Angel Investor Startup Fundraising Office Hours Replay

Our free Startup Fundraising Video Office Hours help early stage company founders 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 lunchtime session hosted by our CEO, Scott Fox, was May 28. 

To watch the new Startup Office Hours replay click here.

[Or scroll down to READ the TRANSCRIPT.]

Startup Founder Discussion Questions This Month

Watch for friendly, free, angel investor feedback on real questions from real startup founders, plus entrepreneur questions about raising money from angel and venture capital investors. Enjoy all that and more in this free video edition of Startup Office Hours from StartupCouncil.org.

Watch the replay for 5 startup #founder pitches, and the expert #investor feedback they got, including:

• a nursing aftercare SAAS startup

• a new Google Flutter competitor

• a $200MM semiconductor startup seeking angel investors

• a live radio network/platform

• a no-code apps solution

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

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

And see a complete TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

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

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

You can watch LIVE here later this month on June 25:

https://www.youtube.com/scottfox

https://www.facebook.com/clickmillionaire

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

Subscribe to the YouTube channel here!

Submit your Question in Advance >> Win Free MasterMinds Workshop Tickets:

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

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

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

MasterMinds Startup Fundraising Office Hours TRANSCRIPT for May 28, 2024:

0:00

startups your dreams your Visions for changing the world maybe making some money along the way we're going to spend

0:05

the next hour an hour and a half with uh investor pitch practice and questions from start Founders from all over the

0:11

world we've got hundreds of people RSVP today so I don't know if we're going to get to everybody I tried to print out all the questions and they got a little

0:18

ahead of me my my printer literally ran out of toner we'll get to as many as we can and of course I'll be turning on the

0:25

chat room soon too to welcome you in to talk to each other because that's really what we're doing here is building communities building networks that can

0:31

help you accelerate your startup visions and like I said help improve the world and maybe make some money too so welcome

0:37

to Startup office hours this is a monthly program that I do here from the luxury of my office inther California

0:43

it's lunchtime here in Southern California and uh so I'm turning on my camera to see what I can do to help you

0:48

I'm a Serial internet entrepreneur I've been at this a long time I've founded and built a lot of big companies small

0:54

companies well more small companies really and a couple big ones I've written these books over here if you haven't seen my book the three in the

1:00

middle are in English the rest are foreign translations so uh from all over the world Japanese Chinese Russian um

1:07

all kinds of different languages so if you're here from some other part of the world welcome happy to have you here I'm

1:12

working on some new books too stay tuned on that we'll get to that this summer um but I'm here today to help uh share with

1:19

you the benefits of my experience which have uh benefited me personally and my family as well as created some cool

1:25

products and services that help the rest of the world today I spend most of my time well doing stuff like this I'm mostly an angel investor and I review

1:32

lots of uh pitches and decks probably thousands of them over the last few years and I'm here to try to share The

1:39

Insider techniques and perspective that investors have on fundraising I've been

1:44

running office hours like this on and off for at least 10 years and as the audience has grown I've noticed that the

1:50

focus is almost uh well let's say 70% on fundraising that's the biggest hurdle

1:57

that early stage Founders have and I have a real Mission as you tell by all the books I wrote and stuff I'm really trying to help people get up to the next

2:03

level I came from a background with not a lot and with no connections and these days I'm kind of an Insider so this show

2:10

is about helping you find your way inside the club that makes money through digital Innovation so we're going to be

2:16

talking mostly about high-tech Ventures which are the ones that grow the fastest and that's not because there aren't

2:21

thousands of good ideas maybe millions of good ideas in the world but it's the High-Tech high growth ones that grow the

2:27

fastest and therefore attract venture Capital money and that's where most of the questions I get are around and

2:32

that's mostly what we'll be talking about today how can you find investors how can you meet investors build relationships raise money what sort of

2:39

capital structure should you uh use to attract investors what needs to go in your deck what needs to not go in your

2:45

deck or your pitch we we do some practice like that as well so we've got um two channels going on here basically

2:51

one's the public one well actually there's several channels but there's public and private so the public is what most of you are watching so we're live

2:58

on YouTube on uh LinkedIn in live on Facebook on Blog Talk Radio and of course the archived editions of previous

3:04

shows are available in all those places as well but there's also a backstage chat which is already full and those are

3:10

for folks who have RSVP and that's what I was talking about these printouts I've got a bunch of people who were smart enough to read the fine print on the uh

3:17

on the uh event listings and uh wrote in early with um with questions and pitches

3:23

that they wanted to practice so we're going to be getting to those folks first and I can see backstage I can see people like uh Brett and vemar and Melo and uh

3:33

Lydia and James and Kay and Henry and Chris so if you folks are GNA want to

3:39

participate um you need to turn your cameras on I'm talking to Brett and Kay and some of the others who James um and

3:46

I'm going to bring you all on stage in a couple minutes or on camera I should say and uh we'll just talk through who wants

3:51

to talk about what to figure out what our agenda is today and for those of you who AR I know as soon as I turn on the

3:58

chat room everybody how do I get backst the backstage is full for now so when folks come on camera they're going to

4:04

ask their questions practice their pitch then they will leave and this is for you guys backstage you're gonna hopefully

4:09

then turn off your camera and go and watch on YouTube or LinkedIn so we can let other people backstage that's kind of how this works there's only room for

4:15

10 at a time backstage uh and we've got um you know dozens and dozens of people tuning in so far okay so let me see what

4:23

I've missed um uh hopefully you all can hear me and see me I guess the backstage folks yeah I guess you can you're your

4:29

turn can anybody wave at me thank you Lydia okay cool all right so that's working I often forget to turn things on

4:35

to get so excited to be talking to you so um all right so we're going to be here do this and then uh I introduced

4:42

myself that's good oh I so let me start with a couple caption updates so we have

4:48

a couple qualifications so okay well first of all that's me hi um some of my

4:53

background and uh particularly the reason I do this I guess I should say for a moment is I'm particularly

4:58

interested in helping people who are not already insiders make more money right I'm interested in finding people who are

5:04

like I used to be who were maybe uh firsttime Founders or maybe they're immigrants or minorities or women or

5:11

people who don't get quite the same attention and are underappreciated by the existing capital structure so that's

5:17

really what we're doing here of course white guys are welcome too I'm a white guy so we're doing this for everybody um

5:23

but we're happy especially happier if you're here um if you're from an underrepresented group because that's who needs a little extra boost and

5:29

that's why I'm doing this so also need to point out that this show is about fundraising and a lot of Technical and

5:35

um specific topics but this is not qualified legal advice hold on I'm

5:40

trying to find that disclaimer put that up just to make it official uh where's there we go this is not qualified legal

5:47

or financial advice this is just friendly uh lunchtime conversation with some guy you met on the internet and

5:53

that's what we're doing today so if you have real issues which I know all of you do all entrepreneurs have issues no doubt about that if you have real uh

6:00

specific problems for your business we're going to kind of do overview conversations but you should absolutely talk to your own qualified legal and tax

6:07

and accounting and uh mental health professionals to get help with the specifics okay this is just kind of for

6:14

fun and directional Trends to point you hopefully in the right direction also this session like every month is being

6:20

recorded and will be online so don't say anything stupid don't say anything too confidential all of this again is going

6:26

to be shared and the idea is to get everybody together and uh meet each other and share information but only up

6:32

to a point right you don't want to give away your secret sauce and this will be archived on LinkedIn so if you missed this uh or you want to see previous

6:39

episodes uh you can did I say LinkedIn I meant YouTube It's archived on YouTube on our YouTube channel so if you're not

6:44

there already please go ahead and visit that and like And subscribe etc etc all right so and that's I guess that's our

6:51

only ask here we're doing a lot of uh sharing as much expertise as I have but if you're watching this uh please

6:57

comment link subscribe all that stuff because that's what drives the algorithm and there aren't too many investors I

7:03

know like myself who do this and give away this advice essentially for free so if you think this is a good idea and

7:08

like to support our work then please like And subscribe like I said this is by the way this is a service of the

7:13

startup Council startup Council here this is an organization that I've started specifically to do this and to help Founders around the world and you

7:19

can go to startups council.org and if you're not yet you should go get on our uh mailing list and I'm trying to find

7:27

that URL for you you you can join and sign up there's seven different mailing lists now seven that all address

7:34

different holes that I as an entrepreneur have seen in the market and they're all trying to help you

7:41

guys there it is um trying to help you guys so we have mailing lists specifically that um introduce new

7:48

investors we have uh mailing lists that host events virtual events so you don't have to live in in San Francisco to go

7:54

to the events we have mailing lists of of startups where people like you maybe who are trying to reach out and have

8:01

investors find them we have um etc etc um ways for you to publicize yourselves

8:06

and meet investors those are the these are um essentially nonprofit businesses that I'm trying to build community

8:11

services to help all of you guys so go there and that's kind of the Gateway into all of that and I guess since I've

8:17

got this Chiron right here this is a cool one to see where did it go just a second the national startups directory

8:24

this is cool where did it go here this one okay so this is what we're calling our sponsor today this is the ntion

8:31

here's the well that's the business card for it but the national startups directory the camera won't focus all

8:36

right this is a directory of you of startups and what we're trying to do is get all hundreds of startups in one

8:43

place in a standardized listing why so investors can find you right that's the problem when you're a founder and I've

8:49

been a Founder nobody knows you're there so you got to get out there and we're trying to create a centralized place

8:54

where you all can list and you can literally um I think it's free right now that code you can see is literally free

8:59

for a year or something like that and even then it's really low cost we're just trying to cover costs with this stuff all right so that's our game plan

9:07

for today okay who's with me I hope you're all with me um and I'm going to turn on the chat in a minute it's uh

9:12

people are chatting in there we'll get to that in a second but first I want to invite a bunch of our backstage folks on

9:17

on camera and we're going to try to figure out what we're going to talk about today because I have some ideas

9:22

but I don't know who all actually showed up and we'll see who's going to join us and what they want to talk about Okay so

9:29

all right so we've got 10 people backstage so everybody who wants to come on camera turn on your camera looks like you guys are listening what a great

9:35

crowd we have okay so we're going to bring on Brett and valdemar and mzo and a bunch of other folks and everybody

9:40

just hang on a second and we're to hold on there I gonna we're gonna have to is

9:47

that you vemar who somebody yeah okay vemar sorry we got to turn you off that you've got your

9:53

microphone or something crazy feedback my friend I'm sorry that's going to hurt everybody's ears okay and here comes

9:58

some other f folks hi guys nice to see you and Henry oh here Henry Henry's a local good to see you Henry and uh James

10:07

and there's somebody else really loud who's that I'm sorry you guys gonna have to work on your audio okay and Chris

10:14

okay we got bunch of people hi um if we can try a different layout here get it

10:21

there we see people a little better okay cool all right well that's what we got so far and then I missed who did I not

10:28

bring on Jesse hey Jesse you want to angle your camera I can only see your forehead well there you are hi that must

10:34

be Jesse and if you're not talking can you mute for a second let's just see who

10:39

who's giving us trouble here Vore will try you again yeah sorry vemar yeah there's

10:46

you're gonna happy to have you put something in the chat but are you guys hearing that too or is it just me there's kind of like this airplane noise

10:53

yeah okay okay sorry Vore nothing personal happy to chat with you and I know you wrote in too so we'll try to get to your question okay so this part

10:59

of the of the show is just a simple kind of quick introduction so I'd like to just go around each of you just give me the 30 second version of what you'd like

11:07

to talk about and I have your notes so we can elaborate um but if you um just give me the 30- second version and then

11:12

I can figure out kind of a coherent order to the show and then everybody else knows what we're going to talk about as well so let's start here if we

11:19

don't mind uh Henry nice to see you can you unmute and just give me the 30 second what you what your question or pitch is about today well I want to I

11:27

wanted to pitch a one minute pitch today I didn't do it last time so that's the main thing I wanted to do easy okay I

11:33

remember last okay Henry great nice to see you so that's our friend Henry and I'm gonna let him gonna turn your camera

11:39

off there Henry just for a second and um there okay all right give a little more

11:46

space for the rest of you and this next gentleman I don't know your face Chris is that Chris hi

11:53

Chris looks like you need to unmute Chris hi hi SC hi everyone good morning well it's morning here and Sydney

12:00

Australia excellent nice good day good day uh this is my first attendance and I

12:07

really um I've got quite a few ideas swirling around in my head I've founded been a co-founder of uh some

12:14

quantitative hedge funds but very small ones in the past this time I'm looking to do something on my own um and yeah I

12:23

don't have any backing at the moment so and then it's not necessarily hedge fund related but it's um these

12:30

ideas uh related they're quantitative so machine learning um that's my background

12:37

okay what's your hold on Chris Chris what's your question I just need to table cont is is it possible to raise

12:42

funds from Angel Investors with just a pitch deck so just conceptual um what are the key key ingredients to success

12:49

at the conceptual stage that's a great question and we will definitely cover that so I will get back to you thank you

12:55

nice to see you thanks for getting up early uh okay so then next up looks like

13:00

um the names are hiding from me Melo is that right that's one of you not both of you right are you are you like a group

13:07

you're a rock band or something yes we are yeah we're together hi guys what's

13:13

on your mind yeah so we would like to practice our pitch okay cool well that

13:19

was easy um and where are you guys from Amsterdam the Netherlands excellent we just opened a Meetup Group in Amsterdam

13:25

is that why you saw us did you see it on meet up I got it all right excellent all right well we will have you guys on in a

13:31

couple minutes as well and just for everybody that's interested in pitching the pitch format here is pretty simple it's just two minutes no slides or up to

13:39

two minutes doesn't have to be two minutes but we keep them short and it's more like the experience of pitching rather than the full indepth of the

13:45

pitch right so we can talk about pitches separately but the practice is more just kind of to give you a little bit of stage fright and some in a friendly

13:51

environment and feedback so two minutes or less Audio Only and and then we'll move on and we'll get feedback and

13:57

you'll get feedback from the chat room as well all right next up so that will be Melo and then this next gentleman

14:04

here in the yellow shirt his name is k hi yes that's me good to see you uh I'm

14:10

K I'm founder at Universal informatics and we are based in lahabra in Orange

14:16

County so we're not that far uh the product is universal UI makes it

14:21

significantly cheaper to develop app apps and Services I am here to practice my pitch but I had a pitch deck I

14:29

prepare for two-minute pitch but I'm happy to try okay that's exactly right that's that's the spirit so let's do

14:35

that and um yeah we don't have time for full pitches but the two-minute thing if you're willing we'll do it and you don't have to go first that way you can see

14:41

how other people do if you'd like or you can go first to get it over with either way absolutely we're friendly either way cool well nice to meet you K and then

14:48

next up looks like I'm just moving real Hightech here I'm moving across the screen slowly James hey

14:56

James greetings greetings uh Scott I've uh we're local I'm local in Orange

15:02

County I think we've met before in Irvine at your evening Gatherings thank you for those yeah yeah I reached out uh

15:10

I'm uh may be a very early stage here so I won't don't have anything to pitch but

15:16

we I am looking for uh a route to pathway into the local I would say

15:23

rocket and Aerospace uh businesses in Southern California we have a a vision

15:29

sensor that's a edge Computing device that's uh a

15:34

quality uh aspect of metal additive manufacturing is pretty widely used in

15:41

all the new uh relativity space rocket lab okay those guys good cool that's

15:48

great we'll talk about that you you wrote in so I had time to think about that which I much appreciate okay we'll get back to James and then we've got

15:56

left here um Jesse hey Jesse where are you from Jessie hi thank you yeah thanks

16:01

um my name is Jesse Heisler work with a chip startup in Dallas I'm based in Huntington Beach um it's a it's a

16:09

semiconductor startup I like to practice my pitch okay also did lots of pitches today okay great nice to meet you and

16:17

then we've got L and last but not least is Lydia hello Lydia where are

16:24

you yes my name is Lydia and hello everyone um I'm calling in from Virginia

16:30

okay and um I'm the founder of the lead Communications uh lead is the the first

16:38

three initials of my name lyd Communications and bottom line is I GNA

16:45

do what I plan to do is more of a call center setup kind

16:51

of what's your question um funding is the problem so I want to

16:59

be able to be Cent with um how I can pitch to investors you know what the

17:07

protocol is and what I need to do and what I need to say how I have to say it

17:12

and then go ahead and practice and if you have any um other um you know any

17:22

other suggestions okay you know as to Angel funding and Angel Investors and you know

17:29

all that good stuff so I'm pretty much here to learn and grow fair enough well nice to meet you thanks for tuning nice

17:35

to meet you all too and we will definitely that's you're right in our sweet spot we will be covering those kind of topics and uh helping everybody

17:43

learn especially because they sounds like you're GNA see a bunch of examples we got a bunch of people pitching so you'll see how this actually works in a

17:49

in a uh in a real life live ammunition situation I guess not live ammunition nobody's writing checks today just for

17:56

in case the SEC is listening this is not officially pitch practice these are not all qualified to credited investors this

18:01

is for entertainment purposes only still educational L all right so cool so let's we're going to get on that let me just

18:07

look at my notes um let me just tell you about something that um our friends from Amsterdam reminded me I wanted to tell

18:13

you guys where I have a Chiron for each of these but I have lots of chirons so let me find this basically the startup

18:21

Council come on where is this well it's kind of like that I

18:27

already told you you should go there but the startup council is worldwide um oh here's a good one actually let me put

18:33

this up um if you're not if you're on LinkedIn you should come and join us um follow us there we'd appreciate it you

18:39

can find me personally I'll put my uh my URL in the chat later um you can find me

18:45

personally as well I get kind of overwhelmed on LinkedIn so I can't necessarily keep up but I'm happy to link and you know the algorithms um

18:52

follow they show you who you connect with right so if you'd like more we can keep in touch better that way but what I

18:58

wanted to tell you about is come on where is this this is the best part of the show

19:05

right where you guys watch me scroll and get confused hang on I swear it's here I saw

19:12

it there okay so um meetups so um the startup council is a global organization

19:19

we started here in Southern California as you've heard um and we have thousands of members here in Southern California

19:25

and I did that primarily to spin up the local community here then we've expanded uh once we figured out how to help the

19:30

local community we've expanded online like I said startup council.org there's seven different newsletters a bunch of different websites all lowcost or free

19:38

designed to help the ecosystem and to help you honestly the thing I'm trying to talk about here is meetups we have

19:44

meetup groups in um I think it's 48 cities now in at least 10 different

19:49

countries um about 75,000 members worldwide so if you are in a city where

19:54

you haven't joined our Meetup Group please go do that of course 70 you know 50 cities sounds like a lot but there's a lot more cities than that in the world

20:01

but all the major Financial capitals and um that are english- speaking anyway um

20:06

and uh you can join and like our folks friends in Amsterdam they heard about that because we opened one in Amsterdam

20:11

recently and there's two things for you that may benefit you in this specifically well one is obviously that

20:17

you can get alerts for um our events but the other is that if you have events in

20:23

your town and we have them we have meetups in in Cape Town and Manila and Philadelphia Chicago Vancouver Sydney I

20:30

all over the place uh Las Vegas Miami uh if you have events in your town that are startup related and these are legit

20:38

events not you're not trying to scam people or sell nonsense right but if you're trying to honestly help Founders

20:43

you can come to this site and of course you can join the meetups but you can also submit your events and we will

20:49

publicize them back in your town right so if you're in Chicago and you're planning a pitch session or you're in

20:55

Milan um or London and you're getting something together and you want some help publicizing it to help your local

21:01

ecosystem you can visit those meetups and send submit the event details to us

21:06

and we'll put them on our meetups in those cities as well so even if you don't have a mailing list in some of

21:11

these towns we will uh give you ours essentially right so trying to help you find more people and build your

21:18

community and then so that's I think that's cool I don't know anybody else is doing that um and then also the secret

21:24

plan here it's not so secret I guess if I say it on YouTube but U for my next books I'm going to hopefully out and visit all those meetups in person and

21:30

we'll talk about the books and um bring some of the uh expertise that we shared today to your cities so that's uh

21:36

startup council.org meetups and you can go check that out and we're there to help like with everything else we do so hopefully that

21:43

sounded interesting all right now I'm going to turn on the chat room and uh see if anybody else is here with us I

21:48

know there are obviously but um so if you are in the chat room we'd like to see you you're welcome to say hello and

21:54

we're going to have our friends start pitching and doing questions in a second here um and the uh there we go so that's

22:01

popping in and let me just say hello to people there and if you're coming in um uh to the chat room please let us know

22:08

where you're from that's always fun at least for me to see and um Alex uh let's see there's Alex hey Alex nice to see

22:15

you and uh Andre thank you for helping moderate yes Steve right uh we only have so much St space backstage and we will

22:22

open that up as people ask their questions and pitch and leave and then you can come in given uh how much time

22:27

we have of course um so hello Carlos hello Andre hi Chi hi um um let's see

22:36

William okay there's a question William has hopefully can get back to that angel thank you for the sound check Angel

22:42

andh Alex and uh Lebanese now in Ottawa okay cool all right and now that the

22:48

chat room's on I'm sure a bunch more of you are going to pop in and join that as well so the point of the chat room is that you can meet each other um you can

22:54

also offer feedback so if somebody asks a question or gives a pitch you please share your expertise as well I don't

23:01

have all the answers I'm just here trying to convene and and moderate right so there's a lot more expertise in the

23:06

group mind that is the audience here then in between these ear so please go ahead and contribute and but via the

23:12

chat room and we'd love to hear from you and the founders who are pitching and asking questions would love to have your expertise as well so if you know people

23:19

you can introduce them to or um there's something about their pitch you think could be improved etc etc that's what the chat room is for and please go ahead

23:25

and post your LinkedIn uh URLs in there in fact I said I was goingon to and here's mine if you want to connect on

23:31

LinkedIn and uh happy to uh welcome you please do put a quick note and just say you know I I was there on your uh

23:38

startup office hours so that I know who you are because I get lots of spammers and scammers and um we try to filter out

23:43

to keep the knuckle hoods up okay so next up we're going to have let's see let me look at my list let's see Pitch

23:51

questions pitch pitch questions okay so so far of the uh let's see here of the

23:57

bunch of people that we talked to about half or pitches and half looked like questions about fundraising which is

24:03

about what I expected so I think maybe why don't we um Henry if your game let's

24:08

give Henry a shot um because I know he's done this before he's literally done it on stage with me uh at an event I hosted

24:15

nearby last year and um and he can give the rest of you an example so let me find Henry and then we'll do a couple

24:22

minutes of that and then I think maybe we'll alternate questions and pitches and where' Henry go okay

24:28

there he is hey Henry that sound good sounds good okay excellent all right so

24:34

let me just reiterate for everybody else what Henry's going to do is like a two-minute pitch and um and you have a

24:39

lot of background noise see I guess you're on speaker so it's okay but if it gets worse yeah we're gonna yeah it's

24:46

quiet here okay maybe next time you want to get a a mic or something as opposed to the open air thing but I think it's

24:51

okay for today but just warning you um okay so what Henry's going to do is a minute or two of pitch just verbal and

24:57

he's gonna try to address this is part of Lydia and other people's questions he's going to try and Henry knows some of this I think he prob this will

25:03

probably be okay um but he's going to try to address uh the problem and

25:09

solution and then how they make money like those are the kind of the three simplest points what we don't need is

25:14

your life story and it's got to be quick in a minute or two and in fact the first 30 seconds are the most important

25:19

because that's when people are paying attention if they don't understand what you're doing in the first 30 seconds or

25:24

so we're going to fall asleep so um or or play on our phones more likely right

25:30

so okay so that's enough there and let's hear what Henry has to say today is this GW apps your your same company correct

25:38

excellent okay so I've heard this before so I'm gonna be really hard on it no I'm not so actually I thought it was a one

25:44

minute pitch so it's on the short side okay that's fine so hi I'm Henry I'm a

25:49

co-founder of GW apps and we provide a noode application platform to help medium and small businesses digitize

25:56

their operation and build custom application the problem today is that too many small businesses are behind on

26:03

the digital journey and they're still using spreadsheet to manage their business data it is very inefficient so

26:09

we designed G GW apps with two things two key points in mind first make it very easy to get started and build

26:15

simple application that is key because otherwise people give up and they just look at other alternative but at the

26:22

same time we offer a lot of advanced feature in our platform so as they learn the platform and build simp application

26:29

they're able to develop more complex application and really digitize the operation in fact our client tell us

26:35

that we offer the best combination of e ofuse and advanced feature which is why

26:40

probably we have a 97% retention rate uh the nood market is growing 35% annually

26:48

uh expected to be at90 billion by 2029 it's a great opportunity for people with

26:54

a good product uh we're actually adding today some AI feature to make it even

26:59

easier to uh use the product so I'd love to have 1550 minutes of your time to discuss more this opportunity in more

27:05

detail thank you for listening wow that was good very good Henry's done this a couple seriously

27:12

Henry that was very nice concise so I'm glad we recorded that because that was

27:17

that's how it should be done I didn't time it actually but yeah it was under two minutes obviously so nicely done um

27:23

so okay so this is the opportunity for everybody in the chat room um to offer feedback so we're not going to really

27:29

debate the business model because that's just we could and should but that's a much longer discussion but if you have

27:35

suggestions about what he said or didn't say or left out or should should put back in or you know that kind of thing

27:41

or um that that would that's what the chat room is for on a structural level I

27:46

would suggest a couple things just to Henry and everybody be careful about what I said when before he started it

27:52

sounds like he's using a speaker phone that's probably not what you want to do with the pitch because audio there's

27:58

literally a study that shows people think you are 19% smarter if they can hear you better and the quality of your

28:04

audio is critical if you're G to get somebody on the phone for a zoom pitch obviously face to face you just got to speak up right but um I would everybody

28:11

I would encourage you to get a dedicated microphone if you're going to be doing Zoom pitches and everybody's doing Zoom pitches these days so that's a it's a

28:17

decent investment I'll even it if it's helpful this is one I use this is a Blue Yeti this is um it was about a 100 bucks

28:24

maybe five years ago so this is kind of a fancy one but any dedicated microphone will be better than a uh than a speaker

28:31

phone okay so that's for everybody so pitchwise here's what I'd say um I would say fantastic concise very nice he did a

28:39

couple things that I think are instructive to the rest of you uh who are asking how is this done and um those

28:45

are this he started with um a oneline sort of explan we introduced himself and

28:51

he explained what the company did like in one sentence and that's really important he gave us some context

28:57

because it may be obvious to you what you do but we investors we hear so many pitches we don't know you know we don't

29:03

have time to read the stuff you send us quite often especially if it's a big competition or something so if you show up and you start talking and you don't

29:09

say to like 60 seconds in what you actually do we're lost we don't know if you're an aerospace company or a

29:15

Cosmetics company or a pizzeria like you gotta tell us we don't know so he did that right up front then he moved second

29:21

to the problem and a solution and then he made two key points which is great because two I can remember six I can't

29:28

right so problem solution two key points see I'm being really nice I said I was going to be mean but I can't be mean Hender that was too good um and then he

29:35

threw in some statistics which are also investors eat numbers so if you don't feed us numbers we starve so here so the

29:43

positive side is this 97% retention rate 97% anything is amazing right so and

29:49

retention rate is particularly great that means the number of their customers that renew that's fabulous um my

29:55

probably largest and kind of only criticism Henry and again again this is constrained by time so you didn't have time to say everything but that was the

30:01

only number you gave us right well no that's not true you you talked about the market size which is great but it sounded like you're in Revenue which is

30:08

VC speak for he's making money how much like I don't have any idea I didn't hear that maybe you're saving that and

30:14

sometimes people do hold stuff back because the point of a pitch is you're not going to get a check the point of the pitch is to get another pitch right

30:21

so that's fine maybe you're strategically holding that back but I don't have any sense of your how you

30:27

make money I mean it's an app so I guess is it SAS is it one time is it I don't know I can guess but you didn't say how

30:33

much is the average ticket size like is a typical customer $5 or five million I don't know again maybe you didn't want

30:39

to say that but those again investors eat numbers and if you and I'm talking to everybody here if you feed us those

30:45

numbers um we'll be doing the math in our heads oh you said you make $5,000 per customer and your average customer

30:52

and you have 100 customers I'm doing the math right and I'm like then you have a 97% retention rate that means it happens

30:57

every year okay I'm calculating that in my head and even if you're not a numbers person we are that's what we do so those

31:04

kind of numbers are important and again in a minute you know casual pitch hard to fit all that in but that would be the

31:09

only thing I saw you missed Henry because the rest was great um the last it was it was designed as a one minute

31:15

pitch that's why I kept it short but uh with two minutes I definitely should add those Point thank you yeah you're you're

31:21

welcome and then the last piece is the ask the specifics again hard to do in a short amount of time U but we're raising

31:27

this much or we're hoping to raise this much um at maybe maybe even say

31:32

valuation maybe not because those are debatable and uh if you have a structure in mind this is a safe note pre-money

31:39

post money safe it's convertible debt whatever Etc um so a little more on the financial side would be helpful and

31:45

interesting to those of us who are investors great so Hand big round of applause let's see what the chat room

31:50

had to say Henry let's see what your reviews were like from the crowd let's see hello Peter hi Athena um Amelia yes

31:59

you can pitch a food business uh if if we want to I don't know if we have room today but let's see um there's some

32:04

other questions and who is your ideal customer and what's the most important pain point for them okay you talked a

32:10

little bit about that kind of thing but you could be more specific sure really good pitch it would benefit if you add

32:15

more emotion like variations in voice and tone okay sure enthusiasm that's a good one Andre I I would validate that

32:21

that goes along with my better microphone right and and I'm not the expert here well I guess today I'm kind

32:26

of the expert but you know I do that like I'm talking and I sometimes I get excited and other times I whisper you know like it keeps it engaging um I have

32:33

a lot of broadcast training though so that's uh that's not a surprise but that can help and then Athena says hi Andre

32:39

Okay cool all right so there we go nice job Henry seriously um you could tell the gentleman has practiced it's good to

32:45

see you hope to see you again soon and keep moving along here got a lot of folks today all right so let's um

32:52

hopefully people are finding this useful let's see who's next on our list um I'm

32:58

looking at our notes so we had Chris and mzo and Kay and James Jesse and Lydia so

33:03

far [Music] Angels Aerospace investors Lydia let's

33:09

do a little round table if we could okay and talk about funding and then we'll do

33:15

more pitches here okay um although you know it's got to be what time is it in Amsterdam it's pretty late meltis are

33:22

you guys you wanna where' they go I want to keep you guys up all night

33:28

what is it like 10 o'clock there 9 o'clock 10 o'clock hello 9:30 yes it's 9:30 9:30 oh

33:37

so it's not too late all right well um well why well whynot let you want to do your pitch or you want us to talk about

33:43

the fundraising stuff first fundraising is fine you want to hear that okay okay let's we'll come back to you okay so

33:49

let's bring on um our friend let's see Lydia and who else wanted to talk about

33:54

fundraising um James you want to turn on your camera and who's the third one Chris is

34:02

Chris still here where's Chris Chris there he is all right down there

34:09

okay okay so here we've got some folks who all had questions about fundraising

34:14

so can each of you give me one sentence of a question just to set the context

34:21

just one sentence I know you all have more but let's just start like have kind of a group conversation and that might maybe we help everybody okay actually

34:27

first can youall SM smile there we go right we got you got to post it on social media Okay cool so one question

34:34

just like one sentence question so um Chris what's your just one sentence version is it possible to raise funds

34:41

from Angel Investors with just a pitch deck perfect that's exactly okay and

34:50

James I think you're muted

34:56

James how do I find a knowledgeable investor okay cool and then

35:02

[Music] Lydia she's got her be right yeah ldia

35:09

do you want to

35:15

unmute coming coming oh okay I apologize yeah um what

35:25

who is legible what what type of business or what type of startup is eligible to

35:31

receive from um an angel investor and what should your portfolio look like

35:36

okay excellent all right thank you all all right so we put if we put those kind of in order then I would you're all in

35:43

the same wheelhouse that's why I thought maybe we could do this together so let's start with who who's eligible how to

35:49

find them and then deck only so I think that the answers are and

35:56

these are my answers again chat room please please chime in and join us and offer your suggestions because I know a

36:02

lot of people have similar questions which also means that a lot of you have similar uh experience right so go ahead

36:08

and chime in on these questions if you would so um okay so let's start with who

36:16

is eligible and so well let's see okay so Angel Investors are

36:22

accredited investors accredited investor in the United States these days generally means that they have at least a million net worth or I think it's

36:29

three or $400,000 of annual income and it's more if they have a joint you know

36:34

like a spouse a couple situation so these are people who have um what seems like a lot of money when you don't have

36:41

any money but they're not really the super rich necessarily um once you get above accredited investors another

36:46

called qualified purchasers and those people have at least $5 million net worth it's investable and then of course

36:52

there's like the super rich right but basically you're talking about people um the reason that there's an asset requirement of course is that the SEC is

36:59

trying to keep people who don't know don't have a lot of financial experience

37:05

from investing in things that they maybe don't understand and losing their money so it's it's the state trying to help

37:10

protect the the weak um there's arguments pro and con on both sides of course but as a as a Founder what you're

37:16

trying to do is find people like that or more so the reason that there's an asset requirement is because some people have

37:23

just have money right some people just are born with money not me maybe not you guys but you know some people just have

37:28

money magically um but the other category is those who make money and so a lot of angels are people who have good

37:33

incomes you know they're Bankers or lawyers or doctors or dentists um and so that's why there's an income requirement

37:39

as well or a separate category for income so to find investors the entry-level question is who in your

37:46

family network has the money right and this that's why most people start with friends and family and the typical uh

37:53

the typical joke is that it's first stage funding is the three FS friends

37:59

family and fools right who's going to be dumb enough to believe you uh if they don't already a friend or a family and

38:06

the reason that that has some truth to it is because investment comes like most sales situations from relationships

38:13

friends and family are the First Investors because they're the ones that know you and they may not already understand what you're doing but they

38:20

know you and they believe in you and they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt that a professional investor is not so as you try to raise larger

38:26

amounts of money you're going to run into people like me who are Angel Investors and we get picky but then Venture Capital firms are even pickier

38:33

because they're investing uh money from their limited partners who tend to be um big institutional clients like

38:40

endowments and Pension funds and Banks and things like that so it's our job to be picky right and so friends and family

38:46

are where you start and then you move up to maybe to fools people who might have met you and don't really know but at least are willing to try and then of

38:52

course you move on to people who actually do this a lot which is people like me and of course Venture Capital firms so that's kind of the landscape so

39:00

who's eligible it's people with some amount of money now that's different than crowdfunding which is another thing

39:05

Equity crowdfunding these days there's a lot of inet where offerings can be made

39:11

through websites like we funder and um start engine and people like that uh and full disclosure I'm an investor in both

39:17

of those companies um but the um the idea of raising money from your customers is a really cool idea uh we

39:23

funder calls it a community round so somebody was asking for example about a food startup if you're opening a restaurant or something you're probably

39:29

not going to be able to raise Venture Capital because venture capital is really designed for high growth super

39:35

high growth businesses which tend to be software based or um technology Innovations of some kind maybe Life

39:41

Sciences um um Venture Capital doesn't tend to invest say in restaurants even if it's going to be a restaurant chain

39:47

that spins off millions or billions that's not typically a venture capital investment um so for Lydia for you for a

39:53

call center I don't know enough about you we don't have time today but you know I don't know that's a venture capital is thing whereas what James is

40:00

talking about Aerospace that's an area where Innovations are showing up all the time with Material Science and Rockets

40:06

and you know all kinds of stuff where wow you know things can go literally literally to the Moon um and you can

40:12

make real money there right so VC is more interested in that because they are literally looking for moonshots they can

40:17

invest in a 100 companies and 99 of them go belly up but one of them is Uber and

40:22

pays back all the others so they're looking for real home runs all the time so okay so that's kind of that's my

40:29

first answer am I on the right track is that helpful Lydia or anybody else yeah okay good that's helpful okay good all

40:34

right so I'll keep going um so um what do you I'm look at my notes here okay so

40:40

can you pitch with a deck only so Chris sounds like you run a Quant head fun obviously you've got some brains there

40:46

um that's impressive stuff um normally I would say no in the old

40:52

days you could raise money with a deck only and by the old days I mean web 1.0 the internet was so new the potential

40:57

was so large that people were kind of less Jud I I sorry for the interruption um

41:06

what is deck only oh sure okay great question so some of us are very new to

41:12

this yeah no thank you thank you yeah keep me honest good stuff uh presentation deck so in the old days uh

41:18

the old days a business plan would be written and I could even show you one of mine I think from web

41:25

1.0 well that's not it but anyway like this they were they were you know long

41:30

long documents that would people would print full of graphs and charts and stuff and this as an example well this

41:36

one's 100 pages but they were like 30 or 40 page documents and um people people don't do that anymore because nobody has

41:42

time and frankly as a startup it's all made up anyway right who we don't need to write 50 pages about something right

41:48

you're kind of making this stuff up um story what's that it's a story it's a

41:53

story yeah that's right and these days so a presentation deck is a SL deck like a PowerPoint and it might be five to 20

42:00

Pages depending on your audience and the length of time you have to present and it summarizes all that very quickly and

42:06

you know big fonts that people can read from the back of the room and you just talk through it generally in a pitch

42:11

situation of between five and 20 minutes and um that's that's what it means by a deck so can you raise money without a

42:18

deck historically uh yes these days I would say no especially since we've come out of the we've left the Zer

42:25

environment meaning the zero interest rate envir which is a Quant guy you're probably familiar with you know all the free money essentially when interest

42:31

rates were at zero in the states investors like me and more importantly much larger investors were looking

42:37

anywhere where they could get some kind of return because it basically z% interest to put their money in the bank

42:42

so they were throwing money at everything well now interest rates are up where they're more interesting four five six per you know or more depending

42:49

on what you're looking at so that money is being more judicious and the growth rates have come down for a lot of things

42:55

so people are being pickier which is way of saying I don't see anybody investing just on a deck anymore unless and maybe

43:03

this is you Chris um you have something amazing that is innovative and you have domain expertise that suggests you can

43:11

kick ass in this area in a way that other people can't one of my friends calls it um unfair competitive Advantage

43:17

if you have an unfair competitive Advantage something unique you can get into the right rooms

43:23

people may still be interested um it's a lot easier though immediately if you

43:28

have anything to show for it and we call that traction traction is the idea that

43:34

you're you're you know you're gripping as you're clawing forward so you know the uh any traction is better like a a

43:40

minimum viable product or some customers who are interested or some customers who are actually paying of course is the

43:45

best and that's very chicken and egg if especially if you're trying to start another hedge fund for example you

43:51

probably need a lot of capital to start that you see this a lot in medical devices and life sciences and Hardware

43:57

because they take tons of capital before they even produce anything like you see this with um with Elon Musk right I

44:03

think he just raised six billion dollars for a startup that hasn't even started

44:08

right but he has obviously unique advantages and a track record that allow him to do that kind of stuff um and

44:14

that's AI which is artificial intelligence is the hottest area of of the investing landscape right so I think

44:21

the answer is no but maybe if you have a window into that is that helpful Chris

44:29

yeah it's very helpful thank you Scott um I just had one question what's your definition of minimum viable products

44:36

please sure well that depends a lot on the on the sector and the what the product is right um I guess minimum

44:43

viable product to me would mean something that is workable enough that

44:49

you can get customer reaction so ideally it's in the market and you're selling

44:54

and getting sales revenue for it but that's obviously a harder step and it means means that you need to have a

45:00

fairly finished product and also one that you're ready to continue servicing on an indefinite basis right so an MVP

45:06

can be it's squishy it's a spectrum but more it can be more of a prototype or something but what investors what we

45:12

want to see is that somebody other than you um gives a right that that's

45:19

what traction means right like you've got a minimum viable PR you've got these you know we we meet entrepreneurs all

45:25

time who build castles in the air in their head but they never actually sit down and do it and the easiest way to

45:31

prove to an investor that something is viable is that customers want it and to do that you have to have enough of

45:37

something that other people are like yeah I will you know maybe not publicly

45:42

but they'll say yeah I will buy that when it comes or I'll put down a deposit or you know I'll I'll I'll be a beta

45:49

tester for you or you know something that shows this is more than a lunch meeting with your uncle who's patting

45:54

you on the head and saying good job Sunny you know it's like what do you actually got um and that can be challenging if you're running a hedge

46:01

fund or something but in your case I'm guessing you'd have some sort of a portfolio modeling or something that

46:06

might show you know model returns in the past or or something like that um sorry

46:12

we don't have time to get more into that you or Lydia with the specifics but hopefully that gives you some some

46:18

context on thank you very much yes perfect yeah um speaking of that the two

46:24

services that we actually do if you want to work with me more directly IR L and these cost money full full full

46:29

disclosure I only have so many hours in my day and I've got kids and stuff but if you want to work with me directly you

46:35

can book some hourly Time by phone or I do video reviews of pitch decks and stuff like that I can send you a quick

46:41

video right it's not cheap but if sometimes people want to do that and they ask me so there you go that's useful um and for those who are

46:47

listening to the audio only it's at scotf fox.com workk with Scott okay so now

46:52

let's talk to James James is looking for Aerospace invent and then we're going to do some more pitching I'm sorry this is a lot of me talking but these guys all

46:59

had overlapping questions I think are useful um tell me in the chat room if actually throw in some um follow-up

47:05

questions as well if you you'd like and I'll get to those in a second so James was specifically Aerospace is that what

47:11

you wanted James that's correct okay so James is looking at Aerospace investors so this is what I would do and again I

47:19

don't have all the answers um but actually let me let me throw in a quick plug because this is actually something

47:25

we built this is a directory you probably I know you've been to my events before James but you heard of this one

47:31

but startup investors directory.com I get this question every time so we we built this and it's a directory of uh

47:39

several thousand early stage investors and it's all searchable in Aerospace for example it's one of the categories there

47:45

are 40 or 50 categories so you can search on uh you know food Tech or

47:50

Aerospace or biotech and you can also search if they invest in uh black Founders or Latino Founders or rural

47:57

Founders or immigrant Founders because I'm trying to help all those folks as well um and that code there Sid launch

48:04

um it's half price or free or something I forget but anyway that's the thing we built so that's an answer if you haven't

48:09

looked there yet James I would try that um but more specifically this is for everybody and

48:16

um I hope this is helpful also this is how I look at finding investors what you

48:22

have to do is work backwards with the end in mind I think which is who the person most likely to invest and it

48:29

seems kind of obvious but a lot of people seem to like like this like they'll come to this and they'll use the

48:34

search engine and they'll pull up a list of like you know a thousand investors who may have ever looked at an aerospace

48:41

deal and then they'll spam them all right and that's not the way to get anything done right in any context right

48:46

you wouldn't do that on you know in any situation and um what you need to do instead is work backwards and so what I

48:54

would be doing is looking at ospace deals and fill in your blank if

49:00

you're not Aerospace right if you're biotech or your edtech or uh you know

49:05

crypto whatever it is look at that sector what are the successful exits that have happened and find five or six

49:12

or 10 of those companies that have gone public or been acquired get as much information as you can work backwards

49:18

okay so those companies did great who were their investors did they have um VC

49:25

firms okay probably at the later stages who were the earlier rounds who were the angel investors and find those folks and

49:33

then also find the founders because the founders of those companies they're rich now what are they doing they think

49:39

they're super smart because they built one company or maybe two but they're the people that are most likely here's my

49:45

punchline to give you the benefit of the doubt because you need to find people like your friends and family would at

49:50

the early stages who will give you the benefit of the doubt but they don't know you and they don't know your business

49:55

but they may be kind of do know your business because they're already in that industry so maybe they'll give you a break and take you more seriously and

50:01

get you in the door than if you you know walked into a a random bank or Venture Capital firm who didn't know you and so

50:08

what I'm saying is you substitute personal relationships with industry uh overlap or expertise and demonstrated

50:15

interest and then if you can find a dozen or 50 or whatever it is of people who actually worked in that industry or

50:21

even senior Executives like in Aerospace find the guys that retired from Rockwell

50:26

and Boeing and SpaceX you know the former chairmans and stuff right that those people have money right and what

50:31

are they doing playing golf and you know they'd be happy to be con consulted you know because it'll make them feel smart

50:37

and useful and everybody likes to feel smart and useful right so that's what I'd be doing so what I'm suggesting is a

50:42

a more personal approach than I see a lot of people talk about and Linkedin is great for this right working backwards

50:48

who's got the money is the answer right that's the answer who's got the money those guys go talk to them and then um

50:55

and that's what part of what we did here is part of again I'm not pushing this particularly we don't make money on it

51:00

it's a break even business but we put in as much as we could their portfolios so go search on Aerospace then find those

51:07

com the their investors and look at the portfolio companies um that they invested in so if you find a VC you know

51:14

the Lydia's VC firm right and Lydia invested in SpaceX made a bunch of money

51:19

that's cool if you're companies like SpaceX then you track down Lydia's uh contact information and we put as much

51:25

as we can on here it's sometimes hard to find um and then you email her or send her flowers I mean whatever you know to

51:31

get noticed and say Hey you know I saw you made some money in SpaceX we've got a company that's going to be like SpaceX

51:38

and here's why don't you know not a whole dog and pony show but two or three quick points like Henry did in his pitch

51:45

two or three quick points this is why we're growing and exciting you know can we follow up and and keep it short and

51:51

sweet but with context and um that will get you a much better result I think than the

51:57

spray and prey that most people do okay sorry you got me going on my favorite topic so I sorry if that was kind of a

52:03

lecture so um any followup questions there I'll go into the chat room is that

52:09

useful very thank you yeah okay good good I sometimes I get talking and I get

52:16

talk too much all right let's say let's see um let's see what our friends say in the chat room if anybody has some I bet

52:21

there's um additional oh Scott h u the the other gentleman on on the group

52:27

there of three um I remember the word adoption you were kind of talking about

52:34

you know how to how to show uh validity and uh the word Mark adoption

52:41

in the market clients are out there expressing interest in what you're doing

52:46

yeah that's a good word yeah that's pulls that whole thing together I agree

52:51

that's a nice one all right so let's just look in the chat room for a second see what our friends see if everybody is

52:56

enjoying that or or uh or laughing at my inep explanation okay um okay there I

53:04

saw those already and okay so Amelia yeah we kind of just

53:09

talked about that so Amelia says what if the company's not making money yet what should I mention instead and I actually

53:15

what James just said there adoption if you have any kind of adoption the word I used was traction same idea what have

53:21

you done that is more than you thinking it's a good idea right what have you sold a few have you had some customers

53:27

express interest have you even just run some ads and showed that they had a good clickthrough rate um or uh have you

53:33

spoken at some conferences like whatever you got is what we'd like to hear because the number one problem with

53:39

entrepreneurs and I I'll paint myself with this brush too we think we got to figure it out but you know we're we're

53:46

looking at it like this right so what you've got to show us that demonstrates adoption or traction is is excellent and

53:53

and helpful Andre chimes in personal experience right Andre has been on the

53:58

road literally on the road the last month or two no virtually no rise funds without an MVP even with the MVP is very difficult

54:05

you need to show some good traction yeah that's I agree oh he has a follow-up comment small chance to find an angel

54:11

investor who may invest in a brilliant idea if they know you well in your past history okay that's kind of what I was saying Andre yep exactly Chris that's I

54:17

think that's the the program is to demonstrate what's unique about you that would uh kind of break that pattern uh

54:24

the days of getting funded you know on with a smile and a and a elevator pitch I think are gone I don't know if they

54:29

ever really existed you know the media exaggerates everything I was trying to raise money during web 1.0 and I did but I only a couple rounds I didn't get as

54:37

far they make it sound like everybody who who had a pulse was getting money it's never that easy money is money is Serious Business okay uh business grants

54:46

what does Carlos say State accelerators in Virginia okay Carlos that's for you Lydia yes there's a lot of State accelerator programs there are programs

54:53

thank you for that Carlos uh I would look at the BDC Small Business Development Corporation they are

54:59

national network of uh entrepreneurship help centers essentially that are funded by us by our tax dollars so it's free

55:06

and they're super helpful small business administration has programs as well as does score the service core of retired

55:14

Executives especially since V you're in the DC you know that area of the VC

55:19

sorry VA meaning Virginia has lots of resources because of the federal government there sorry Chris those are

55:25

those don't apply to you down under but there's probably something equivalent uh in in Australia so there are grants

55:32

to yes oh for sure there's lots of Grants uh and especially let's let's be frank here as an African-American woman

55:39

I think you you've got a good shot at that too there's there's more money and support for that than there used to be

55:45

for sure and um I would yeah I would look especially after President Biden's

55:50

inflation reduction act you know that was like2 trillion do or something last year it's taking a while to trickle

55:56

through to the economy but there's more and more money coming into the local like because it it got granted at you

56:02

know like at the state level and then the county level and then had to work its way through down to the local there actually workshops and stuff showing up

56:08

a lot at least here in Southern California and I presume it would be in Virginia as well I'm gonna look into what you've already given me the sbdc

56:14

sbaa and the score for now yeah yeah those are great idea yep that help you

56:20

okay so then on sure yeah yeah um okay there's a definition of MVP and Andre's got lots of Andre's a

56:28

sharp guy he's got lot to say today so Aerospace de deep Tech so this is back to you is Andre in Virginia he was I

56:35

don't know where he is today where are you Andre actually is you joking do you know

56:40

him no I don't no he's from the DC area actually I okay yeah I don't know if he

56:46

can if we can connect but that will be after the meeting okay fair enough yeah he's got more advice for you here too

56:52

deep Tech grants yeah sounds like you two need to have a conversation cool okay Alex wanted to add uh there

56:59

that's a good one Alex Alex is an attorney he's based in the Bay Area and he helps early stage startups so if you're looking for legal advice um we

57:06

have a lot of friends and sponsors who are attorneys happy to always offer introductions if anybody listening needs

57:11

introduction to Professional Services firms like attorneys or accountants things like that those are the people

57:16

that sponsor the startup Council and help us pay our bills so um if you need stuff like that let me know but Alex is

57:23

a good place to start and he's very succinctly has said here there's this classic adage if you ask for money

57:28

you'll get advice but if you ask for advice you get money and the reason for that is like I was saying you ask for

57:34

advice that forces the person to think about it and engage and try to be helpful and it kind of puts them in this

57:39

positive mindset where they get to thinking about helping you and maybe that leads to money faster than just

57:44

saying hey can I have some money right so that's good strategy and let's see what else we got

57:50

here here's another good one reman says would incubators or accelerators be a good option yes absolutely um options

57:59

for deep Tech and sorry that's a lot of words at once accelerators and incubators can be great my caveats would

58:06

be um if if you're going to do deep Tech specifically then find a deep Tech incubator doing a general thing may or

58:12

may not be helpful it might I don't know but you need to be specific I think because the the capital structure for a

58:18

business like that is very different than say uh an app which has a much lower Capital requirements and Spins up

58:23

faster for customer customer adoption but the other thing I would say incubators and accelerators can be great

58:29

just be sure to read the fine print and check references because every incubator and accelerator has to cover their bills

58:36

and or make money so they're probably going to offer you a check or something or office space or something in exchange for Equity so how much of each and what

58:44

does that mean in terms of the actual value of your company it's up to you to decide and then also if they claim to

58:50

have all these reference or introductions they can make for you I would check some of those references

58:55

because you would with anybody else right you don't hire somebody to remodel your house without checking references so I would do that as well because there

59:01

are incubators or accelerators that may be great or were great five years ago but haven't done any deals lately and

59:07

maybe they're not as great as they used to be right just common sense all right

59:12

um okay and Henry says very good advice on finding Angels thank you Henry okay so uh Chris and um Lydia I think we will

59:20

let you go thank you for being patient and being so uh Smiley making making the

59:26

program look good and we'll move on to some more pitches here and I think that

59:31

means our friends from Amsterdam would be up next let me um sorry I need to

59:37

change that there's me time is it okay W

59:42

spend an hour on that okay there that's the one I wanted okay all right so up

59:49

next so we did okay we did Henry and Chris and James okay and then we've got

59:57

Melo and K Jesse Lydia and it looks like Stephen snuck backstage too so we're

1:00:02

going to do uh looks like a power half hour of pitches is everybody ready for that that should be interesting so we're

1:00:09

going to bring up our friends here from uh from Amsterdam I gotta turn off

1:00:14

the chat because otherwise it gets right in between you let's see turn off this chat for a

1:00:20

second there we go okay so you guys want to unmute yes yes okay there we go good

1:00:27

all right well nice to meet you thanks for staying up late yes thank you okay

1:00:32

so kind of heard the rules a minute or two just wanna want to go ahead and we'll we'll share what advice we have

1:00:39

okay thank you so I am the founder of Melo and this is um

1:00:45

sharesa yes so I will do the bit um so moo is an

1:00:52

all in one platform system for the Aftercare uh um imagine need to work

1:00:57

with seven different systems to be operational in a niche where is shortest

1:01:03

of Staff um as a result of meiso after care providers are able to reduce the

1:01:09

administrative burdens I'm sorry I got to stop you I I I speak American English

1:01:14

that's what I speak I'm sorry I can't I don't know what you said it's what care after care a after care yeah that are

1:01:24

like um nursing Elderly Homes home careesokay okay so it wasn't the accent

1:01:30

so much is I don't know what after care is so I would suggest starting your pitch over and explaining what after

1:01:35

care is that's my not yours and also I meant to say this to Henry and some others whenever you pitch at the beginning speak slowly I know you're

1:01:42

nervous but like say the word so everybody can understand especially if you're speaking I don't know what other

1:01:47

languages you speak but you have than mine right so slow down so we can so we can understand okay you were doing great

1:01:54

I'm sorry but after all right coming up um starting

1:02:00

again so Melo is an allinone platform

1:02:06

for the after care the after care such as Home Care Organization Elderly Care

1:02:12

um imagine to need to work with seven different systems P to be

1:02:19

operational so as a result of moiso after care providers are able to be open

1:02:26

AAL with every tool they need on to one platform so they can reduce the

1:02:33

administrative burden of their employees and the heavy workload um by

1:02:39

having every two they need into one platform of course so we have mtis we

1:02:45

share the passion to um improve the quality of uh the after care in many

1:02:52

countries such as those in South America Africa and the Middle East to the standard as we know it in

1:02:59

Europe and um yeah we looking for um people who want to join us on our

1:03:08

mission yeah okay that it are we done yeah okay great all right well nice job

1:03:15

interesting so um well you have a great smile so that's gonna get you a long

1:03:22

way so um so that that was good so the first thing is to make sure we know what

1:03:28

you're talking about right so we covered that and you you you got you uh pivoted very nicely after care meaning nursing

1:03:34

Etc that's exactly what I needed so good job um then what you didn't I didn't

1:03:40

hear the word anywhere was software are you talking about software yes okay so

1:03:45

you said tools you said systems you said platforms um all of those can mean other things you can literally mean physical

1:03:52

tools a platform can be something I'm standing on physically think you need to use the word software so okay this is

1:03:58

true with a lot of U so I'm suggesting two intro sentences and this applies to everybody um make sure you explain what

1:04:06

it is like after care is this XYZ as she did on the second D anyway which is

1:04:12

great so be clear about what market and then say what you do so we build a

1:04:19

software we have software and it's a SAS model I'm guessing everything sass e is or it's an install that serves the needs

1:04:26

of these customers with this problem like a three you know things this is

1:04:32

what we do for these people for this reason and then you can do the rest because this is the same point I made

1:04:37

with Henry I don't know where you're going after care I've never obviously never heard of after care at least called that way I don't and then you're

1:04:43

talking about tool systems and I'm like okay systems platforms I wasn't sure right so um I can figure it out and

1:04:51

obviously in this context and to be fair if you're at a pitch competition or something doing this they're going guess

1:04:56

that it's software why not tell them right we have software and it does this and then I think some more specifics

1:05:02

would be helpful as you said there's all these systems like I'm guessing billing probably you know reporting patient

1:05:08

tracking like tell me exactly what you're doing right um and then very

1:05:15

interesting you're doing this globally and I like the approach of it's the EU standard that we're going to do

1:05:20

internationally that's very interesting and clever the point for an investor immediately I start thinking

1:05:26

okay where is the company headquartered in which case like if it's in Amsterdam is it's an EU or or Dutch company so if

1:05:34

I invest am I investing in what currency what you know and then if you're working in Latin America and the revenues are in

1:05:41

you know whatever some other currency over there it gets conf from again

1:05:46

investors are numbers people Finance people that sounds like as a patient

1:05:51

very cool as an investor I'm like o complicated very quickly there's different tax regimes for all those

1:05:57

right so you might want to if that's a key part of your pitch you might want to talk with your attorneys or Tax Advisor

1:06:04

somebody like how do I make this sound easy and in in the US case and I don't know what it would be for you in the US

1:06:09

case you'd say this is a Delaware sea corporation that does business in US Dollars and would be issued here in the

1:06:16

states and like that that immediately makes a difference to me right because I'm a us-based investor and I pay taxes

1:06:22

in the US like I literally could not invest in your company if it's based in in Holland not that it's illegal it's

1:06:28

just the tax difficulties would be so much that I couldn't ever make money even if you made a zillion dollars so

1:06:35

think about your investors and who you're talking to um yeah so anyway I hope that and then the and then at the

1:06:41

end and you maybe early stage for this as I said to Henry you would probably want to say something about what you

1:06:47

want which you did but you did the kind of nice we'd like you to join us on our mission which is cool but investors

1:06:52

again we want specifics we're raising $500,000 at a three and a half million pre-money valuation or post money safe

1:06:59

or something and even if you don't know all those buzzwords at least say we're looking for

1:07:05

$500,000 you can figure out the rest like or if that's not what you need you say you know we're looking for customers

1:07:12

who are nursing homes or we need a chief technical officer or you know like you can ask for other stuff too and you can

1:07:19

ask for all of it right so um and then the other thing sorry I'm get me going here um what stage are you at I'm not

1:07:25

clear is this an idea or do you have a thousand customers you're doing a million dollars a month like we don't I

1:07:31

don't know where you are in the journey so that helpful I hope so yes quite

1:07:37

helpful thank you yeah um yeah and what were your guys's names I didn't I didn't

1:07:43

catch them my name is Charissa yes yes and mine is given given

1:07:50

okay hey guys nice to meet you I hope you'll come find me on LinkedIn happy to connect with you guys there in Holland

1:07:55

let's just go through the chat room and see what uh if anybody had any comments or suggestions um there it

1:08:03

is we go um oh okay sorry it turned off the chat so let me um but there there're

1:08:10

still oh there it is okay um

1:08:20

okay sorry a lot of questions here I got lost very good advice thanks

1:08:26

much needed here in the US my after care experience was awful yes I think that

1:08:33

that's probably yeah obviously Carlos knows what after care was because he had it had that happen I I haven't done that

1:08:39

yet unfortunately or fortunately Andre looks like you're trying to address huge Market smaller Niche okay that's fair

1:08:46

yeah you might want to be more specific or actually that was missing and again you only have so much time right so why

1:08:52

you guys right does one of you have expertise in this area I'm guessing or connections or something you know why

1:08:59

and the other is why now like has something changed right the software allows this to happen you know maybe

1:09:05

there's a crypto angle right you couldn't do 10 years ago or you know why you and why now is two of the pieces

1:09:10

that um would also thank you yeah you're welcome well nice to meet you guys hope to see you again and tell your friends

1:09:19

in in Holland and have to get myself over there it's been a while since I've been to the Netherlands okay so that's

1:09:26

and we're moving along here let's see who's still with us

1:09:34

backstage okay K and Steve looks like

1:09:40

and yeah and then we're probably out of time we did Lydia right okay cool all

1:09:45

right I'm glad you're sticking with me here I guess we're adding some value thank you all for being here I know this is a lot of

1:09:51

competing demands on everybody's time so we do this once a month and if it find it useful please do click like And

1:09:58

subscribe and leave a comment or two that's how this all works you know it's the social media world we live in just

1:10:03

trying to make friends and and help some people here um let me just toss in another quick um let's see if there's

1:10:11

any other things I was supposed to say here oh if you're looking for a speaker for your show or your uh podcast or

1:10:17

really in person it's more fun in person but if you're having an event I do do a lot of public speaking and enjoy doing

1:10:22

that and I've got um I can do presentations or fireside chats or um that kind of thing and I'm looking to do

1:10:29

some traveling you know the pandemic's over and i' be happy to get out on the road and maybe come to your city or country if that sounds like fun I'd be

1:10:36

happy to meet you and um talk to you about that as I said we do video reviews

1:10:41

or private calls as well if those are useful to you again those cost money that's the only way I can manage my time

1:10:46

but if that's helpful happy to do that we have some LinkedIn groups actually

1:10:52

this is on LinkedIn if you want to join a private group there where we try to continue the community that's built here

1:10:58

during these calls you can come and join that and I'll just read this out loud for the uh podcast listeners it's

1:11:05

linkedin.com groups1

1:11:10

14394 that's SLG group14 30941 they won't let me give it a a

1:11:16

pretty name but that's that's where it is or you can find it just go to the startup council.org web page actually

1:11:23

and if you have follow-up questions if you're watching this later during the replays and you think about something

1:11:28

that we didn't address or you have a followed question you can post those comments as questions uh or say post

1:11:33

those questions as comments on YouTube and I'll do my best to get over there to

1:11:38

help you there as well and I think that's kind of it yes okay cool let me

1:11:47

put up that offer we had as well this is the startup investors directory uh promo

1:11:53

and I know people always ask me for that and where's the other one I got put

1:12:00

these two together one more second and then we're going to do I guess some more

1:12:08

pitches oh actually this one this a lot of URLs I'm throwing at you but this one everybody um contacts me and says you

1:12:16

know can you introduce me to these people or can you look at my deck I get too many I just can't I don't have time

1:12:21

but this page is a page I put up for all of those of you who are looking for

1:12:26

investors and it's scotf fox.com startup dfun and startup dfun will show you the

1:12:34

list of uh I belong to a bunch of Angel groups and it will show you details on those and help you direct you I don't

1:12:41

invest directly much anymore I mostly invest in funds that then do Investments and it also has more details on the

1:12:48

startup investors directory and stuff like that so that might be helpful to you that's where I'll send you honestly

1:12:53

if you if you send me your deck I'll send you here because I just can't look at everything so if that's helpful um I

1:12:59

hope it is all right so next up we've got uh K and Jesse and Steve I think

1:13:07

so yeah all right so let's do K and we'll do these three guys and then I

1:13:12

think we'll be done with our show today here's Kay hello K nice to see you good

1:13:18

to see you Scott all right so you got the vibe right a couple minutes of uh chat and uh then we'll all then we'll

1:13:23

all pick poke HS in it does that work for you right so for me this is mostly an improv so let's see how it it turns

1:13:30

out okay excellent all right so uh Hey everybody um my name is k uh I am a

1:13:37

doctor of Engineering in the area of Computer Sciences and I am obsessed with

1:13:42

universal Solutions universal meaning one key that opens many doors uh this

1:13:48

time around I have created this technology called Universal UI which competes with Google's flooder product

1:13:56

and uh wins in many aspect mainly in three aspects one it PS to more

1:14:02

platforms uh two it is easier to learn because we are based on easier language

1:14:08

and three needs much less coding as a matter of fact in most cases it needs

1:14:13

half as much as coding as Google's flutter uh to achieve the same task so

1:14:19

the current stage is uh we are at beta we have actually used this technology to

1:14:24

make a bunch of prod s so this is a readymade uh product we have a bit of

1:14:29

traction we have a demo applications and we have rade products using it h the

1:14:35

revenue extremes are coming from this is an open- Source business model for us so

1:14:40

we make money by Consulting we are going to charge $250 per hour for Consulting development

1:14:46

of custom applications that's going to earn us $100 an hour and we will have Enterprise

1:14:54

Ed addition which is going to be $750 a year uh per user per subscription

1:15:03

our user base is going to be about 60 million developers and out of that

1:15:10

there's going to be 22 million software graduates and out of that we are going to Target uh a few thousand early

1:15:17

adopters we are going to form alliances with uh software Outsourcing companies

1:15:22

and we are going to try to get some SBI R and stdr funds as well so uh companies

1:15:29

that are close to us are red hats that uses the same business model the the

1:15:34

market and this companies uh my time is up so uh I'm going to wrap it up the

1:15:41

this market and this companies have been growing uh about 10% annually and we

1:15:47

project the same growth for our company the projection we crush the numbers and we realize that we are going to be

1:15:54

profitable in the first year uh so for this company and for this product we are

1:16:00

raising $800,000 to be able to protect our intellectual rights to uh pay salaries

1:16:07

and wages and uh comfortably expand to the next stage excellent that was really

1:16:14

well done I took I I was looking for problems I didn't find too many so I'll try I'll try to try to help the key one

1:16:22

would be at the end you you didn't say it specifically you said 800 or 800 800 Grands we are raising again here

1:16:31

slow down eight say the T 800 because I thought big difference yeah so just be

1:16:37

careful okay absolutely no that was really good um very interesting so he did a lot of things right folks right so

1:16:44

please share your um comments if you have suggestions for him and um to move

1:16:49

him along but okay that was really nicely done I would suggest to you uh and I meant to say this to if those guys

1:16:55

are still there all of you guys who are pitching with a speaker phone just be careful right like I would I would get a

1:17:02

different kind of mic so that you can we can really hear you and you're not so bad but it reminded me more for Melo

1:17:07

because there were two of them right but everybody seriously investing in a microphone is easiest way to up your chances of getting funded okay so this

1:17:15

was very interesting um I liked everything you said um I have a more strategic question we don't really have

1:17:20

time for that but let me do the good stuff first so as open source you explained it you actually have traction you explained what the traction was very

1:17:27

nice you made an analogy to a well-known company in the space red hat and then what I'm doing folks is for others of

1:17:33

you this is pattern recognition right what he's doing right you should be doing right so all those things uh explained the business model it's both

1:17:40

Consulting and a b Tob subscription which was great he even explained the unit economics which is what VC's call

1:17:46

the price right how much do they actually charge people and then he said that they're going to be profitable soon

1:17:51

so it gives you some idea of the growth he actually gave growth number numers which is shocking and shocking in a good

1:17:57

way I mean like nobody that's really good um they're reaching profitability which is always exciting and interesting

1:18:04

um so yeah very nicely done two points that I think might be helpful for you strategically one is the investors are

1:18:12

very leery of service-based businesses right if you're doing consulting at X dollars an hour even if it's $ thousand

1:18:18

an hour that doesn't scale the way software investors want to see it right and you are obviously a software guy so

1:18:23

you know that right but I would downplay that and really focus on

1:18:29

the B2B subscription business because that's the thing that can take off and you know this you've run the number absolutely no we we have a three-year

1:18:35

plan and year two onwards we are just expanding on the subscription yeah okay

1:18:41

so this is he gets that but for anybody who else is thinking this way investors we don't like to see businesses that are

1:18:46

hourly based why because that takes humans and humans only have so many hours it just doesn't grow software

1:18:51

Works 247 right so the second for for K and this context like I said I would downplay the Consulting and you can we

1:18:59

understand like I don't hide it don't lie but just be like we're using this as initial Capital so that we can get to

1:19:05

this right and then focus on the that the second part because that's the part that can scale and I think he knows he's

1:19:10

noding he gets it right so but that's that's really what it is yes yeah okay so um I would play that the larger

1:19:16

question I have is and we don't have time for this but I would just address it to me or anyone is an investor we

1:19:22

hear a company that says we're competing with Google like good luck man why you right I mean

1:19:29

so you spent a lot of time explaining what you got but the elephant in the room is dude you don't have a chance

1:19:35

it's Google right so and we don't have time to get into it now I'm sure you have reasons why that's goingon to

1:19:40

happen but that's what you need to address because that skepticism outweighs all the cool other stuff

1:19:45

you're saying um because they're Google right so so something about that needs

1:19:51

to be early in the pitch so that the other stuff can be believable because it it's just they're such a competitor

1:19:57

right can can I try my chance to address that in 10 seconds so this this this is

1:20:03

a sub product of Google and basically it was made by three people in the beginning so it wasn't that different

1:20:08

from where where I am at the moment oh okay that's interesting so yeah I would say that you mean flutter was was

1:20:13

started by three guys true yes okay so yeah I would say that but that's and that's I'd say that's like 30% of the

1:20:20

equation the other 70% is that they have the distribution and the assets to grow it like crazy right so how you're going

1:20:27

to your go I guess uh in VC speak that's the go to market strategy how are you going to even if it's better right we've

1:20:33

seen many technologies that were better than the incumbent but they didn't get anywhere because they just didn't have the distribution muscle right so that

1:20:41

that's still I like your answer but it's not the whole whole answer right the go to market strategy still would be a big

1:20:47

question so you can chew on that and we can see you again next month and try again or whatever you'd like so and you're abely maybe we'll see at a local

1:20:53

event too that'd be great cool well nice to meet you thanks for sharing your vision uh and let's move on

1:20:59

here hope that was helpful to K oh I forgot to look in the chat did anybody say anything clever in there that we

1:21:05

should highlight let's see

1:21:10

um my chat won't refresh are you

1:21:16

guys uh somebody Jeremiah is speaking Dutch to our friends in Amsterdam okay

1:21:21

all right well K you didn't get too many uh comments because that was good good job all right so let's move on we got

1:21:27

two more here and then we'll be done for the day so I think it was Jesse where's Jessie hey Jesse do you want to turn on

1:21:34

your camera are you still with us oh yeah there he is okay here's Jess cool

1:21:40

can you angle your camera down there we go sorry no no wores ceiling

1:21:48

fans all right so remind me where you were hunting right yes hunting

1:21:55

all right nice to meet you all right the vi you want to give us a couple minutes of uh intro to your

1:22:01

project yes thanks um really appreciate the opportunity to practice the pitch um

1:22:07

so my name is Jesse Heisler and I work for a semiconductor startup base in Dallas called strike

1:22:14

photonics what makes strike different is our chips are powered by light as

1:22:19

opposed to the traditional chip which now is powered by electrons light is

1:22:24

faster it's uh there's no unit of mass so it weighs less um it's impervious to

1:22:31

EMP and um um just the benefit of a faster chip and a lighter chip um

1:22:38

outweighs uh the the electronic chip uh there's no other us-based photonic chip

1:22:45

manufacturers outside of strike photonics uh we make money initially we have two business verticals we will sell

1:22:52

chips to defense contractors including Ron which we have our first um

1:22:59

non- reoccurring engineering Revenue as of last year to develop uh chips for

1:23:04

their for their platforms we also have support letters from other uh defense

1:23:10

contractors like Ron for similar work uh we will also build our own um systems

1:23:18

that that the chips will power initially the first product will be a medical diagnostic device uh we have a supply

1:23:25

agreement from a CDC initiative uh for 15 million units at $100 per test today

1:23:33

our Capital formation is is primarily all private capital from individuals and

1:23:40

family offices we finished our a last year for 10 million uh have our building

1:23:45

financed in Allen Texas for 15 million and we have equipment financing for

1:23:51

three and a halfmillion we are now kind of in the beginning stages of our B

1:23:57

preferred Equity valued at 200 million we've raised about five million of that

1:24:02

so far we are in progress with um army and Naval grants uh $5 million each and

1:24:09

then the big uh funding is chips and we are in the second round of our

1:24:15

application for that which is the monster bill from last year uh TI is a

1:24:20

as an investment uh partner and a so it's equity partner and Manufacturing

1:24:25

partner they are producing the uh silicone substrate which is kind of the

1:24:32

base layer of our chip and they've also manufactured the first and second gen of

1:24:38

generation of our of our photonic

1:24:44

chip done thanks yeah excellent well that's impressive

1:24:50

what a what an interesting and well funded operation I don't get we don't usually get series B level companies

1:24:56

here this is great um $200 million valuation but that's that's a real company so congratulations to you guys

1:25:02

thanks exciting um so I guess okay so comments wise and again everybody in the

1:25:08

chat room if you have suggestions please I'm in there he's he's here because he'd like your feedback so care so I would

1:25:15

say I liked um well a couple things so first of all the sound is not great you

1:25:21

you looks like you're wearing earbuds but it sounds like you're in an open room using a speaker phone so it's okay

1:25:27

but it's a very open Sound and I guess you can hear me okay somebody said the chat room that you can hear me right I

1:25:34

okay yeah yes um so I don't know what you're doing but you might want to call a friend and see if you can uh buug it a

1:25:40

little it's it's okay it could be better um so you're well spoken you got covered

1:25:46

a lot of good points you could use some more emotion that was pretty dead pan so a little more excitement if this is your

1:25:51

company like show your passion for this um one of the things you didn't say was your role in the company so I don't know

1:25:57

if you're the CEO or a founder or you're you know a parking attendant so

1:26:02

investors like to deal with senior people so if you have a title I would I would use it um because and the reason

1:26:09

is not personal it's just more that like if you're not the CEO we're gonna have to talk to CEO soon so we'd rather save

1:26:15

a few meetings and talk to them sooner right so I would be clear about that and what your role is in the fundraising

1:26:20

process if you're not the CEO um on having you know these commments and the

1:26:26

letters from these other um uh companies is great I mean obviously right you've got some great traction I started

1:26:32

writing that down and I you had a whole bunch more tracks and you're already into series B so you you this is clearly

1:26:37

an entity that's along the way it obviously also means especially you probably no this that for anybody that's

1:26:43

a company of this size They're Not Looking for Angels anymore they're clearly up in the institutional Market meaning Venture Capital firm or even

1:26:50

private Equity perhaps like real real big checks not individ ual investment so

1:26:55

they're going to have um and you can see the requirements are higher like with the amount of traction that he

1:27:01

demonstrated Angels would go crazy and and invest all the time except of course the valuation is already 200 million

1:27:06

right we tend to invest a 10 million or less so it's a different Market segment and depending on

1:27:12

your and where you you're g into different TI of funding stack as well um

1:27:20

other than that I didn't have a lot to you covered a lot of ground must have done this before what is your role in

1:27:26

the company uh corporate development director okay great that's that's the

1:27:31

right path at least right you I didn't mean you were the parking attendant obviously but um but I have Park cars

1:27:36

for us so it's okay there we go okay well there hey now there you did something right you smiled that's the first time you smiled so you gotta smile

1:27:43

like you know oh you just muted something you did we lost

1:27:50

you something going on in the background there okay sorry all right it's all right um but yeah I would lighten it up

1:27:56

and smile and you know try to be excited as you are um if people you know people are going to they take their cues from

1:28:02

you right if you're not excited why would we be excited so um you know if you have to have a glass of wine first

1:28:07

right go make it happen um yeah and that's kind of all I had you you you covered a

1:28:13

lot of things that I was interested in so um I guess competition would be the other one um and you're so far up the

1:28:20

capital stack that I don't have as much experience with companies raing that much money so sounded like you you

1:28:26

you're on the right track I should have said we're not raising money from institutions individuals only and family

1:28:32

offices so I don't know if I mentioned that no you didn't because I'm okay so unpack that a little why why is that or

1:28:38

how is that um we uh it's the it's the founders initiative to stay away from

1:28:45

from institutions uh one of the founders took a company public before and and um

1:28:50

didn't like that route so we've been successful enough to um to raise money from it from

1:28:56

individuals and family offices interesting okay so yeah you should definitely say that if for no other reason you never know who's watching

1:29:02

right we've got we've got viewership all over the world so okay so what's your minimum check size let's unpack that a little bit uh we're we'll go down to

1:29:09

100,000 100,000 okay so anybody who's interested in companies like this that's a fairly small check for a company of

1:29:16

this level so a $100,000 ticket here it's an interesting opportunity that's cool I'm glad you brought that up that

1:29:21

explains explains why you're here right very cool okay yeah so that's a different that's a

1:29:26

different thing for sure all right well great well thanks for coming and I hope the feedback was helpful uh mostly

1:29:33

validating that you're on the right track nicely done okay thank you well I just I appreciate all the uh startup

1:29:38

Council um just resources it's been very helpful since I moved back to Huntington

1:29:43

Beach and all the different events that you guys um you know co-sponsor and it's just really been valuable I've met a lot

1:29:49

of people through through your um event calendar and it's just been I I

1:29:55

appreciate what you're doing right well thank you thank you Jesse I appreciate appreciate you being here and saying that awesome all right well hope to meet

1:30:01

you in person one of these days too so all right well that was Jesse and um

1:30:07

let's see here then we've got I think we've got one more but he mentioned something cool about the events calendar

1:30:13

so this one I didn't talk about yet for those of you who are interested this is the world's only calendar of startup

1:30:20

founder events that are all virtual all virtual why do we do that because this

1:30:27

allows Founders who don't live in New York City or London or Mumbai or Sydney to go to events because events are how

1:30:35

you make friends and friends are how you raise money and money is how you grow companies so this is a seed uh planted

1:30:42

in your mind hopefully startup events.org and it's a newsletter one of the seven newsletters that we offer uh

1:30:48

at startup council.org but you can sign up and it's free and we list events that are virtual for Founders so if you are

1:30:54

looking to level up on your fundraising expertise or HR skills or marketing or

1:31:00

you software development whatever it is there's events like that posted there all the time from all over the world and if you're an event organizer come and

1:31:07

list them and we'll pump them out for free again worldwide to try to attract more attendees to your events that are

1:31:12

helping startup Founders so if that sounds interesting to you please go sign up all right so I think we have one more

1:31:19

Steve has made it backstage and thank you for being patient Steve nice to meet

1:31:24

you and I think he's our cleanup hitter today and we're going to uh hear a pitch

1:31:30

from him so thank you for waiting Stephen and um you so you saw the vibe right a minute or two and oh yeah

1:31:37

totally how's my audio by the way it's good that's good yep nice and loud yeah well I think I check off a lot of these

1:31:43

boxes so this hopefully will be good and a learning experience for myself and or all the participants excellent thanks

1:31:51

alrighty and it checked out I rehearsed it about a minute 50 5 minute 50 so it should be good great okay here we go hi

1:31:58

I'm Stephen lenthal I'm the co-founder of Internet FM and I'm coming to you live from the studios of acid flashback

1:32:04

radio which is the flagship station of our platform of streaming radio from across North America the UK and Europe

1:32:12

internet FM my business includes mobile desktop and smart TV delivery of

1:32:18

streaming music radio built for passionate music fans now unlike Spotify

1:32:24

which is music on Demand internet FM is live radio just press play to hear any

1:32:29

of our 10 different genres across 50 stations now what distinguishes internet

1:32:35

FM from the competition is our less is more approach our relationships with

1:32:41

affiliate radio stations and a number of interactive listener features to rekindle what made radio so popular

1:32:48

during the 60s and 70s our business model is based on a lowcost subscription service to grab our

1:32:56

share of a$ 20 billion business with over 500 million pay subscribers all

1:33:03

around the world that continues to grow 10% year-over-year since launching we've had over 7,000

1:33:11

downloads of our mobile products and more than 20% still use it on a month-to-month

1:33:16

basis our diverse team of rock stars in programming marketing graphic design

1:33:22

broadcasting and operation is bills for success with a low operating cost that would enable us to

1:33:28

break even with as few as 2,000 paying subscribers our experience with highly

1:33:35

targeted marketing on Google and Facebook allows us to obtain downloads

1:33:41

for as little as 67 cents per recently we overhauled their website and turned

1:33:48

on the subscription feature we're in the process of validating that model and with the low overhead we feel we can

1:33:55

achieve very good growth without major VC investment instead we are seeking

1:34:01

additional Angel investment of $150,000 to launch at scale our Mass

1:34:06

marketing and continue product development I thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions excellent all right

1:34:13

so thank you for that Steve and anybody who's got suggestions please uh chime in in the chat room and we'll pass those

1:34:20

along here as we uh head toward the end of the show and and let me uh excellent

1:34:26

pitch says Andre all right um okay that's what I wanted to put up okay okay

1:34:33

so yes nice statement I really liked the focus uh you first of all you did some things that I was suggesting to other

1:34:38

people which was you said who you are and your role in the company so you're a senior person that's involved in the management level like I said investors

1:34:45

we want to deal with the person that's going to sign the check right or cash the check I guess in this case so that's helpful um you had a clear statement of

1:34:52

what you're doing and that's really helpful because again so many entrepreneurs are so close to it you think it's obvious it's not obvious to

1:34:59

us it's not that we're stupid well some of us are but we we just see so many things you gotta you got to feed it to

1:35:04

us slowly um the focus on differentiation was very nice as well because there's obviously a lot of music

1:35:10

products out there Steve spent a lot of time explaining why they were different why this was relevant given that

1:35:16

internet radio is not a new thing by any means anymore right so how are they different from existing um that is

1:35:22

literally the number one question we get all the time what makes you different than Spotify and it really is different

1:35:28

um so we will always take a little bit of time to explain that out yeah and I would I would maybe even double down on

1:35:33

that because that's you know if person like my kids don't listen to the radio like at all like they they were

1:35:39

surprised that the buttons in the car did that seriously because they did

1:35:45

Bluetooth in with their phones uh anyway so okay so so critique or or feedback to

1:35:50

hopefully be helpful um it was a good pitch but you were definitely read I would not do that I would try to

1:35:56

memorize as much as you can so that it feels more natural easier said than done but you know that's what people react to

1:36:03

your energy level and your familiarity with the business so the more familiar and passionate you are the better

1:36:08

reaction you'll get so it's obvious it just takes work and I'm sure you could get there if you wanted to um 7,000

1:36:14

downloads sound good um but the real question is growth right and you did kind of address that so my immediate

1:36:20

question was over how long a period and you're growing and then revenue and but then you revealed that the subscriptions

1:36:26

were fairly recent so you don't really have results yet I guess but that's that's what every investor is going to

1:36:32

want to see because the other stuff is is cool um and but it's taken a while

1:36:37

and 7,000 as you know not a huge number in the world of Tik Tok or whatever but so the traction of that subscription

1:36:43

offer is what everybody's going to want to hear about so as soon as you have numbers there that's what I would focus on anybody who's in software development

1:36:50

knows no matter what your timeline is it takes double or triple the amount of time to to put it in play yep that's

1:36:56

right but at least it's launched now that must be a big relief um and then but that leads to my other question was

1:37:02

$150,000 is not a lot of money in the investing world so I think a lot of

1:37:08

angels would be surprised either like you and I and I well I'll just say it

1:37:14

don't you have that money yourself or can't you get it yourself from friends and family to go out and do a fundraising process for only

1:37:20

150k is a is a high class El sort of reaction but that's what they're going to say it's not necessar what I'm saying

1:37:26

but if it's only 150k like you could put at least 50 on credit cards hopefully right and get going and you would own

1:37:33

more Equity that way if you really believe it so I'm not saying that's the answer but that's kind of the feedback you're going to get so I would suggest

1:37:40

either lower it to like 50 and try to do it yourself somehow or crowdfund it

1:37:45

maybe or triple that and say we want 450 because it's probably going to take

1:37:51

longer than you think anyway and that's a number that's large enough that at least investors will go okay I see why you're not doing this yourself and I

1:37:57

don't know your personal financial situation you know whatever but you know that it that's an in between number

1:38:02

that's awkward it's like not it's not worth the trouble from a lot of investors point of view yeah because I would exp I know we don't want to get

1:38:08

into a whole discussion but if our burn rate is only about 4K a month you'd be surprised that how little we need

1:38:15

because it's such an efficient model we've created here yeah and I don't want to give up I own 80% between me and my

1:38:21

son I don't want to give up anymore equity and to be able to maintain control so that's sort of a nice sweet

1:38:27

number for us but whatever it's really inappropriate for this discussion here here let me just give you the feedback I

1:38:33

would give in that conversation is if it's only four grand a month put it on your credit card and in six months for

1:38:38

24 Grand you've hopefully validated this thing and it's making money or at least enough that then investors would be more

1:38:44

interested and you could triple the valuation and you would make the money that way again easy for me to say you're living this but that that would be the

1:38:50

typal answer right so um okay well cool but I hope it hope it goes well I hope that's helpful feedback let's just check

1:38:57

in I think people are uh probably had enough pitches today but let's see if we got any feedback in the chat room for

1:39:04

you excellent pitch seems like your reading portions could benefit by learning by heart looking into the

1:39:10

camera otherwise great simple language lots of numbers yeah agreed so nicely done uh James says backstage he's saying

1:39:17

um what's the current or expected future value that's a good point James right we didn't hear much about the exit or the

1:39:22

potential for the investor right if I put in that 150 what am I going to get or even maybe analogies of other

1:39:28

companies that have done well uh in that space or maybe or even what your exit strategy is if there is one because if

1:39:34

you're running this as a lifestyle business investors aren't going to be as interested or maybe you pivot to to some

1:39:39

kind of Revenue share as opposed to an equity sort of structure so lots of ways to slice that but something about what

1:39:45

you get for the 150 is is a oh yeah Spotify if you're listening I'm up for

1:39:50

or apple it would be apple or Spotify right because they they don't know how to do radio they just don't right

1:39:56

excellent okay well nice to meet you for coming I hope that was helpful and I think we're near the end of our show

1:40:01

today and I hope that was helpful to you I want to suggest that if this was helpful and we hope it was then please

1:40:07

do click like and share and comment all that kind of stuff it seems little but it really does add up so um if all the

1:40:14

people that watch this today and in the replays if you like and make a comment then that will help us do this more and

1:40:19

more often and support more entrepreneurs hopefully like you and if if you have a follow-up question if

1:40:24

you're watching later on YouTube or somewhere else you can post your questions there and we'll do our best to respond as well and hope that uh you

1:40:31

know again that that's helpful for you and if you haven't yet if you haven't gotten the message then you should go to

1:40:37

Startup council.org that's the hub for all the things I've been talking about today and we'll be happy to help you in

1:40:42

lots of different ways and if you go over there you can see how many there are there's enough that it's it's kind of a crappy website to be honest there's

1:40:48

so many different things we're doing just trying to help I'm filling in little holes as an entrepreneur by Nature trying to fill in little holes

1:40:54

that will make your life easier as a Founder so I hope it does that for you and I hope to see you again next month this is a monthly show so um come on

1:41:01

over again in late June and we'll be doing it again and I hope to see you and please bring your friends again next

1:41:06

time thanks for watching I'm Scott Fox you've been listening to Startup fundraising office hours from startup

1:41:12

council.org have a great day