How do you raise $7M pre-revenue using the YC playbook?

How did you tell the world about this, you know, NFT Pokémon card drop? And and kind of what happened after? A lot of people reaching out to us. I think we had a very different experience than a lot of founders in that space because it was the hottest subject, something new in that, and they saw it as like the biggest. I don't think we would be where we are if we didn't go to YC. We do the same mistake like every founder does, and it's normal. You need to be the most interesting person for them to want to talk to, which is easy to say and hard to do. My advice to you is trying to Welcome to episode 15 of Fundraising Demystified, the podcast where we uncover the untold stories of startup founders who have raised capital to bring their visions to life. Join me, Jason Kirby, as I interview these founders and dive into the untold hidden truths of how they got funded. Today, we have Nicolas Le Jeune with us, the ex-Googler and now CEO and co-founder of courtyard.io, a physical trading card marketplace backed by NFTs. They've raised a total of 7 million during the crypto boom and also participating in the Y Combinator startup accelerator. We talk about how the crypto web3 landscape has shifted from hot to not so hot, how they raised capital to buy them time and find product market fit, and the strategies they used to get investors on board during this journey. Let's go ahead and get started. Hi everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today, we have Nicolas Le Jeune with us from courtyard.io. Welcome to the show, Nicolas. Hi, Jason. Thanks for having me. It's It's great to be here. No, it's exciting to have you on the show. For our audience today, it'd be great if you could just kind of jump in, tell us a little bit about your your background, and you know, working from you know, Google to YouTube, and ultimately leaving all that that behind to to start courtyard.io. Yeah, so I'm from Belgium. Grew up in Belgium. Had my first first role I was lucky to get a job at Google. Moved to Ireland. Most of the people start in Ireland at Google. So, I was primarily doing sales at Google for for the cloud sales. Things went well, ended up managing France, Africa for SMBs, moved to the US to to do the same thing. And then I'm a big music fan, so I always wanted to work in around the music and entertainment piece. And so, I found this role about like managing music labels for YouTube, which is was kind of my dream role at the time. Moved there in San Bruno in California to to do that for all India labels. So, I did that for about 2 years. It's great. Got to meet a lot of great artists, a lot of cool labels, good great connection. But then after 7 years, I figured that I I wanted more to that, and I could see my path at Google like staying kind of like a line trajectory, and I wanted something different and really build something for myself. So, I experimented with different ideas, and then I ended up launching Courtyard, which was a lot of a lot of challenges. My co-founder I started with like 2 days before I left Google actually told me he could not do that anymore. So, I had to go through like engineering profile at Google that were talking about crypto. You will see Courtyard is linked to crypto, and started emailing them on LinkedIn. Found two engineers that were interested, but kind of hesitating. I told them, "Why don't you guys talk together without me?" And they were they got on well. We were lucky we were the three of us, and that's that's how we kicked it off. And you know, so having the opportunity to work at Google, build those relationships, and even recruiting from Google, which you know, I'm sure you know, helped kind of the narrative for raising venture capital down the road. I guess kind of walk us through what happened after you made the leap of faith and you started this company. What was kind of the focus and why'd you start it, and kind of what does it do? So, I can maybe start with the second piece. How did How did you start it and what does it do? So, when it was at the time where NFT really boomed, and we saw NFT not as just this digital image, but more as a way of like proving ownership of something wherever you bring it. So, you can go to any website and prove that you own something, this NFT. And we were like, "Why don't we tie that to something physical and have an entity that just stored those physical assets in a secure location like a vault or insure them?" And we looked at who is the most trusted companies to do so, and we ended up with Brinks, which is the armored truck company you see on the street. And we called them up. We called up, asked to talk to somebody bigger, asked that somebody bigger, convinced them that we're building something really new for them and something brand new where we would vault the assets at Brinks and create NFTs of all of those assets that could be traded on any platform. And it was at the time where like that was the hottest industry at the time and like the future. Now, it's it's a bit less so. And this is how we kicked it off. I um I convinced them we started working on like the prototype, reaching out to people, and the very beginning was more about forming the right team. A lot of people had pretty good job, as you can imagine, people working at Google, maybe have kids. And so, some of them like or a person who manages our our community was still working at Google, and I was just like, "Hey, if you work on Discord, then you just like you do a lot of stuff on Discord, can you just help us on the side?" And that's what he did. He kept his job and started working a bit on the side to help us out, and he moved full-time once we had money. And so, I would say it took about 6 months of like no salary, no pay, and just like working through that, me and my co-founder, with all the risk working kind of like on the side. I I essentially gave myself 1 year, and I was like, "I'm going to lose that money. How much did I spend the last 2 years?" And I was like, "That money from my bank account is gone. I'm investing in myself, and so I don't have to worry about like I need to make money tomorrow. I need to make money tomorrow." And so, that really gave me the freedom to to feel comfortable like really building something. So, this is how it all started. We wanted to do a proof of concept where NFT drops were a big thing. We we thought of like, "Why don't we do Pokémon cards?" It's something that's nostalgic to most people. It has high value, and so we went ahead and bought a lot of Pokémon cards. So, I didn't have the money at the time to buy that much. So, a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, lent me $500,000 to It was a Tesla engineer who Tesla You saw the stock quite increase. So, he was I believe pretty well off, but he was really nice to lend us $500,000, which we borrowed, and we said like all the cards we buy anyway keeps their value. If we don't sell out, we keep the card, and you can sell it. And we bought 800 cards, average value $500, and we all the cards range from like $100 to like $50,000 a card. And we did this NFT drop where you didn't know what card you were going to buy. It was just a closed pack, and it could be proven on the blockchain that the card is inside the pack. And everything is like randomly assigned to people. And we sold out in 2 hours. So, that's really how it started, but this new proof of concept of like those 3D cards and so on. So, So, lots to unpack here, the very interesting kind of narrative of one capitalizing on market trends. You know, NFTs were all the rage. I was looking at everyone's looking at them, if not buying them. And you you kind of found a unique model, a unique way to kind of capture attention. I do want to kind of unpack a little bit more, but there's something that you said that I think I don't hear often from founders in terms of how you envisioned your commitment to this you know, starting this company in terms of making this gamble or making this bet on yourself, and kind of reserving this you know, certain amount of cash that you know is basically gone forever unless you make something work, but also putting like a a deadline on it. To kind of give you that freedom and flexibility to be solely focused on the organization. So, I thought I want that to be a takeaway for a lot of founders that are maybe considering to jumping into starting a company or have already done so, and this might be a way to reflect on how they should prioritize. So, I think that was a really valuable insight. Definitely, that's the thing that helped me the most in terms of like feeling comfortable that like I have that time, and I don't stress every single day to try to find something that works or raise money today or tomorrow or something like that. So, that gave us a lot more flexibility there. No, I think that's a very valuable lesson. Going into this NFT drop, I have so many questions about the logistics, but you know, we don't have to spend too much time on that. But these are digital Pokémon packs that people were essentially unboxing, and they didn't know what they're going to get, but they knew that a card was valued between $100 to you know, $50,000 essentially. And so, you get this to How did you guys get this to market? How did you tell the world about this, you know, NFT Pokémon card drop? And and kind of what happened after? It was very organic all on socials, all on crypto Twitter at the time where we we started with the concept. It was a novel idea like Pokémon card on the blockchain. It's something new, it's something different. We were very lucky to find um our now 3D modeling person. So, all the cards look like a exact replica of the card that we have in the vault, but they look much better. It's like a 3D model that's like turning and so on. It looks more than an image because I always thought of like if it's a digital representation, it needs to look better than a photo. Uh so, we had a lot of like really really interesting content that could potentially go viral. Um and it's it's organically grew. Uh we did a few growth hacks, and we ended up with the Discord with like 10,000 people at some point. So, um that that's really how how like it was at the the right time as well. So, I like to say that if we did the exact same thing today, it would probably not have worked uh because there's a time like now everything's about AI. Um there's a time and a place, and I I believe like timing is very important. And timing, especially for um like you need to find the right industry but something different within that industry because same when live shopping was happening, Whatnot blew it up. So many companies tried to do the same as Whatnot, but it works already. So, it's very hard to do something different and something that innovates there. Yeah, and I think that's something that a lot of founders need to look at and and you kind of make it sound like it was so easy to do. Oh, a couple growth hacks, but you know, it's there's a lot of execution and strategy that kind of goes into making sure you're getting to the right audiences and so on. So, I don't necessarily want to like make it sound like it was super casual. not easy at all. It was not easy at all. It was uh it was a lot of grinding, a lot of like uh we took some time before having users, right? Like I remember it it we we were grinding days and days and days until like suddenly one day our Discord went from like 600 users to like 5,000 in one day uh because one thing happens, and it really like like it's all about I believe making the setting the conditions so that you can potentially have that like you cannot force that like lightning that you need to happen, but you can set all the condition in order to make it happen basically. And and then it needs to it needs to happen. Yeah. And then and maybe ideally ready for when it does happen so you can capitalize it uh capitalize on it. But uh so, let's let's kind of you know, fast forward from this point. You guys go viral. Uh you you sell out in 2 days. I guess kind of talk us through if you can like what was kind of the revenue growth at that point and then what did you guys do for for capitalizing the business from there on out? And did you pay back your friends uh the 500 I did pay him back. Uh I did pay him back. So, funny enough, we before we sold out, so it took actually quite a bit of time to set up all the processes with Brinks like signing the deal. We got an exclusive deal. They ended up investing in us. Um so, this took quite a bit of time. Um we entered before that, I believe like 4 months before actually selling out and having like the exact concept done. Um we ended up uh going to an incubator Y Combinator um which which helped a lot, and we ended up raising quite a like a bit of money. We didn't close the round before that, but before the actual sale of it. So, we had a lot of hype. We didn't actually have revenue until uh I believe 3 weeks before the end of YC uh where we did the where we did the drop and sold out there. So, yeah. Okay, so you guys did you got into YC first. Then you guys did the drop. And so, there's probably a lot of momentum and just from the YC network in it itself probably helped in terms of more exposure, strategy, and growth hacks, things of that sort. That would you say that's accurate? I think what with YC did, it brought us on the map for investors. So, I had a lot of investors reaching out to us. Uh I think we had something different because it was a new area, and everybody thinks this makes sense to link it to physical assets. Uh but nobody had a really key strategy for the operation piece, and because we had this exclusive partnership with Brinks um that put us a bit different than the rest of the population. And we had a good team and so on. So, that's that's I believe why we we entered the space, and we we went to YC there. Uh but it really gave us a lot of exposure when it comes to investors uh reaching out to us and learning about what we're doing. Got you. And then how quickly after the drop uh and kind of that you know, you know, sell out day did you guys go out and raise money and kind of what was it what was the strategy? What did you guys think about when it came to how much money to raise, who to raise from, you know, you guys are hot in a hot space uh doing something unique. So, lots of attention on you. How did you approach it and what was your strategy? So, prior to the drop, we were like a lot of people were reaching out to us. Uh I think we had a very different experience than a lot of founders in that space because it was the hottest subject, something new in that with a team that had something a bit different than the other, and they saw it as like the biggest like uh a really huge potential. Um so, we raised quite a bit before that. So, we actually raised 3.5 million uh before actually dropping the the revenue. Uh how we how we did is really trying to optimize for the right people that were going to help us. And so, talking to different VCs and so on. And after the drop, we talked to larger funds uh like multi-stage funds and uh ended up going with NEA. We we thought we were good with 3.5 million, but we were expecting to have like a crash in the crypto because the moment was not right right now with the economy and everything at the time. It was in March last year. And so, we ended up raising 3.5 million more uh which ended up raising like $7 million uh in total. Okay. And were they I hate when these traditional YC safe or the equity rounds? What was the Safe. Uh just safe. Got you. So, to this day, have you guys raised money since? No. We we kept the money. We kept frugal. Uh we still have quite a bit of runway, and uh we we're building. Uh so, we we're trying not to and this is what we expected. Right now the economy, we're in the collectible space which is like uh disposable income, I would say. It's the first thing that goes away. Okay. Um and so, we're not in a stage where like there's a huge boom when it comes to like NFT collectibles and so on. So, uh this is why we keep on on building on new on new thing and uh looking to find a product market fit uh which we're getting close to, but uh still still need to to work a bit more on that. So, you guys were were smart in the sense that you capitalized on market momentum but also realizing that this momentum is coming to a close pretty quickly. Kind of you know, I think when what was like the big close? Was it Celsius Celsius that went down first or Celsius and then FTX and then Yeah, then FTX and then people and then yeah. And then everything started BlockFi and everyone started kind of you know, coming down. The party was over. Um and what you guys did was basically kind of were concerned that this might be the reality, raise a little bit more capital to give yourselves some flexibility, some cushion. And I guess kind of since then like kind of given the the market dynamics and just kind of as you mentioned like uh collectibles being more of a disposable income area. What have you guys been working towards outside of like product market fit? Have you guys been selling? Have you guys been creating transactions, revenue? Kind of what's been the business experience as you kind of have to you know, weather the storm here? So, all those NFTs that were live, uh some were redeemed so we could redeem globally, some started to be traded on OpenSea. So, OpenSea was the number one marketplace of NFTs. So, initially, we started talking to all those big luxury brands, watch brands, and so on to see can we do that for you guys? Um I think it was a bit too early for for them to jump into the boat on that. And we we built a system where anybody can send cards to us very easily. So, they can just ship their cards. We print the shipping label automatically, and uh they ship their cards. We kind of realized uh afterwards in the current environment for crypto that uh the consumer that we have, there's a huge market for cards, but the consumer that we have are not specially into crypto and don't have a crypto wallet or don't know what the gas fee is or like all of that complexity, USDC, and so on. And so, we realized that we need to abstract the complexity of the blockchain. If the blockchain people care mostly about buying an NFT that has a super high volatility that might 3x within 2 days, which physical collectible rarely do. And so, we were trying to merge those two worlds, and so that's why we we built the first um marketplace that's like fully web two that's backed by web three. So, no gas fees, no um no gas fees. We create an account for you. You pay with a credit card if you want or with crypto. So, that's what's the the main goal of us first. And we see quite a bit of traction. So, we have about like 100 to 500 cards being shipped every week to the vault, and those cards are starting to transact uh quite a bit. Um so, that's the first stage. The second piece now we're working on is uh building uh this concept of drops because blockchain is very transparent. And so, uh this concept of like you can buy a pack and you don't know when you see all the list of cards, and really focusing on like this fun way of like opening pack digitally without having to go to the card shop to do so. And you know, just so I understand, you guys are basically keeping the physical item collectible items in the Brinks vault. And the NFT is exchanging freely cuz it's backed by the physical asset, right? Exactly. And whoever owns the NFT, uh we we don't even call them NFT anymore. Like whoever owns the asset on the platform can um at any point in time say, "I want to redeem my assets." And then we destroy it, and then we ship it to you. Interesting. Okay. And how often are people redeeming them? So, we had redemption in about 15 countries. I would say it's about 4% of the of the assets getting redeemed. Yeah, I'd be curious. it's much more liquid because the asset stays in the vault. Uh it can be transacted from New York to Japan to wherever within seconds. And you have the whole history of like transaction for those assets. Uh and you can do a lot more things because it's on the blockchain. So, rather than us we we doing like things like collateralized lending where you can put your asset as a collateral and borrow money, a lot of platform do that in the collectible space. But now we can just without having to build it ourselves, we can just go to a platform that does that in the blockchain and say, "Here are the assets." And just integrate with them because they can use the blockchain to prove that the person owns the asset. So, that's really the power of the blockchain where you can only transact like not only transact on our marketplace that on any other marketplace is compatible with what we do. That is pretty powerful from a platform perspective. And you know, again, collateralized lending is is was all the rage and then you obviously some some companies collapsed due to it. But uh So, I want to kind of go back. You know, so this is pretty interesting story in terms of how you guys got to where you are and what you guys working on today. Um but something that came up before we hopped on the call was kind of the the amount of term sheets or just offers and the negotiations discussions you were having with multiple VCs. You know, you were in a hot market, you know, innovative solution, right timing, and coming out of YC. So, there's a lot of attention on you. How did you go about making your decision to go with the investors that you chose? It's a good question. I think there was two or three main factors. Like the first one was the the fit. Um is that investor like reputable? Is like does he know a lot about the industry we're going after? And do we have good conversation when we discuss? So, funny enough, I I I joke when I said that the like the I never presented a deck. I had a deck which I sent often times, but it was mostly conversation about the problem we're trying to solve and seeing like what the perspective is and like it was more of a conversation of like trying to figure out what the position is and what do they think is the best way to approach this brand new market that's like very hard with a lot of challenges ahead. And bringing them along as a kind of a team member and brainstorm with them and see how it fits together on this. So, that was one of the main the main principle. And then yeah, afterwards it was all about the well, like if they were interested, if they could bring us some external value. Maybe they work in a company that's similar. So, we had for instance somebody who is is the CEO of the largest grading card company. A card grading company who came as an angel. Like those type of contacts really help as well for where we were trying to go to. And when it came to one, I I agree with you. Like I I tell founders this all the time. If you're pitching your deck at a meeting, you already lost. You lost. Yeah. You you should send in advance. It's all about like they have their own questions that they are interested in. They probably looked at the business. And so, it was more of a presenting what we're doing and then having them ask the question they were interested into. I like to say that we often think that we're too interesting than we we are. Like from then like they have their question in mind and they want that question to be answered. They don't care about this other area that you think is super cool from your business, but they don't care about it. So, that's that's the main thing. Yeah, that's actually really interesting point. I just a lot of founders feel they have to share something that they're really proud of and like that they've put a lot of work into. But a VC ultimately cares about, you know, a few things that are in their head that they're going to ask and dive into more. And it's better to appease those types of questions than it is to, you know, kind of drag them down a rabbit hole they weren't expecting or didn't have any interest in. And you know, effectively you're sell you're you're selling to a VC. You know, they're your customer effectively. And you need to kind of make sure you're listening to to the body language and the questions that they're asking. Um So, next question for you is what questions did you ask the VCs to kind of feel them out and kind of get a feel for, you know, who's actually going to be the best partner? And did you make the decision more so on the partner or do you make the decision more so on the the brand, the firm? It's a bit it's a bit of a mix of both, right? If you have like a huge firm that's very renowned, that's it brings a lot more resources as well. And we have different investors that are some are more seed focused, some are larger multi-stage fund. You see the different types of resource they can help. And even longer term how they could help like follow up and stuff like that. So, I would say it was more about the experience and like the asking them about how they think is the best way to go about like when it comes to like go to market or like bringing them along and brainstorming with them. So, the ones that felt more like a team member, if that makes sense. Or like if they were a part of the team of like how can we figure out that together? And that had really good comments and that had comments that showed that they understood what we were doing and were interested in that piece, I would say. Yeah, I think that's a a good way to look at it. I think some founders feel it's about they have money, I want the money. And as much as that's important, it's more so you're going to be building relationship in the next 10 years. And if you guys also have the foresight of the market maybe not going to be perfect for much longer, you definitely want someone that's going to be comfortable in the trenches with you and not necessarily, you know, kind of forcing you to pivot the business into a direction that wouldn't make sense for you. Yeah. That's right. Um So, kind of where do you see the the NFT and just collectibles market going in the next few years? And and how are you preparing for it? I think it goes with cycles similar to crypto. Right now, interest rate is so high. People live like the economy is not doing as well. They we're not in a great stage from an economy perspective, right? And the first thing that comes away as I said before is disposable like things that you you can get rid of. The first some of the first things are like collectibles or um collectibles or yeah, even crypto is is completely completely crashing, right? Who would want to buy more crypto for for now? I think the technology is the thing that I'm the most interested in. I think people see it too much as this speculative thing. I see it more as a technology that can enable this to enable us to use like interoperability between different platforms. Now, if you go to eBay, you can buy it's on eBay, but you cannot use the data from eBay automatically to another platform to provide other services. Or this video game cannot look at what you have in your account and just like integrate it with it. So, I think we're going to move towards a stage that's going to take a bit of time, but I think like we're moving towards a stage where that blockchain technology is going to really bring something different. Uh the last piece is I think we need to innovate. The thing we talk about like drops and like maybe repacking of assets digitally um is a new mechanic that hasn't happened before. And it needs to bring back the fun. I think part of the collecting is more than just investment piece. It should be fun. It should And that's what NFT really brought. It was fun to trade NFTs, to buy NFTs. It was exciting. And a lot of the platforms are still to this day very like transactional and you just like buy, sell. It's not as fun. Which is what Whatnot exploded and it's still growing quite a bit because it was fun to watch people opening packs live and so on. And so, uh I think it's still like a quite a bit of an interesting market to focus on. It's going to grow a lot, but it needs to have the fun component to it. And innovation in technology. All right. So, let me let me hop back in here. So, um kind of rounding things out a little bit now. You you've had some experience from, you know, kind of going from Google like big tech firm to to then YC to to then raising from an EA and you know, building your products and you know, being smart with how you manage your money to give you the runway you need to kind of get to the traction to to maybe justify a future round. What would your advice for for founders that are in this current market? You know, the the hype is all gone. We're back to 2017 kind of, you know, fundraising market. What would be your advice to the founders to, you know, either get into YC or, you know, to raise, you know, and get attention from multiple VCs? So, I think to to unpack that like number one regarding like getting into YC, I think it's I don't think we would be where we are if we didn't go to YC. I'm a big proponent of I know it's some are it's controversial and it's like I think the advice they give, they see so many companies left and right. They talk so many people that do the same mistake because we do the same mistake like every founder does and it's normal. But they are really telling it to you how it is. They they don't care if you don't follow the advice and they just see it all. And so, a lot of really good advice came came from from YC. And so, that was really helpful and it helped us like put us on the map as well as a startup. So, that's the first one. In terms of advice, I think this current market is difficult. I'd say a lot of people think of yeah, raising money is difficult if you don't have traction. So, my biggest advice is you can still raise money if you don't have traction yet because they don't expect you to have product market fit. Otherwise, you would be a series A already, right? What's the most important to me and what helped me the most is build the best team. I spend all my time you were talking my role is selling to VCs, but it's also selling to people to have the best people joining the company. And one leads to two and then two leads to three and then you're three people. So, you're more attractive for people to come in. And so, when you have really strong profile, um it really creates like the the best environment. It's like a journey you all take together and that's that's what I'm the most proud of for now. It's like the team I've assembled uh and and tackling that challenge together. Uh so my biggest focus because doing it alone is it's tough. Uh so I have a co-founder uh be as fair as possible as your co-founder. So I told my co-founder that we we're splitting it half-half. Uh it's you and me just because even if my brother come it was as much work uh from both side and it's all about giving it your all. So that that would be my advice. Uh focus on the team, be fair to people. Uh it's all about like if it's successful it will be a huge success. It's all about maximizing your chance to success to me. And in order to do that you want everybody is on board to be like 2,000% on board. You want them to be able to call until like 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday because it's a huge journey and like to be committed to it. You know and I think that's uh incredibly valuable to talk about the team um when it comes to pitching VCs and you know sharing the story and getting people riled up. VCs really do look like can you can you recruit you know recruit top talent? Yes or no? And if you're CEO and you know founder and you're not able to get great talent to the you know to the team then that's a you know red flag to to VC especially in that kind of pre-seed stage or early stage where they're really betting on the team because your product may say you're going to do X but then 6 months later down the road that X doesn't work and you guys pivot to Y. You know they're really betting on the on the team. I would say to chat to that uh order for YC batch. Uh so you're putting groups of like smaller and smaller group. We were 30 companies. I'd say about 30% have pivoted. And like most of the YC success like Brex has pivoted. Like Slack has pivoted. It was a game before. Right? So it's it they they should like the idea and the concept but it's all about like the team and their ability to execute as well. And and within that network uh you know just kind of shed some light in terms of what goes on behind the scenes you know from a YC participation? Like what's the community like uh of fellow founders and you know how is that been impactful for for you as an organization? I think the the the the thing that's the most helpful is like the relationship with the partner but also like you're part of a group of startup within the same industry. Uh and so you you talk. We we still keep in touch to this day. We have monthlies uh where if you want you can join. If you don't want you don't have to. And we just talk about the same challenges the same struggle that we're facing as well. And so it's it's really good in that sense. Um I'd say the that that's pretty much like the the main value and it helps you like push you to um like they have tons of resources and they push you to to visibility for for investors. And you know before we re-wrap up here like what's the final words that you put out to to founders that are currently in this market right now? Um so one thing I wanted to to chat about on this is like every single meeting counts as well. Uh it's a very small world and it's all about like at the end of the day perception uh of the team uh on this. So even if it's not the best investor you want and so on. Like I would take every meeting as it's the most important one because everybody talks. And it's when one person starts to everybody's friends. Uh all the investors. And so when somebody starts to hear more and more about your company's name they're like oh that's interesting. And so now they wanted more. And it's it's very similar to nobody wants somebody who's like begging for money is like desperate. Right? So that's why do you want to be in a strong position on this. And so it's it's a very weird dynamic in a way that like you need to be um you need to be the most interesting person for them to want to talk to. You don't want to go and beg and ask for an intro and so on which is easy to say and hard to do. Right? Uh but my advice to you is trying to um to feel confident about like your business and really feel like you if you're not 100% convinced that you're the thing why should they? And so it's really like if you're the most convinced and you're like all the investor that were not interested I was just like fine. Good for you. It's it's it's bad for you. Like I have other things and I'm pretty sure like on this you it's a loss for you. And like that's the approach I feel like you should take because if you're not thinking this way there's no reason they should think about it this way. That's your way. Yeah you hit it on the nail in terms of like the difficulty of managing that perspective cuz you know as much as by the scenes you might really need the money or might really really want the money but you know when you come off as either desperate or kind of you know needing the money it just is such a detract you know a detractor for for VCs to kind of show interest and and want to participate in your round. And you know advice I give to founders all the time is never rebuttal. If they give you a no politely accept it and move on your your merry way. Like trying to fight for them to change their mind never works and burns the bridge and then you're talked about the guy that you know person that begged for the money or you know didn't present well and it leaves like a bad taste in their mouth uh to where they you know you won't get referrals. You won't be talked up. Uh and it can you know dramatically hinder your ability to go out and raise you know down the road if you know you're kind of having that combative or defensive uh approach when you're fund raising. It's much better be like hey thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. You know maybe we'll see that each other down the road. Uh that's a way healthier way to communicate with investors. So appreciate you sharing that that input. So what's the best way for for people to follow you or learn more about courtyard.io? Uh going to courtyard.io we have all our socials. Uh we have uh you can follow us on Twitter on Discord on Instagram. Uh we we're announcing soon uh the first drops. So there's going to be a lot more drops and exciting stuff where you can buy Pokémon cards as close back with your credit card and you can open them and redeem them if you want to and resell them automatically. Uh so there's a lot of fun stuff that we're trying to bring for the collectible space that is coming very soon. So um feel free to check it out. And if you have some graded cards you can send it to the vault and get them on the platform. Well so well I'm going to have to go dig through my old collection at my parents' house at some point to to see what I have there but uh it's probably not worth much but um you know if you're in the collectible space be sure to to check out courtyard.io and you know Nicholas has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Uh and look forward to to getting this out to our audience as soon as we can. Thank you so much for having me.