When should you monetize before raising a Series A?

I think one mistake entrepreneurs make a lot is like trying to convince people who aren't interested to be interested but in reality it's actually about finding people that are interested welcome to fundraising demystify the podcast where we uncover The Untold Stories of successful Founders who have raised Venture Capital to bring their Visions to life join me Jason Kirby your host as we dive into the hidden truce of the fundraising game we'll explore different strategies tactics lessons learned from these entrepreneurs who have figured out how to win the fundraising game in their own way whether you're a budding entrepreneur just getting started or an established founder looking to scale your business this podcast equips you with the knowledge and inspiration to conquer the fundraising landscape welcome to episode 6 of fundraising demystified today we have Brett Martin joining us today he's the co-founder of kumospace a virtual office for remote and distributed teams has gone on to raise a 21 million dollar series a led by Lightspeed Ventures but what makes this story different than most is that Brett is also a VC himself and the co-founder of charge ventures in early stage VC fund so in this episode we're going to talk about how Brett couldn't resist becoming a co-founder of one of his portfolio companies their fundraising Journey leading up to their series a and the importance of timing their fundraise around an inflection point in the business and much more let's go ahead and Jump Right In hey everyone this is Jason Kirby here founder and managing director of thunder.vc welcoming Brett Martin to the show thank you so much for joining us today howdy Jason thanks for having me excited to be here nah we're we're fortunate to have you and it'll be great for for you to tell the audience a little bit about your background and uh the fact that you're a VC and also the founder of Kumo space I'd love for you just to kind of take it away yeah so I'm the co-founder president of Kumo space Kumo space is a virtual office for remote distributed teams to show up in and work together every day uh you know you can either call it a productivity software or a B2B metaverse depending on who your audience is I'm also the co-founder and at GP at charge Ventures it's a New York based pre-seed sea stage Venture Capital firm and then um the little bit of time I have left I eek out as a Adjunct professor of data analytics and machine learning at Columbia business school so busy over here yeah you most certainly are that's awesome and um you know it would be great for you to kind of tell a little bit about the story of your your Royal Kumo space as a founder and kind of um you know how that idea you know came to life yeah well um you know I had just I was investing full-time at charge uh years in and uh during the pandemic so when the pandemic hit beforehand we used to throw a monthly happy hour for Angel Investors in charge and it's a great source of deal flow a good way to kind of keep the network warm and when the pandemic hit ever obviously couldn't do that and everyone said well why don't you you know bring this online and having a zoom having a zoom meeting for 50 of my friends every month didn't actually sound like that good of a time and so I called up my uh old buddy and and co-founder of multiple other companies as names Yang now we've known each other we've built two companies together and uh I said gang what are you up to he said well I'm about to just quit my job and start another company in the mobile QA space and I said gang they had a you might make some money doing that but that sounds so boring why don't we solve this you know massive problem around uh around uh you know video conferencing and you know the fact that it's all kind of one to many and there's nowhere you can have an organic conversation with multiple groups of people coming in and out of conversations and uh yeah that's how it started so initially I he came back two weeks later with a prototype and initially I was just gonna advise and then I was just gonna Angel invest and then I was gonna invest out of the fun and then we're gonna incubate it out of the fund and then it came time to you know we were ready to raise and he's like are you just gonna do this with me or what and I said okay like you try to stay out of it but couldn't couldn't resist the best ideas are like that no it's awesome and then you know kind of what was the journey from you guys kind of bootstrap it to get it off the ground you raise some initial Capital what was kind of the fundraising Journey well you know as an investor I feel like there's lots of things if I see them and they have high growth and network effects and plurality and Technology modes and a good team you know usually I just try to give them money and get out of the way you know it's a lot easier way of making money than building but but this particular one the the mission of Kuma spaces so near and dear to my heart which is how do you use technology to help people connect in more authentic sort of human interaction and now we focus we build virtual offices so it's like you know people are spending all day on zoom and you know having meetings but they feel isolated and how do you use technology to make them feel connected either that had a personal mission for me and so um we were lucky we started it we sort of building in May of 2020 and then you know launched it on the internet in August and it's it's you know it's inherently viral right people are inviting their friends and meeting each other so it just started growing organically uh you know as organic you know nothing's perfectly organic I think you still have to Hawk into all of your friends and email everyone you know so obviously you know we're doing all that um and it just started to grow and so we were going to raise a pre-seed and in fact you know charge was gonna uh leave that that's that's my fun but then it it was already taking off so we just kind of jumped straight to the seat and um you know bold start which is uh sea stage fund based in New York all friends of mine they're probably the best infrastructure Fund in New York they uh they let it and that was mostly based on you know personal relationship I wanted to work with those guys for more than a decade no it's amazing I don't want to overshadow the fact that like he just kind of like downplayed it a little bit oh we just send it out to some friends to kind of get some initial traction like but like you know really what was that concerted effort to like get that initial user base because obviously you're capitalizing on the fact that everyone feels disconnected you know the world is shut down and you know here's this alternative solution um but like really like what was the effort that you guys put in in terms of getting that initial traction yeah so I mean we're lucky we're products uh guys mostly in in the sense that we If the product wasn't going to sell itself and spread itself then we probably wouldn't be in this business and so I think we're lucky in the sense that you know we who use content you know we viewed our Kuma's face as the content SO meetings as content that could be shared and distributed and so you know my thesis on any kind of social app is that you have to make it really easy to create share and consume compelling content and if you can do that then you have a chance to grow organically so people were basically creating spaces putting them Kumo spaces which is like you know a little virtual world where you can have meetings or um you know video chatting and then they were sharing them with their friends inviting their friends and then you know we had a kind of a you know what they call K factor or reality so for every one person that we added they would probably add you know another half of a person so if every two people that we brought into Kuma space they would bring another person and so things grow you get kind of nice organic lift and so we just you know obviously created lists look you know 10 years in New York Tech know a fair number of people who run events or um who are also looking for Technology Solutions right then and so you know emailing them getting in their hands getting their feedback and having them invite their friends and so it really just started to grow or it did it really didn't grow organically with a little bit of a Kickstart no and I'm glad you're bringing up the reality factor I feel like a lot of startups especially if you're in the social space like trying to build a social app like if you don't have you know a variety of reality fact to you to your app like there's just no no growth potential you know at that point and there's clearly not product Market fit so I'm glad you kind of bringing up that point of just how you had to use your get another user um you know organically and so on that note actually I saw funny um tweet the other day from San Sam Altman the uh you know why Rand Y combinator and and now runs open AI that you know the chat gbt started up and he he said you know years of it uh advising startups that they have to have a multiplayer baked in inherent virality Etc he's like we have none of these on open AI I don't know what I was talking about um which is funny because I I do think that you know you look at the open AI a chat product it's like this thing is begging for a multiplayer use case so um it could grow you know fastest growing startup of all time it could grow even faster if they had actually put in the right social loops I know it was actually I saw that tweet too and I thought it was hilarious and just like you know take take every piece of advice to the great assault you know at the end of the day like there are there are playbooks that work and then there are you know playing outside the books you know also works just depending on your situation and but again what it really comes down to is product Market fit you know if you have a great product you know it should be able to sell itself and if you if you don't have that then that which leads to ultimately you know either having a pivot or find New Alternatives so you guys skip the precede you know so you kind of you get it off the ground get some momentum you're on a hot Market you go straight to the seed so so walk us through how much how did you decide how much to raise and how many you know VCS were involved in that particular round I'm funny this trend towards everyone saying okay this is how much I'm raising and I mean you know we ran we had a model and sort of said okay you know we think that that we can with a couple million dollars we a week except for a hundred thousand um Maus which we felt like would be sufficient to go raise an A and um but that's I I think that I think the from the outside a lot of times it you know raising money looks like uh you know VC looks like a a ATM machine where you you know insert a pitch deck and then out comes and then a couple million dollars with well in reality you know most of these things are founded on you know multi-year relationships uh you know that's how someone can feel comfortable you know having a call with you and then giving you a million dollars is because they've already known you for 10 years and and seen you um you know senior career progression or you know work with you on you know prior deals so um I you know we we said to both start frankly the back story there is that uh on my first company which is called sonar I you know it's a long convoluted story but I was going to raise around and um he's actually going to be a recap round so kind of a painful round and uh you know after months of trying to put it together actually the Bold sort guys were you know ones who put an offer on the table and were gonna help me through it now that never actually materialized and I need I definitely it's too early it's uh 10 a.m here I need a beer to tell that story but um you know I always wanted to work with them and I remembered you know them being like okay these people don't work with and so I built a you know shared deals with them for the next 10 years and then when it came time you know I took 10 years between startups when it came time to run it back you know they were the top people on my list so um you know basically I I pinged a couple folks on a Friday afternoon um and you know said hey you know I actually I ping Bulls aren't on Saturday at 11 by 12 30 we were in Kumo space in in our product having a meeting and then by Monday we had uh basically you know hand shake shook hands on on terms so that's how fast uh you know the market was moving in 2021 but I I honestly think that's just how fast both star Works uh generally so you know to show you how quickly you have to move to get a deal well and see I think that's that's something awesome like granted we you know 2020 2021 we're a bit of the anomaly years and things are slowing down but like that kind of gut instinct or that you know quick buy-in you know whether you get a term sheet immediately but when you start to see the other side of the table engage that quickly you know again like product Market fit building something that's solving a big problem like these boxes being checked that quickly and now I've got any other relationships so that makes things accelerate a lot faster because there's the inherent trust that doesn't have to be you know start from scratch but I feel a lot of Founders come in and you know if the VC is not going back and forth with you and you know and having that kind of banter back and forth to establish the the opportunity then a lot of Founders you know need to realize that that's probably not going to work out and not going to be a fit in your case you had that you have the relationship it was quick and fast and you know I would say accelerated to the extreme given just the state of the market um you know back then and so that was just for the that was just seed round correct correct and so you guys raise a couple million bucks um you know what happened there after did you guys hit your milestones and then set up at series a like what kind of happened to the business after you've raised that money so we you know we raised that seed and uh we took some money from our some other angels that we really wanted to be you know part of the round and then and then it became intend to build I mean to be fair at that point you know criminal space was only two employees um we had higher you know we had won MBA uh you know from Colombia who was helping us out and I think we had just hired a consultant so it really it was really just me and yang at that point and so we took to see money um and actually built out a little bit of a team hired some additional engineers and uh you know sort of took what was essentially a proof of concept and you know plot re-platformed it so that it could scale and what what happened was then is you know we're continuing to grow organically you know we were kind of doing hand-in-hand combat stuff to grow and then one um week we had this crazy spike in in users and where did that come from what what what happened and traced it down found out found this random Tick Tock post uh you know that some Tic-Tac user had posted about having a tea party in kumara space and um we we were like oh wow that's pretty interesting and you know how the power of uh social here for driving traffic and so we said okay can we recreate this and so we started doing you know influencer marketing and um you know driving traffic but we couldn't figure out how to scale it so you know it's pretty laborious you know I'm not sure if folks here have done influencer I I feel like it's probably the best Channel still today especially after all these changes that um you know apple and Facebook made for advertising anyway you know it's you gotta find the people that are relevant to your audience you gotta figure out how to get in touch with them you have to email them you have to you know negotiate with them get them your content track it you know give them a UTM tracking code and see how it performs right it's a pretty manual process and so we spent several months trying to figure out okay how do we actually scale this um and then we eventually got some good software in place we actually use this a company called grin um that I'm an angel investor in uh you know that does influencer marketing software and help basically helps that whole sort of sourcing to supplying to tracking influencers and um we eventually got that running and so we could scale up so you know we figured out how to do okay we could actually have 10 20 30 people posting about Kumo's face and that because we have that content right you know we talked about sort of like video chat as content we were just you know getting that all over digital and we were requiring users for you know like less than 10 cents a uh you know a registration which is obviously you know pretty cost effective customer acquisition and um we sort of kind of realized okay we had that set up and then in the fall of um yeah in the fall well late fall pretty much the end of 2022 we said okay you know we've got this thing growing you know we're growing we got hundreds of thousands of you know monthly action users that are growing now let's throw a modernization and so um you know we released our first sort of paid product and you know it pretty much ripped I mean we went from like zero to you know close to a million run rate in three months um and so you know obviously that was the right time I had to fundraise you know when when you have everything going up and to the right it you know it doesn't always last so when you've got it I think it's an entrepreneur you got you gotta capitalize on it and um that's when we went out for the ad so beautifully said and that's what I coached so many Founders on is inflection points like how can you time your fundraise around an inflection point where everything just kind of ramps up because you know it could be short-lived and if it's short-lived you want to get that capital in the door as quickly as possible because it starts to level off and you know investors like oh maybe this isn't so hot you know or terms start to change a little bit um so that's incredible to kind of hear how you guys leverage that so quickly and then you know so you you kind of flip on the monetization Imagine subscription for you know teams or companies to kind of pay per users that effectively the model uh yeah well I mean we've iterated a bunch of times since then but um at the time I think we were doing kind of a capacity based pricing sort of like like probably like but it's a wedding or something you know you know you have to see you have a space for 100 people um kind of with the real estate analogy uh since then I think you know we've moved toward more of a traditional per seat per per seat per employee per month sort of model um you know really simple right down the middle no that makes sense and uh and we'll yeah pivoting on the on the model kind of what was did you deal with any pushback from customers was it more of a clear fit and that's why you did it and customers liked it or did you have any pushback from your existing customers that ramped up so quickly uh I think uh one thing I think that a lot that we definitely did and a lot of entrepreneurs um do is you're really precious about pricing I remember the first time before we launched pricing I spent literally a month thinking through you know 10 different pricing models and then model them out and um you know agonized over the decision and I think you know then we launched it and yeah sometimes some of it works some of it doesn't and uh and now we just change pricing all the time we just are constantly changing you know I think every month we probably try something different or pricing just because uh you know you realize that as a startup it's like you're you can't be too worried about upsetting the you know your existing customers not because they're not important they're obviously super important but just that you know for you for for you to work for them you need to find a sustainable business business model that works and so if it's not working then it's not really going to serve them long term either so you have to keep iterating quickly and you really you realize just not to be so precious with it because you know the the if you're going to be 10x in a year that's way more important than either not rocking the boat for where you are today yeah no I completely agree with that that sentiment so you guys hit this inflation Point you're monetizing you're getting to a millionaire R very quickly so what happens when you go out for the the a like walk us through that that process of how you kind of say all right now's the time and then how did you execute to close and what was that timeline well yeah I mean I I think that the the process is you you know working with if you already have a raised right so you're going for as you already see investors right I think you get everyone lined up you get your Google CRM your Google sheet you have you put in all the people that you already know or you you know you've been wanting to work with you get you solicit all the referrals from your existing investors and um you know you kind of prank order them prioritize them you do a couple kind of you know quote-unquote throwaway meetings with people that you know you probably don't you know aren't your first pick but you can at least get the you know get the Kinks out of the presentation and then you know then it's just having all your docs in place having everything orderly and then you know what I like to do is I you know I call it like fundraising raising essentially you have to maximize fomo for investors because you know it's all about creating key on your deal so um in this case I think you know the best is you pick a couple people that you know six months in advance you say okay this is the four or five people everybody want to work with and so you meet those people you tell them what you're gonna do you meet that three months later you have your checkup you show proof of execution so you just you showed them you know hey this is what I said I was gonna do I did exactly this right so you're starting to connect the dots on your ability to execute and then ideally right before you do your fundraise you you know release some news or you create some Catalyst uh you know you launch a new product you get some press right which has them wanting to talk to you right and then they start then they come to you so in a deal world you can kind of you know coordinate all this and then you kick off your fundraise same thing you know hey close people on on tell you on Friday we're gonna start fundraising next week I'm giving you the weekend Head Start if you're really interested they'll lean in and then on you know that Monday you just email your first 10 people and then you kind of EPK you keep adding the people to the pipe as many as you can manage now you don't want to email everyone because you'll just get swamped down you will actually won't be able to respond to things timely and timeliness is so important um but you know I think it's probably you have about 10 15 people on your pipeline at any given time and then just keep as people drop out you keep adding in maybe 2x as many to keep keep the pressure going and um you know you'll know pretty quickly like I think one mistake entrepreneurs make a lot is like trying to convince people who aren't interested to be interested but in reality it's actually about finding people that are interested so it's more of a you know just getting more people into the top of the phone I I love the don't convince people that aren't interested there's so much like chasing of investors that gave a no or kind of get or ambiguous or like you know come back later you know clearly not leaning in and there's this like oh but if I just if I just give him this one piece of information it's going to change his mind it's like never works like maybe point zero one percent of the time but it's you know it's out of that Dumb and Dumber like so you're saying it got a chance you know it's like it's not not usually worth pursuing in most cases yeah it's a bad use of everyone's time you know investors have a hard time with it just because they don't want to miss the next big thing and and they you know want to keep optionality so you know they are never trying to say no at the end of the day but you spend your time trying to convince them this is terrible time just find find more people and you know it always works best when you find the person who is already working for what you're building right like they had the idea in their head they're like man this is such a great idea and then you show it to them that works amazing because then if they feel like it's their idea right you need to make investors feel like your idea is their idea and that's the easiest way to get them across the Finish line that's well said and so when you guys when did you guys go out to market for your series a when was that kind of like that beginning that out initial Outreach yeah I mean we were trying to take you know that you can feel the market was hot at the end Q4 you know 21 right and so we we sort of realizing okay we gotta it you know I think the other thing that um another thing that entrepreneurs realizes for me I think it's so much about predictability right what what investors are terrified of is unpredictability they want to see just consistent growth right and looks very predictable and like okay this trend line is going to keep going in the same direction so what I recommend is you know when can you basically predict that you can create can you manufacture six months of steady growth you need the first three that like when you think you can predict six months of growth that's when you're ready to start your fundraise now you basically the first three months are creating the track record and then you once you have three months of growth and this is really you know for really a seed or series a company once you have three months okay now can you absolutely guarantee you can do three more months because you what you can't have is your growth Peter out while you're in the middle of a fundraise but once you have three months and then if you think you can do another three months then it's go time and you basically have to have you know what are the 10 tricks in your upper sleeve that you can use to control that growth right is it adding new markets is it adding new channels is it uh you know a couple customer deals that you have in the pipeline that you know you know you can close in the next three months so how can you control that so that as you are fundraising you know you're going you're going out you have solid you know three months of track record and Azure fundraising each month that goes by you can update investors with hey here's another 20 30 growth month right and so so much of it is like creating that window where you can control the predictability and share that with invest and share that with investors because the worst thing that can happen to you is you're in the middle raising and oh I have a down month because you know not you're not you're not just like out a month you're actually screwed for another three or four months until you can build that predictable tracker oh man such a a harsh but true reality that I think a lot of Founders need to take into consideration as they go out to race because a lot of them like okay now we need money it's like no that's not gonna work you know most cases like you know if you don't have that manufactured growth you don't have like everything you just kind of said it just becomes a massive uphill battle you know to try to convince investors to take a leap of faith on you and it's you know how can you mitigate risk as much as possible for the VC in terms of creating that predictability and that consistent growth that makes it a lot easier for a buy-in from an investor as opposed to choppy growth which becomes more difficult battle and some people might you know say oh is that is that disingenuous or something and it's like well actually no that's what public market investors are looking for as well right if you look at a public market really traded company like that's why SAS companies get values so highlights because they have nice predictable whatever exchange and steady growth and when people Miss estimates that's when the sockets clobbered and so you know it's really just the same thing on a smaller scale if you can create predictable growth is a seed stage startup that well that's super valuable right that's what investors that's looking for and so let's go back to the timeline so you kind of picked up on the Market's hot Q4 2021 you know but that was kind of where we saw the peak really uh of peacockness there's still stuff happening but you know definitely started plummeting but is that when you started the the growth uh you know kind of manufacturing the growth over the next six months like what was that yeah I think I think look we obviously you know in terms of the market cycle I'm not even trying to pretend like we had you know the visibility you know we knew when the top of the cycle was we got lucky there's no question what I think is the probably take away for entrepreneurs is more you know when you know and you basically have weird predict we had created this predictable growth machine right from the marketing side we we knew how to scale and we knew that we could you know control growth and so we were you know that's when we knew it was time to start thinking about fundraising and then we took a risk around monetization right that was unclear but then when that worked out again in our favor and started you know ramping like I think there's where a lot of people get mixed up and they say oh okay well you know we're gonna get we'll just keep growing for you know a few more months six more months and then we're gonna raise an even bigger valuation right um um the truth is that multiple and what investors will pay it's it's it's yes the absolute number right it's like yes I'm making x million dollars you know in Revenue remain and then I'm getting some sort of multiple on top of that but but it's as much the growth and as much the consistency of growth and so you know like you have to weigh okay yeah I might be making twice as much revenue um you know in six months but am I going to be growing half as fast and that is actually you know investors when they're looking at your trend line they're extrapolating out right they're usually you know have a a Rosy you know estimate if they're if they're excited about your company they're gonna you know guess to the upside and so you'd rather actually have that your shorter but steeper curve to raise than you know taking the risk of okay what if my growth has slowed down in six months and so I think you know the thing we did right was kind of pushing forward our fundraise as soon as the revenue started working and saying okay it may you know it might it might never get better than this but let's let's hop on it and take advantage and I think that's you know you know correct me if I'm wrong but being on a you know you were a Founder for your you know prior to being a VC and became a VC and back into the founders C kind of juggling all all roles like what kind of insights and I I feel like what you shared is you know kind of the insights that you uniquely gathered over your experience kind of being on the other side and being able to play those cards I could probably convinced you into a deal and using those to convince others into a deal that is that a safe assumption yeah yeah 100 I mean look I obviously invested in things that you know that right before the investment everything is up and to the right then you invest and then you know things go limp or sideways you know and and it's not even like that happens that happens all the time to investors right like everything is obviously put together to try to make the best possible picture and part of fundraising that's just part of entrepreneurs doing their job I mean I don't get upset when that happens I'm you know trying to avoid it but it but but it had but it does happen so um you know having seen that as an investor a few times it's like okay I understand what is it compelling and attractive and how do I uh you know how do I take advantage of these Dynamics um you know the other thing is like as an investor I've seen is well actually that's from being entrepreneur you know I learned from my first company you know time kills deals is just a really important concept I think for anyone fundraising is to realize the time kills deals and so everything is about moving fast and keeping things moving and if things slow down that's where that's where you die and I think a lot of entrepreneurs it's crazy they're they get hung up on this term or that term or you know evaluation and then they kind of hem back and forth and it's like hey if you don't have a term sheet yet you really don't have any unless you're profitable right which is not the case for most seed Siege companies um so I in all of my experience I've just learned you know I've learned the hard way okay over negotiating it isn't doesn't make any sense if you don't have other options like all that matters is getting options on the table and then and then building building up you know I I completely agree with you know the statement of time kills deals like uh happened to me in a previous company we were selling to Samsung had an acquisition offer everything was amazing it was perfect across the board but our board wanted to push for more and we're like no we're good let's just let's just stay with what we got and they got aggressive and you know like really pushed hard and that killed about three weeks well if you don't know the story back in 2017 Samsung had a whole regime change and the day before closing the new CEO had signature Authority and killed every deal on the table we lost by hours we had champagne at the office we had like buses loaded up to take everyone to the Sands it was just like it could be this amazing day and since Korea starts you know hours before we do we like wake up to a text message from the the corporate Dev team they're just like it's dead like us the worst story to have a similar one and well we ended up selling to Walmart everything was fine but it was you know just again like unnecessary negotiation like don't don't get greedy when things are good you know and uh you know let good things happen and you know what they were fighting for was so insignificant you know to to everyone on the table but you know to to each their own and when uh you know when that stuff kind of happens but um I'm glad you mentioned that just because yeah and also just from a Founder's perspective of like you know if you're not seeing momentum happen on the other side you know the VC is not acting quickly uh or at least responsive and quick like it's probably best to be looking at other you know investors or other VCS and not necessarily get hung up or put all your eggs in one basket no they'll come through and you know in a lot of cases that doesn't happen like you know BC found a better deal you know there's better opportunity on the table uh maybe they can allocate Capital to and you know if you didn't get a term sheet you know that's very much a possibility and I think Founders just get so hung up when someone they get get a nibble on the hook you know and they they want to reel it in but you know in most cases it's a lost fish especially in especially in this market right like you know it's been a brutal fundraising market and I honestly think it's going to keep getting worse like I don't think we've even seen the mass startup Extinction event that is looming uh people are still you know working off their War chest that they raised in 2020 2021 and um you know they haven't a lot of people who raise the infinite evaluations haven't had to go back out the market and or they raised seat extensions last year and so you know I think it's going to get worse before it gets better and so what I'm seeing you know the the really Savvy entrepreneurs are one they've they've obviously reduced costs and you know prolonged Runway but they're also just getting cash in you know they're they're not being squeamish about oh it's you know a Down Round or whatever they're just like they're just getting the deals done because they know that the survival is the name of the game for the for them yeah no there's definitely I can have a whole thesis right now that we're gonna see some massive consolidation you know there's just so much money invested into Tech and talent over the last several years in this big boom cycle that and the founders weren't quick enough to respond to the market dynamics and the fact that capital is just going to dry up and they're not going to be able to sustain operations but they maybe built something valuable or have a team that's valuable and we'll start to see those that were smart and have cash on hand were able to continue to raise or big conglomerates coming in and just gobbling those those companies up and uh you know it's a lot of me too companies out there that all kind of raised on similar premises of other successful companies so we're going to start to see you know probably the top two in those spaces get acquired uh and the rest kind of fall out and I think you're right I think we're gonna continue to see a mass Exodus as you know Capital becomes more and more difficult to to raise in this market 100 percent so get it while you can get get whatever you can while you can yeah and also like you know I think building those relationships with VCS even when you're not raising I think it's something that you know you've had the fortunate ability you know you build a founder of the past you have a long history and those relationships have really helped you capitalize on a quick raise and build clout and credibility to it but also not that you had a crappy business you know it's like you were you know accelerating growth you were building something great and uh and the relationships added to it creates a unique effect where you're able to kind of raise larger cells of capital quicker than say someone that doesn't have that that pedigree or that experience uh leading up to it um so at least from from crunchbase it says you guys close this round in August is that when you actually close around or is that when you just made it public last year oh yeah well you know you with these larger rounds you don't have to you don't close at all first so you can get a lead and you can fill out but so we you know locked down at the end of the year and then we filled out throughout yeah and then um as far as how Kumo space is doing now like kind of what's been the journey after raising that capital and kind of where do you see your uh see the future of Cuba space going I mean got a few million users now you got you know tens of thousands of folks uh sitting in it for using the Virtual Office use case in particular which is how we monetize so people still use it for friends and social and education and events and things like that but then you know our main business model is providing Virtual Office Space for sort of distributed teams and you know we've got people sitting in there six and a half seven hours a day uh you know working a little you know working all day in Google space um so yeah if there's any uh you know Founders it works very for Founders I think you know there's this whole kind of Return of the office um you know debate going on and I don't know if you read the you know you know any Jazz CCO of Amazon like memo you know bringing people back to the office why to do it you know I agree with a lot of the reasons why people are dragging people back to the office in a sense that you know better collaboration you know build a strong culture if you're a manager you want to know what your team is doing so you can help them out I just don't think you need to you know concrete box to do that I think you can get a lot of those benefits with a Virtual Office Solution like Google space so I think if anyone you know if your Founders are and I think it's a startup you know one of the being able to hire and offer perks like remote work is actually one of the few competitive advantages you have so you know if anyone's looking to take advantage of that definitely hit me up I know it's great to hear and I I agree with you I think there's a fine line of the coming back to office I love the hybrid model where you know you kind of get to come are these larger companies what I think a lot of people don't always realize is you may be coming to whatever the San Francisco office but maybe your team or your direct reports or your managers or in the New York office or the Austin office and they're still kind of spread around you're not always necessarily close to your team so this is where you know something like you could be in a physical office but with your remote team you know um in Kumo space and something like that so I I see it very much just a hybrid solution that gives people a lot more flexibility that is a good fit for their business um and not necessarily this cookie cutter everyone's got to be in the office or everyone has to be remote and it's more of Founders have the option to kind of choose what's what's best for them from recruiting and retaining Talent now that these tools like you most bass exist a hundred percent I I we're not you know we we have in person offsides twice Sierra because we use you know we totally appreciate the value I think it's more just like a inverted model right you know the inverted classroom where they used to lecture in class and do your homework at night and now they you know you watch a lecture on video and then you do your homework in class whether the teacher can you know give you personalized attention I think something similar is happening with work where you say you know hey look we meet in person to to really you know protracted brainstorming or to build you know personal relationships and then we do most of our work uh you know from home or you know wherever we want because you know fundamentally what are we doing well as we come to to wrap here you know what's you've already given a ton of really good nuggets of advice to the founders looking at Rays by just sharing your story but you know if uh if you were to provide any additional information that you haven't shared already or want to kind of leave a Founder with a final point when it when they're coming to to prepare for a fundraise what would be your advice I think completely simplifying your is uh you know one the one thing if you you know we look at all the YC companies every year and the the thing that ytc has perfected is the clear compelling you know investor pitch right like they you know they have a process and everyone runs the Playbook and when you're a VC and you look at it you're like oh my God all these covers look the same but they all look the same good and you know it's hard to tell what is good or what's not because they you know but they've really perfected okay we do less information is more simple plain English you know traction uh you know controlling that process um you know I think there's a lot there's a lot to be learned from them I think they also have a lot of I would say tactics that work against them such as oh being dogmatic about the price or uh you know oh I'm only raising on 20 cap and I wouldn't recommend those things I think a lot of those things are actually good for white combinator but not necessarily good for the company um but I do think that Founders can learn a lot by looking at their pitches and uh yeah a lot of those are online and on YouTube so you know you can check them out and and learn from just being really crystal clear and uh not putting not overloading the investor with too much information and I work on that every day with founders of just like how can we delineate this to like one Clear Point as opposed to like here's 40 data points on one slide don't you don't you want to know all the research I've done I put a lot of work into this and I want to show you how much work I did tell your babies feel free to kill your babies I it's a hard thing for a Founder to come to realization on but it's very much an important piece of advice and I appreciate you leaving that uh note for for Founders um I really appreciate you being on the show how can Founders follow you or or learn more about what you're doing at either charge or Kuma space uh yeah so just um you know feel free to hit me up I'm on Twitter Brett priet1211 or you know pick me up on LinkedIn if you're looking for a Virtual Office Space just yeah you know reference this podcast and we'll definitely hook you up and if you're uh your pre-seater seed stage founder looking for Capital um especially if you're based in New York you know would love to hear from you uh Brett at charged FBC so uh thanks so much for having me all right I appreciate that and I apologize for the Department of you know inbound that you might get when this uh this goes live yeah what a terrible problem to have I know right all right well Brad really appreciate you on the show thank you so much and uh you know good luck on the The Journey with Kimbo space thanks Jason