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.

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

The latest free session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was October 7.

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.

Startup Founder Discussion TOPICS This Month

In this episode of our free Startup Fundraising Office Hours, StartupCouncil.org CEO Scott Fox went live from Detroit to coach founders on their investor pitches and answer questions from startup friends worldwide - both on camera and via chat. Topics focused on raising money from angel investors and venture capital firms, including:

• Eric from Napa, California: Pitched Conduit, an open commerce network for merchants ($2M raise). Scott said it felt like Eric was reading it and advised opening with a plain-language “Fox phrase” (a 6-10 word sentence an eight-year-old would understand). Scott invited him to join Startup Council: https://startupcouncil.org.

• Mark from National Harbor, Maryland: Pitched My Brain Restore, a supplement he says reversed his Parkinson’s progression ($2.5M raise). Scott advised keeping the backstory short and focusing on numbers like margins and distribution.

• Nikolai from Sofia, Bulgaria: Pitched RIEX, an AI tool that turns support tickets into business insights ($300K pre-seed). Scott advised opening with a Fox phrase, naming the specific problem, and highlighting his background.

• Lui from Virginia: Pitched an inventory-free marketplace for dumpster rentals ($1M raise). Scott suggested raising $300K or $3M instead, researching investors by thesis, and asking “who do you know?” He pointed Lui to TCA Venture Group: https://tcaventuregroup.com/.

• John from Tustin, California: Asked what typical founder equity and vesting look like and what the maximum equity is after four years of vesting. Scott explained that new investors usually make founders re-vest, that percentages dilute while share counts stay the same, and that startup lawyers are essential.

• Moram from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Asked how to protect ideas and choose the right partner after a partner took his ideas. Scott said ideas can’t be protected, but a co-founder agreement with vesting, a cliff, and milestones protects you if a partner doesn’t perform.

• Wayfinder News from Seattle: Asked about a parent LLC with two or three DBA companies underneath it. Scott said this is generally fine for a single-member LLC, since a DBA is just a business name rather than a separate entity, but she should confirm with a lawyer.

• Mary from Scotland: Asked what she did wrong when a face-to-face pitch went badly, and mentioned she is a filmmaker. Scott said some investors are simply rude, and that film is a poor fit for tech investors, so she should research who funds film and look at film conferences instead.

• Harish from India: Asked how an Indian IT company can win its first US clients. Scott said to differentiate with branding, sell directly from India, build social media presence, and use customer referrals.

• Eugene from New York: Asked whether investors ever contribute time and introductions instead of money. Scott said yes, through an advisory board, and recommended the FAST (Founder/Advisor Standard Template) from the Founder Institute for setting small, vesting equity grants.

• Joe from Dallas: Asked how to approach a pre-seed round when you already have revenue and a signed pilot. Scott said “pre-seed” is a loose label tied to raise size, and that stating the dollar amount you’re raising is more useful to investors.

• Brandon from Detroit: Suggested that fewer, more targeted emails work better. Scott agreed and said 400 well-researched, personal emails beat 4,000 generic ones.

And much more, as usual!

NEW FREE RESOURCE: Download the Startup Council "Fundraising Tips" free PDF here: https://www.startupcouncil.org/tips

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

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

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MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for October 7, 2026:

0:00

Fox coming to you live today from Detroit, Michigan. Today we're going to talk about your startup problems, your

0:06

issues, your challenges, your strategies, and we'll have time for some folks to practice their investor pitches

0:11

as well. So, no checks are being written today, but we'll have a friendly worldwide community here to join you and

0:17

help you puzzle through the obstacles that are challenging you and your startup. I'm Scott Fox. I'm the CEO of

0:22

Startup Council. We're a worldwide community service group that I started after a long career as a serial internet

0:28

entrepreneur. these days mostly an angel investor and and really mostly a community organizer. I work worldwide to

0:34

help accelerate startup ecosystems and connect founders to resources. That's the mission of startups.org and the work

0:40

that I do here uh well across the United States today in Detroit uh last week in Bulgaria and Croatia. And um I'm

0:49

spending a lot of time trying to help everybody move faster as a former uh entrepreneur myself. It's uh well

0:56

current entrepreneur really but a former founder. I've spent a lot of time all over the world trying to help accelerate

1:02

other people because it's a lot harder to find the resources that you need especially as a first-time entrepreneur.

1:08

Uh it's harder than it should be. There's a lot more gatekeeping and um unequal distribution of expertise and

1:14

information. So I spend a lot of time trying to level that playing field for everybody who wants to move from the

1:19

outside like I used to be to the inside which is kind of more where I am now. So, I spent a long time in Silicon

1:25

Valley and um raising money and uh helping other companies and helping my

1:31

own companies and and uh ecosystems like I said all over the world to try to connect the dots to get further faster

1:38

uh with a more efficient use of resources and together I think we can do one of those rising tide lifts all the

1:44

boat sort of thing, right? So, if that sounds like you, you're in the right place today. I'm happy to welcome you here as this is a free service of

1:50

startups.org. Of course, we give priority on the questions and the pitches to our members. So, if you

1:56

haven't yet checked out startupconsil.org, please do that. We are uh busy trying to help you. And I'm

2:02

going to turn on the chat here in a minute, but let's see. Um,

2:08

so I want to show you this. Okay, there we go. So, over at startupconsil.org, or we have uh directories of um of uh

2:15

startups and directories of of service providers like law firms and development shops and accountants and all the folks

2:21

that you need to get your business up and running. And then there are investors of course and a jobs board and

2:26

a calendar uh for events and uh most importantly I guess we have the newsletter. So if you haven't signed up

2:32

for our newsletters, we have at last count I think nine free newsletters that uh cover all different aspects and

2:38

geographies of startups all over the world. And if you'd like to join those, they're free. Happy to have you sign up there and uh and get the free

2:46

information. Really, we're just trying to collect the dot, connect the dots so you can move farther and faster, like I said. So, I'm going to turn on the chat

2:52

room here in a minute and welcome everybody in. I'd love to hear where you're from and what brought you here

2:57

today. And let's see. Well, that's right there. Okay. So, if you're over on um

3:05

LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, you can type a comment there and it will show up here in the chat room and we'd be happy

3:11

to try to help you puzzle through the next steps to accelerate your startup. Like I said, got a few folks backstage

3:17

already who uh signed up early who want to ask some questions and and talk. It looks like uh Mark and Eric are both

3:23

back there, so I'm going to be bringing them on in a second. And um then we'll be discussing what they had to say which

3:29

is if I can quickly look here uh Mark had a let's see Mark had a startup he

3:36

wanted to pitch it looks like around um brain research. Very cool. And Eric also

3:44

wanted a pitch. Okay. He's from Napa, California. I wanted to talk about infrastructure for peer-to-peer

3:49

commerce. Okay. Both of those sound uh like they're in the right place. So, if this sounds like fun to you, you can

3:56

join us uh backstage. And uh uh looks like the chat isn't quite working yet. Are you folks seeing this? Um

4:04

somebody type something, please. Let's make sure this working. Every time I do this, they change the interface, so it's

4:09

always a little bit of a mystery. There we go. Thank you. Uh Joe. Uh Joe, where

4:14

are you from? First time here. Happy to meet everyone. Excellent. Just tell us where you're from, Joe. I'm always curious. I know that we got RSVPs today

4:20

from all over the world as we usually do. Uh, but I specifically was inviting folks from Detroit, which is where I am.

4:25

We're launching the new Detroit Startup Council. Um, this is a local chapter. I grew up here in Detroit. We're launching

4:32

that here. And I just got back on a State Department uh, trip with um to

4:38

visit Bulgaria and Croatia. So, there might be some folks here today from Sophia, Bulgaria, or uh, Split or

4:44

Drovnik in Croatia where I was speaking all this past week. And hopefully we'll hear from some of them as well. Uh Joe

4:51

says he's a US founder for an AI robotics company in Dallas. Perfect. Well, this is exactly who this show is for, Joe. So, I hope it's helpful to

4:57

you. And thank you, Nissam4188. The chat is working. Yes, looks like all you guys are from YouTube. Is there

5:03

anybody on LinkedIn? There it goes. LinkedIn user. Okay. Well, LinkedIn user, I'm sure that's not your real name, but yes, this does work for

5:09

LinkedIn. Absolutely. That's why I use this service. So, so, okay, go ahead. Please introduce yourselves. Uh, nam and

5:16

LinkedIn user. Let us know who you are, what brought you here, and we're going to get over to the uh the chat room or

5:22

sorry, the u the pitch practice. Uh let's go, Detroit, Brandon. Okay. Thank you, Brandon. Let's go. Exactly. I'm

5:29

literally I'm downtown Brandon. If you know Detroit, you might recognize the view out the window. There is the city

5:36

county building in downtown Detroit. Just to prove to you, [laughter] not AI generated. I really am here. Just came

5:43

in last night from Bulgaria. Um, okay. So, let me switch this up a little bit.

5:50

Uh, I introduced myself already. Oh, let me turn on the uh here's a couple. Here's the link if some of you want to

5:56

join us backstage. And I'm going to bring in our friends Mark and uh was it Eric? I think. Yeah, Mark and Eric. So,

6:02

okay. So, Mark and Eric. Let's see. And we're gonna get going. So, um let's see.

6:08

Jason. Hey, Jason. That's another Detroititer. Excellent. Um,

6:13

okay. Lots of buttons here. Oh, and you can invite your friends, by the way, if anybody else is doing this. I'll be on the air here for an hour or so and I'll

6:19

be taking questions and I'm going to stop talking here in a minute. And there's there we go. Hey, Nikolai from uh from Sophia. Exactly. Excellent. So,

6:27

I told you I was there. Just there last week. So, great to see some of you folks coming in from Eastern Europe as well.

6:32

And uh Nay uh in California. Hey, Nate. Nice to meet you as well. All right, so

6:38

here we go. This is Let me turn on the backstage like I said. Okay, so Mark and Eric coming your way. And let's see.

6:46

There we go. Very nice. Hello, gentlemen. How?

6:52

Is the mic working? How you doing? Yes. Yeah. Is my mic working? Excellent. Okay. So, I think you both

6:58

wanted to pitch. Does that sound right? Sure. Okay. Absolutely. Let me uh let me just give you the

7:04

overview. So, I don't think I've had either of you on the show before, but nice to meet you both. Um, we're going

7:09

to do uh, so what we do here is it's pretty casual. There's not, like I said, not any checks being written today, but I'm a long-term angel investor and we

7:16

have plenty of smart folks in the audience as well who can give you feedback. So, we're just going to do two minutes. I'll put a timer on and it's

7:22

just u just verbal. We don't have room for slides and everything because that generally breaks the system, right? And

7:27

then we'll all go home. So, so just talk and you don't have to use the full two minutes and just as if you're talking

7:33

to, you know, an investor pitch and you guys know what that means. Um, but here's the other part for the audience. we probably don't have time to explore

7:39

and debate their business model. Um, I'm sure let's just give them the benefit of the doubt. These are smart guys are

7:44

working on something. They've spent a long time thinking about it. So, we're going to give them the benefit of the doubt on there. the way that we can help them even if you don't know for example

7:51

AI robotics sort of things or or um brain disease supplements u like Mark's

7:56

going to talk about you can help them in terms of their pitch in terms of like what did they miss what should they have

8:03

said differently um you know their style you maybe a different haircut I don't know whatever it is but you know more

8:08

style stuff to help them to help them kind of yeah sorry Mark nothing personal [laughter]

8:14

to to help them be better at it right because the content is really kind of their job, but we can help with format

8:20

and style and um and presentation, right? And that's what friends can help each other with. So, that's really the

8:25

vibe here. Okay. So, given that, Mark and um and Eric, anybody want to volunteer? Go first. Either way.

8:33

It's up to you. Eric, do you want to go? Uh yeah, I can go. Okay. Okay. All right. Mark, we'll get back to

8:38

you in a couple minutes here. And Eric, let's uh let's do this. And uh Okay.

8:44

Okay. So, and everybody out there watching, please go ahead if you're just joining us, uh, chime in on the on the chat room and say hello and let us know

8:50

where you're from. I'm going to pull up my phone here um, uh, to put on two minutes here and this

8:57

will give you a chance and we will, uh, and don't, don't worry, this is a friendly group. So, whenever you're

9:03

ready, Eric, let's hear it. All right. There's no free market online anymore. Giant siloed platforms control

9:10

discovery, data, payments, and they control the customer relationships. Shoppers pay more, merchants make less,

9:16

and every business is forced to rebuild its audience inside platforms that can eliminate them at will. Conduit is the

9:22

nervous system for a new model of online commerce. A merchant runs one store, owns the identity and customer

9:28

relationships behind it, and publishes products onto an open network. Those products can appear across many markets,

9:34

social apps, communities, or curations without the merchant creating new accounts, rebuilding a catalog, or

9:40

surrendering the customer relationships. Today, if you want more distribution, you join another platform. With Conduit,

9:46

distribution can come to you. Anyone can build a storefront, marketplace, or discovery experience and

9:52

permissionlessly include the products already on the network. That's the magic. One store, one identity,

9:58

potentially unlimited distribution. while shoppers can still buy directly and privately from the merchants. And

10:03

it's already working. In less than two months, we've had over 3200 user sessions, 120 completed checkouts, and

10:09

have over 50 merchants in our private beta. We've also hosted two live event markets. We're turning on revenue this

10:15

month through fees on commerce. We coordinate from there. We expand into custom storefronts, relay hosting,

10:21

sponsored discovery, and machine readable commerce infrastructure for apps, affiliates, and agents building on the network. We're not creating another

10:28

destination marketplace. We're building the foundation for commerce across open networks. My name is Eric. I've helped

10:34

build multiple bootstrap companies from zero to seven figure annual profits. My co-founder Dylan led product and

10:40

engineering at Poly Market from a small early team through its series B when it became a unicorn. We're raising 2

10:45

million to scale the infinite bizaar. Thank you. Well, that was great. I very good. Um,

10:52

okay. So, folks in the audience, I always have plenty of comments. Um, and that was like one minute 52. So, I don't

10:57

know if you'd practiced that, but that was pretty much you pretty much nailed it. [laughter] Thanks. Yeah, we've had a few reps and,

11:03

you know, going through all the motions with different folks. So, cool. Very cool. Okay. So, um, open to

11:08

comments in the chat room from everybody. So, um, sorry, let me get at the chat. There we go. Okay. So, N or

11:16

Nikolai or Jason or anybody has suggestions, but I'll go first. Um, so that was very good. You covered almost

11:22

all the bases. you know, I have a checklist in my head and I was kind of like check, check, check. So, good job. Um, it did feel like you were reading it

11:30

obviously. So, yeah, I was. Yeah. No, obviously. Right. So, it's way better if you can internalize it enough

11:36

to just, you know, blurt it out. Um, even if you miss a thing or two, I think the au the trade-off with a authenticity

11:42

is worth it because otherwise you don't sound quite so robotic, you know, but you understand that. So, that's just a

11:48

matter of practice. But, but the practice does make a difference, right? real um contextwise the uh No, I thought

11:57

it was very good. I guess I was just curious and you don't have a lot of time, right? So two minutes is an artificial constraint, but I was curious

12:02

more about how and why like is it I don't think I heard and I'm doing a couple things at once, so I apologize if I missed it, but um it sounds agentic or

12:10

like what what is the difference here? You don't have to answer me because we don't have time to get into all. Yeah, no worries. It's um I mean the

12:16

open protocols that we're building on is something called Noster and and then of course you know for payments it's just

12:22

as simple as using Bitcoin as a dump pipe with you know dollars or whatever currency coming out on either end

12:28

real time conversion and wow that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And it all happens client side so we can't actually we're sort of

12:35

blind through the payment routing. Um so we can sort of provide service without you know with provably not being able to

12:41

surveil folks still connect them through the network. Um, people hold their own keys socially and also obviously with

12:48

the whole crypto thing, money, hold your own keys. But I've been trying to avoid saying things like crypto or Bitcoin or

12:55

whatever in the pitch because it it turns a lot of people off. Yeah. Yeah. It's polarizing. I understand. I guess I would suggest

13:02

though that you need to give a little more detail because at least somebody who knows what they're listening to. I just left me with tons of questions,

13:08

right? um because it was like almost mysterious and I don't think you want to be you want to be more informative than

13:13

mysterious, right? So just but I hear what you're saying too. I don't think you're wrong, but you know, you said

13:19

Bitcoin, a lot of people run away screaming, right? Yeah. And a lot of people associate what we're doing with the Silk Road, which is

13:24

not at all what we're doing, you know. Right. Right. That's not an association you want either. Right. Um yeah. Okay.

13:31

But I guess you know spend a little time to see if you can boil it down into a slogan or you know one word or sentence

13:37

too just to give us the kind of the road map of like this is where you're headed.

13:42

Um because what you did was kind of well Joe says in the very great pitch may be ignorant but still don't understand what

13:49

you do right so that's the problem is you're being mysterious enough that someone who doesn't know what you're

13:54

talking about can't get it and I who might understand what you're talking about didn't get it either. you're finding the happy the unhappy medium,

14:01

[laughter] right? So, I would either like and and my next book is about fundraising and I

14:06

would this is my main thing I would recommend for you because this is perfect example. This is a really interesting deep tech sort of you're

14:14

this interdisciplinary stuff. This is hard to encapsulate, but my next book, I've got a thing called the fox phrase,

14:20

which is you should spend like three days figuring out how to put together a

14:25

a six to 10 word sentence that an eight-year-old would understand that you say right at the beginning just so that

14:31

everybody has some context and then those who are less technical can tune out or those who are more technical can

14:37

lean in or vice versa, right? And I mean something like this, like you know, this is really simplistic. Uh, we make soap

14:43

for dirty people and we distribute it through Walmart and our average gross margin is 50 cents and we source it out

14:50

of Arkansas. Okay. So whether I missed it or not, I don't know, but at least I know where you're headed, right? And and that kind

14:57

of context like laying the foundation will help everybody either lean in or lean out, right? So um yours would be

15:04

hard to put in that sentence, but but I think exploring, right? I mean you could use

15:09

AI to massage it, right? But but in simple words, you know, what your eight-year-old niece, you know, what

15:15

[laughter] what what does Uncle Eric actually do?

15:20

Okay. So, anybody else? Uh, so, uh, MJ, hey, Matt, how uh, I missed what you actually provided. Got the why, but not

15:26

the what. Okay. Similar concept there, right? You you kind of talked about it's very cool and mysterious, but we're not

15:32

sure what. So, um, just my dad used to say, bring the hay down to where the

15:38

horses can eat it. like you're you're you're a smart guy and you've talked about this with your smart friends and you're operating here. We need you to

15:44

just say we sell soap to dirty people, right?

15:50

Got it. Um, have you raised money before? I mean, for this myself, I've only done bootstrap

15:56

businesses. I've never had to raise money thankfully. Um, my co-founder, you know, with Poly Market and a few other

16:02

ventures, he's done. They've obviously raised some money. But has this company raised money yet? Uh, yeah. We've got an angel uh one

16:08

angel check and you know I've just put in my own capital my co-founder has as well. So the reason I ask is because 2 million is

16:15

kind of a hard number to raise. Um and just strategically you might think about

16:20

either uh how much is your angel check? 100k. Okay. So yeah that's more of the ticket

16:26

size for angels, right? 50 100 maybe 200 if you're lucky. So to get to 2 million with angels is going to take you know

16:33

dozens of angels and a lot of work for you guys. two million for an early stage fund might be good and you mentioned by

16:39

I wanted to praise you by the way because the the pitch you mentioned the traction you had and that was very cool right that suddenly it came to life this

16:44

is not just theory then that's huge for for right I mean that the different you know zero to one is the hard part right

16:50

and you've got to one which is huge um but back to my point 2 million's too

16:56

much for angels and it's kind of on the small end for a lot of funds it's way better than 1 million a lot of people want to raise 1 million which is almost

17:01

an impossible number um so I would just think about that strategic ically if and

17:07

your friend might have more experience and I don't know who you're talking to etc etc but in in abstract I would say

17:12

it's a lot easier to raise like 400 or 3.5 2 million is kind of in that no

17:18

man's lane okay which is just harder right because there aren't if if they're a big fund in your

17:25

space they're going to want to write $5 million checks right and and angels it's

17:30

going to take you uh 20 of us at 100 grand each and that's just a crapload of [laughter] So

17:36

yeah. So you know those kind of things. Um okay. So well I don't know. Was that helpful?

17:41

Very helpful. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You're welcome. Nice to meet you. It sounds exciting. Um yeah. So I you

17:47

heard excited by it. Yeah. [laughter] Well that's a good sign. Right. That's part of my book too. Right. People

17:54

always worry about the money. Like do I have enough money? The other thing is enthusiasm. Like do you have enough enthusiasm to give up with this until it

17:59

goes public? Right. That's gonna be years. Right. So if you're excited that's that's a great sign. So

18:04

awesome. All right. Um Mary says from Scotland, "More information. What is it?" Yeah, same thing.

18:10

Go to uh conduit.market. Yeah. Yeah. There go

18:15

to go. So are you taking signups now? Are people able to go do this? It's it's open. Anyone can sign up. Uh

18:20

we're focused on our beta group of feedback. You if you figure out how to get on the network yourself, you can

18:27

join the beta group, become a merchant. Um but we're Yeah, we're focused. We've got a lot of feedback coming in already.

18:32

we're building every day. So, yeah. Well, congrats. That's that's very exciting. I'd love to see somebody reinvent commerce. That's big

18:39

opportunity, too. That's the other thing. While I've got you, I'll let you go and we'll get head over to Mark. But, uh, let's see. How do I do that? Like I

18:46

said, they changed. There we go. Okay. Well, lovely to meet you. Go over to startupconsil.org, sign up if we can help you. Happy to see you again, Eric.

18:53

Thanks. Yeah. Um, the other thing I was going to say, what Eric's tackled there is a really

18:58

large market. Like, commerce is everything, right? and commerce applies everywhere, right? So, that's a key

19:04

thing if you're trying to raise venture money. Um, you know, if you're starting, you can still be an entrepreneur and have like a pizzeria or a barber shop or

19:11

something. Those aren't venture capital type businesses because they're not going to take over the world, right? What VCs are looking for is companies

19:17

that can just go huge, right? Uber, Facebook, you know, that kind of massive global scale, SpaceX. So attacking a

19:25

category as large as reinventing commerce um is probably going to confuse like your angel investors who are your

19:32

friends and family because it's going to be seem too ambitious. But that's exactly what Silicon Valley wants, right? They want disruptive um big

19:38

opportunities that are large enough to uh impact because they're working in tens and hundreds and even billions of

19:44

dollars, right? So, um, they need opportunities that if they work are big

19:49

enough to move the needle when they're managing like a billion dollars under management, right? So, if you have a really successful company that only

19:56

makes, you know, 20 million a year or something, I mean, that's great, but it's not maybe enough to really get a

20:02

traditional Silicon Valley VC excited. So, there's lots of different kinds of investors. There's a big part of my next book, too. But, um, hopefully that's

20:08

good context for you guys. All right, so who's next? Uh, oh, Mark was going to be next. Okay. So, let me bring on Mark.

20:16

And um I'm going to have to, you know, guys, I have a silly question. I I want to go grab a piece of paper. Um I'm in a

20:22

hotel, so I don't have all my stuff with me. Give me This is a really stupid thing to do, but 30 seconds. I'm going to grab a pad of paper so I can take

20:28

notes while we're talking. I know right where it is.

20:44

Okay, I wasn't kidding. I'm coming right back. How's that for authentic? You know that

20:50

this is a live show, right? When a guy leaves the camera up. Okay, so but I got a piece of paper and then I can give

20:56

better feedback. Cool. Okay, so Mark is up next and uh

21:03

the rest of you actually those folks who are watching if you want to come join us, you can do that over let me see

21:09

here. Oh, invite your friends YouTube and uh LinkedIn. Um and then

21:17

where'd that go? There it is. Okay. Okay. And here comes Mr. Mark.

21:24

There he is. Hi Mark. Hi. How you doing? Good. Nice to see you. Where are you from? Uh right outside of Washington DC

21:31

in what we call National Harbor, which is right outside Maryland. Okay, cool. Yep.

21:36

All right. Well, nice to see you. And uh you heard the uh the format basically

21:42

with Eric there. So uh you can jump in if you have any questions that's fine or you want to just jump in. Go ahead.

21:47

Sure. Yeah. Actually, uh what uh my situation was I'm 68 years uh old as of

21:54

yesterday. uh and uh I had developed Parkinson's from uh being at Camp Ljuna.

22:01

I was born there with very toxic water. Eventually I got Parkinson's and but

22:06

unfortunately I also had the gene for Alzheimer's. So I had two neurological diseases at one time. I can't people say

22:13

you know I fall downstairs but I can't remember why. Um, and you know, the the

22:18

whole thing was the dopamine they were giving me, the neurologist was made in the 1960s and I said, "Will this cure

22:25

me?" And they're like, "No, you know, essentially you're going to die of Parkinson's." And I said, "That's unacceptable. You know, I'm not going to

22:31

deal with that." So, I started doing research. I'm a I was a database programmer for many years and I started

22:36

doing research. found a product that was studied in universities, paid for by big

22:41

farmer, couldn't convert it into a patent medicine. So, it stayed uh essentially as a supplement and they

22:48

dropped the whole deal. Uh I've read the research, I understood it, I made it here in the United States. Uh it's right

22:54

here called mybrainrestore.com. Probably it's reversed there. Um, and

23:01

mybrainrestore.com is a powder product uh made from a seed

23:06

from a unique plant I had never heard of before, but I was able to source it. Uh, I got it in, I started taking it. I

23:12

didn't really tell people about it except my neurologist, and I went from stage three Parkinson's to stage one

23:20

Parkinson's. My neurologist was ecstatic, you know, that I could do this. Um, at the same time, I had

23:27

Alzheimer's. Now there is a blood test for Alzheimer's amaloid beta 4240 test.

23:32

I took that and I was in 2023 in the red actually 23 in me had actually pointed

23:38

out I had the gene uh uh PO4 which is uh

23:44

precursor you know essentially to Alzheimer's. So dealing with two neurological diseases I was determined

23:51

not to die and determined not to get into this situation. So, uh, I

23:56

developed, um, the product. This is a fascinating story, Mark, but can you what's what's the Can you wrap

24:03

it up? Sure. Yeah. Essentially, we developed the product, uh, mybrainrestore.com.

24:09

Uh, and, um, we're selling it. Uh, we're on Amazon. I do 50 podcast. Um, we have

24:17

all our medical my medical information up there. 3% of our buyers are doctors. Actually, one's a neurosurgeon. uh

24:24

pretty heavy duty. Talked to him uh and they're seeing results from it. Um I've

24:30

already met with one investor group, guy has Parkinson's. Um he's made millions of dollars. Went down and met with him

24:36

already. Um and continuing to talk to investors into what we're doing. Um

24:41

fantastic. Okay, that's that's okay. We're over time. So that's a compelling story. Absolutely. I'm I'm I'm really

24:48

happy for you this is working for you. That that's fantastic. [laughter]

24:54

That's that's yeah kind of unprecedented, right? My goodness. Good job. Good job. Um and and thank you for

25:00

taking the effort to commercialize it so that other people can benefit. That's no small hurdle. Geez.

25:06

Yeah. No, no. I matter of fact, right before we got here, I had a call from a person who, you know, wanted to change,

25:11

you know, delivery time. So, fantastic. Well, that's good. Right. Customers want it. Okay. Okay. So, but

25:17

our our context today is as an investor pitch. So, as an investor pitch, um, you

25:22

need to make it a lot shorter, at least when I, again, 2 minutes artificial time, right? But the story is super

25:28

compelling. So, um, you just got to figure out how to tell that in 10 seconds so that you can get to something you didn't even discuss, which is the

25:34

business because that's what we're investing in. Like, um, right, we need to know, you know, units sold and cost

25:40

of goods and distribution relationships and profit margins, you know, shipping times, you know, all that kind of stuff,

25:46

which you didn't even have time to get to. So, and obviously you know that stuff, right? So, that's why that's why

25:51

we do this show. Like, so think trying to get in the mirror and get all the you're setting the table is

25:58

mind-blowing. I mean, I'm I'm really happy for you if that. That's amazing. Of course, you're going to run into a

26:03

lot of medical claims issues and liability potential. And I guess this would be an unregulated supplement,

26:08

right? So, the FDA, we already called them. They're like, you know, it's a supplement we don't get involved. It's a natural

26:14

product. So, it's not an issue that way. It's just not available. That's that was the problem.

26:19

I couldn't. Right. Okay. Amazing. Okay. Well, cool. Well, this is a big story obviously. So, from investors

26:26

compress the the Parkinson's Alzheimer, I mean, you have all the details there down to like the first, you know, 20% at

26:33

most so that you have the 80% left for, like I said, numbers. Uh, investors

26:38

numbers. We want, you know, all the distribution stuff. So, can you just tell me the quick version like what does

26:44

it cost to source and what do you sell it for? We sell it as an evergreen. It's actually an evergreen product which

26:50

obviously investors love to hear. Um, once people buy it, uh, uh, what the

26:55

version I take is $179 a month on a subscription. We do give discounts for certain people. Um, but it's auto

27:02

shipped. Our system takes care of everything. Uh, we ship second or third

27:07

day delivery, priority mail. uh we take care of all that. Um and then they take

27:13

us and and we don't use AI and answer the phone. We answer the phone. Uh because we deal with a lot of older

27:19

people like the person I was just dealing with before I got on the line was, "Hey, I'm on a vacation here. I don't need the product to show up." So

27:25

all those kind of things are important. We have high high volume um uh product

27:30

essentially on Amazon. It's just getting started. Uh but Amazon's going to swamp us very quickly. Um you know others have

27:38

o overwhelmed you with orders you mean? Well one brain restore product up there like prevision which is well known made

27:44

out of jellyfish uh and another one called viceol I think it is those two do

27:50

uh just under 1 billion every 30 days on Amazon. Wow.

27:55

And that does not include their other stuff and what our product is is totally different. Okay. So that that's what we need to

28:01

hear next time Mark. So, like I said, 20% on why and then the stuff you just said in another whatever 40 secondond

28:08

version, right? This kind of numbers um 179 a month subscription model. Yeah.

28:13

Like give us the numbers because when we're listening, we're we're doing we're trying to do equations in our head, right? And so the more numbers you get

28:19

the we can construct a spreadsheet and then we can go to where you're going which is wow I want to invest.

28:24

[laughter] Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And do you have any sense of the valuation of this company or what

28:30

how much money you're raising? Um, we're looking to raise right now 2.5 million. Um, because we're getting a lot

28:38

of response from people all over the world, uh, especially Canada, things of that area. Um, so, you know, with

28:45

tariffs and things like that, it'd be better for us to set up satellite remote, you know, product manufacturing

28:51

maybe than trying to ship at this particular time. Uh what we've also discovered is that it crosses different

28:57

areas. We have a gamer version because it gets rid of foggy brain. Um it goes

29:03

across multiple neurological conditions. So we actually bought from Rochester University which increased our value. Uh

29:10

glimeatic.com that's like glycancer.com. Okay. The glymphatic system is key to

29:16

why this all gets stuck in the brain and why people get better and why my Alzheimer's is 70% better than it was.

29:22

I'm the first person in the world who will probably beat Alzheimer's. I am that close to beating.

29:29

That's really exciting stuff. Um, okay. Well, this sounds like a a a situation or a product that deserves more

29:36

opportunity. So, happy to have you here and support. Um, if you want to come back again and practice a pitch again,

29:41

maybe some people will be watching this as well that might be interested. And of course, you can come join us at startupconsil.org and and post your

29:48

stuff there. That's what it's for is to amplify the signal from founders like you who don't necessarily have

29:53

connections in the Silicon Valley. We're trying to our newsletter and stuff trying to get everybody out there. So, um,

29:58

Right. Congratulations and good luck. That's [laughter] Yeah, good help. Right.

30:04

Yeah. Excellent stuff. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming. Nice nice to meet you.

30:09

Well, that's inspiring. I'd love to see that work. I've had friends and family affected by those uh diseases, too. Um,

30:16

that's that's a big deal and a big market, right? Like we were talking about a large market. Um, I think I I think I heard him say the number a

30:23

billion a day. Was it a day? A month? A billion something. Pretty impressive.

30:28

Um, okay. So, let's see who else is in the chat room here. So, um, you can

30:33

comment on LinkedIn or YouTube to uh to toss in another question if you'd like.

30:39

And Lui, it looks like you want to come join me backstage. You can do that. uh founder office hours.com should get you

30:46

there. And if that's not working, tell me and I can post the longer u ugly URL

30:52

that's hard to type in, but that should redirect um to have you come join us backstage. Um there that's a uh Lui. Um

31:02

okay. And then um all right, other folks. So um Mary says, "With money,

31:08

people need to be transparent about the structures. so much online as a scam. Yeah, that okay. I think that's Sorry,

31:14

that's back for Eric's pitch, wasn't it, Mary? I missed that. Uh, yeah, absolutely. That's it's a good point.

31:19

And I think that's why he was trying to be vague, you know, he wasn't wanting to

31:24

set people off, but it was a little too vague, right? And we talked about that with Eric. I think he got it. So, it's a it's a fine line between being

31:30

informative and being confusing and mysterious. [laughter] Um, okay. So, uh, all right. Anybody

31:37

else uh chime in with some questions or we can move on? Uh Lou, the link is on

31:43

the screen. Um type it in. Uh I I can't send it to you while I'm talking. Um all

31:50

right. And then uh so let's see what are some of the other questions that we got earlier. Let me just address a couple of these. There were some other pitch

31:58

folks. Um let's see. There was uh

32:05

Okay, we can't practice your pitch unless you're here, right guys? Um

32:12

well, Mary asked um how to learn more about Startup Council.

32:18

Well, so yeah, you go to startupsil.org. Uh it's all pretty much there and there are there's a page uh if you go to

32:24

startupconsil.org/join, there's a list of the benefits, Mary, uh

32:29

that you can find. And um in terms of the newsletters you're not getting um

32:35

you don't get the notifications long enough in advance. It sounds like you're not on the right newsletter list. So um

32:42

click on join the newsletters and there's a whole bunch of them you can you can choose from and that should get

32:47

you uh working pretty well. Um uh Moram from uh Saudi Arabia from Riad um had a

32:54

good question about uh confidentiality. Um and they said that uh they shared a

33:01

idea with a partner before uh and eventually partner took all the ideas and pushed them out and then how

33:08

do how does he or she protect my ideas or effort? How to choose the right partner? Yeah, that's a that's a good um

33:16

a good question. Um, and it's there's aren't there aren't really any easy answers, right? Um, uh, oh, there's

33:24

Nikolai. Okay, hold on, Nikolai. I'll come talk to you in a second. Okay. Um, the, um, finding partners is hard. Um,

33:32

and that comes down to common sense in terms of, you know, who can you trust and spending time with people that you trust and building relationships and

33:37

checking their credentials, checking references, kind of common sense stuff that you would do with any other uh,

33:42

important relationship. The piece I can add to that that sounds like you're missing Marram was that there are at

33:49

least in the United States there are legal structures to help um solidify this kind of um activity so that you are

33:56

on safer ground. First of all, you can't protect ideas. If someone if you have a

34:02

good idea and another person copies you that there isn't much you can do about that anywhere, right? Other than only

34:08

working with people you trust. Um, but what you can do, at least again in the United States, is set up a co-founder

34:16

agreement that has vesting. And those the concepts of are this that if someone

34:22

is coming into your business, you don't have to just give them half. You can give them whatever piece you would like.

34:29

Small, large, extra large, extra small, whatever. You know, you can give them 2%, you can give them 20%, you can give them 80%, whatever. That's up to you.

34:36

And then on top of that, you can put in what's called vesting and milestones. So that let's say you really like this

34:43

person, you want to trust them. So you want to do 50/50, which actually I never recommend you do at least 5149. So

34:48

technically someone is the boss and can make a decision so you don't ever get stuck with a split decision. But let's

34:54

say you like them enough you're going to give them 30% of the business. You don't just give it to them. You do it over

34:59

time. And that's what we call vesting. Investing basically means you're taking a piece of that company um as long as

35:05

they perform each month and they're putting it like in their vest pot. They're like putting it in their pocket, right? Investing it. And um the standard

35:14

standards for this kind of thing are usually over two, three or four years and they're associated with milestones.

35:20

So you could say to your friend, "Hey, I love you. We work well great together. I would like to invite you in to own 30%

35:27

of this business." that that here's the change that you will earn over time if you perform as we both expect and that's

35:35

the key. So you in other words you have to write this stuff down and then you would say perhaps over um over uh two or

35:42

three years so say 36 months uh you get an equal piece of that every month for

35:47

36 months two more wrinkles. One you don't usually start right away usually do a what we

35:53

call a cliff. So you might say uh things have to go well between us for 60 90 days, six months, something like that

35:59

and then you get the first chunk because that you want to work together enough to make sure you know anybody can make

36:06

sound like a genius over coffee, right? And they might they seem like a wonderful person and then you actually start working and you realize you have

36:11

very different styles or expectations or resources available, right? So you want

36:16

to have that cliff to make sure you get past sort of a probation period and then the rest of it would vest say monthly

36:23

over that period. Again depending on performance performances can be dictated

36:29

generally like at your discretion or it can be dictated based on specific accomplishments. So, if they're saying

36:34

that, I'm going to bring you a bunch of customers, then you say, uh, you get another chunk uh, you know, whatever 1%

36:42

more of the company for every customer that we sign when those customers pay, right? Put it on the money. Um,

36:48

dependent on the money. Or you're going to uh build out the website, then that's a milestone. Or you're going to recruit

36:54

more people or you're going to set up events or, you know, a marketing campaign, whatever it is. uh you can tie

37:00

the amount of stock that they get over time to achievement of those milestones. That the point of this is that if you do

37:08

find a friend, a partner like you did and then they kind of rip you off, they don't still own a piece of your company.

37:16

And if you later are trying to raise money or invite other people in, you don't have this phantom shadow silent

37:23

partner who's kind of lurking there owning a chunk of the company who isn't contributing anything. And that kind of

37:29

arrangement is key to the success of founder relationships and most startup capitalization structures because of

37:35

life right. I mean even the best intentioned person things happen sometimes right suddenly uh you know

37:41

someone gets sick or dies or or they fall in love and they move or they have a kid you know like like it could be

37:46

good stuff or bad stuff but it changes the equation and you both started here with similar expectations but things

37:53

change over time. Investing in milestones can really help protect you in those respects. So, if that's useful,

37:59

um, I hope it's useful. [laughter] All right, so we're going to go on to,

38:04

um, let's see. I see my friend Nikolai here wants to say, and then I see a couple more folks in the chat room. U, go ahead

38:11

and chime in there. If you want to, uh, post your comments, you're welcome to do

38:16

that, and we'll try to, uh, get to that. Um, and I didn't I forgot to say out

38:21

loud, I do need to say this. I put it on the screen. Um, this session is being recorded and will be published uh

38:27

publicly. So, don't say anything stupid or confidential. And this is not qualified legal or financial advice. I'm

38:33

just a friendly guy who you met on the internet who's trying to help you out. And uh you need to talk to your own

38:38

professional counsel uh before you rely on anything that I'm saying. Okay? These are just theories and your situation is

38:44

probably different. So, you need to talk to adults who are specialists specialists in this kind of thing. And

38:50

um you should uh do that rather than just uh believing me. Okay. [laughter]

38:55

Okay. So, come on over on LinkedIn if folks have more questions. And let's see. Nikolai.

39:02

Nikolai. Hello N. Hey everyone. Hey Scott. Hey. Thanks so much for hosting this. Yeah, I

39:08

would love to pitch what we are doing over here at Trip Text if that's okay. Excellent. That sounds fantastic. Yeah,

39:14

it's great to have you here. It's uh what is it? Oh, it's not too late there yet, right? No, it's 6:43 p.m. dinner time.

39:21

Yeah, I'm still I just flew in I flew back from Sophia yesterday and I'm still not sure where I am. [laughter]

39:30

Yeah. Yeah, it's you say it's middle of the day out here. It's bright and sunny. So anyway, okay. So, you heard the

39:36

format, right? Um, just remind me where did we meet? Did we meet in person at um

39:42

um we met at this event which was like the startup moment for Bulgaria. Um

39:48

it was organized by the I'm sorry, Future Unicorns. Yep. Yep. That's the one. Future Unicorns, right? So, Future

39:54

Unicorns, give them a shout out. there an accelerator program for entrepreneurs in uh Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe

40:01

that brings people over to San Francisco to do soft landings to help accelerate uh both those startups but also the

40:07

business and the relationships between US and Southeastern Europe. So very cool organization run by Constantine. So

40:14

for sure that's a great context. I couldn't have said it better. Yeah, those guys are amazing. Uh yeah, so so

40:20

um I am I'm Nikolai from Sophia Bulgaria. I run a company called RIEX

40:27

and what we do in a nutshell is we read support tickets with AI and we extract

40:34

business signal. We're trying with one input source to basically produce signal that's useful for um product for sales

40:42

for support and retention all together. And uh we published our MVP in April

40:49

with about three integrations I think we had at the time. In May, we got accepted in accelerator in San Francisco, Founder

40:56

Sync. Um, there we found our first pilot. We ran a two-month pilot in a

41:01

company which is a small team, but they have product market fit. So, tens of thousands of customers, thousands of

41:08

tickets per month. We learned a ton with them. And now we're in about month and a

41:13

half in our first enterprise uh sale process with a group of telecoms over here in Europe. Um I think that we are

41:22

kind of focusing on regulation being our mode. Um as I said said to you in our

41:27

meeting we don't have too much things going us for us for us over here in Europe but regulation is kind of one of

41:33

those things that we have plenty of and we use it as a mode because right now technology is not so hard of a mode that

41:40

you could actually build with and we plan to own this market the telecom market in Europe first and then uh

41:47

expand beyond that for mid-market and enterprise companies where we're most useful.

41:54

You finished? Yep, I finished. [laughter] Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, I remember now.

41:59

You were sitting on the couch over there and we were talking about Moes. I remember. Um, cool. So, let me stop the

42:05

uh timer. Great. Okay. So, that that was very it was cool. I remember better now

42:11

once I heard your your uh review there. So, yeah, that's a good pitch and I I like the idea of regulations as Moes um

42:18

because everybody knows Europe is very regulated. that makes a lot of sense and telecom is certainly a big market also

42:24

also good stuff. Um the it was a very good distraction discussion like because

42:30

you you trotted out all the things that are going right which is great you know because it's like I was saying to

42:36

somebody earlier the uh the hard part is going from nothing to something and and you definitely have something there. So

42:41

we talked about this uh I think it was in the kitchen at future unicorns too. Um, so um,

42:48

so if I was going to make some suggestions, well, you didn't have an ask at the end, so I don't know, are you raising or not? So that's obviously

42:54

something. Yeah, just to input there, [laughter] I I did kind of realize that I didn't

43:00

say the ask at the end. I tried to kind of make it unscripted and fit in the two minutes. We are raising $300,000 preede.

43:08

Um, yeah, that's our ask right now. Yeah, then that's perfect. So you've heard you've been on you heard me saying

43:14

earlier that that's a good number compared to a lot of people want to raise you know like a million which is

43:20

just a hard number between angels and VCs 300 is you can find a few um angels

43:26

and do that and it's a manageable outreach process. The other thing is sometimes people come on and they want to raise like $25,000 and it's like

43:33

that's not enough to be worth the trouble. Not that you were saying that but I'm just saying to everybody else who's watching. Um uh and by the way if

43:40

if folks are watching in the replays I should mention that um these are all archived online. So if you um if you

43:48

come back and you want to have questions later we and you comment on YouTube we'll we'll try to help everybody um

43:53

there as well. Um okay so okay so what I would what I would uh I like that it was

43:59

unscripted because it felt real as opposed to the very good pitch that Eric gave which was really good but you could

44:05

tell it was being read right. So what we want the ideal is between what he did and what you did. [laughter] So all the

44:11

details he had but the the friendly personal approach that you had which is great. What I think you could use is

44:17

also what I suggested to him is right at the beginning a slogan or what I'm calling a fox phrase that really

44:25

specifically kind of creates an equation. We do this for these kind of customers. We make money like this and

44:32

this is how far we've gotten. like some something like that because um

44:38

uh the problem for investors is all the words you said make sense but I don't

44:44

know specifically what you're doing right service tickets for telecoms I'm sure there's a lot of them I know that's

44:49

a big market but a little more specifically like what is the problem specifically because you have actual

44:54

customers now you could probably be more specific and those specifics are what make it interesting to investors that

45:00

because they demonstrate both the actual problem but also that you have the experience dealing with the problem, but

45:05

it positions you as the expert. So, it's a win-win for you. Any any thoughts on that? No, I think I think that's that's spot

45:12

on and u I think it does make sense. We don't have customers, by the way. I just want to kind of point this out and uh

45:18

not be misleading you with anything. Uh we have uh conversations for for first

45:24

potential customers. We finished our first pilot um about uh a few weeks ago

45:29

and we want to Yeah, we are currently working on the first deals. Um but um yeah, I I totally

45:37

agree with you and I would definitely take that uh advice. Okay. Yeah. Well, I think if you did

45:44

that, you're you you have a nice way about you and it was uh it seems authentic and I've met you, so that's

45:50

cheating, I guess. But you know this is a real thing, right? And you you have the credibility.

45:56

Well, I guess the piece I didn't catch and I I apologize if you said it because I am doing multiple things was about your background and your team. Did you

46:03

say anything about that? Nope, I didn't say anything. I was kind of just focusing on what we're doing. Yeah. So, uh can I make a quick uh blurp

46:11

here? Yeah. So I um I've led a couple of teams in YC back companies before uh starting my own

46:19

company and uh before that I built developer tools that are used in Microsoft, NASA, Boing, Visa and a bunch

46:27

of other companies and uh yeah I I've been an engineer for most of my career over 20 years now and uh

46:34

entrepreneurship is uh uh kind of the the current thing the next thing I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that that's a great

46:41

resume, right? Anybody says names like that, YC and NASA, I mean, that gets people's attention. So, I wouldn't I

46:46

wouldn't skip that part. That is definitely worth saying. Um, yeah. So, I think you've got all the right pieces.

46:52

Just a a little more cons and again, two minutes is made up, right? But, um, putting them together. Um, what I do is

47:00

when I'm trying to pitch something is it's kind of like your life story. If you meet someone quickly, you give them

47:06

the really short version, but if you're having dinner, you give them the long version, right? But either way, you know

47:11

the story so well that you don't have to think about it. You just adapt it to the time, right? And that's kind of what you

47:17

want to practice so much that you can do it in 30 seconds, you can do it in three minutes, you can do it in 13 minutes, you can do it in 30 minutes because you

47:24

know that Nikolai's story, right? And this is his story. and just get to the point where you can and you probably

47:29

just have a couple bullet points in your head like the summary, the problem, solution, issue, market

47:35

size, some examples, and then the team, and then the ask. And and that's enough in any short conversation for an

47:41

investor to say either that's interesting or that's not interesting, but you should talk to my friend, right?

47:47

And that's what you're really after is the referral. So, that makes total sense. Yep. Yeah. Well, great to see you. Um, hope

47:54

to see you again. We'll be doing this now that I'm back. uh in the states will be doing this more often. So hopefully

48:00

Awesome. Sounds great. Have a great rest of your day. You too. All right, there we go. Excellent. Okay,

48:07

Lou, looks like you got backstage. So that's fantastic. We'll talk to you in just a second. Let me talk to some of

48:12

these other folks in the chat room because I saw a couple other questions um popping up.

48:21

Okay. Oh, there's my friend John. Hey, John. Um, okay. Well, here's my favorite comment

48:26

of the show so far. This is from Andrew. Go Blue. [laughter] For those viewed that don't know, that's

48:32

the University of Michigan, which is one of the reasons I'm actually here for a board meeting in Detroit, Michigan. Um,

48:38

University of Michigan where I went to college and I guess maybe Andrew did too. So, go blue, Andrew. Thank you.

48:43

Back to California. There's my friend John uh from Tustin. Uh, cap table question. What is um Oh, sorry. Um, Mark

48:52

and uh, Eric, if you want to get out in the main chat room, you have to quit and go over to YouTube or LinkedIn. You you

48:59

are backstage, and that's awesome because that's what got you on camera like Lou and Nikolai. But if you want to

49:04

get in the main chat room, you have to leave and start over essentially. So, click on a different link. Like, literally just go to

49:09

youtube.com/scottfox and you'll find our channel and then you can comment there. We're trying to shut

49:15

you out. In fact, I can turn you off here or you can go turn yourselves off. If you just leave this and go start

49:21

over, you'll be in the main chat room like John is here. Okay, so John says, "What is typical founder base equity in

49:27

a schedule? And what is the maximum equity at the end of the four-year vesting?" Okay, let's see. Well, John,

49:33

it was great to meet you at the Thai Investor Summit. I think that's where we met recently, right? Um, interesting

49:39

background. John's a professor um in Southern California and anyway has some some good ideas and some sharp questions

49:45

every time I do this. So uh what is typical founder equity investing schedule was max equity.

49:53

Okay so um the idea here John is that at

49:59

the beginning you own 100%. So it's not in terms of shares necessarily although

50:04

it is the shares it's just it's easier to think about it in percentages. So if you are starting the company and you

50:09

have no co-founders you own 100%. And you don't vest. So you just own it right? This is common stock, not

50:15

preferred stock. Yeah. So, let's leave that at that for

50:20

the simple version. And then what is the max equity at the end of four year vesting? Well, if you have no investors

50:27

and there's no vesting, you still own 100%. So, you probably know that. So, I you're this is there are layers to this

50:33

question, right? So, that's the simple case. You founded it. No partners, no investors. You own it all immediately

50:39

forever. Done. Novesting. What you're pro you're asking this because I know you're a smart guy is probably you know

50:46

that there's more to this. So where this gets a little more complicated of course is like I just talked about if you have co-founders they are going to be on some

50:52

kind of vesting schedule if you have a founders founder agreement. Uh and if you raise money this is a big shocker

50:59

and disappointment to many founders. If you so you start your company you own

51:05

100% or you say you and your your co-founder you own 70 they own 30 or something like that right? Okay, fine.

51:11

But you meet investors and they want to put in uh $2 million or $5 million or

51:16

something, they're going to make you start vesting all over again. And I know

51:21

that sounds really unfair. And frankly, I think it is unfair. But now that I'm more of an investor than a founder, I

51:27

can see both sides of it, right? They want to make sure that you're going to stick around, right, and keep running the business because you are the expert. That's what we're investing in is you

51:34

and your passion for building the solution to the world's problem. So, we need you to be around. So, maybe John,

51:41

what you're asking is when you start you, yeah, you have 100% or maybe 70 and 30 with your partner, but once the money

51:46

comes in, they're going to start over. And that will typically be 2 years, 3 years, four years, something like that,

51:52

depending on the situation. Let's call it four years that you essentially have to earn back everything in the company

51:58

that you previously had owned. And that sucks. Also, this won't be 7030 anymore because

52:06

by bringing in that couple million dollars, you've diluted your stock. So, if you issue the company, if the company

52:11

issues stock to these investors, um the math is going to complicated for me to do here on the fly, but say, say you

52:18

brought in $2 million, there's a $10 million company, the company's now worth $12 million, uh instead of the $10

52:24

million valuation you had. Your 70 and your partner's 30 would be diluted by that amount. So it's not 20% 2 million

52:32

out of 12 2 million out of 10. It's whatever 20% is out of 12 million. So

52:37

you're diluted by that amount. Um then the second question, what's the max

52:43

equity at the end of the four year investing? Well, hopefully you're still controlling and this is where shares matter as opposed to percentages. Your

52:50

70% let's say after that dilution from the investors is down to I don't know

52:55

call it 56%. uh and your partner went down to 22% or something like that, right? And the founders 56 22 80. So

53:02

they have they have 12% of the company. These are not real numbers. I'm making them up, but just for sort of uh

53:08

ballparking sort of things, right? So you're down to 56%. Um

53:15

that percentage has gone down, but the number of shares you own has not right

53:21

because you're talking of percentages. So again, if the I'm making these up, these numbers aren't going to exactly jive. But if say there were 10 million

53:27

shares and your percentage of that, the start was 7 million of those shares,

53:34

the other money comes in, you still own your 7 million shares, assuming your vesting goes well and performance and

53:40

everything, right? You still own that big chunk of founders common stock, 7 million shares. But that 70% is now only

53:47

56% because here's the key. the company's issued a whole bunch of new stock to the outside investors, right?

53:55

So, their 2 million came in and you issued, let's call it 2 million more shares, right? So, you still own your 7

54:01

million, but your 70% has gone to 56 because they have 2 million more shares exist now. And if you raise another

54:07

round, say the company does well, and the next round is a $6 million round, uh, and that's going to issue a whole

54:13

bunch more shares. So, your percentage may go from 56 down to, I don't know, 41 or something like that, right?

54:20

You still own the 7 million shares and now the 7 million shares each share is worth a lot more because you brought in

54:26

2 million and you brought in six million more. You've raised $8 million. So the company valuation is probably it was like zero when you got the shares,

54:31

right? But now if you've raised $8 million hopefully a company's worth 2030 million bucks easy.

54:38

So your 7 million shares, each one of those is now worth not a penny or zero.

54:43

It's worth maybe $2 or $5 or $12 or something like that. So 7 million times

54:48

$12 a share, you've got 14. Did I do that right? $14 million worth of stock

54:54

even though your percentage has gone down. That make sense? That took me years to

55:00

get my head around that. And this is in my my next book. So I think I told you that John when we met recently. And my

55:05

book is written for guys like you. Uh you're plenty smart, but you don't speak venture. And and this is one of those

55:10

goofy ways, right? And all that gets more complicated because we didn't even talk about your shares are common stock and their shares are going to be

55:16

preferred stock. The uh you have to put aside money for an option pool uh to

55:21

compensate your employees. The uh first round of shares issued to investors is

55:27

probably preferred A and then preferred B. You might have slightly different terms. Uh it gets complicated really

55:33

really fast. And this is why you really need good legal counsel. I there's no

55:39

way to escape. you just cannot DIY this stuff. Um well, or if you can, then you

55:44

should just go be a lawyer and make money as a as a startup lawyer because it's a it's a specific skill set. Uh and

55:50

it's not they don't teach it in law school. This is not law school. I went to law school. This is nothing I learned in law school. law school, they teach

55:56

you like criminal procedure and property law and like basic like blocking and tackling kind of law so that you can go

56:02

and you know try car accident cases or divorces or or or contracts but not this kind of detailed kind of contract

56:09

securities law. So um if anybody listening wants or needs referrals to specialized startup attorneys, that's

56:15

one of the services we have at Startup Council. We'll be happy to connect you to people who are very good and this is all they do and they'll be happy to help

56:22

you through this kind of stuff. Uh and they're not cheap. Um, generally if you have a viable company, they'll discuss a

56:30

deferred fee arrangement. Lawyers never work for free, but they'll defer five or 10 grand of services until you get

56:36

funded in the hopes that you get funded and then you pay them uh, you know, as soon as you do that kind of thing. So,

56:42

uh, attorney referrals are useful like that. Anybody listening can let me know.

56:47

Okay. Uh, John says, "Oh, well, there we go. How'd you like that? Um, I guess this worked." Um, tada. Thank you for

56:55

making it clear. Awesome. Nice to see you, John. Okay, Louie is still here. All right, we're gonna go over and see

57:00

Louie now and see what he has to talk about. And, um, let's see. U,, by the

57:08

way, if you have, uh, liked or subscribed this, we'd love that. Uh, it helps attract more people here. This

57:13

free service just trying to help people. And the more people that know about it, the more people we can help, right? So,

57:18

if you haven't yet, please click to like or subscribe or leave a comment or all of those things. That would be really

57:24

appreciated. And um by the way, this is where the rest of that stuff is that I'm

57:30

talking about, including uh attorney referrals. Okay, so here comes the way.

57:37

There he is. Hey, Louis. Hello. Hey. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Scott. Thank you very

57:42

much for taking time to to teach us and to guide us what we have to do. Yeah.

57:48

Especially the first founder. I need two hours from you, not two minutes. [laughter]

57:55

Yeah. Where where are you based? Uh Virginia. Oh, Virginia. Okay, cool. Yeah. How about you, sir?

58:02

Uh I lived in Southern California, but today I'm in Detroit, Michigan. Oh, nice. All right. Is it cold yet

58:07

there? No, it's it's it's thinking about it. It's thinking thinking about it. Even here in

58:13

Virginia. All right. Well, I don't want to take a lot of your time. I have multiple question but I would like to

58:20

uh to to pitch my business first. So maybe you have like understand about what I do and by the way I try to reach

58:28

you multiple time on LinkedIn and [laughter] no reply but I understand you

58:33

have million message on on your inbox. Yeah I can't LinkedIn is overwhelmed. [laughter] I understand I totally understand. So so

58:41

uh Scott my name is Lui Alchami. I'm I'm uh I'm originally from Middle East. I'm

58:46

refugee here in United States, but I got my citizenship soon uh like uh recently,

58:51

a few years ago. Uh I arrived to United State to San Francisco with $23 on my

58:58

pocket. Wow. 15 years ago. But yes, sir. But I made it. I bought a

59:04

house, car, wife, business, everything. So, American dream is working for me.

59:12

But I still have the last step, which is I'm doing it right now. All right. [laughter] So after after many sales uh

59:19

jobs in United States and like uh the last 11 years I work in uh dumpsters

59:26

industry and recently I talked to my co-founder

59:31

which is a tech genius. He's the guy who write codes and you know I told him I need to to build a platform and app and

59:39

he likes the idea. So he said I'm partner now. So he's 20%, I'm 80% right

59:44

now. So what we built, we built an inventory free platform for dumpster

59:50

rental, portable toilet, mobile office container and storage unit container.

59:56

Think about us like Uber or Airbnb. We own no trucks. We own no drivers,

1:00:01

nothing. But we have so many local business uh dumpster or rental companies

1:00:06

around us. They joining uh our platform. We launched on May 15, so basically four

1:00:13

and a half months. We lined up the customer before even the business exist. We have $260,000 in sales right now. 29%

1:00:23

markup and uh 100% repeat customer. Each one of those 44 customers I have right

1:00:31

now, they order at least 40 dumpsters a month. And one of one of them they

1:00:39

ordered for the last four and a half months 150 dumpsters. We launched only

1:00:44

one product so far in only Virginia. So right now I'm asking a million dollar to

1:00:50

expand to eight more states and everything ready the the business model

1:00:56

ready the projection ready assumptions ready corp process uh

1:01:03

uh like the platform is ready. So we we have those sales with zero sales team

1:01:10

and zero marketing spend. Imagine if I have 10 other people like me in the

1:01:17

office. The 44 customer they will be 4,000 customer and the 260,000 going to

1:01:24

be $26 million in sales. So and in only one product imagine if we

1:01:30

add the other three products and uh the market is huge. We just got,

1:01:36

if you heard about Clark Construction Company, it's one of the biggest construction company in the United

1:01:41

States. We just, we just got hooked with them and they order 100 dumpster for one project. We got another uh contract is

1:01:50

going to be signing on Friday for 700 dumpster for one project. Imagine those

1:01:55

guys, they're going to start taking us with them from project to another. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

1:02:02

Go ahead. Sorry. No. Very good. You're excited. I can see why. [laughter] That's legit. So, first of all, welcome

1:02:09

to America. Congratulations, man. That's very that's a that's a great story. Thank you. The American dream is dead and it's not.

1:02:14

It's just a lot of a [clears throat] lot of people are lazy. [laughter] I know.

1:02:20

Um, so that's that's I'm really happy to meet you. Um, that's a amazing niche.

1:02:25

Very cool. Very very cool. And congrats on the progress. So, this is all just in the Maryland Virginia D.

1:02:30

Just Virginia. Just Virginia. Wow. And actually only five cities in Virginia. Virginia have over 128 cities

1:02:38

and only in five cities you know so far because we want to build our our

1:02:43

operation right. So we can replicate it in in every other state. So we

1:02:50

we basically pilot mode right now but actually we start

1:02:56

getting orders in from Illinois from Florida. H we did couple orders in

1:03:01

Texas. uh you know the SEO is helping us a little bit but we're ask the only

1:03:08

problem I'm having right now is to find the right investor

1:03:13

you have no idea how hard for me without mentor right to to to to do this I have to learn

1:03:20

everything the hard way I have to learn I have to learn little literally

1:03:26

everything I'm I'm I'm learning how to write code I'm learning how to how to

1:03:32

talk to investor, how to build how to build a pitch deck, how to how to update

1:03:37

like everything. So my only problem right now is to find the right investor

1:03:45

because those middleman guys, they're the one they need up front thousands of dollars money.

1:03:50

I tried a couple of them but it's it's a scam. Yeah, it's a scam. Thank you.

1:03:55

So let's So fantastic. I'm I'm I'm happy for as your new friend. I'm proud of you. That's that's really cool. And I

1:04:01

think you've identified something really interesting. So here just on the pitchwise the uh well I I I just have to

1:04:08

ask what about competition? Do you see other people doing this? Yes. There is a one big company they call dumpster.com. They have been in the

1:04:15

market for uh nine years right now. They uh last year they announced $150 million

1:04:20

in revenue and they only do uh residentials, but we're focusing we're

1:04:27

focusing more on commercial, but even uh dumpster.com, they just raised

1:04:34

this year uh $400 million. Yes. Real money.

1:04:40

Yes, sir. And only in dumpsters, but we have three other products, right? Okay. Wow. Okay. All right. So

1:04:47

pitch-wise, um, I think the pitch is great. I mean, you've got real numbers, you've got enthusiasm, you're you're

1:04:53

clear and excited about it, which is critical that, you know, the biggest problem with the pitch between friends

1:04:58

is you said, imagine with the money, I could hire eight more guys like me. Where are you going to find guys like you, man? That's the hard part.

1:05:06

Actually, actually, that's a a great question. With my experience in 11 years in this business, I met so many people

1:05:13

work in the same industry. So I have lined up 25 people who wants to work

1:05:19

with me but I need money to to make them come to me. That's a good answer. That's a great that's great. So people that are already

1:05:24

in the business. Okay. Fantastic. Okay. So what I what I really liked is you you trotted out a bunch of numbers that

1:05:30

makes it believable. Like I said to other folks when we listen we investors were always doing equations or

1:05:36

spreadsheets in our head. Right. So you said $260,000 in sales 29% margin 100%

1:05:41

retention. That's like that's astonishing. Um, that kind of stuff is really eye-catching or earcatching, I

1:05:48

guess. So, yeah, I would keep that up. Fantastic. Um, I would, so I don't I

1:05:53

don't have any real Yeah, I guess my questions would have been about team and and hiring would be

1:05:59

hard. Uh, and then competition, which you addressed once I asked you anyway. Um the fact that you have uh a clear

1:06:06

initial base in one product that you can extend extend both into other products but also geographically is a I like the

1:06:14

the vision of that. Um it's very out of fashion to be the Uber of anything but

1:06:20

this is a case where Uber makes sense. I mean there's a lot of people with inventory that they want to move and

1:06:25

they don't have your skills to build that platform. So I I that's making a lot of sense to me. So

1:06:31

I want to tell you one fact. Sorry for cutting you. Uh actually I was one of the first 100 driver with Uber then when

1:06:38

they start in San Francisco. [laughter] No kidding. Oh that's interesting. That that was my first job in United

1:06:44

States by the way. That's you know Louis that's a great hook for a pitch. You say look I've only

1:06:50

been in the I'm not from here but I have a history of innovation. I was one of the first guys at Uber and now I'm

1:06:56

building my own Uber. That that's a that's a really memorable Yeah. Yeah. I would use that.

1:07:02

So my question to you, I have two questions if you don't mind. The first one,

1:07:08

uh, you're investor, right? Yeah. Uh, after you see me and you talk to me,

1:07:13

would you consider investing me? That's my question number one. My question number two, what where is or how what is

1:07:21

the right way to find the right investors or where I can find those guys? Yeah. Yeah, that's the hard part for

1:07:27

sure. Um, so yes, I think you're you're interesting. You ticked all the boxes that uh interest guys like me. Um, I

1:07:35

don't invest directly much anymore. I mostly do it through funds or angel groups. So I can connect you. The

1:07:40

largest angel group on the west coast is called Tech Coast. Uh, it used to be Tech Coast Angels. Now it's Tech Coast

1:07:46

Venture Network. Tech No, Tech Coast Venture Group. And you can go on the website Tech Coast TCA Venture TCA

1:07:54

Venture.com. Um, and you can apply and we have 400 angels that look at all kinds of stuff.

1:08:00

And this is this is interesting stuff. Um, and you already have revenue, which is the key bar for most angel groups to

1:08:07

have to clear. Um, okay. So, how do you So,

1:08:13

well, one question about the pitcher or suggestion. As I said earlier, I don't know if you're listening, but a million dollars is a hard amount to raise in my

1:08:20

experience. So, I would think about whether you can do a raise for like 300

1:08:25

or three million because a million is too big for individuals

1:08:31

and [clears throat] too small for a fund, right? There's not really anybody that writes a million dollar check um

1:08:37

these days. I mean, I could be wrong. I'd be happy to be wrong, right? If you can find a rich uncle, whatever. I hope

1:08:42

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm the richest one. Yeah. [laughter] Yes. But statistically, most deals are done either here or here,

1:08:50

but not in the middle. And you're trying to I know as a first- time founder, this happens all the time. People think a million dollars that sounds like an

1:08:56

adult serious number. It is, but it's it's it's homeless, right? So, I would

1:09:02

about a smaller number, some two, three, 400, because then you could talk to angels and you could get say um you

1:09:09

know, six angels at 50 grand each and that's 300,000. And then you only have to manage six people. If you try to

1:09:15

raise a million dollars from angels, you'll need at least 20, maybe 30 of them. And you will spend all your time

1:09:20

chasing angels and getting them to sign stuff and it will completely blow your schedule and you won't be able to do it.

1:09:26

And a million dollars [clears throat] is not enough for most funds. Is it realistic for early stage company

1:09:32

like me to to ask for $3 million from a virtual company? Probably not um yet. I mean, can't hurt

1:09:40

to try, but it it also depends on who you're talking to, right? So, say you have two meetings. Today, you have lunch

1:09:46

with an angel investor like me and tomorrow you have lunch with a fund. You can have a different story because

1:09:51

either way, the money is going the same place. You're not lying. You're just saying, I I need, you know, are you

1:09:56

interested? I would love 50 grand from you or 25 grand or even 10 grand, right?

1:10:02

Just to get things moving. And then, but then tomorrow, if you're having lunch and I'm a venture capital firm and you say, "I want a million dollars." Well,

1:10:09

I'm probably going to say you didn't do your homework because the smallest check I write is 3.5 million and you're wasting my time. Right? So that you So

1:10:17

the answer to your question, the overarching question is how and where do you find investors? It's a research

1:10:22

question these days. There is so many there are so many investors and everybody says they're an investor even,

1:10:29

right? That it's really about Google, Google, Google Google, right? You just got to drill down and every investor

1:10:35

that is a a firm will state on their website what their thesis is and the thesis is we invest in uh latestage

1:10:44

aerospace companies or we invest in preede medical devices like they will tell you right and you just need to wade

1:10:51

through them all and you know AI can help with this like search like crazy and you want to create a list of at

1:10:56

least a hundred maybe 200 the good thing is that you that you are a software company and there are lots of software

1:11:02

investors Right? You're not trying to do something that is unknown or unproven, right? This is a niche lots of people

1:11:08

invested. This is businessto business SAS software. This is this is well-known territory. And there are thousands of

1:11:14

guys that do this. So your job is to research the hell out of them and then

1:11:19

split them into angels who you ask for small checks or angel groups because then you can go like to TCA venture

1:11:25

group and say I want I'm looking for 350,000 or something. uh because as a

1:11:30

group we'll pull checks of between 10 and 50 or 100 each and you can get a

1:11:36

group of six or eight guys or gals together to do 300, right? Um so but

1:11:41

that's what you need. You need a list of 100 or even 200 and and just figure out who you need to know before you get on

1:11:48

the phone or email them what do they like to invest in. And ideally what you want to do is find people that have

1:11:54

invested in things like this before. Find people who have made money in B2B

1:11:59

services or or made money in dumpsters. Like any guy who made his money in containers or dumpsters or portagons

1:12:06

would love you because you're going to make him look really smart. Right. Exactly. So right now right now I'm I'm

1:12:13

in due diligent with uh one big capital company. They ask very very deep

1:12:19

questions and they need more information back and forth. And there's a angel

1:12:26

investor in actually in Los Angeles. He's super interested. I sent him the whole data room. And there is a one guy

1:12:34

in London. He said he will raise me money for 5% success fee. And he he was

1:12:42

so excited because he said, "I know the exact investor that I'm going to get you

1:12:47

the million dollar in one check from them."

1:12:52

You know, you know how many email you know how many email and phone call how many email I sent since I start like a

1:13:00

month ago with my uh round. No, 4,000 email.

1:13:05

Good job. Okay, that's the right answer. Yeah. Yeah. No, good job. That that's what you have to do. I had a woman on

1:13:11

this show two or three years ago and she was so disappointed. She was from DC actually. I remember her and she was so

1:13:17

disappointed because she wasn't getting the reaction from investors that she wanted. And she was going on and on and finally I said, "Well, how many have you

1:13:22

sent out?" You know what she said? How many? Four. [laughter]

1:13:28

Four. 4,000. 4,000 email got me got me three reply only.

1:13:34

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That No, that's the right That's the right idea, L. Okay. Another angle for you. Where where are you from? You said you came from the

1:13:40

Middle East originally. Syria. Syria. Okay. Yeah. So, find rich Syrians

1:13:45

in America. Uh here here's the thing. uh

1:13:51

people who invest in startups and technology and softwares uh that's that's my personal uh you know

1:13:59

opinion they have a different mindset than other people like doctors engineers

1:14:06

uh uh you know in my community I'm the vice president of my community in the

1:14:11

DMV area but in my community they they

1:14:16

have a little bit close-minded about startup. They they want they want an actual thing like a buy a car and sell

1:14:22

it, buy a house and sell it, you know? But that's the wrong folks, right? You need to go, this is a research question

1:14:29

again. Who are the leading lights of Syria? The guys are maybe a generation older than you who came and came to

1:14:35

Silicon Valley. There've got to be a couple, right? Who some guys in software or somewhere. You maybe don't know them

1:14:40

yet, right? Yeah, of course. And network your way to find those people, right? or ask the um Syrian

1:14:46

consulate, you know, the commercial office. There's probably a commercial representative. We we don't have empathy yet here.

1:14:52

Yeah, I guess. Sorry. Yeah. No, no, we because we Syria just got liberated like two years ago. But

1:14:59

yeah, but yeah, still anyway uh I'm here right now. This is my country. I belong

1:15:04

to here. And uh uh you know, I I'm I'm thankful for

1:15:09

everything over here. like uh if you work hard you can make it

1:15:15

and I'm I'm going to I'm going to win no matter what even if I investor or not.

1:15:20

Well, this but this is the point is the same though. People will invest in you if they trust you and they will trust

1:15:27

you more if they understand the business or they understand you. And the business is obvious, right? Guys who made money

1:15:33

in dumpsters, they're going to love you. The people who understand you are going to be other immigrants from the Middle

1:15:38

East. maybe not Syria, but other folks who, you know, I don't know, Lebanon or, you know, Jordan or whatever. Um, and

1:15:46

there are got to be guys like that and women also out there or or nonprofits that bridge the countries. I mean,

1:15:52

there've got to be people there. And I would spend more time just sometime, not it's not the answer, but it's an answer.

1:15:58

If you haven't pulled that string yet, it's an opportunity for you. And you um

1:16:03

my next book is all about fundraising. Actually, I should promote that. I guess I'm working on this now. And one of the

1:16:09

keys is you find the diaspora of whatever you are, right? You are from here, whether it's cultural, religious,

1:16:15

racial, uh you're a vegetarian, you know, you love to skateboard, whatever it is, you find your people and they're

1:16:21

going to get you faster. And that's one of the best ways to accelerate what you're doing as opposed to finding

1:16:26

another middle-aged white guy in Silicon Valley who you have nothing in common with. And you know, you have to convince

1:16:31

me like because I don't know you, right? Did I convince you? Huh? Did I convince you? you. Yeah. No,

1:16:38

you're good. You're good. But it would be easier, right? If I was also from from Syria, right? Like I know

1:16:43

I know your grandfather, you know, like let's go. [laughter] It's it's not it's not working like this

1:16:49

anymore. Uh trust me, we are in 2026. It's totally different right now. But uh

1:16:56

so research, research, research about you know investors and all this stuff. But uh the last question and I will

1:17:02

leave you alone promise. Um, how can you help?

1:17:08

Yeah. Well, that's a good question. Thank you for asking. Right. That's the question. See what he did there, everybody? You got to ask, right? I just

1:17:14

posted a video the other day on our YouTube channel. The wrong question is, he asked the right question. The

1:17:20

question I get all the time is, "Will you invest?" Someone like Louis will talk to me for five or 10 minutes and

1:17:26

then they'll say, "Will you invest?" And what does that do to an investor? It scares us, right? We don't know you.

1:17:32

You never ask us to invest, but what you do ask is how can you help? Or even

1:17:37

better, Louie, is who do you know that might be interested? That's the question. Who do you know? Because every

1:17:44

investor, we know lots of people, right? And we are always trying to help or we we got other things to do. I could be

1:17:49

playing golf right now, right? Um but if you activate the mentor reflex,

1:17:55

who else do you know? Then we go into we want to solve problems just like you do. If you give me a problem to solve, that

1:18:01

makes me lean in. If you say, "Will you invest?" I lean back, right? I know.

1:18:06

So anyway, that's you get it. But um Okay. So, how can we help? Well, so first of all, startupconsil.org, right?

1:18:11

Come and have list your company and we'll try to publicize it. That's the main thing we can do. Um our newsletter

1:18:18

goes out to all kinds of people worldwide and we're trying to help people by showcasing you. So, if you

1:18:24

have a press release like you signed a new customer or you want to announce your raise or something like that, CNN

1:18:30

is not going to cover that, right? It's not going to get any attention, right? But we will give you the attention and

1:18:36

that's what we're trying to do is it's a publicity. It's content marketing platform essentially, right? So, that's one.

1:18:41

Um, then the uh Techost Angels uh is is a good opportunity. And then, yeah, I

1:18:48

would just email me some stuff. This is interesting company. I I'll I'm happy to think about it. Um, of course. Send me your email, please,

1:18:56

on private and I will do it. I'm going to tell you one funny story. One minute and then I will leave you.

1:19:02

It's got to be quick, though. We got other people. Yes. So, it's a long shot thing. A couple years ago in Virginia, I met

1:19:08

Shaquille O'Neal in uh in Hookar. And

1:19:13

because I came from no money and nobody helped me, so I know he do a lot of good stuff. So, I paid his bill. I paid his I

1:19:20

picked up his tab and I thanked him and I left. Yesterday I thought about it and I texted him on Instagram that you

1:19:27

remember me this this and this and he said, "Hell yeah." And now we we gonna

1:19:34

open the conversation. Maybe maybe God send him my way five or six years ago to

1:19:41

do and at that time I had $500 in my pocket only. I paid 300 for his tab. So,

1:19:47

oh my Louis gold. I'm not kidding. So, that that was the

1:19:53

investment for future maybe. Yes, I I'm writing that down. I might I

1:19:58

might use that story in my book. That is amazing. [laughter]

1:20:03

Okay, so I um sorry, let me write it down. Paid Shacks Bill. That's a great story.

1:20:11

That was worth a minute. Thank you. Um I have a mutual friend who is a friend of Shacks as well. So mention that story

1:20:18

when you email me and maybe they would be uh who's more of a startup guy may maybe there's a connection we can make

1:20:24

as well maybe maybe all right uh please send me your email I'll send you the the

1:20:32

whole data room with explanation everything you can best way to reach just do info at startupconsil.org

1:20:39

info or you can use the form on the website and that will get to me and we'll get back to you info@startupcounsil.org

1:20:46

og. Yeah. Okay. Well, that was awesome. Lovely to

1:20:52

meet you. All right. Very nice. Lu Alchem Alchemy. Okay. I'm looking forward to

1:20:58

hearing from Lou. What a great story. Did you guys hear that about Shaq? That's a bold move. And I recommend that. You got to get people's attention,

1:21:04

right? People sit around and they email, email, email. You really want to get somebody's attention? Send them flowers,

1:21:10

right? Send them chocolates. I don't know. Yeah, Brandon. Yes. Hell yeah. Talk about relationship building.

1:21:16

Totally. That was a boss move. [laughter] Especially the guy says he only had $500 in his in his world. He

1:21:23

said 300 of it because Shaq needed a drink. [laughter] Very nice. All right. Okay. So, we're in

1:21:30

almost an hour and a half in here. Let me I'm going to scroll up through the chat and uh address other folks here before we wrap up. Okay. Um

1:21:39

Oh, yeah. I got a bunch of questions here. Okay. So, any concerns? So, Wayfinder News says, "Are there any

1:21:45

concerns with creating a business structure as follows? Parent LLC with two to three DBA companies under that parent LLC." Um, well, I don't know

1:21:52

where you are in the world, uh, Wayfinder. Uh, so, and this is not legal advice. Um, and it could be very

1:21:59

different in other countries, but in my experience, which is not your experience, you should talk to a lawyer. Um,

1:22:06

maybe [laughter] the apparent LLC, it depends on what kind of LLC you're talking about. In my

1:22:12

experience, again, not legal advice. A single member LLC, you can do lots of stuff. If you have multiple members who

1:22:17

are other like co-owners of your LLC, that gets more complicated quickly because then you would need approval

1:22:22

from other folks to be doing other things, right? But assuming this is a single member pass through type LLC. You

1:22:28

can have two or three DBAs. Sure. Um, a DBA is just doing business as. It's not actually a legal entity in my

1:22:34

understanding. It just means that um you're John Smith and you have a

1:22:40

business called John Smith Plumbing and you have another business called uh uh Tacos on Tuesday and but all of those

1:22:46

are uh from John Smith LLC and when you get paid someone can pay you as Tacos on

1:22:53

Tuesday and it will you can deposit that check into the John Smith LLC bank account legally. So that is my

1:23:01

understanding. Again, not an expert. Uh, but I think that's uh Oh, you're in Seattle. Okay. Yeah. So, I think that

1:23:06

would apply. I don't know. You know, Washington might be different than California where I live and work mostly, but that kind of concept. A DBA isn't

1:23:13

really a separate company. It's just a um they literally in in the county I live in, they call it an FBN, a

1:23:19

fictitious business name. It's literally a fictitious name. Just a you're

1:23:24

pretending to be somebody else. Not pretending you are, but you're using a different brand name. I think that's fine. Um, but again, you should talk to

1:23:31

somebody who is an expert. Mary says, "I talked to I tried to pitch someone face

1:23:37

to face and their whole approach was rude and negative, so I gave up. What did I do wrong?" I'm sorry about that, Mary. Um, you know, investors are

1:23:45

perhaps a higher quotient than most people because most of them think that they're really smart and they have

1:23:51

some money and so they can afford to be dismissive. Um, I don't know what you

1:23:57

did wrong cuz I don't know you and I don't know the context, but you got to just keep trying. You heard the conversation with Louie just now. Uh,

1:24:05

he's pitched 4,000 people. 4,000 by email. That's different, right? It's

1:24:10

harder to pitch people face to face, but you're going to have to talk to probably hundreds of people. And a couple of them

1:24:16

are going to be jerks. And uh, you might think about what you did, try to get to

1:24:21

the point faster. That would really help. It would really help. As I was talking about earlier, this fox phrase

1:24:26

idea that I'm I'm uh advancing is explaining very clearly in one sentence

1:24:32

what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, and how much you make, and how often. That kind of thing. Like, if you

1:24:37

can just say, "Hi, I do this for these people. We make the money like this, and

1:24:42

we this is how much they pay, and we're doing we made this much progress so far." Is that something that you or your

1:24:49

friends might be interested in? that again you want to activate the mentor mode and try to get us helping you. If

1:24:56

you just try to pitch, it's it's you know, would you like that yourself? Like, you know, you're at a lunch or

1:25:01

something and somebody comes up and starts talking and you know that trying to sell you something essentially. Um,

1:25:08

you know, I'm not I don't know what you did. I'm not saying you did that, but it happens to me all the time. And it's a lot easier if you're just friendly and

1:25:13

say, "Hi, this is what I do, why we do it, how much money we make. Do you know anybody that's interested in that kind of thing?" And that lets me participate

1:25:22

and be helpful. Uh, Nikolai says, "What if you've been investing

1:25:28

start with a request to restart our investing?" Yeah, that's right, Nikolai. Um, this is what I was talking about a few minutes ago with John's question

1:25:35

about vesting. Uh, angels will not usually ask for

1:25:41

this, but anybody who has real money and a real legal team will probably ask the

1:25:48

founding team to revest their stock completely. Yeah. or at least like half

1:25:54

or threequarters of it, something, right? Uh that's standard terms in Silicon Valley. And like it sounds like

1:25:59

you're as shocked as I was [laughter] when I figured this out like 10 or 12 years ago, whenever. I was like, it

1:26:05

seems really unfair from the founders point of view, but you know, it's their money. Um so if that's what you need to

1:26:12

do, that sometimes that's what you need to do. Of course, their argument is that if you're really into this and you're as committed as you say you are, it should

1:26:17

make a difference because you're going to be here for three or four years, aren't you? Come on. Right? right? I'm giving you millions of dollars. You better be doing this. So, it shouldn't

1:26:24

be a problem. So, kind of kind of a a slap in the face in some ways, but just

1:26:30

business in other ways. So, yeah. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the better, you know. Um, oh, sorry. So,

1:26:37

Eric says, what? Eric has a comment on this. That would be something negotiate with your investor around. You don't have to agree, but they may make a reset

1:26:43

one of their acts. Yeah, well said, Eric. That thank you. That's a good way to put reset. That's that's how investors put it. That's a good

1:26:49

phrasing. Reset. uh you have all the stock but we're going to reset you because now you're starting over with

1:26:54

all of our capital and Eric phrased that very well. Hares says

1:27:01

I'm a founder of an India based IT company software hub. We provide software development AI automation digital transformation services. What

1:27:07

would you recommend is the most practical way for an Indian IT company to enter the US market and acquire its

1:27:13

first US clients? Okay. So, um well, there are lots and lots of Indian

1:27:19

IT companies. I get messages, I don't know, two or three a day, right? So, um

1:27:27

I hope you're really good and I'm glad you showed up here. I'm happy to help. Uh I do a lot of work in India and and a

1:27:34

lot of uh Indian friends and so forth. Um so, I wish you the best of luck.

1:27:39

You're going to need to differentiate yourself somehow. I don't have a quick answer but there are tons of guys like

1:27:44

you doing this Harish so direct sales

1:27:49

yes um you if you if you can sell from India that will obviously keep your

1:27:55

costs way down so I would certainly start there see what you can do by LinkedIn or email or Instagram or start

1:28:01

a podcast or something right just to reach people acquiring attention is the hard part these days I'm presuming that

1:28:07

your work is good I guess I would try networking from existing and customers, right? Um, incentivize them somehow to

1:28:14

tell their friends. Maybe you can make a deal, some kind of a affiliate relationship or referral program. And

1:28:22

most importantly, uh, I think you need some kind of differentiator. Just another IT company is not a thing. I

1:28:29

mean, it's a it's a very hard road and I would like it to be easier for you. So,

1:28:34

I would say um, uh, think of something differentiated. give yourself a crazy name or a crazy logo or uh fly over here

1:28:42

and throw some crazy parties, you know, get people talking about you. Uh which

1:28:48

most of which cost money, although a name doesn't cost much money, right? Call call badass it guys in the world.comble,

1:28:57

right? And there was this book like 15 or 20 years ago that I thought was amazing. I didn't read the book, but I

1:29:02

just remember it and here I'm gonna tell you about it. Right? We're still talking about it 10 or 20 years later cuz the name of the book was a heartbreaking

1:29:10

work of staggering genius or something like that, right? Just stuck with me

1:29:15

like wow okay, right? A heartbreaking work of staggering genius like that's

1:29:20

memorable and I don't even know what the book was about but I remember it. Uh so I would look at yourself and your

1:29:27

branding as a inexpensive way to differentiate and then yeah if you can um hire local representation sure but

1:29:33

that's going to be very expensive. So I think you need to think about a ladder in terms of your distribution strategies and your ways to attract attention and

1:29:40

the easiest of those is branding and public relations as in terms of being the most uh cost-effective I think and

1:29:47

get your social media game really going because you can do all that from India and then gradually work your way towards

1:29:53

US-based representation but on a cost-effective basis and the key of

1:29:58

customer referrals is probably the one that's going to unlock the most onshore US customers for you.

1:30:06

Hope that's helpful. And anybody, hey, you know, I don't have all the answers here. Those of you who are watching, go ahead and please chime in. I I'm I'm

1:30:12

just the facilitator here. I love like the way Eric helped uh you know, answer that question Nikolai had about the

1:30:18

founder reset so forth. Uh Nikolai says, "Good job on this project." That's right. Exactly, Nikolai. Yeah, that's

1:30:23

pretty impressive, right? Okay. Uh Brandon says, "Here, same problems here

1:30:28

with an exceptional job acquiring customer." Yeah, exactly right. No, I love the people that dropped this. I learn more than they do, right? It's

1:30:35

this is fantastic. And building this network, right? We all need to help each other. This the pie only gets bigger if

1:30:40

we help each other. The politicians are going to do this for us. Uh Eric says, uh,

1:30:47

yeah, he can, right? He had to head out, but thank you. Yeah, nice to meet you, Eric. Oh, Brandon, this is excellent

1:30:53

question. Um, or suggestion. I mean, this is for Louie. I think those

1:30:58

targeted emails, less can be more. Yes, that's exactly right. And I ran out of time to say that 4,000 emails from

1:31:03

Louie. I would rather see 400 emails with, you know, 10x the amount of research behind each one and make the

1:31:10

emails personal and uh connecting to the person's background and making the pitch, you know, in the context of, hey,

1:31:17

I saw that you invested in that or I know that your personal history is this or we both went to the same school or

1:31:23

we, you know, we both love, you know, water skiing or whatever it is. And the

1:31:28

more of those dots that you can overlap, the better. Uh, and make it personal.

1:31:33

And those will hit a lot harder and a lot faster. And again, not necessarily asking for a pitch for an investment,

1:31:39

but asking who they know that might help. That mentoring is a key thing. Great point, Brandon. Thank you.

1:31:46

Hares is back. Uh, oh, I just did answer that. So, I just

1:31:51

hadn't gotten to it. Arish, no worries. Happy to help. Um, okay.

1:31:58

investors. This is Eugene. Eugene heard you mentioned investors usually want to see revenue first. So I because I don't

1:32:04

really need funding already built get the first commercial pilot customer pilot. Do investors ever get involved by

1:32:10

investing their time, network, and introductions instead of primarily investing money? Yes, absolutely.

1:32:15

Eugene, thank you for that. Um I'd love to hear where you're from and how you heard about this, but absolutely. I was

1:32:21

going to talk about this with Louis if you're still here. uh and Nikolai too or anybody all of you honestly is the idea

1:32:27

of a board of adviserss. A board of adviserss is a very common concept in Silicon Valley, which is people that

1:32:34

have expertise or connections that can help you and you give them a little bit of stock that vests over time based on

1:32:40

maybe some milestones and they agree to work for you in a

1:32:45

small way to help make those connections or sales introductions or recruit

1:32:51

people, you know, as key hires or uh get you invited to speak at a conference or

1:32:57

raise money, you All those things, right? All of those are totally legit. And uh absolutely, Eugene, that that's a

1:33:03

standard thing in a board of adviserss. I recommend using a document called the fast, which is the founder advisor

1:33:11

services template, I think it's called. You can Google it. It's from the founder institute. uh the founder institute

1:33:16

publishes the fast and it's a um it's a document that's free that will give you

1:33:22

some guidelines of how much stock you should give investors or not investors adviserss sorry adviserss uh because

1:33:29

it's really hard right if you go to some smart person that you respect say hey will you help us and they say well I want 8% of the company like you don't

1:33:34

have any idea right is 8% a lot or too too much too little right it's it's way

1:33:40

too much that would be insane um but the fast has a matrix

1:33:45

that says your company is at this kind of stage and the founder is going to spend this amount of time and therefore

1:33:52

maybe you give them half a percent sort of idea like and you can and it's negotiable right if I do uh when I do a

1:33:58

founder advisor services agreement advisory board thing I usually ask for triple what they do what they suggest

1:34:06

because I do this full-time this is all I do right um but for most typical adviserss it's somebody in your industry

1:34:14

who like like in Louis's case, you know, some guy who runs a dumpster company and knows a lot of people. He might, you

1:34:20

know, you could just do this with a few phone calls once a month and introduce you to his friends, you know, that kind of thing. It's just a very small amount,

1:34:26

right? Um, and that is absolutely, Eugene, a legit way to go. And I would

1:34:31

suggest that everyone watching this think about doing that kind of thing. Um, oh, quick pitch to like and

1:34:37

subscribe, please, if you haven't already. Tell your friends. I'm going to get do this more often. I haven't done one in a while. Um, but it looks like

1:34:43

people are into it. I'm happy to help. And Joe is back. How would you approach

1:34:48

preceeded round if you have revenue and a signed contract where you launched the pilot but still consider yourself preede

1:34:54

despite a contract with a global company? Uhhuh. Okay. So I I think what you're

1:34:59

saying there, Joe, is that you're pre because you haven't raised money even though you have a business going. And

1:35:05

that's fine. Preed mostly is in reference to the funding context. So I

1:35:11

think you are preede until you've raised uh seed from real investors and often

1:35:17

times people will still call themselves preede even if they've raised money like from friends and family that is is

1:35:24

absolutely you have raised money but it hasn't been from professionals so you haven't in the sense been validated by

1:35:29

institutional investors so I think you can call yourself preede as long as you want to the names of the phases don't

1:35:37

matter so much and they're very squishy anyway Okay, for software

1:35:43

preede is very different say from medtech or hardware because medtech takes years to develop and they're

1:35:49

always going to be preede essentially until they get through FDA clearance and licensed or bought by Johnson and

1:35:55

Johnson or something. They're preede like forever technically uh but they may have raised a bunch of money along the

1:36:01

way because they had to. And same thing if you're developing hardware or deep tech or space tech or something like that it takes a ton of money. So preede

1:36:08

is more of a state of mind. It's it's more shorthand for how much money you're raising. So I'd say your preede as long

1:36:14

as you're raising it depends on the industry, but less than

1:36:19

$500,000 in the US maybe something like that 300,000 something like that. So the term doesn't matter so much. I wouldn't

1:36:25

be worried about that. It's much more informative to an investor rather than coming up and saying, "Hi, we're a

1:36:30

preede company." Come up and say, "We're raising $150,000." And that will tell me right away kind of

1:36:37

how big your company is, right? So numbers are more effective than labels, I think.

1:36:43

Um, Brandon, great, nice to see you. Yes. Um, and Satcha says, "Great session."

1:36:51

Um, and thanks for your suggestions from Harish and Mary

1:36:57

uh, as well. Um, filmmaker. Oh, filmmaker. That's why you're having trouble, Mary. Films are really hard. No

1:37:06

tech investor is going to be interested. You need to go and find film conferences. Do not even try to talk to

1:37:11

venture capital. That's probably why they were rude. Like I have no interest in film investing either because I personally I lived in worked in

1:37:17

Hollywood for years so I understand that business. I I won't I don't want anything to do with it. [laughter] So, you probably need to do what I was

1:37:24

suggesting to Louie and a lot of other people is do a lot more research on who the investors are that you're targeting

1:37:29

because they u most people that like would be watching this show or going to a venture capital type conference are

1:37:36

not going to have any interest in films. It's it's just a different market, right? It's just a different thing. So,

1:37:41

um you do yourself a favor and do a little more research and you will uh you'll get better results, I think. So,

1:37:49

I think we're wrapping up here. This has been a lovely session almost oh man that went longer than I expected but

1:37:54

[laughter] I love chatting with you guys and uh I would encourage you to come and join the startup council. You come and

1:38:00

sign up for the free email newsletter list if you haven't already. It's a useful and u informative set of services

1:38:07

there and we built them and it would be free except that when I do it for free uh people a bunch of knuckleheads show

1:38:13

up. So it's very cost-effective low cost as we can make it and we're always looking for sponsors to help support this work. So, if you are watching this

1:38:19

and know someone that might support our work accelerating early stage founders uh across the United States and

1:38:24

worldwide, be happy to hear from you. If you want to work with me directly, I do carve out some time in my schedule. It's

1:38:31

very expensive. I'll warn you, but you can come and uh you know, we'll have a call together or I can review your pitch

1:38:37

deck or that kind of things. But again, very expensive just to manage my time. Sorry, only have so much time today

1:38:42

because I need to finish that book. Like I said, um not that one, this one. This book is

1:38:50

coming. Yeah. Uh so that's all for today and hope to see you all again and thank

1:38:55

you very much for liking and commenting, sharing and subscribing, all that nonsense. And I hope to see you all again soon. Best of luck with your

1:39:01

startup wherever you are in the world. Thanks for joining me. I'm Scott Fox from startupsel.org.

1:39:06

Here to serve you onward and upwards. See you next time. Thanks very much.