How do you fundraise as an immigrant founder with visa issues?

when I came into the ecosystem my network was precisely zero I knew nobody and when people said oh my God I did friends and family around I'm like who are these friends and what is this family who have this money to give you right what what is that magical thing so I had no family investors no friends who write checks um and uh all of it was just cold would you write 13 books on machine learning before starting an AI company well you might want to consider it because that's what this immigrant solo founder did before he went on to raise $16 million for his AI SAS company and then sold it within 7 years he did it with zero Network and no Visa but still managed to build and sell that company and is now a VC in this episode he shares his secrets and the most pivotal moment that changed everything now on to the show welcome back to the show today today we have pratique josi with us founder and CEO of Pluto shift welcome to the show Jason thank you for inviting me it's great to be here no I'm excited to have you you have a fascinating story as a exited founder a machine learning author who's written 13 books and not just you know little books like textbooks uh so and before the day of llm where you could have chat do it for you and you built in you know great company and now you're a VC you have an incredible story what is it how did you get here yeah uh you know during my 13 books phase I wish I had llms could have could have really really used that so I wrote them before before all of this so um yeah quick story I was born and raised in India and southern part of India actually a small town in the southern part of India and uh yeah grew up there and I came to the US to do my Master's and then right after that which was in LA I moved to uh San Francisco Bay area for my first job which was Nvidia and I was I was I joined the AI team and back then it was very early like just trying to figure out okay what is this thing can we make it work on mobile devices do we have enough compute will it look cool will people like it will applications be useful or will it be demo Weare so like very early days of figuring out how to make it practical so that was my first job out of college and then I I've been building and shipping AI products for a while now and um yeah and also during that time I I used to write a blog um I I still do in different shapes and forms but back then I I had a small blog that I just talked about if I discover something interesting or useful hey I discovered this cool new thing I just I just felt like writing about it and uh yeah that I just I just did that and one day a publisher got in touch and said uh hey I know your blog we like it would you like to write a book and I said uh wow that that looks interesting that sounds cool uh book author amazing so like okay let's let's how hard can it be I've written a bunch of block posts let's do it and the first book was excruciating I realized that writing like you know a blog post with like 700 words with nobody to check or approve or edit was a breeze writing 300 Pages where it goes like review after review and and like oh this is not cool enough or not fun enough or this I don't know what this paragraph means so that was the first book got through it and then once he got the hang of it I I kept writing and then after 13 books I I told the publisher I have nothing else to say I'm I'm going to stop now and uh I'm out um so that's that um yeah so that there you got to 13 books like that's that's pretty substantial and like hundreds of pages each and of a you know and and the topic in correct me wrong was around you know python AI machine learning you a very heavy technical oriented content that yeah had to kind of give everyone a reference of time like you read Nvidia in like 2012 time line correct uh and then you did a 10 11 12 yeah yeah so yeah you had you know you're at the kind of the Forefront of AI and machine learn well fact that has more machine learning less probably Ai and U and you write several books on the topic um how did that lead you to starting a company and uh what was that transition like yeah and just to of set the context the way I look at these these terms um AI is the goal and um machine learning is vehicle to get there it's one possible vehicle there are multiple vehicles to get there and um that's that was always how I looked at at these these terms and data for example is the fuel for that vehicle so different different roles in in this in this in this world so the books when I started writing the books I realized um there's so many things you need to know to make ml practical right to go from uh theories and algorithms just very theoretical how do you you go to the real world and make it practical and that was one of the big um interests I had is to bring AI to the physical world because there are in the past we know how to apply AI to images or search Eng like virtual world and then I was very interested in like physical infrastructure so how do you how do you bring AI into the physical world and that was the big insight into launching the company Pluto shift is to do just that cuz there was a big and even and there still is Big Delta between how much AI is is used in the virtual world and how much it's used in the physical world because it's just not easy to make it work so that was the Insight so launched the company with that insight and then at the very early the first thing we did was part of all the physical infrastructure let's start with water infrastructure because water as as a topic it's very close to heart I grew I grew up in a in a town where water was scarce um in fact there were many days when there was no water so we had like store water until we get it the next time the Taps there's no 24/7 Taps concept at least when I when and where I grew up so water was a new topic very close to my heart so did that and then expanded to other types of physical infrastructure and uh yeah that became Pluto shift we served large customers for 500 customers over the years and uh yeah that that did that for about seven years so let's let's break that down you know you went on to raise over 16 milon for Pluto ship so let's not downplay you know you raised a good amount of capital you were a solo founder um what was it like raising raising Capital kind of walk us through the initial stage where you kind of either started the company or raise the capital like what kind of came first and uh what what happened thereafter yeah once I decided okay this could be a this could be a company I started doing um a bunch of research to research on the customer side to kind of understand hey is this is this real will customers even care do they do they do they care about doing this and so did a bunch of that and then realized okay there is a a small group uh small group of people who were extremely enthusiastic and that was like the first hint of of a signal that okay at least a small group cares enough about it so that they want it to exist so there was that once I had that I started talking to U investors and the biggest by margin the biggest uh barrier for me was the Visa situation because uh here to start a company U you at least need u a valid legal framework right and I I just I just didn't know like I wasn't Rich enough to afford a a personal lawyer to go find a path and then um to incorporate a company and U do that full-time I didn't know how to do it on a work visa so that was the first big barrier so when I started talking to a bunch of people I came across Unshackled Ventures which uh amazing amazing amazing Venture firm um I know the the two Founders really well and uh I'm not now I know them well but back then I didn't so yeah got in touch and that was my first like first true check because nobody else wanted to deal with uh the Visa situation and the investors were like I I honestly I don't know how to do it you figure it out and then come back and maybe you'll talk about fundraising right and um yeah so yeah so that was my first like preed um funding did that and then did built the pro like there was a demo I built a real product got a couple of pilot customers validated that it was a real need and then after that went out to raise a seed round a proper seed round with like an Institutional Investor and uh by the time the visa thing was sorted turns out there is a very nice legal way to do it but uh you need like a a lawyer to help you figure it out and you can't do it as an individual um yeah so the SE seed stage uh came that was the the first big like institutional check and then um after that that was also mostly based on early customers the founder pedigree and the team early team I had built and then after that the series a which was the the next big milestone uh and that was pure metrix basically can you can you show that this is the business and you can't at series a it becomes a little less about the vision and the story a little more about you got to show up with metrix and um yeah those are the three three big stages lots of ups and downs yeah let's about let's talk about some of those ups and downs so when it comes to that pre you're talking to invest ERS you're on the bay area and they're basically like we don't get this visa thing you know and they're telling you no because they don't want to do the homework and uh they're you know for lack of better words it's not their focus you know the friendly way to put it um how but you end up getting unch venters how much did you end up raising in that round and from how many investors yeah right in the very early stages we um the the preed was about 300K that's it so we put together uh a small round obviously the it was led by Unshackled Ventures and I got a couple of angels but basically like a very small preed round and the goal of the round was can we validate this hypothesis that we have we showed up with the hypothesis saying that okay this group of customers they care about these sets of things how can we prove it how can we show how can we gather proof point so yeah that that was that was that so very a very small preed round is what we did no it makes sense and uh at the point you get that preced money you still don't have your Visa situation figured out just yet but you're you're on your way and you build a team and you get a little bit of early interest uh for your seed round how much did you raise in your seed round and how did you get in front of those investors what was your process to go out and raise that seat yeah and also just to add the preedee was when I figured out the Visa situation because you cannot raise money without figuring that out right so what we did was I I talked to a bunch of investors everyone said I don't even want to start because the visa thing looks dicey so I talked to unshackle Ventures and they said this is exactly what we do like this is our thing and so we figured out how to make it work Incorporated the company and then then raise the preed so that's so so once we close the preed the visa thing was ordered and then for the seed round we raised uh 2.1 um 2.1 actually no uh overall 3.5 um so it was kind of slightly so what happened was we went out to raise about two and it quickly got uh expanded because we had we got more interest and that was like the brief period of time when I remember the up uh it was mostly you know it's like a spike where the UPS are very brief the Downs are pretty pretty long so um yeah so 3.5 was the was the SE Dr and um that's what we did yeah and when it came to getting getting those investors to the table getting their getting them them interested was it just people in your network was it war inos did you kind of compile a list how did you kind of get introduced to those investors that ultimately wrote you a check yeah um when I came in when I came into the ecosystem my network was precisely zero I knew nobody and when people said oh my God I did friends and family round I'm like who are these friends and what is this family who have this money to give you right what what is that magical thing so I had no family investors no friends who write checks um and uh all of it was just cold outbound that's what I did like I looked up people on LinkedIn on their websites I went to events to know like who is appropriate for for the stage and then as I did more and more then a couple of You'll Always Find good people who are willing to help and that's one of the best part about this this Silicon Valley ecosystem is that for absolutely no reason people will help you and they're are complete strangers and uh and now I always remember that when somebody reach reaches out to me I try to in whatever way possible just just help them out because somebody helped me for absolutely no no reason and uh that's what happened so I started with a lot of cold outbound and then somebody used to respond most of them didn't and then somebody who who used to respond I I talked to them said hey this is what I'm building and they said I might not be able to invest but you should talk to X Y and Z right and then through that I got to the right people and then um yeah that's how I that's how I raised Capital yeah it's so refreshing to hear because it it's a really how a lot of Founders go and do it but you know you don't hear these stories and like all this kind of stuff of how they end up pulling it off I just imagine it took a very long time to build the trust and build those relationships and that's kind of what fundraising ultimately is and why people always say you always you always have to be fundraising because it just takes so much to build those relationships over time so um now let's let's jump to the series a you mentioned it was very metrics oriented um you know share what you're comfortable with but what kind of stage was your company at when you guys went and raised the series a like what what metrics did you guys achieve and how much did you raise for that series Z yeah yeah so we were uh an Enterprise software company at the heart the mechanics the business was we were selling software to big companies and we had to prove or or gather like metrics on a couple of key things one um how many customers uh were able to convince number of logos basically who are now using your software that's one just pure number of customers um how much are they paying you overall and uh also on average ACV how much is that like for example you can show up with a million in revenue and if 950k is coming from like one customer that's bad that's very risky you failed to convince a bunch of other customers so the question was what's the what's the ACV and what's the median uh ACV and then on top of that expansion is also something we had to prove meaning once you land this logo great they're paying you 50k to use the software very first uh interaction but did they come back to buy more software from you and in our case more software would mean did they deploy at a second facility right did they add more people to the product um did they come back and ask for more feature so basically did they consume more of your software given enough time so these are these are a couple of different proof points that we had to gather and at about at cies a we were roughly at about north of like 10 big logos like actual customers these are not Pilots or these are not like oh my God I called up my friend's friend and they're doing a an Loi no these are like official formal customers with signed contracts no backing out and we had to show there were there were all like late five figures or early six figures and also with at at least I don't know one-third of the customers who started at 50k and now are at double or triple that amount within the within the last 12 months so these were all the things we had to gather uh to show up at CA and again it's different if you're selling to smbs it might not be enough but if you're Enterprise meaning if you're selling to Fortune 500s who are who are willing to sell out Millions to buy software this is a good this is this is good this is at least this is what we did to show that 10 different customers you can call them I gave them phone numbers to investors like call these people they'll verify everything so that's what we we showed up with yeah I so glad you mention that because that is actually a part of the process for a lot of series investors is customer reference checks they want to make sure a good VC you know will do that some EC's will like I believe in you You're great and then yeah doesn't always work out and also shows that investors care and they're willing to do the homework and and you know get involved and get their their hands dirty and do you know check on the work so it's it's great that your investors chose to to do that along with your your raise so when it came to raising Capital at each stage you know preed seed series a how did it kind of vary in terms of difficulty uh for each stage and ultimately which one became the easiest one to raise for oh that's a very interesting question um because one one would think that the more you do it the easier it becomes and um but in my case the precede was extremely difficult mostly because I didn't know about fundraising I didn't know about Visa I didn't know about company building I didn't know anything so it was difficult for for those reasons not the fundraising mechanics was a was a small part of the reason there are much bigger reasons why it was difficult so that was difficult series a was also very diff difficult because it was incredibly it was brutal to get these companies to pay money in a reasonable amount of time because they think in terms of quarters and years and startups Live and Die in like days so to convince these big companies to look at the product use it consume it sign and then wire the money that was very difficult so in retrospect I think at least for me the seat stage just happened uh it was easy at least than either preed or series a uh so yeah that's that's how I I look at so in terms of difficulty the hardest was preed second hardest was series a and Seed was um the easiest I like that you you think it'd be progressively easier but it's good to kind of see the the reality of your situation um right right as you kind of progress you're raising money you're hit mileston you're attracting Capital you ultimately decide to sell the us um I guess walk us through that decision- making process and why that was the best outcome for you yeah so in our case um it was more about so more of a like an asset uh acquisition basically what we did um was the company is still running Under New Management I'm friends with the new CEO and uh the process was basically just we we were at a point where we thought okay we've been doing this for about seven years um and uh we all want to do slightly different things for our next phase and then we decided okay there is something on the table right the company the name will will live on the product will live on and um maybe the new management uh will will will take it in a different direction so was mostly that it's just that look we gave it our best and then um obviously would be great if it's like A10 billion do hundred billion dollar company right it's it's great but we at a point where the teammates the leadership obviously me the investors we just wanted to say you know what this is we gave it a we give it a try and now there's something on the table maybe the company will will will live and maybe it'll become something different so we just that's what it was basically so yeah so now the company's running under Under New Management no I appreciate you sharing that and kind of the the outcome of you know going out building a company raising money getting some top tier logos and and ultimately to to an exit to kind of allow it to continue to grow and flourish into something while you get the opportunity to I don't know write another 13 bucks is that the is that the game plan oh that yeah that we um I think 13 is is where I'll stop people say it's it's it's my lucky number even though 13 is considered historically it's not it's considered unlucky I want to stop at 13 and I will stick with it no that's fair I you know commend you for getting to 13 in the first place let how pursuing more but uh or at least the first book um so but now you you find yourself in a on the other side of the table you race three rounds you you know you're solo founder and all this and we kind of glossed over that but it's you know at least in my opinion it could be exceptionally more difficult as a solo founder to attract Capital but you pulled it off and and now you're a a VC so you're on the kind of the capital allocation side at Moxy Ventures tell us kind of that story you know why did you pursue uh becoming on the investor side kind of what what does your day-to-day look like now on the other side of the table yeah as I did more and more of company building and I I live here in in the Bay Area so the network is is amazing and as I did more and more I got comfortable with investors the process I just had a a bunch of this this tribal knowledge that you acquire just by practice and you cannot there aren't enough books you can read to actually know what it's like until you do it so what I did was in the in the second half of my founder Journey or maybe the final third more and more like early Founders used to reach out they're like hey I saw your story on I don't know Forbes Fortune whatever it is and they're like oh I I do have 15 minutes or can you just tell me I'm I'm I'm here where can I go from here who can I talk so I thought I thought back to people who helped me and then I thought this is this is great some people maybe my knowledge could be useful to to somebody else so I started helping people and then I started finding Founders who are like incredible I oh my God this is insane you're really really good and then I started connecting them to my favorite investors for the stage appropriate investors and I did that that's it the good founder connected to good investor and my role was was done and then back then I wish oh my God if I had the ability to write a check because they used to close the rounds with some amazing names I like I could wish I could write a check because this looks amazing and then I did that for you know 12 18 the the final third and then I realized this is very this is amazing first of all um it's it's great because I get to meet great Founders they're doing great things and now wish I could write a real check because that's when you actually put your skin in the game so that was the the seed U that that that led me to becoming a a VC is once I wrapped up the company Pluto shift I talked to a few people and realized this would be amazing I really enjoyed doing it with part-time and um and now I want to do it full-time so it's more like a I tested it like a trial phase I really enjoyed it and then now I'm doing it fulltime and I see that happen quite often with with Founders that ultimately step down from their company or exit their company uh kind of seeing the other side and and joining and I think that's story lines with you know quite a few that I've spoken to before and kind of when you look at deals now like it's one thing to kind of connect the founder to a BC when you're more just an adviser or just you know being helpful um but what's it like when you're now you know representing a fund and making decisions around Capital allocation how has your decision- making changed and ultimately what are you looking for in founder well your seat stage so like you know what are you looking at for in terms of the founder or the the company yeah yeah it's very different now that you you do it fulltime and you're actually managing Capital uh raised from LPS so it's it's very different from oh I know a cool founder let me make the intro so now I spend a lot of time just understanding one where are all the good sources of Founders where do good Founders hang out like do I do I is there enough coverage in in my in my worldview to actually know where all the good Founders hang out and and you know do they is there a reason for them to talk to me so sources of of Founders is something I spent a lot of time on another thing I spent a lot of time on is uh is these these Market Subs sectors or these these themes and sub sectors where okay what what is what has become interesting um and there's something that my friends my peers my invest friends are yet to realize or uh they do realize it but they don't want to do the homework um either either is fine as long as as long as it's something that is interesting so I keep a lot of uh I keep an eye on all these sub sectors and also I do a lot of research on customer sentiment for example meaning like I think robotic arms are cool let's say that because I built I built robots in the past as a hobby and now it's a very interesting time for robotics with with l so I think it's interesting but it's just a hunch so what do I do to validate that so I talk to people I talk to people who buy robotic arm like big big logistics companies who operate a bunch of robots they had to buy from vendors they had to integrate so I spent a lot of time on on this market research and then also another area is the the diligence engine meaning given all the data I have all this data how do I process that to make a decision mean meaning can I can I just separate out my emotion from cold hard facts and can I make that process repeatable can I make it robust so basically the D diligence engine is that and uh yeah and also a big part of being now VC is is selling selling the idea that Moxy is the best for you selling the idea that um you should you should come to me right and um also helping portfolio Founders being like a sounding board because going from C to a is where I spent most of my founder time so I kind of I have a a very instinctive understanding of that part of the journey more so than preed or series a because I've lived that life the longest so Moxy is a seed stage font which aligns very nicely with all the this this tribal knowledge I've gathered over the years um and uh yeah that that's what I end up doing so sourcing diligence winning helping portfolio Founders doing um sector and Subs sector research to to know what's happening and what will become cool in 12 months 18 months um yeah that's about it yeah the what will be cool and not what already is cool because if it's already cool Now you kind of miss the boat uh I feel exactly um I had a a post that picked up a little bit of momentum the other day where it was talking about VCS want to be ironically they they they say what you say but ultimately they want to chase the train that's already left the station uh when they're you that's already got all the momentum it's got all the traction and there's tons of trains waiting at the station but had no one on them it's like all this compies are like hey I'm here to take you somewhere I'm here to take you on this this amazing ride and then no they're running back and they're patting on M chasing the uh the train left the station um right so with Moxy and kind of the deals you're looking at you're looking at C deals you kind of talk about your diligence process but ultimately like you know for plug for for Moxy on the podcast a lot of Founders here what type of what type of deals are you looking at stage sector check size that kind of stuff yeah Moxy we had a seed stage fund and uh we invest in in seed rounds for example when the company's raising 2 3 4 million we come in we write the largest check in those rounds and um in terms of sectors we are generalists but we do have our preferences like uh vertical AI robotics um climate Health Healthcare um AI plus bio energy so some of these areas where um we we are more active than others but again at the end of the day we we we invest in in companies Building Solutions to hard problems and solutions because we come from software we we have our network is mostly in software but we have invested in robotics so there's there's no hard rules but basically we we want to or rather we have invested in companies solving hard problems and because of our backgrounds we are completely okay taking on the risk of of of Technology and Engineering right we want them to be doing hard things because many people stay away from like things like deep tech for example and we are we're actively leaning into it because it's it's not it's not as difficult for us to understand because that's what we've done for a couple of decade so it's it's so I think it's it's one of those things where you identify things that are easy to you but are difficult to others so that you can you can just do it for longer and gain the benefits so yeah no I think that's a a wise uh strategy to approach and and often you know the fact that you're able to you're capable of doing the homework I think is one of the most important things uh in terms of doing DET tech and and trying to discover these and uh is it mostly software do you guys do Hardware at all we mostly do software and we the when we do Hardware we do it when Hardware is not like the core source of Revenue meaning you can use Hardware to deploy but you're you're you're commercializing software or data infrastructure that that's fine but if you're making if you're generating Revenue by selling units one by one that's something we don't do but if you're deploying autonomous robots on the farms you're almost giving it away at price and you're really monetizing the data that comes out of it or you're monetizing the software package that you sell to customers on top of that now that is something we get excited by so yeah we don't have like a hard rule against Hardware we have a we have a little bit of bias against the unit byun selling of Hardware yeah yeah no I think that's fair a lot of E's other way just cuz it's less predictable and uh you Hardware is usually not a generally exciting business model is usually you want some kind of recurring aspect to it um so I have to acknowledge that you're an ml expert you're you know technically very qualified in the new age of AI and everything going on when founders come to you and they ask you you know kind of for advice or you know seeking knowledge what's kind of the questions you often get what are those answers that you provide you know being that you're a thought leader an expert in the space yeah yeah many things actually start with or me conversations start with um like making their AI offering more complex and my first my very first advice is just go in the opposite direction if you can do this without using AI you should do it like 100% And most Founders are usually like shocked by that because they're like oh my God you're taking the thing away from me like what am I going to do now like what am I going to tell people if that's your problem you identified the problem because if you AI is is like Nitro boost to an engine that's already working it is not the engine so if you were hoping that you'll be able to do stuff because you call it AI powered then there's a much much bigger problem that you have to solve so that's my first usually that's the first place I start is whatever it is you're doing if I take out AI from it will it still be a company will it still be a product um and that's a good kind of starting point for first principles thinking around the product so that's that's the product part in terms of raising AI Founders come to me all the time friends and colleagues who have an AI powered something an application infrastructure some product and uh they want to raise capital and many many many firsttime early stage Founders they don't really understand the process of raising capital and that's okay like I was the same way I I just had no idea I feel like I felt like I was I was part of a a sport in which I had just no ideas of the rules so I was I kept getting yellow cards and red cards like I just didn't know what what what the hell was happening why am I getting penalized so the point is the point I recommend is Founders just to understand like do you have you spent time with the people you are selling to like selling is you are selling your selling Equity to investors have you spent time with them do you even know how Equity gets bought and many many Founders don't bother doing that they're like hey it's just like a small part of life I just want to get done with want to me get done with it so my point I tell them like just take a second you there a lot of intellectual horsepower right so just take a second to just understand the people on the other side of the of this of this transaction and understand how Equity gets bought and sold right and uh once they understand that supply and demand play a huge role right and this the reason I'm telling this is many Founders like do like sequential fundraising I'm going to talk to First investor if it doesn't work out I'll go to the next one and one after that and unfortunately um the price of the company or the equity is very much driven by supply and demand which means as a Founder you always have to generate demand for your for your shares and that can only happen when more than one investor is interested that's the only way to enforce peace and stability in your fundraising process so there are actually many many nuggets that come up but I'll stop there because those are usually two big things one is the product uh path the AI product pixie dust product path and the fundraising process are the two big things that come up yeah I think that's those are valid advice points and just like I I appreciate what you said about kind of AI should be the Nitro boost to an already working in uh I feel it just everyone has to sprinkle AI on everything because AI is what's getting the funding it's like it's not necessarily true like yeah and there's different layers you got you brought up some good ackies at the beginning of our call in terms of like data being a fuel and ml being the vehicle and AI being like the destination uh love that cool probably try to snip that um but I think when it comes to you know companies out there in the market looking at trying to be that differentiator the problem is is no longer a differentiator so many companies are saying they're adding Ai and it the barers entry are getting cheaper faster easier you know it's it's what else can you differentiate on and when you have those conversations with companies when you know they're trying to figure that out what's typically your advice uh for Founders that are trying to find or have a true differentiation Point what does that typically look like from your perspective yeah in the in the early days it's it's very hard to be like truly differentiated because whatever is your thinking or working on or the idea you have just rest assur it's been tried 10,000 times in the past just just know your history and you'll see that it's not novel so okay so if that's the case then how can a startup be any different like how can they how can they talk to a customer um who's inundated with these things so in in those cases um my my advice usually is like when you can't differentiate I would say like go vertical meaning whatever you are competing against usually there a bunch of unknown companies you don't have to worry about those you're usually competing with with like big couple of big names and even within that there's one truly big name that everyone thinks oh this is like Salesforce or this is like I don't know snowflake how are you different so in that case I I tell Founders instead of running away from it and listing like a table of features and like with the check marks and and or worse like business class 101 the the quadrant how you're different I'll just say we're exactly like snowflake but we are snowflake for this extremely small group of customers who prefer us like 10x more preference to us than them because snowflake is too General they address a wide variety of customers but we have narrowed down and made our workflows and software and everything so specific to this group that they absolutely love us and that and that is your Beach that's your entry point that's how you get started you need those early super fans for you to build a much much bigger Empire and that's that's some shape and form that ends up being being the the case so that's my ADV wice uh on to to most Founders um and also I have a over the years I've g a bunch of these little nuggets which I'm I'm happy to share about about four or five of them maybe we'll go through them quickly one is uh follow your skill not passion because I'm passionate about eating Donuts but I just it's not useful so I need to I need to know what my skill is and I need to follow that and next is the power of compounding meaning people just give up too easily too quickly you got to stay in it long enough for the power of compounding to kick in so that's the other one um oh learn how to tell a good story right obviously this you mentioned at the beginning stories stick stories people love stories even as adults we love story so learn how to be good at it um oh learn to do cold outp the best skill the best skill I picked up pre and post being a Founder is outburn because as as an engineer outburn was like this thing like no way I'm cold emailing because it's awful sounds awful you'll get yelled at no way but now it's like this incredible weapon that you can reld that's it's amazing um oh one more like last thing speed WIS always speed in any situation no matter where you are if you can't do anything just be fast usually speed bends so these are some of the things that um over time have have served as like good good um good points to keep in mind those are some phenomenal points and I agree with pretty much I do agree with all five of them uh when it comes to building a company and uh I think speed is something that a lot of Founders tend to look past when they're not going as fast as they hope they are and they try to be like well don't don't look at that look look at this but uh I think you kind of nail it pretty well and uh prti it's been it's been great having you on the show the advice you've shared has been phenomenal uh obviously you've you know an author you have your own podcast uh you and you're currently a VC what's the best way for people to to learn more about you or potentially reach out to you yeah you can learn more about me by visiting pratique j.com you'll find all the information about me my my writings my podcast my books my everything and uh if you want to reach out to me feel free I'm at pratik Moxy dobc if you're a Founder raising a seedr or a Founder just who wants some help or support or just wants a sounding board I'm I'm happy to chat and uh when you reach out just mention that you found me through this podcast episode C cold email will work in this case it will work I every single one of them uh just know that so make it interesting enough for for for you to respond at the very least but um forque it's been amazing having you uh it's rare that we get an ml you know expert on the show I appreciate the advice especially you know business experience and Technical experience you're kind of like the unicorn in this in the world so appreciate you joining us sharing your stories sharing your insights and uh look forward to getting this out to our audience as soon as we can perfect it was amazing thanks Jason thanks for listening to the show today we hope you learned something valuable and if you did be sure to let us know in the comments or by hitting that like button and if you're a Founder looking to raise Capital then join us at thunder. VC we provide a free tool to help you identify which VC family offices or lenders are the best fit for you using raai it will save you a ton of time from chasing the wrong investors and since launching our free tools Founders that have joined Network have gone on to raise over $1 billion in financing again you can find these free tools at thunder. VC and as a reminder we release new episodes every week so stay informed by subscribing to our newsletter at join. thunder. BC again that's join. thunder. BC and if you or someone you know has recently raised around and want to share your story please email me at Jason thunder. VC that's our show we hope you enjoyed it and we see you next week