure and maybe even just debt as opposed to equity. So I'm presuming you're not

1:10:37

talking about that. you're talking about earlier stage where you're still just trying to figure this out. So traction

1:10:43

um ideally revenue yes even profits yes but if you don't have that what do you do? So again, this is a big section of

1:10:49

my new book, like how do you represent traction even if you're not

1:10:54

there yet? This goes back to our earlier discussion, numbers, any kind of numbers, right? So

1:11:03

um we have an email list of 500 people or when we post things on Instagram, we

1:11:08

get a thousand likes or comments. Like anything that shows other people care,

1:11:13

that's what I'm after. That's the initial version of traction. Right.

1:11:18

Sumant, put your LinkedIn in the chat. That's sort of that's the easiest way to do that. You all can connect with each

1:11:24

other that way. Or or put your email. I don't care. Whatever you want. Go ahead. Um, but anything that shows the the

1:11:31

critical for students or any early stage entrepreneur, I kind of mentioned this earlier. You need to show us that you're

1:11:39

not just a dreamer, that you're a doer. A, and then B, that someone else cares.

1:11:46

someone ideally a customer not your mom right a customer cares right so traction can be anything and ideally you can show

1:11:53

a ramp of increasing traction right so whatever we had uh you know we had zero

1:11:59

uh followers on LinkedIn last month now we have a hundred and in three weeks we have a thousand and three weeks later

1:12:05

we've got 10,000 right or you know anything that shows kind of growth from people that aren't you and your family

1:12:11

and your friends that's what you need to show so so can it be sales awesome you know That's the best. But can it be

1:12:17

followers? Can it be clicks on a on a pay-per-click ad? Sure. Right. Uh can it

1:12:23

be signups to your email list because people are interested in the free ebook you're giving away on this subject which

1:12:29

relates to the problem you're solving? Sure. Um can it be I spoke at a conference and you know I 25 people came

1:12:36

up and scanned our QR code and you know what XYZ right? I mean any of that is

1:12:42

traction. The point that you I'm making is that for all of you, if you don't have sales traction,

1:12:49

find other traction. Do something that shows other people give a damn about what you're building. You need

1:12:55

validation. That's the other word for traction. All right, so obviously I can get going on that for a while, but um

1:13:02

okay, so uh what else we got here? Um

1:13:09

traction. And Nitan, it looks like you said traction, so I guess you agree with me, but I'm not sure what else you're

1:13:14

saying. Um, and what is this? Let's see. Sash says large AI camp. Okay.

1:13:23

Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah, there's lots of resources, especially in AI these days, right? Um, and I should also point out

1:13:28

there are resources in other specific ecosystems like at least here in the states and I think this is true in India

1:13:35

and the ecosystems I know the best are the US, Europe, India and Australia uh

1:13:41

and Malaysia actually because I was just in Malaysia recently speaking for the US state department but the um there are

1:13:49

clusters of resources around AI everywhere but there are also clusters of resources around female founders or

1:13:56

various underrepres represented minority founders or um uh some geographies like

1:14:02

I was in Detroit recently where we're starting a Detroit startup council and they have a lot of focus for example on

1:14:08

mobility and advanced manufacturing because that builds on the legacy that Detroit has of the auto industry and the

1:14:14

and the defense industry. So things like that you know find your find your people

1:14:19

right and things will be so much easier than if you just spam.

1:14:26

So, okay. Um, couple more here. Um,

1:14:32

let's see what this says. Damian says, "Oh, biotech. Excellent." Okay, thank

1:14:37

you, Damian. Um, yes, happy to see you sometime. And yes, I would love more support and participation from the

1:14:43

biotech community. I'm mostly a software guy and the especially here in Southern California, there's so much and and

1:14:49

where you are in San Diego, so much life sciences and and u medtec stuff that that uh would love to support them more.

1:14:56

In fact, there's an event if you're in Southern California, if you're in Southern California, we have a community

1:15:02

calendar of all the events and or our LinkedIn page also. And um I'll be in

1:15:08

San Diego on December 4th, I think it is. I run Stanford

1:15:13

Angels for um Orange County and Stanford Angels of Southern California is having an event um in Carmel Valley. Um I think

1:15:21

it's the fourth. So if you get on our mailing lists or uh LinkedIn page and so forth, um you could probably come to

1:15:28

that if you're interested, Damian. Okay. Um okay, we're going to probably have to

1:15:34

wrap this up here. I'm running out of voice, but um Okay, Nathan come came back. Um

1:15:42

and then uh okay so Nathan was just talking love to

1:15:47

follow this up and then uh uh psych text will come to you too. Um uh oh that's

1:15:54

not the one I meant to click on but oh so one-on-one. Yes. So okay so here's the thing. I'm happy to talk to you

1:16:00

guys. I love to talk to founders. It's my favorite thing to do. Right. There's just not enough hours in the day. So, I

1:16:06

can't um the only way I can control my schedule is to do private coaching calls and it's 500 bucks an hour. I'm sorry.

1:16:13

Um there's a page on my website, Work with Scott, with with some other alternatives and and I I I will be

1:16:19

honest. One of them is this. That's why I do this so I can help a lot of people. Um I also speak at a lot of conferences

1:16:26

and then if you can catch me at an in-person event, um I'm happy to um

1:16:31

chat, you know, while I'm there. Um you can book me online. Uh I speak all over the world you know from you know

1:16:38

Bangalore to Koala Lumpur to London whatever um but uh unfortunately I have

1:16:44

to guard my time so I can get my own businesses done and my books written. Um but that page has a bunch of re

1:16:50

resources at scottfox.comworkwithcott if that's helpful. Um sorry to be uh

1:16:57

difficult about that. It's just I I I give I give away as much of my time as I can. Okay. Um so but your other question

1:17:04

Nit'll talk about um the uh traction and then uh psychex uh we'll we'll close

1:17:10

with your question. So the nitin that I wanted to click on was here. Okay. So

1:17:16

here's niten uh talking about testing an idea for traction. And this is exactly

1:17:21

the right idea. Nathan, if I tested an idea with a group of new mothers and three out of 10 liked the idea, would

1:17:27

that be construed as traction? Yes. And I applause, right? Right? I mean, that's

1:17:33

exactly what I mean. You go out and talk to real people and see what they think

1:17:38

because that's the first step toward having the numbers that I was talking about earlier. You got to give us numbers, right? Show us that other

1:17:45

people um care and that they think what you're doing is valuable, right? So, um

1:17:51

so is three out of 10 perfect? Obviously not, right? But it's a start and it shows that you a person who goes and

1:17:57

engages with customers because that's the number one thing we're looking for uh in founders is that you will engage

1:18:04

with customers, right? Uh if you're afraid of talking to customers, then why

1:18:09

would we give you any money, right? You think you can outsource all that stuff. I I wish it were true, but you got to build a business first. You're going to

1:18:15

have to talk to customers a lot. So the sooner you demonstrate that you're doing that, great. And then because you've

1:18:20

already done that, Nathan, good job. You've got three out of 10. Well, hopefully you got some feedback, right?

1:18:26

And then you do it again and then you do it again, right? And then so then you can show a pattern to investors and that

1:18:33

is traction, right? We consistently reach out. So we had a three out of 10 and then we talked to 10 more and we got

1:18:40

five out of 10. Then we made some more improvements. We got six out of 10. Then we made some more improvements. Oh, it

1:18:45

slid back. They didn't like what we did. So now we four out of 10. Okay, we made some more changes. Now we're getting eight out of 10. And we consistently get

1:18:51

seven or eight out of 10. That's good, right? That's traction, right? And then

1:18:56

you try to improve, right? So those that connection of all those dots of different data is what investors are

1:19:02

looking for is traction because that's what sales is, right? That's all that sales does is summarize that, right? We

1:19:07

have a certain amount of people that are buying our stuff every month and that creates a certain amount of monthly

1:19:12

recurring revenue. And that's just saying, yeah, we have repeated traction, repeated engagement, that people

1:19:18

repeatedly give a damn about what we're doing. That's what we're looking for. So that's exactly right, Nathan. I hope that that Thank you for that example.

1:19:25

Hopefully that's helpful to other people as well. All right, just going to wrap up here. I think this is our final

1:19:30

question. Um, skills psychex.

1:19:35

All right, for a business model which will shape the whole industry and making things quick and more attractive and easy to be done for customers with

1:19:41

businesses, how much people should be working on to develop

1:19:47

plus on fundraising to keep scaling, building and making the whole brand. Right. Okay. So, how do you allocate

1:19:53

your resources? That's a that's a great question. Um, okay. So, couple answers here. And, um,

1:20:01

thanks for those of you who are sticking around. Um, please, I hate to keep saying this, but like and share. We'd really appreciate it. Um, I'll be doing

1:20:08

this again in about three weeks, I think, before Christmas. Um, the in

1:20:13

essence, it is iterative. Yes, Nathan just Yes, exactly right. It is iterative. Traction is iterative.

1:20:19

Exactly right. For those of you who don't know what iterative means, it means it's repeated. Um I think that is

1:20:25

yes that is exactly what it is. You need to show that you are doing things and improving. That is traction. Yes.

1:20:32

Absolutely. Um demonstrating improvement. Yep. Uh cool. Okay. So

1:20:37

sorry back to psychex. So uh so the business model shaping the whole industry making things quick and more attractive and easy. So I want to I'm

1:20:44

going to I'm going to answer your question but I want to pick on that a little bit first. be careful.

1:20:51

There are is a there are graveyards full of entrepreneurs and startups who think

1:20:58

that it was enough to reshape the industry by making things quicker, more

1:21:03

attractive, and easy. And I'm not picking on you. I don't even know what your idea is, right? But just that phrasing, of course, everybody wants

1:21:09

things to be quicker, more attractive, and easier. AB: Absolutely. That's not what I'm disputing. What I'm disputing

1:21:14

is you need to be careful that that is enough differentiation for people to pay

1:21:21

you more and change from what they're currently doing. So if it is quicker and

1:21:28

more attractive and easier but only five or 10%. You're going to fail, right? You

1:21:35

need because because people have their current ways of doing things. People are lazy. And if you're talking something more complex, like you have businessto

1:21:41

business customers, well, they have current ways of doing and they have staff that are trained that way and software and systems and processes and

1:21:47

expense reports, everything set up around the current way of doing things. So to pull that out and replace it for

1:21:53

only a small difference, it's not going to happen. So I'm just I'll answer your

1:21:58

question also, but be careful all of you, right? You need to make sure that

1:22:04

whatever you're proposing isn't just cool and faster and it looks better, but that it actually makes a fundamental

1:22:10

difference in their bottom line, right? What's the return on investment if those people go and rip out what they're doing

1:22:17

currently, which may be free, by the way? What you're what you're replacing

1:22:22

might be crappy and ugly and slow, but if it's free, it has a huge advantage, right? So, just be careful. Make sure

1:22:29

that your improvements are significant and I don't know what does that mean 30% 60%. You know something that's like

1:22:35

people like wow that will be worth the trouble for me to go and restart you know this whole game. Okay sorry that

1:22:43

was just the first part of your question but I want to get that out there because a lot of people think that some marginal improvement is enough and it's not.

1:22:50

Venture capitalists are looking for billiondoll businesses. And to make a billion dollars, you got to sell to

1:22:57

millions of people or at very high price points and ideally both. And that's not

1:23:03

going to happen if you're only improving a little bit. Okay. So, next um psychex.

1:23:10

So um how do we share the priorities right in terms of your team with

1:23:15

businesses um working on how to develop the business versus reaching out for for

1:23:21

uh fundraising and what was the rest of your question and scaling and building. Yeah. And the whole brand. Yeah. Um

1:23:30

I don't have a great answer for that. I think it's you got to do all of them, right? That's the that's the challenge

1:23:35

and the opportunity, right? a startup founder, you are wearing a lot of

1:23:40

different hats and you got to do all that stuff at the same time. So hopefully you have some friends or colleagues, right, to a team so that you

1:23:47

can uh do all those things at the same time. But usually you don't have an

1:23:52

expert at each of those at the same time because those people are expensive, right? So it's probably you and a friend

1:23:58

or two and you each of you may know one or two things, but you don't know all of them, right? So um I don't have a great

1:24:06

answer. Um, but I think I would suggest it's kind of what Nathan said a minute ago about iteration.

1:24:12

I think of building a startup, it would be nice to have it be logical, right? And say, you know, first we're going to

1:24:18

build the product and then we're going to sell stuff uh and then we're going to raise money and then we're going to do the branding and then we'll hire a bunch

1:24:24

of people or or you know, that's a bad example, but you know that it's some kind of logical steps. It's not. It's

1:24:30

iterative. It's okay, we're going to do a little product development, then we're going to talk to some customers. Okay,

1:24:36

now we better go build some relationships with some with some investors. Okay, and then we better go back and we better revisit the product

1:24:42

because the investors didn't like that. Neither did the customers. Okay, so we got to do some more product development. Now we got to do branding. Oh, we got to

1:24:47

change the name of the company. Okay, so now we got to rebrand everything. Okay, so we got to redesign the website. Okay, now we better talk to some more customers. Oop, they don't like that. So

1:24:53

we got to do this. Okay, now we're going to talk to those investors again so they don't forget we exist. And we're going to de demonstrate whatever traction we've had. Right? So, it's these all

1:24:59

these little incremental sticks, but you're you got to be kind of add um to to do this. Um and I that's a long way

1:25:07

of saying I don't have a good answer for you. You got to figure it out. And um ideally uh that's another reason that

1:25:14

investors prefer uh people to have teams and co-founders because for one person to keep all that straight is really

1:25:20

hard. So, I would wish for you that you could have a team so that you can do that. Uh, so you get a day off

1:25:25

occasionally and you can uh switch back and forth uh a little more easily. All right, so I think we're about done here.

1:25:32

And uh what else? I think that is about it. Oh gosh, there are a couple more here. Hold on. Uh iterative. What is

1:25:40

this one? This follow-up from Psychex. How do I keep it smooth? Non- nervous

1:25:46

when I speak. Oh, public speaking. Sure. Um well, thank you. I guess you're suggesting that I'm smooth. Yeah. Um,

1:25:53

uh, I I guess it's practice. Even in high school, I was doing broadcasting and, uh, I've did speech

1:26:01

contests and I talk a lot, as you can probably tell. I was on the radio for

1:26:07

years. I had radio shows. Um, and I do a lot of public speaking on stages all

1:26:12

over the world. Um, it really is just practice. Um I I guess I would recommend

1:26:17

if you two things one is Toast Masters.

1:26:22

Uh Toast Masters is a worldwide organization as far as I know at least they're all across the United States. Toast Masters and they practice giving

1:26:29

toasts and speeches and they're tend to be free groups and they like meet for breakfast and everybody goes around and

1:26:34

talks for a minute and you just practice practice practice right if you don't have the ability to take classes at

1:26:39

school or something. So Toast Masters International I think that's their name. Yes they must be international. The other is to work on your diction. So, a

1:26:47

lot of people mumble when they're talking and they just hardly understand them and they don't because they don't move their lips from practice speaking

1:26:54

clearly every day. I do. I I honestly do. You know, I have things that I say out loud

1:27:00

and I practice like when I'm in the car, I'm driving, I talk to myself like this and I make myself exercise my mouth so

1:27:05

that when I speak it's clear because I used to do broadcasting, right? So, you want to be very clear and that that

1:27:11

takes practice because these are muscles, right? Just like if you want to be a big, you know, muscly guy, you got to do a lot of weightlifting, right?

1:27:17

Work these muscles, too. Um, so thank you for the implied compliment. Um, but,

1:27:22

uh, yeah, I've spent years at this, so I hope that's helpful. All right, so I think that's about it for tonight. I

1:27:28

appreciate you all being here. I hope it was useful. Please like and share and tell your friends. If you haven't yet,

1:27:33

uh, go over to the startup council. You should go look at it because we have newsletters. We have seven or I think

1:27:39

there's more than that now, maybe 10 newsletters. Um, oh, that's a different one. That's our events calendar, actually. You could look at that as

1:27:45

well. Startupevents.org. Um, that wasn't the one I was looking for, though.

1:27:52

This one? No, that's that's not it either. Okay. Well, anyway, you probably saw it's actually right here, isn't it?

1:27:58

Startupconsil.org. You can go over there and um uh subscribe. There's all kinds of free

1:28:04

resources there. And if you're smart, you'll uh plop down 20 bucks and join because we're just getting it started.

1:28:10

It's going to be a major global resource uh for all of you and happy to have your support and participation uh because I

1:28:16

can't do this all by myself. Um it's a team effort, right? So great to see you all. Thank you for being here tonight.

1:28:22

And I hope that uh you all have a great um a great evening for me, morning or

1:28:28

afternoon for the rest of you. And that we'll see you again next month. It will be December uh it's the Tuesday. I think

1:28:33

it's the 16th. All right. So if you're watching this later on, December 16th, you can come see us again. And you can

1:28:40

leave your comments and follow-up questions as comments on YouTube or LinkedIn. I'll be happy to see you. Go find me on LinkedIn. Happy to say hello.

1:28:47

Thanks for being here.

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