How do you show traction to VCs with no product or revenue?

now let's talk about bootstrapping we would meet him a couple of times a week just to get free lunch steal all the snacks around their desk and that would be like our dinner would you sell your bootstrap start up for over $30 million it was actually about a 7mon process our broker sat us down and said remember that number you guys wanted access group is offering more than that let's not get greedy that's what Nick Telson select did he goes on to start a company called Trumpet through that Venture Studio that went on to raise over 6 million seed we wanted to show traction without having traction so how did we do that was we how did you find the investors cuz you didn't have a history of raising Venture a lot of VCS we learn say they're preed but they're not really preed but despite his success as a founder and selling his company fundraising wasn't as easy as he hoped it to be it actually nearly fell through on the last day but welcome back to fundraising demystify today we have Nick Telson cette with with us welcome to the show Nick delighted to be here thanks for having me Jason before we you know dive into your backstory and everything like that I want to jump on the fact that you're a bootstrap exited founder turned angel investor and now you're running a venture studio and you've spun out multiple companies that have raised venture capital I do want to kind of unpack trumpet so trumpet is a unique case where you you decided that Venture Capital was the right path for it and you kind of altered what you originally kind of intended to accommodate that type of capital so I just walk me through that thought process of you know that kind of moment where you realize that this truly needs Venture backing you know food strapping is not the solution here yeah I think with with trumpet the the sort of tick boxes for us um which led us to go down the VC route was instantly Global so this product is instantly Global the opportunity um is vast um so I'm sure we'll dive into trumpet but you know any B2B sales team can use trumpet so you know that that's a very very large uh market and self- serve so we have an outbound motion for for larger customers but it's also a self- serve motion when you pull those three together it's it's a very large opportunity which is Venture back and the other thing we looked at was speed um so we had to execute quickly um this was a segment in the market which is new um it's called buyer enablement um and we actually sort of forged this Market ourselves and since since we've done that a lot of competitors have you know come and tried to eat a slice of our pie so we realized we had to execute brilliantly and execute quickly and to do that we felt that we had to go down the VC route not the uh bootstrapping route so well articulated on kind of how you got to that point I'm excited you Shar that cuz I feel like a lot of Founders don't feel like they check those boxes or they don't go through that thought process to check those boxes to truly qualify the opportunity for Venture most people like well Venture sounds cool and validating so that's what we should do I like no there's a very methodical reason for it which you just describe so before I jump into the bootstrap you know narrative can you explain to the people what trumpet actually does we actually went back to design my night so we had a big sales team there we were selling design my night we were selling um essentially restaurant software to to restaurants I think of it like open table but for bars and pubs in the UK and we had a large sales team selling to to restaurants large groups Etc um and we looked at that sales process and we thought okay on one end you've got CRM sales force HubSpot lots of those on the other end you've got the Outreach tools LinkedIn Navigator scraping email databases all of that and then everything goes back to email and we thought okay look we're going back and forward for over a month here with some restaurant groups bringing in multi-stakeholders on the on the restaurant side and multi-stakeholders at the design my night side and it's all locked within the email between the one person that designed by night and the one person at let's say the restaurant group and we thought there has to be a better way of doing this and we looked at how notion um had developed the industry even how Google Docs bring in collaboration has developed the industry as well and we thought let's bring this to sales so with that thesis we created trumpet which allows salespeople to spin up micro sites digital spaces in seconds between you and your prospect and then this is a live space where you can all work together to get the deal done so this live space you can host video you can host audio you can host demos you can have case studies you can have contracts agreements proposals all the stuff needed to get a deal but in one space between you and the buyer and and then on the buyer side whoever needs to can come into this space and ask questions and have a look and on the seller side anyone can come in and have a look and see how the deal is going so it's this idea of collaboration to get the deal done making it a lot easier for stakeholders on the buy side have all the information presented in the way you want to presented as a you know if you're uh you know selling it to them in that microsite format So based on all those features I see why you definitely needed to raise money because that's not cheap to build I imagine all right so we understand what trumpet is now let's talk about bootstrapping so we'll we'll go back to design by night because that's a business that you bootstrapped and sold uh for over $30 million walk the audience through what design by night was and why you decided bootstrapping was the best choice so yes so design my night uh I'll say dmn it's much easier that was one of the pitfalls two longer name for a brand trumpet much shorter um so dmn was a Marketplace essentially on the one side um it was a discovery platform for going out so um as I said like like open TBL so so people could go find bars restaurants pubs this was back in 2009 when we ideated so actually it sounds crazy now but you know we thought okay let's build a mobile first platform um that was very easy for customers to use when they're out and about they was talking at that time to Millennials who were the the the Gen Z of that time um who who wanted to discover in a different way and the platforms that were out there were quite clunky didn't really speak to that customer not very easy to use so that's how we started it we actually started it as a price comparison site for going out um so London has very uh different pricing going out you can get a cocktail for25 and you can get a cocktail for5 so that was our first thesis was land on design my night say what price bracket you're in and then we will show you restaurants pubs Etc we ran that for sort of two years as just a discovery platform and then really saw that we needed to have a SAS arm to make this a bigger business um building just a b2c discovery platform is tough like to sell advertising you obviously need a ton of traffic um and to sell sort of like spot placements for restaurants and bars can only get you so far in terms of a big business so we then pivoted is because we obviously kept our B Toc arm um to SAS uh and built a reservation platform solely for the drinks Le industry um so we let Open Table do their thing but we noticed that bars and pubs in the UK didn't have a bookings platform and they have very different needs to a restaurant so we built a platform that was specifically for them and because we did that we were able to grow very quickly um when they saw the software just made sense and then we expanded beyond that so we had the reservation platform we then launched a ticketing solution um to do popups events that that our customers could then throw events in their venues as well and then we launched an e vouchering solution as well so we were basically going to the hospitality industry and saying on the one hand we can promote you on our b2c platform um and when we sold our BTC one in six londoners was using it every month so it became a very big b2c platform and on the other hand we were like here's all the SAS tools to run those operations and I guess how did you finance it like how did you get this off the ground were you you know eating Ramen and you know barely getting by uh were you had success early with sales how did you kind of Finance the company to to get to that point yeah so it's worth saying so we were early mid 20s back in 2009 2010 the sort of Angel Investing scene and even the VC scene in London was in my mind pretty nent um you didn't see all the content that you see around investing now it was very much a San Francisco thing um so we almost didn't know the options available to us we didn't even think of the word venture or going to speak to VCS um so we actually um I worked at L'Oreal so I did marketing at L'Oreal Andrew my business partner worked at Accenture what we actually did was um we knew while we were building it in the background running two jobs that we were going to leave eventually so we we hard saved cash and actually when I left my job at L'Oreal Andrew stayed at Accenture and we split salary um because he was earning a lot more than I was and then we just funneled that salary into building the first platform of design my night um we were very much run on gas so ourselves as humans like stopped going out um wasn't spending frivolously true story um one of our good friends worked at Google who actually then became our CTO eventually and we would meet him a couple of times a week just to get free lunch um so we would meet him get him excited about the project have free lunch go back to his desk steal all the snacks around their desk and that would be like our dinner um so we really did run on gas but you know a good year um and all the money that we were saving we were piling into design my night in terms of hiring in the early times it was very much interns So speaking to universities business students and saying hey look you want to come and do like a six-month internship with us and get really good experience um so it was proper proper bootstrap um we did eventually raise um £250,000 from a group of six angels and then they doubled down again to another 250 when we discovered the SAS but we did only ever raise 500 and then took that to exit I still consider that bootstrapping when it's you only raise an angel round I feel it still qualifies as as bootstrapping but that's it's an incredible story and that's why I always love kind of finding out how what was the true story to you know a 30 plus million dollar exit and how much grinding was there you you fortunately young you had you know the flexibility less of you know responsibilities at that age other than to build something great so you know good is to you to get through that period and you know see the the light at the end of the tunnel and drive it towards an outcome and you know so that's that's the bootstrapping story It ultimately gets bought by access group what was that exit experience like yeah it interesting it was actually about a seven Monon process so we ran it very structured so Andrew and I when we started design my night for Founders so young and inexperienced we were actually very levelheaded and probably about a year or so in we sat down together and thought what do we want out of this business like you know is this longterm is this do we want a million pounds each in our back pocket do we want1 million do we want 50 million luckily enough we we were similar in our mindset um we both wanted Financial Freedom and that was about it we knew we didn't want to run this business forever um we knew we would have had other things we wanted to go on to but we wanted Financial Freedom we sat down and discussed what Financial Freedom looked like for both of us um Andrew had had one child at that time and you wanted a bigger family so slightly different parameters on on Financial Freedom but we both agreed on a number and then we actually extrapolated that up and we thought okay well if this is what we want to end up with this is the exit we need to get to uh this is the amount of equity we need to hold to get to that exit we probably need to be doing this amount of ARR and this amount of ebit and as we were building the business and things were going great we could see that ARR and ebit number on the horizon and we thought you know what maybe it's now the right time to start speaking to people so about a year out we engaged a broker here that the business was very sellable uh and the number we wanted was realistic so we went on a journey with a broker um for the first few months they just spent a ton of time with us remodeling the business understanding the business it was actually quite a complicated business we had three bits of SAS and a betc on the other end different business models across all of them as well um so they really got to grips with the business re forecasted it um remodeled it with us um and then we put the IM together which if someone hasn't done it that's like a sales deck to sell your business and we're talking like a 100 slides long so that take took you know like two months together and then we went to Market and we had a list of people that we thought would buy it he had a list of people he thought would buy it he said to us in our first meeting we'll never forget the two PE our two lists um I guarantee that the person that buys design my night won't be on either of our lists and he was right um so you know we had the obvious ones Open Table booking.com Trip Advisor Etc and we did speak to those companies uh he had more like private Equity or or or or competitors in like the Asian market that we've not heard of and then we just did a road show basically so to to cut seven months into two minutes um he uh sends all the decks out he he sends a teaser deck out to all the people on our list some people say yeah they want to hear more sign an NDA uh we then have a meeting we then send them the the full debt um we then had another sort of five meetings probably in some cases to get to uh we want to make an offer or actually this isn't right for us so you're sitting a ton of meetings all the time and obviously you got to have your game face on each time and yeah you just Whittle it down we had about three very very interested parties at the end um and then access group for a UK unicorn like a soft sof Ware House made the most compelling offer could move quicker we UK base which helped us um we obviously looked to earn out terms as well which were favorable and actually the other businesses were probably going to offer us more but the terms and the speed of the access deal were better and our broker sat us down and said remember that number you guys wanted well you know access group is offering more than that so let's not get greedy like let's get this deal done um so we went along with him luckily and yes eventually closed the deal it actually nearly fell through on the last day but uh we got through in the end oh man uh I'm sure there was a lot of emotional moments and roll through the experience you gave the very practical logical step by step which basically like a master class on how a deal gets done so hopefully audience picked up on this but it sounds like you picked a great broker uh so it's but the stress of you kind of loosely mentioned game phase but that that means so much more than just like you know show up and like all the prep you have to do what you can and cannot say in those transactions so kudos to you to you know running a great process getting a great Banker on board and you know getting that deal done so that that's a great story and appreciate you sharing the the details of it um and I guess you know in this experience now that You' had that exit you got that experience it was just you and your partner that got to that exit because you were bootstrap I'm sure you had some couple angels that are very happy um but when it came to you know trumpet and how you see the future of what a transaction might look like in the future for trumpet you how do you think did you run that same process of kind of with your partner thinking about a number and an outcome yeah it's interesting because we've also brought in a third founder who who we've known for a very long time but haven't run a business together um and and Rory is a first-time founder so doesn't have the financial luxuries let's say that and I currently do um so it might have a slightly different motivation to us but we're all aligned which was very important before we started the business as a three the nice feeling about trumpet is actually is less about the financial end point and more about just building something big and Industry changing and it's a very different mindset actually so look you know we want the big outcome um with VCB so you know that big outcome for them is unicorn for us we're more looking at it like let's just go on this journey and build something big and build something Global um and build something that is industry changing um we feel like we're on that journey and and actually having that sort of freedom to be able to think like that without the stress of financial concern um I think makes us a much clearer minded Founders um and and able to to advise Rory as well as the third co-founder better because we're making more strategic decisions rather than financial end goal decisions if that makes sense no it makes perfect sense you when it came to the fundraise and you guys ultimately raised I think 5 million pounds for for trumpet what was the experience like for you know running that process and you know how did you architect that fundraise yes we've done two round we've actually done three rounds really so we've done we did um preed let's call it which was pre-product pre-revenue uh we raised one and A5 million pounds so what two million bucks we then did a safe um a year later for another million pounds so 1.3 1.4 million bucks which would convert the next round um and then we just closed that round which was about 6 million bucks um which we're calling a seed you know a large seed in the sasw guess the two very different processes uh obviously pre-revenue pre-product we were pitching a figma design um and very much pitching the vision of of what what trumpet can become however having said that and as an angel investor myself that at preed um I took my own advice was we wanted to show traction without having traction so how did we do that was we got on on the cold front and we spoke to over a 100 sales leaders um through contacts through networks and through cold Outreach and we actually built a notion page um which listed everyone we spoke to who they worked for feedback positive negative IND different would you buy this product yes or no and at what price um and we were able to take that to investors and say look this is our vision you can see what the product's going to look like and it looked good um and look here's a 100 potential buyers when we launched a product that uh have already given us our feedback um which we're already putting into the into the product and are people we can go to to buy the product once we've launched so we had that we also were building a weit list so we um my background's marketing so we marketed the product very well even though it wasn't even launched we got people excited and had an open weight list um and by the time we were raising I think we had over two to 3,000 people on that weight list and and look you know and and we learned a lot of lessons about the weight list actually and and and in in reality they're probably not going to be your customers but to go and build fomo with investors is great um so we could go and be like here's the vision here's what the product's going to look like it's going to be ready by then here's 100 sales leaders we've already spoken to with their intent to buy and their feedback and here's 3,000 people waiting to buy it and here's two exited Founders so um it it was a compelling story not to say it was easy um you know pre-product pre-revenue is still very hard a lot of VCS we learn say they're preed but they're not really preed they're filling their funnel for when you do have revenue and maybe your seed um so we had to find genuine preed investors that you know are willing to to take that bet pre-product pre-revenue um and we're lucky we did the safe round was very quick and easy we we were we were growing well and we just said to them we want some more cash to keep growing quickly these are the terms are you in and they all backed us again so that was that was nice and easy so before we go so before sorry before we go to the seed the formal seed round one you walked us through an incredible process of making you know creating traction without traction and demonstrating how you did that to get the investors how did you find the investors because you didn't have a history of rising Venture you maybe didn't have the right connections how many people did you end up talking to and how did you find those people and get introduced so a real mixture um so um and people were surprised cuz we're exited Founders but as you said we weren't VC backed Founders so um a lot of it was cold Outreach actually just doing research on um who we thought would back us looking at their portfolio and this and the stage they went at in at we were very deliberate with LinkedIn so when we exited um we basically had two years before we sort of came to Market with trumpet you know many people find this term yucky or distasteful now but I decided to build a personal brand and it was the best decision I made so the personal brand I've built is actually not just inspirational BS quotes that doesn't help anyone I try and give really practical information and I have built up a really good following of Founders and investors you know waiting to see what I was going to do next and that was very deliberate so then when we started when we launched trumpet as a this is what we're building we then got a lot of inbound as well from investors from those two years of building a network and then asking my network so just asking people for favors um and you know you just got to put yourself out there fundraising is a sales funnel so you've got to be salespeople and actually our lead light Swiss VC uh he came inbound to us and two others I believe were actually us out bounding them so it was very much a sales funnel to to get that done no it's impressive and and what would you say the timeline from like cold email to you know cash in the bank was oh you also asked how many so we spoke to about first calls we probably had about a 100 so you know and and to get those 100 we probably you know outreached with the deck like 300 and there was a lot of interest uh so you know the second third and fourth call was still with like 70 70 then 60 then 50 you know didn't go 100 and then five um so we did have a lot of calls to get to the final rounds um and I would say that whole process from kicking it off to ending took us about four and a half months i' says pretty good it's a pretty good turnout from from Co to to deal closed you especially pre-product but were you doing the kind of market research during those four and a half months or did you already have it done at the start of the for uh the start of the fundraise a bit of both so I think we were just learning as we went um so we we created the list there's lots of lists as well if you search on LinkedIn there's loads of free databases out there of of investors you just got do do the research um AI can help you know as well quick plug for Founders looking for an edge raising Capital companies on thunder. VC have gone on to raise over a billion dollars since joining our Network it's AB absolutely free just go to join. thunder. BC to get started and if you leave a comment on this video down below with your company's name and the problem you're trying to solve you'll be interested to win a free coaching session with me okay that's it just comment down below now let's get back to the show but you know and precisely use that and and you know I think fans is sit there and think well I've got no network I don't know anyone but there are resources out there such as thunder so so you know don't don't just the moan that you don't know anyone um and you know if you are a good salesperson and you do have a good Vision then you'll have good conversations if you don't maybe then you're not right for VC or maybe the product isn't going to be the next big thing and that's okay too so yeah it was and and as you know as well you're also refining your pitch as you go so you know the first 10 calls were very different to the next 20 calls and the the second call while we were having the first calls was very different and you know so you're constantly refining your pitch and learning and taking feedback on board um to create that interest to create that fomo um that it's a game that's raising money that's all it is it's just one big game um and you need to be smart on how you play it no I think you guys executed flawlessly when it comes to just the the reality of how these deals ultimately get done and you I think four and a half months is great and I think it has a testament to your background you know that kind of post exited founder status you know can kind of speed up the process and the trust for investors whereas some case you might meet someone it might take six to 12 months of demonstrating that you can deliver and you can execute before they'll feel comfortable investing but when you have a track record you can shorten that timeline pretty dramatically um all right so we've done uh so let's talk to the the seed round for trumpet so we talked about the pre-revenue stage let's talk about the the larger seed round that came recently yeah I think what we found with the SE which we were surprised about and I think that's just 2024 is the heightened expectations of of what you need to raise a seed round it's not just a bit of traction you know so to to to to open the Bonnet a bit to shed some light on it you know we had some investors that said no because we hadn't proven enough on the the big Vision yet and we said well yeah that's our big Vision we're we're two years in um yeah I don't know how we can show you our big Vision when we're not even there yet but that was enough reason for them to say we don't believe that you're going to be able to execute on that big Vision um fine others was obviously as a SAS you you go up Market you you you're not starting with Enterprise very few SAS products will come out the gate starting Enterprise and actually I don't think you should and we were very much to midmarket the ACV was going up and we actually did have some I would say larger mid-market Enterprise deals and also some Enterprise customers that maybe had $33,000 contracts but the potential was 500,000 but we were still at the 30,000 with them but we were already in there and again we had some investors that were like well you know your vision is to get the ACV up to X um and you haven't proven that yet uh you haven't got a contract that is $500,000 and again we were like well we're two years in and but we're actually we think ahead of that curve we're already in some of these companies we're now going to land and expand but that wasn't enough of them either it was yeah very um lofty expectations which surprised us we were fortunate the we built a good team the growth had been good um we we were were proving that it was working uh we had some very good logos and our investors wanted to double down already so you know that's a good signal if your current investors want to invest again so it was easier to get the intros this time we also all of those preed that I told you um aren't really preed investors we'd obviously kept nurturing those we had a long list of all those people that said no to our preed um but we could tell they would probably be more keen when we have revenue and we're a more seed stage so we kept them warm we'd kept them updated with very loose updates on how we were going by the time we launched the fund raise we had quite a long list of people that wanted to speak to us because we've been nurturing them we were able to execute relatively quickly it was a similar time frame four to five months um but yeah I think we were just surprised about the expectations of a seed round of a product that's not AI yeah exactly that seems to be the I'm now running into companies that say were powered by human intelligence uh which I find to be refreshing uh so this is incredible story I'm really glad you shared what when I feel to be like the textbook play for raising Venture I think you're really kind of hit all the key steps that you know have to happen in order to get a deal done so switch gears you know we talked about trumpet but you also have another found company that you co-founded called SQL which you alluded to earlier um what is SQL and uh how did that come to be so SQL um is a lot more fun sounding than sales Tech although now I love sales Tech um so SQL is a um invite only um app for professional athletes um to be able to invest in the best startups in the world having a positive impact um so the thesis there was especially in the States you could see the the top top goats were Angel Investing and having good returns and you know you've got um Serena who's got her own fund uh there's you know sha and all of these that he invest in ring and made of Fortune there's lots of positive signals to the market to to other athletes that look Angel Investing is actually an asset class that you should probably look at and and actually it's an asset class that your financial advisors probably aren't telling you about either that was one signal for us uh the other signal um is it's almost like an ego play as well so athletes more and more now don't want to be known just as an athlete um so if you look at a lot of um say NFL players or NBA players that have invested Ed if you go to their Twitter bio it's actually investor NFL so actually they're almost you know bigging up that they're an investor and and why not it you know it adds another string to their bow hey I'm not just this athlete and obviously the the other obvious side is Cash they have cash to deploy and in a lot of cases aren't being advised smartly on where to deploy it um and we we when we were researching SQL there was this crazy stat that was something like 62% of all pro athletes go bankrupt they get you know their large contracts up front in in a lot of cases in the US um they are mid 20s obviously you get this large amount of money you go and buy four houses three boats 10 watches you want to look after your family you want to look after your friends and then suddenly that money can go very quickly um and you know just putting it in real estate is isn't really enough um if you're going to be smart with your cash um and then obviously as you get older your contracts go down value but you want to live the life you were leading um so it becomes a bit of a a death spiral down to bankruptcy and we wanted to sort of readdress that so um within SQL there there's a big education play as well so we've almost built we're building the master class of Angel Investing within the app so all video content that's how athletes like to consume content and we have uh lots of education in there we have stories from other athletes we've got stories from Founders from VCS um and really teaching them about what Angel Investing is about and educating them rather than their financial advisors um on what they can do in the UK as well there's lots of tax breaks for investing in early stage startups which again let's say Premier League soccer players would have no idea about because they wouldn't be told about that so it's educating them on that as well and they just need to rely on us that we are giving them access to the best startups in the world how do we do this is we partner with the top desl funds and the top DL fund managers not just the fanss um they have to be leading the round uh they have to have done their due diligence already and then hey look what Founders don't want Shaq and David Beckham on their cap TBL so it's a bit of an easy sell to the VC like it looks good on the VC if they get SQL in on their round um so we do that we're also bu building our own proprietary Tech to Source the best deals in the world as well um so we're using technology AI ml to to get access to the early promising Founders and sort of get in there early on their Journey with them um so we're sort of the the deal flow is coming from from two ends um and we say to the athletes you don't need to worry about the quality of this deal or the quality of the founder that's our job we've done that job for you you just need to see if you resonate with this deal and if you do you can invest in with open banking via the app and yeah very cool very exciting it's different to trumpet that we brought in a very experienced founder guy called Alex who had a over $200 million exit with his previous business which was in the high netw worth space so Andrew and I are very much more just like the ideator and the initial uh we we funded the initial MVP which we built at the same time as trumpet but we very much handed it over to Alex now uh and we're just sort of like you know High Equity Angel Investors into that platform now that's a phenomenal story and it's it's I love these new ways to think about starting a fund because effectively it's a you know like a Syndicate you know type model in a way but with so many more value add layers to it that you know can help differentiate both to the LPS in this case a very specific audience but then also you know makes it an appealing offering to you know lead investors to want to have you on the cap table uh to kind of get access to those better deals as opposed to having to go out and hunt for the deals without that kind of collaborative you know model so you I don't have much more to say than that it just sounds great from uh and and just before we you know start to wind down from the the conversation here you've also been an angel investor and I think it'd be interesting for you to share your perspective on how you look at deals being a you know bootstrap founder VC back founder you know launching effectively I'll call it a fund or syndicate it uh using technology but then also making your own individual bets uh how do you think about Angel Investing and how do you prioritize who ultimately gets your your early checks yes so I do go very early so you know I like to be sort of sub five million bucks as my entry point um I'm very much Angel mindset so you know if I can get sort of 10 you know 10x return that's great so if I'm getting in at sort of um you know three three million and we can take that to a 30 to 50 50 million uh exit then I'm super pleased about that um so I'm looking for realistic bets rather than moonshot bets so and I'm very upfront when I speak to Founders about that I'm like I ask the questions I ask myself what do you want out of this what do you and your co-founders want out of this um let's plot that Journey out together I really enjoy niches that then can expand out so actually design my night the niche was bars bar booking software we then expanded to pubs and we then expanded to restaurants um trumpet we it's not a niche but we focused on sales teams we're now focusing on customer Su success teams Solutions Architects teams um so we're the niche the Trojan Horse is sales and we're expanding out across all revenue teams SE Co the niche is start um is startups as the asset class but then down the line there'll be other asset classes in the app so I like to apply the model to my own startups to to what I like to invest in so very smart switch onf Founders that know the industry very well that's very important to me you don't necessarily have to have worked in the industry but I want you to have done your research so when you're going to need to Pivot which you will need to do I want you to be the font of all knowledge in that industry that you're working on so when it comes to that pivot decision you know how to make the best decisions for the company to thrive in the industry that it's it's operating in the other thing that I like to look at is non-ego Founders because I'm not looking for those moonshop Founders I'm not looking for those eccentric what you know Elon musk's and Steve Jobs types and and let's be frank I'm probably not getting in front of those people anyway so I'm not looking for almost like this Bluff and Bluster ego of me building this unicorn I like really grounded Founders that are smart that have a really nice backstory as to why they're building this and why they want to be successful and have their head on the ground and I would rather them say to me we're going to be doing next year a million and the year after that we're going to be doing three million and the year after that we're going to be doing 8 million rather than this year we're going to be doing 20 million and next year we're going to be doing 60 million and will take on feedback like you have to be open to feedback as a Founder you need an element of ego to back your idea but you have to be very open to listen to your customers and you need to listen to smarter people around you whether that be your team or investors to make better decisions so I look for very ego less Founders which you probably won't hear that often because most people are trying to find those outliers no it's refreshing to hear that and it it sounds also it's you know similar to your background and you know similar to your identity as a founder and looking for Founders that have a similar Playbook or similar approach uh so you know for Founders listening if you resonate with Nick's story leverage that to to potentially reach out uh Nick this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation thank you for being on the show we'll make sure to link that in the show notes as well as the links to trumpet and sequel really appreciate you joining us for today thanks for having me Jason thank you for watching today's episode as a reminder I'm your host and Kirby I have built and sold multiple companies with over 135 million in transactions as either a Founder operator investor across multiple Industries I'm currently the managing director and founder of thunder. BC where we help companies and Founders at all stages navigate what capital to raise and who to raise it from and help improve company's odds of raising the capital if you need help reach out to us at help. under. BC if you like Today's Show please share with your friends give us a like or comment down below and as a reminder this show is published weekly to get notified new episodes and our newsletter be sure to go to our website at join. thunder. BC and if you sign up today I'll send you a few freebies on how to negotiate a term sheet how to get a free list of relev VCS and much more that's it no more Shameless plugs thank you and see you next week