How do you bootstrap to $10M after raising $2.7M?

When we first came on the market, we got a lot of death threats from photographers. Actually, it was just really intense. What tactics are you doing to convince customers to be like, you should do an Easter shoot? We floated the idea of getting more funding, but everyone was like, "No one's going to give you anything. Like, there's just no way." So, what did you do to turn the business into a profit generating machine? I had so many friends that were so talented, but were so poor. No matter how talented they were, they couldn't cobble together enough work to stay the artist they wanted to be. I was like, "This is sad because the arts make the world a better place." The only thing that I would have changed is I everyone welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Jennifer Sai with us, founder and CEO of shoot.com. Let's shoot with two T's. And Jennifer, I'm really excited to have you on the show because this your business is very close to my heart. Uh mainly because a past that most people don't know about me is I used to be a professional photographer. And I did my first real tech startup was basically an identical replica of what you have just, you know, five, six years prior. And I'm just excited to talk about kind of your strategy, how you raised money, and kind of how you decided to make this a a oneanddone fund raise and move on to profitability. uh which I think is a more common story for so many founders this day. So Jennifer, thanks for coming on the show today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's just kind of get started. What is shoot.com? Yeah, so shoot is a professional marketplace for photographers that are uh they're working professionally. Um we're trying to fill all of their supplemental time with gigs. And you know what that means is for the client, we're able to offer them free photooots, free mini photo shoots. the free to book and you only pay for the photos you want because we're able to aggregate demand at specific locations. So photographers end up having a day of backtoback sessions. Normally when you are a professional artist of any kind, the biggest problem is trying to kind of cobble together enough work so that you can make a living off of that. So, we were like, "Hey, can we fix that with a business model that kind of turns on its head that you're not doing you're not spending all your time finding gigs, doing all of the business to support it, but you're actually focusing more on photographing because we're handling all of that business activity." And so, that's kind of what bore that was really what uh helped us make shoot. And, you know, we've been around for seven close to seven years now. And we're very proud to have a 4.9 star rating on Google. and we're in 60 cities across the US. It's super impressive because this is ultimately what I had hoped for my business back in the day called Toggle to to end up being, but we focused too much on trying to raise capital and less so much on just knowing that we actually had a good business. It just actually wasn't venture backable. So, first thing I want to start off with is you're a marketplace. So, you have supply, you have demand. So on the supply side with the photographers, just experience I had was there any push back of standardizing pricing and kind of coming out with this business model with the audience that you try to pursue and how did you get that initial kind of supply side setup? Yeah, that's a really great question and we had so much push back. I think anytime you have a marketplace for artists, they just get very upset understandably so that they're getting taken advantage of that they deserve 100% of the money like all of that stuff. There's it's I understand why they feel that way. There's so like you know there's so many people who are not necessarily um operating in a good faith place but because a lot of us started as creatives the whole thing was we wanted to create something we wanted to see if we could have a business that was like a win-winwin for us photographers and clients. So, you know, a lot of the push back is that they did deserve all the money. And so, there was a huge education component that we had to say like, hey, we're providing all of these services that are actually really expensive and timeconuming that you don't want to do. So then we had to uh really articulate that we're not for every professional photographer, but if you are a certain type of professional photographer that has supplemental time and you want to fill that with gigs that just come to you like easily, we handle customer service. You don't ever have to deal with that. We handle sales, gallery delivery, all of that stuff, you know, that's and and marketing. Marketing is a huge piece of it. Finding clients and being able to do that in a cost-effective way is really hard to get that kind of volume. So that's what we kind of there was a anyway so that was the education piece but you know when we first came on the market we got a lot of death threats from photographers actually it was just really intense and that's you know when you're try it's so hard when you try to help people and the first thing that they're they say to you is they want you to die and so like that was something we had to deal with and you know that just really compelled us to have to figure out how do we articulate our our value proposition to photographers so you know there there's a written record by death threats on an article written about me 10 years ago. You have the same thing. Oh yeah, I did a lot of media and um yeah, I I got ripped. I got death threats. I got all kinds of things when when we did that. So, uh, you know, I empathize, uh, for you and and kind of what happened there because, yeah, they everyone has a very strong opinion, um, and especially artists because, ironically, they spend the time that they have not taking the whatever 150, 300 bucks they might get working for you. Yeah. But harassing people online. No, it's true. and and you know we even like we know that the offer of the free photo shoot from like a provider point of view sounds like we're taking advantage of like it doesn't sound possible right so like we had to it's too that's exactly right and so we get a lot of like you guys must be a scam so what we do to counterbalance that is like we provide a minimum guarantee of $100 per shooting hour for photographers and then we do whatever we can to try to protect their time so if they even show up like if they show up and the client cancels they get a fee if they're late, they get a fee. Like, we try to pay them for everything that we can get money from to try to help them. And then, um, you know, I again, it's just it's it's really hard to override that. People don't like disruption like this, which I I totally get, but it it doesn't make it tricky. Yeah. No, but that's how these marketplaces, you know, spend. Well, that's why I'm spending time on this is just because marketplaces are hard because we're only talking about one side and that's supposed to be the easy side. Hey, I'm going to give you money. Yes. now you got to go get the you know the demand side. So how did you manage to fill their calendars and and how do you go about you know getting the supply side or the demand side these days? Yeah. So we were really lucky cuz when we launched in 2018 Facebook ads were so cheap at that time at least for us like it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Their targeting was so good and really it took off once we figured out who our target market was. So, in the very beginning, we assumed that it would be millennials and younger folks that wanted photos cuz it was right when Instagram was getting really popular and having really high quality polished images was really in vogue. But then, you know, it was okay. But then it it really took off when we realized that our target demographic are like millennial moms and Gen Z moms. People once you have moments that you want to start capturing with photos. So that's really like when people are dating seriously or they adopt a dog, things like that, and then they get married and then they get pregnant and then they have children, your children look really different and like even within 6 months. So those people constantly want professional photos. So once we started targeting them, it was that's where we got like a lot of the bulk of um our clientele and and between Facebook ads, Google ads, you know, that's where and a lot of gorilla marketing, that's how we generate demand. Yeah. And that's basically been a scalable mo model for you guys to this point. But let's go back to kind of the early days and kind of talk about what this show is all about when it comes to raising money. So you raised a little over two and a half million. Uh walk us through kind of when you decided to raise money and what your game plan was for securing that capital. Yeah. So I have to say that I am really privileged in this area because one of my co-founders/chairman is like a serial investor entrepreneur himself. So in the very beginning we were once we figured out that what our target demographic was and we were advertising to them and our we realized you know our acquisition cost was so low our growth was really exponential. So, like we grew super fast. Like even the first year I I feel like we went from like like $80,000 of topline revenue to like like I don't know something like you know what I mean like 500 500,000 the next year. So it was just and then it just and then we went to like a million. So we it was starting to really look what they what it looked like was like oh we have hockey stick growth like we just put money in it and it's just very exponential. And so during that time, that's when um my co-founder was like, "Let me just ask all of my friends for like a friends and family round." And he cobbled together, you know, that two slightly over two and a half million in the very early years, which was very lucky cuz I didn't have to really do any pitching, which is I know very unusual. So like he like just tapped into his network and and the money just came in. And then iOS 14.5 happened where all of a sudden our acquisition costs started to skyrocket because there was Apple privacy put into things. So it went from, oh, you know, it only cost us $20 to get a client. Now it costs anywhere from like $50 to 200. So that's all of a sudden that changed how everyone including all those investors saw us and then we we knew our our trajectory had to change. That's pretty brutal. Yeah. Yeah. 2 and 12x to 10x uh rorowaz or not even uh your cost to acquire a customer going up that high. Yeah. Um so it's a good thing you did raise the money because you probably wouldn't have survived if you didn't raise money beforehand. That's completely correct. Yeah. So I do want to you said you didn't do much but at the end of the day you did drive hockey stick growth with very limited capital before raising capital. We did. Yes. So you did do something. You made yourself attractive in the first place. We did. We did the you know. So why did you start the business? Oh, great question. So, I started the business because I actually come from a background where I'm I have like a strong background and I did investment banking, I did corporate finance, all of that stuff. And then I transitioned into being an artist. So, I was an actor for and still am sometimes for like a little over 10 years. And so, I had so many friends that were so talented but were so poor. You know, no matter how talented they were, they couldn't cobble together enough work to stay the artist they wanted to be. And it really stuck with me because it didn't like I was like this is this is sad because the arts make the world a better place, right? And so it kind of rattled around in my head and then I reconnected with my co-founder chairman like a decade after I worked for him actually. Um I was I worked for him at a startup and I was like you know what I I know I need another type of day job and I and I want I feel like a startup is the best use of my skills. Like do you know of any hiring? And then we got together and he was like and we realized I was talking about my background and we realized oh hey like can we make a startup that helps the gig economy for artists and we realized that we could do it for photographers. So that's really where it was born where we're like hey how do we how do we keep artists artists? So that was really the impetus for what we did and that's how it was born. There you go. And when it came to that 2 and a half million, you had the major shakeup on your your cost of acquire company or uh customer going through the roof, how did you mitigate and kind of what was your plan there after? Was it to go back out and raise more money? Was it to figure out profitability? Kind of what were you dealing with at that time when the costs were going up so high? Yeah. No. So when that happened, that was the only time that I've really had a genuine like panic attack about my business because we started the business and all of us a lot of us are very operationally were good operationally and good at processes but none of us were experts at marketing. We had just like it was like we ran Facebook ads and like no one had like a background in it but you could figure out their platform and so we're like okay cool. So then we were like we actually have to learn marketing from scratch. So we have to, you know, we were just guessing before. So that was kind of really the tall order. We thought about getting, you know, we floated the idea of getting more funding, but at that point in time, everyone was like, "No one's going to give you anything. Like there's just no way. So you got to have to you have to figure out how to make it work yourself." And that was really terrifying. So like out of survival, we had to like really learn the nuts and bolts of marketing from scratch and think of ourselves as that kind of uh you know the kind of company to see like hey I know we had a good idea and like we could scale but like do we have what it takes to also be a profitable long-term company standing on its own two feet. So that was really what drove us to then focus on doing that and I'm like I I think we can I think we can do it. So that's what kind of put us on that path. But what did you do? Like what did you change in the business? And you had the cushion, you raised money at the right time to give yourself that flexibility to kind of make the decisions. So what did you do to kind of turn the business into a profit generating machine? Yeah. So there's nothing sexy to tell anyone. Like we just had to liter we signed up for every marketing newsletter on the planet. We figured out how to track attribution ourselves and we've built proprietary like spreadsheets to really track every single platform. Know how it changes on a daily basis, be able to catch it when it starts to trend up or down, if it starts to trend in a good direction, magnifying that and putting more spend there if it starts to trend bad, trying to figure out if it's us, if it's just what it, you know, and just being so strategic about that. That's what it is on a daily basis. And then, you know, cutting any sort of incremental cost. So, like we don't pay for space. We're fully remote. We don't spend We don't do any sort of experimental spend that is out of control. So, it's like I would never do like a $50,000 ad campaign that I have no idea how much it's going to work. Like I need to know that it's going to get me results. So, it also changed our culture into one of testing like constant smallcale tests to see what works and whatever works we do more of and whatever doesn't work we let go of. It doesn't mean that we'll permanently never do it. Like for example, we fig we the first time we tried connected TV ads, it didn't work and then we tried it again two years later and now it works for us. So it is but it is with a mind that like we'll try anything but we'll try it for a very short amount of time. So it it just changed the discipline that we had about running everything in our business um instead of like oh let's wait and see. There's no wait and see like we we'll cut you off within like you know 10 days basically. Well smart. Yeah. And and how do you like again for a new marketplace founder out there that might be listening like how do you balance the supply demand that you know it's like okay you got photographers but if they're not getting booked they get disengaged and maybe don't you know respond as much and if you don't have photographers you can't get customers like how do you m how do you manage that balance? Yeah, we I mean we're monitoring the supply demand balance in so we're in 60 cities, right? So we have to know how each city kind of performs like are we do we have too many photographers or too little photographers in each city and for the demand that we get. So, we really do monitor that on a city-by-city basis and we kind of know what their capacity is. And then we're hiring kind of all year round and we have to be very specific that unless you're in very unless you're in like certain markets that your demand will be very seasonal. So, the biggest season is fourth quarter. So, that's where like holiday it's holiday card season. I'm sure you know you're familiar with that. And so that's where like we can't have you got we can't have enough photographers in most places just to fill the demand, right? Cuz that's when people really want it. But so then it gives us the onus of like okay what other on our side like what other holidays or events do people want photographers? So like graduation, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, um summer vacation, if there's these other smaller micro moments, like how do we advertise for those better and drive the demand there? And then are we hiring enough photographers knowing what our demand was in previous years for really like aiming for fourth quarter to make sure we get the most of that to keep growing every year. So it is it is very much you know we're looking at both. No, it's incredibly difficult and like one of the big reasons why, you know, we couldn't raise money when we were launching, you know, Toggle was one the disbelief that the frequency of use like a big marketplace problem for a lot of founders is there's not enough frequency of use on both sides to, you know, drive LTVs high enough to justify the CAS. Uh, and so a lot of investors just generally don't like these types of marketplaces for that reason. It's like how many times are you gonna really use a photographer every year? Um, but you kind of hit that point there in terms of like how do you generate more demand per year beyond just the Q4 kind of seasonal, right? So like what what tactics are you doing to convince customers to be like you should do an Easter shoot? Well, you know, the first thing is anyone who owns a marketplace, like you need to be really on your emails. Like you have to know when that demand might hit and and just religiously email people without being too annoying. But honestly, I'd rather be annoying than miss an opportunity. So, just like make the most of your email list for sure. And then, you know, we do things like we sell bundled like packages where it's like, hey, get two or three shoots in a year, two or three, and then you get like a significant discount. Some people will really opt into that. Then you try to get like first party data from them as well to be like, "Hey, it's your birthday. It's, you know, this this event or that event that you might be interested in." Give them a discount. try to drive them to book a session. So, there's all sorts of little things to think about, but it's a lot of meticulous planning on, you know, in your in the email journey, in your marketing to try to hit these people. You're likely having trouble raising money or selling your company. Personally, I've had four exits and I've raised over $145 million. If you want a free coaching session with me, just like, subscribe, and leave a comment down below letting me know what you think of today's video for a chance to win a free coaching session with me. I'll select three winners every single month. You just have to like, subscribe, and leave a comment down below for a chance to win. Now, on to the video. No, it's it's absolutely crucial. Like I think any consumerf facing business, you have to be accelerating on the points that you've already touched on to your just the granularity in your marketing to uh your the paid ads plus email to kind of have any shot at being able to generate enough cash flow from a customer and get them to spend more uh on a regular basis. When it came to this decision of like you are, you know, you got to build a business out profitably now and you've figured out the kinks in the business to to to do so. Can you share with the audience some of the numbers behind your business? You know, kind of back then and maybe how you've grown today and kind of where you're at in terms of either topline revenue or profitability or just your unit economics. Yeah. So, I think the first year we were at like 80,000 of topline revenue. We were in like one city. We were lucky to grow exponentially during the pandemic because we were one of the few activities that was outdoor and socially distanced. So you could hang out with your family and have a good time and and have your memories without like getting sick. And so that was something and and then there was also less competition with marketing. So that was actually like a really fortuitous time for us to grow. And now we really hit so we were really lucky cuz in 2023 we finally hit break even and that was a big deal for us. And you know we hit break even. Our customers are spending on average like between 180 and 190 a person which is really great. And then um in 2024 we actually from so sorry we hit we hit break even with 8.8 million of sales in 2023 and in 2024 we 20xed that profitability. So we went from like 45,000 to close to a million and then on top on on a topline revenue of 10 million 10.2ish. So that was a huge accomplishment for us. And because of the way that we work, we actually don't know what our financials are until January of the following year because we have this like annoying tale of like, hey, pay pay only for the photos you want, right? So that means that there's a lag. They're not paying when they when they book the session. So we don't know how people are going to buy from and and you know, people are kind of struggling a little bit during the holidays and then we know in January like, oh, I'm positive we're profitable now. So there's this like we're holding our breaths for those last few months. It's I it's kind of brutal but painful. Yeah. So then our whole year is is really about can I design my business? Can I set everything up for success well enough that we can stick the landing? And it's kind of like if you do enough of the right stuff, it should stick the landing by itself. But there's like a lot of anxiety about that every year for that. Yeah, that's intense. Uh especially that payment model. Like are you paying the photographers up front regardless of the payout? Yeah. So we pay like part of their guarant we do that. We have that $100 minimum guarantee and then we we pay whichever one is higher. So we give them that we upfront that to them and then whatever commission they earn on top of that we give to them afterwards. So they have kind of rolling money coming to them twice a month which is great for them. How do you manage that cash flow wise? That sounds brutal. It's like oh I love these pictures but I'll I'll buy them like 3 months from now. Yeah. So I mean we we have like an email journey again try to really compel people to buy and then we just have to be really good about our finances and you know understand how our working capital is because like it's like once you hit like October then the money really pours in. So it's about like figuring out how to spend that wisely through the rest of the year so that you can kind of survive until the next season. That's a that's a fun game. It is a fun game. So, you know, now that you got it established and kudos, you know, 10 million top line, very few businesses can make it to that level, you know, I always thought back with, you know, target our business like that would have been like the goal would have been, you know, 10 million topline and so you've achieved that and you know, not a bad timing. I think, you know, seven years to get there is actually pretty reasonable. What would you change? Would you go back and change anything after kind of seeing what you've done and you know, how you progress? Is there anything about the business that you would have gone back wouldn't have done that? The only thing that I would have changed is I took some bad advice early on that we don't need to have the best accountant and I completely refute that. That is the only thing we we we had some I think certain accounting rules changed really early like in in the early years that we were in business. So we didn't realize there was a bit of a shift. So then we had to end up paying thing when we made things right. we ended up having to shell out like close to $300,000 of money that we should have paid like could have been captured and paid up front. So that's that's the one big regret that I have. Have a good accountant. Yeah. Honestly, I've dealt with so many companies. I work with companies on capital raises all the time and like one I either can't get the books which is like huge red flag. Like it's just like oh they're working on it, they're working on it. They're working on it. It's like you need to fire that team now. If it takes more than you know, especially some of these businesses are not that complex. They don't have that many transactions. It it kills the fund raise. It kill like if you can't demonstrate the management of your books or you have like just gross negligence in the management of your books, it's such a deterrent for any outside capital to potentially come in and or just make your business totally screwed. Whether it's backed taxes or just yes, mismanaged cash or not knowing what your cash position is truly. Yes, like you know what your payables are, especially with your cash management of like pay then get paid uh situation. You really need to have predictability in that front. Otherwise, you could have a great business but be cash bored. Uh that's correct. Yeah. So that's that's good advice. I don't hear the complaint about accountants enough on this show. Oh, really? Oh my god. It's like the one thing. Well, that's a you of all things to complain about, that's a good one to complain about. You know, if you had other things, uh there's always something worse out there. Um, and now that you've hit this milestone, you know, 10% EPIDub, you know, you 10% profit on 10 million revenue, it's fantastic. You know, you're now bootstrapped. You could basically choose your own destiny. What are you thinking? What's next for shoot? So, this is where I am like at the end of my road in terms of my expertise. I since I've never sold a business before, I don't know what the best path is forward. Just to be like totally transparent like do we do we try to get VC funding to try to supercharge some aspect of of what we've done that's a possibility though I understand you know the whole people don't VCs don't like services service based like platforms all of that market all of that stuff right do we try to get bought out or do we try to like run it for do we just try to run it forever so there's like we we look at it and I'm like you know what I I don't know which what's best for us but I just know that I I want to do what's best for everyone involved, at least on our side. So, I don't but I don't always know how to make that decision because I've never done this before. So, this is kind of like the interesting crossroads that we're at. But what's nice is like I don't have to make any one of these decisions. Like I don't have to go get an acquire. I don't have to I don't have to sell. I don't have to keep it. But like, you know, there's just I'm just like again I I want to do what's best for everybody. Jennifer, this is fascinating because this is what I deal with every day with founders. There's, you know, what I kind of tell people is you, you've built a business, you got to a certain, you know, door. You've opened that door and now you see three more doors. It's like, okay, sell the business, raise more money, stay, you know, stay stay the course. And how do you basically choose what to do? And what a lot of founders make the mistake of is leaning towards what passive advice has been, raise venture, which was one of the first things you said to do. In a lot of cases, it may or may not be an option. The reality is is like what's you know you kind of mentioned your core of like okay how do I positively impact th those already involved those that were with you during this journey that suffered with you got to you this point how do you make sure all is well for everyone involved and and what I do with founders all the time is I walk them through what we kind of call a capital strategy assessment so what I'll kind of share with you and be curious to hear your thoughts and this is for everyone in the audience as well this isn't the secret sauce here basically you look at those three doors you know let's just say raise more money, sell or be like a long-term profitable business. And the best thing to do is actually get the data on what the market's dictating on those other two options of selling or raising money and understanding if those are even attractive to you cuz like venture in some cases just using my knowledge the back of my head probably not going to be interested just mainly because you're you're more kind of in the early stages of growth equity but you're kind of too small for your traditional growth equity. So, it's more like the smaller players are going to come in and they need to make money on you. And marketplace economics, there's a bunch of factors that come into place, but you might be priced out of multiple uh EIDA, not revenue. Yeah. And if you're priced in the in any category of selling or raising capital and you're based on EBIDA multiples at your business, at your scale, you're probably not going to be in love with the number that you get day one. And then it's like, okay, that's where you are today. What gets you beyond that hump? So, what gets you that higher multiple? What's the arbitrage play that gets you from like a maybe it's a 5 to 8x EIDA multiple to maybe like a 2 3x revenue multiple? What changes would you have to make in the business? or if you can go from like a fivex epida multiple to an 8x and how do you manipulate the multiple game is where I usually like to start with a lot of founders uh of how do you figure that out and sometimes it's subscription based services rolling out new services sometimes it's expanding into new sustainable growth channels but there's always certain comps out there that can help founders navigate what actually moves the needle in some cases it's evida so like a 1 to 5 million in Ebida for your business. Don't know the comps in front of me, but you would probably fall depending on your growth rate and a couple other variables in the 5 to 8x EIDA margin, but if you have a high like really great growth rate, which your EBID has great growth, but revenues maybe not as much, you could probably get to like 10 to 15 depending on the velocity and potentially owning a market and being a, you know, leader in the market. There's higher premiums that could be made from a private equity perspective. So I always root the expectation in a private equity standpoint and suggest founders that that's an outcome you can engineer but for strategics which are more ideal. So like maybe a bigger company other marketplaces like a thumbtack would you probably compete with um you know would want to buy out your business and you know kind of roll it into theirs and what would be the strategic value there. So those are the types of things that you know you want to look at but they're hard to engineer. Um, but like private equity outcomes are always easy to not easy, but you can set a path on how to get there. So, I know I'm going on a bit of a rant here, but this is stuff that gets me excited and I help founders navigate this stuff all the time. I love it. I love it because I don't know like it's all new to me. So, I deeply appreciate everything that you're sharing. But the the root of it is is like northstar. And that's always any talk I give to a founders like what's your northstar? Some people like just want to live on a beach. I like Clay how much money do you need to live on a beach? It's like, okay, well, you need to double the business or you need to triple the business or you need to fix this part or you need to fix that part and you need to do that under 12 months at this velocity to then have this outcome. So that's something that I always encourage founders to think about is like what's actually your number and then what's your prep stack? So for you it should ideally you even have a 1x pref on your capital raised. What does that mean? Yeah, I'm so doesn't understand a liquidation preference. Uh so typically in almost all documents out there from convertible nodes safes most people have a liquidation preference of 1x meaning if I gave you $2 million if you sold the company for $2 million I get my 2 million you get zero. Yeah, it's basically the first or if you if you sell for 10, 2 million gets taken out of the business first. They're guaranteed their 2 million regardless of their percentage and then the rest is just their uh distributed. And there's like participating, preferred, and nonparticipated. There's a lot there, but basically the first thing you need to know is like, do you have any debt and do you have any kind of liquidation preferences on your investors, which usually I would factor in at least 1x unless, you know, it's just a super simple safe. And um in those cases like okay if you're going to sell for 10 well you raise two and a half so technically only 7 and a half will get distributed. Mhm. Mhm. In those situations and so you have to think about is that enough for everyone to be excited about? Is that material? Is it not material? And that's always what I tell founders to think about is you know know your options know what's behind those doors. So if you chase an exit or raise capital, you know, what's actually going to come behind that door and what do you have to do to be able to unlock that door as an option? And then does that even satisfy you? You know, is it worth doing the work to get to that point? Oh. Um, and then there's, you know, stay the course. Do you like your people? Do you like your team? Do you like your market? Do you like what you do? Like if you and you're profitable like and you always have that as an option then there's certain KPIs that maybe you come back to this you know these three doors again in like two years. Yeah. And you know kind of say like okay selling for 10 15 million is not interesting to me. Selling for 30 is. It's like okay well double the business triple the business. You never know what the market will be, but that's something that um is always good for founders to kind of look at and know, all right, if we went to market today, what could we actually achieve and what's the marginal impact in the business that we have to make today to make an outsized impact on the the return? And there's sometimes like recaps you can do like you don't have that. You have a pretty clean raise, but um there's, you know, recapitalization, so basically getting rid of prep stacks and wiping out debt. And there's just like general cap table cleanup that can create massive outsized returns for the founders, not so much investors. So there's just lots of creative deal structuring and financing, you know, financial engineering that can create a material outcome because depending on the business and I've talked to many from like SAS to consumer to direct to consumer and so on. just knowing what your multiples are, doing that homework, doing that research, and knowing actually what the market's willing to pay for you now. And that's some of the most valuable information you can have as a founder to know what decisions you should be making right now to generate an engineering outcome. So, I'll get off my soap box now. No. And can I ask you a question? Of course. So, right now is a weird time business-wise. So, how is that impacting kind of I don't know if that's too general a question, but like I feel like because people don't know what's happening economically, like how is it how how does that impact, you know, a business even in my standard cuz I'm just like, oh, with everything happening, it's so crazy. I mean, we're lucky enough for like we're lucky that tariffs don't directly impact our business, but there's going to be, you know, consumer confidence is going down. Does it impact us that way? Like, are people going to be spending less all this? So then, you know, when that is all roing around in the market, how does that impact a business in my position looking to figure out like what's next? We think that we're just not going to do anything for a year or two. But is there any do you have any thoughts about that? So yeah, there again like going back to that door analogy of like how does it impact door number one versus door number two versus door number three? So the state of course probably minimal impact outside of consumer confidence but that could also mean at cost go down because not everyone's you know advertising as much. It could mean other aspects of the business but it also mean photographers can't afford new new gear. Does that really impact you? Maybe not. So that I think is not so materially to your day-to-day operations but from a transaction standpoint this is what a lot of I just had a call with one of our clients earlier today on this. Like the macro market dictates what people are willing to pay for your business right now. Because when there's a whether it's a risk-free return of, you know, government bonds to being able to go into equities right now, equities got dirt cheap in the last few weeks because everyone's sold off in the market. And most of the capital allocators that I know, especially family offices that have diverse, you know, allocation strategies, they're all piling into private uh publics and because publics are cheap and predictable and easier to manage and in and out liquid. So why would they pay the premium for private investing in funds like private equity who might be the company that buys you and whatnot? Um, so ultimately privates have to lower their valuations and lower their terms and expectations to be able to reattract public the money that's going to publics. Now, of course, there's always private equity money that's already secured and venture capital money that's already secured, that's deployable. But responsible fund managers, who ultimately you're going to want to be sold to a responsible fund manager, they have to look at what's happening in public markets to basically price and set the discount. um to whatever they should be buying you at knowing of what might be happening in the markets in 3 to 5 years if they choose to be you know look at liquidating you in that time like reselling you at a higher price down the road to kind of capture their their return. So that's the kind of like you know the 4D chess as they say in terms of like looking at all the different layers of like okay well really what you're trying to engineer an outcome for is for that private equity firm to flip you in 5 to seven years and like they need to look at you today to see what they can do in 5 to seven years and right now you're right it's shaky deals right now they're happening there's people that just you know that's a beautiful beautiful part about private markets once the capital's secured in a fund like they have the autonomy to make decisions But they usually will try to capital, you know, capitalize on the shakiness of priv markets and try to negotiate better discounts. And then there's some, you know, venture just like finger in the wind. They don't care and just throw money at any price. Um, but in your case selling, you know, there has to be an outcome that can happen. And being that you're profitable, you can at least generate, you know, cash flow for the time being. And hopefully there's sustainable growth channels. But if I were you in your shoes, at the very least, identifying any other channels of growth um is going to be your most defendable mode that you can possibly have. And then trying to secure provable, I'd say in how you can increase LTV year over year is going to be pretty crucial as well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you. Yeah. No, that's fine. Uh I usually don't get to do that on the show where I get to like dive in specifically on this topic. It's um but since you brought it up, I was like, I got to dive into this one. Oh, please do. you know, highly appreciated. Uh we could always have an offline conversation, too. But yeah, that's uh so kind of like taking a step back, you know, now that you kind of uh have that little bit of context, you know, love for us to to kind of wrap up and and have you share uh some advice to founders that might be either in the marketplace economy right now, gig economy in that world. Um what would be your advice to them right now? Marketplaces are really hard. So, if you're going to do them, I think you have to be really obsessed with process and like logistics. If you really love just being day in and day out to optimize real like the minutia of how things are running, like that's what I feel like has helped us be successful is that we're just kind of fidious about all of the details to run a marketplace successfully and stay current to deal with like, you know, the day-to-day changes in marketing and um being able to put out fires of like your different service providers. for us, you know, our photographers, like the different problems that come up with that, figuring out pricing, like it's all of those little details add up to create an experience for both your um for us, you know, our photographers and for our clients. And our ability to optimize that and always kind of we kind of see it as like a game that we we're like, how do we play this game the best? Can we make it more efficient? All of that. That's kind of what we do on a daily basis. And I feel like for a marketplace in particular, that's what's really helped us. So, um, maybe it's not the same for every marketplace, but we have found that to be key for ours. Yeah, I I think that's great. And I think that is generally what makes marketplaces so hard. You have to be on point and then ultimately systematize as much as possible. Yeah. Um, super organized. Yeah. Otherwise, it's mayhem. Yeah, it's absolutely. I I remember those days and yeah, I do not wish them upon anyone. Uh, well, well, Jennifer, it's been absolutely amazing having you on the show. It's been a great blast for the past for me in terms of this this general category and getting to talk about it. But if someone wants to learn more about you or shoot, where should they go? Yeah, so you can visit us at shootwith2ts.com. You can see our uh schedule of free bookable sessions. You can also follow us at shootwith2's at shoot on Instagram or Tik Tok. You can also connect with me @ jenjen ts a y on Instagram or on LinkedIn as well. I'm also LinkedIn. So, um, love being on LinkedIn. So, you know, come follow us, come, um, you know, ask questions, anything. Happy to, you know, connect with any and all of you. No, absolutely appreciate your flexibility and being open to that. And, uh, you look forward to including that all in the show notes down below. And thanks again for for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you for watching today's episode. As a reminder, I'm your host, Jason 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. And to get notified of 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 relevant VCs, and much more. That's it. No more shameless plugs. Thank you, and see you next week.