How do you raise $29M as a solo founder?

welcome to episode 43 of fundraising demystified today we have Diana Hond on the show with us a fundraising machine and solo founder of parallel a platform providing virtual care for children with special needs Diana raised 29 million in what I think are the two most difficult sectors to raise it virtual care and edtech but her Innovative solution to a high demand problem led to an attractive quick sell cycle rarely seen in these industries starting with a Finance background she leveraged her network to nurture early relationships with investors to get feedback on her ideas before actually asking for money she shares how she built trust over time and became a master of running a fundraising process when it came to capitalizing the business when it needed money the most she even shares her secrets to acquiring top talent to fill gaps where most co-founders would typically play a role and what it's like to be a solo founder as a reminder to get notified of our weekly podcast and newsletter be sure to subscribe at join. thunder. BC again that is join. thunder. BC now on to the show hello everyone welcome back to fundraising demystify today we have Diana hon with us founder and CEO of parallel welcome to the show thanks Jason excited to be here I'm excited to have you and I'm excited for you to get the opportunity to share your story uh as a solo founder raising more than $28 million but before we go into all the details introduce yourself tell us a little bit about your story and what you're building at parallel yeah for sure um well to start uh parallel is a virtual care platform we work with kids primarily who struggle with learning and thinking challenges so dyslexia ADHD speech impediments um really all kinds of mental health challenges we work particularly within school districts across America we're in about 15 states right now partnering with 80 plus districts to ultimately uh plug into their special education departments and help them deliver Services directly to the kids who qualify for them so we have a robust network of virtual providers who cover all different backgrounds um everything from specialized instructors to um speech and language therapists social workers list goes on and on ultimately they plug in and work with these districts directly via our proprietary platform um platform itself has really aided uh is meant to Aid schools um and providers ultimately in getting the both Best Care delivered uh and also the most efficient and effective care so um it's been a exciting Journey because we're both at the uh intersection of healthcare world and education world so has been been a good learning experience in both those are two very difficult sectors to succeeded and you chose to combine them together um and it seems to be working out for you but uh I'd love for you to kind of share how you got to the point of conceptualizing the idea behind parallel and then going about you know building that company totally um well the story is pretty personal I grew up with learning and thinking challenges myself was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD um when I was about seven years old which is fairly unique for anyone familiar with the space most kids are diagnosed much later um if at all and it is historically pretty hard to procure resources uh once even identification has been made so I was a unique case in which I really reaped the benefits of early detection and early intervention and so from purely a mission perspective was really excited to kind of rethink how you could deliver care um a new and innovative ways and kind of recreate my reality for more kids Across America recognizing that that is certainly not the norm today um I think the idea of virtual care was super intriguing to me even prior to covid um this idea of really increasing access especially in a realm where there is Neely a shortage of these you know highly trained highly skilled providers um putting things online really is the only way to be able to provide these highly individualized and personalized resources for students we're not talking about like seventh grade math we're talking about you know small group reading intervention or one-onone intervention um you know working very Hands-On between student and provider to help them overcome a very specific communication or articulation challenge right we're talking about really really specific things and so um in order to have that one-on-one individualized care it kind of had to be virtual if you're going to start getting into far-reaching underserved communities and so the virtual model was always intriguing it wasn't until Co actually hit that definitely exacerbated the issues within the school systems and specifically in the realm of special ed that's no surprise to anyone um but that was when people actually started believing that there was a real opportunity to put things online there are companies that have been around for a while who do virtual uh K12 Therapy Services all of those companies had a big boom during covid but they are really kind of like staffing agencies online where we have come in as very much as a tech enabled service provider focused on as I mentioned before how can we actually make this care not just accessible to more kids but actually exponentially better than what you would get in an inperson setting right and so with that comes a lot of tools directly for our providers as well as tools directly for the school district themselves to actually manage those students the case load and actually track the outcomes of those students so that they can ultimately see those students Thrive graduate out of the special ed system make more room for more students who need the support um and run a much more productive and efficient special ed Department so you have a very personal story to to go about making this this company come to reality and solving the problems you do it sounds Innovative sounds like you know timing worked out for you in terms of it sounds like you launched this either during or right after covid is that accurate right in the middle of co uh I I kid you not I have reached out to advisor types you know my background's not clinical um my background is much more on the kind of business finance side of things so prior to co had actually started talking to potential clinicians to kind of help try to rationalize if this opportunity to do online services even even was a thing and uh people fully like laughed in my face at that point and then six months later I reached out to them again and some cases I didn't even reach out to them they reached out to me and we're like okay I'm ready to go like let's talk now um and so it's kind of amazing to see the tourament events but yeah by uh September 2020 we had launched or at least Incorporated the company I would say 2021 was when things really started to uh pick up pace so you did this by yourself you're you're a solo founder you didn't have a CTO or anyone like that on as a co-founder what made you jump in on this by yourself and kind of what's that Journey been like for you yeah um I will say it's still almost an experiment I I will report back in uh five years and tell you how I really feel about it but uh I was given some advice early on from a friend of mine who's also a fellow founder who had said you know don't don't wait up to find a co-founder right you can always add a co-founder further down the road but like you're going to drive yourself nuts and stall a lot of progress trying to find that perfect co-founder especially you know finding a technical co-founder not an easy thing to do um and especially when you're talking about this very Niche Mission visit V Mission driven business um probably even harder right well different than like building some crazy AI company these days so um with that M decided to jump in and kind of always went with the mindset of maybe I'll find that co-founder down the road um got pretty far into it pretty quickly right like the second you get in the mindset of like I'm not waiting on anything all of a sudden the company really started to take off you know we had a pretty robust group of kind of clinical advisers that were helping us with the first prototype of the um the product and the services we had a small team of kind of contractors at the time and well we kept adding people to the team and I can definitely like remember when we had our first like couple of Big Shot hires if you will um we were kind of past the park point of like people even thinking about like co-founder seat and at that point I kind of you know also had it in the back of my head right um and so you know ultimately it's been a really interesting journey I would say I would actually probably give any founder the same advice I was given um I think it takes a unique type of person though I think I am the type of person that can deal with the uh highs and lows of startup World um to the best of my ability there are definitely personality types out there that just like do not want to Simply do that alone and that is the hardest part obviously about not having a co-founder is like at the end of the day when things get hard like it's it's on me right um so ultimately you know bear the burden of that I will say on the kind of like Rosier side of it we were able to go in early raise a lot of money which then allowed me to go hire really great people and ultimately pay them a good salary that was why I didn't have to give somebody the co-founder title and so I ended up having co-founder esque people I was also able to give people a lot of equity my early employees so they had this like founder mentality while they might not have had the official title I actually now would say I have a more robust executive team around me that acts with this founder mentality despite not having a direct co-founder so I can't say that it's like all butterflies and rainbows and everyone should do this but I think those are some of the factors that folks should consider but I still stand by like don't let yourself get too held up because you could spend frankly years trying to find the right co-founder and like in most cases it doesn't work out anyways so there's that that's an incredible uh story share there in terms of what to look at and I love that you had that friend tell you just don't wait and and I think that's great advice to a lot of people considering whether or not to move forward the company because once you get something going it becomes more and more attractive to other people to potentially join you uh so you kind of have to put a little effort uh and in this case you just kept going which is awesome and you can add co-founders like at any point you not a co-founder two years in if you really want I mean it really depends on what you want to do and also like co-founders don't need to be a 50-50 split in the company so I think there's a lot of different ways you can get uh creative with it that when you're first starting the company um maybe you're not thinking with that exact mentality so it's well said and I think that'll be good good music to a lot of people's ears uh that often feel to have to be that 5050 split which in a lot of cases isn't actually the reality in most cases it's not um so you talked about raising money early on to be able to bring on the talent that require didn't require you to go out and get co-founders how did you do that how did you bring on those early resources what did you validate what did you achieve to be able to lure in investors and and how did you get access to those investors yeah totally um a few different factors here so I will know I'll preface all of this by saying you know we definitely raised our like preed round and the Golden Age of fundraising so I also want to just be realistic that the advice I'm giving should all be taken with a grain of salt um because we raised our seed round in 2021 when it was much easier to do that and also frankly when like digital Health world was all the rage so um that was also helping in our favor and covid there there were a lot of things working for us at that point um I just to answer like the more tactical parts of your question very early on like when I was first kind of toying with the ideas of parallel I was trying to get Buy in from investors so anyone I knew on my social network who was an investor or knew investors like I was trying to take coffee chats with those people just to start putting the idea in front of them and I use those conversations both to develop my own idea as well as sort of pitch the idea like the trick was to go in and not act too firm on like this is exactly what I want to build what do you think of it but more so like hey you're looking at a lot of companies in these spaces like what do you think of these ideas you know is this of interest to you like what do you think funding looks like for a company of this like what are all the like longer term considerations I want to take into account and I did that mostly because I came from Finance world and my biggest fear was not being able to fund the business um especially actually I remember the very first thing and like the Catalyst for needed go raise money was our legal bills were really high because I didn't want to mess with like providing health care services and not having the right legal structure in place and so I remember the first you know the the cost of the lawyer quota was like 25k to set up all of the legal um professional corporations and so on and I won't get into all that but Healthcare world is a slog um and so I was like all right we're goingon to have to go raise money at some point I kind of kept kicking the can down count the curb um but it made it really easy when that day came and I was ready to do it excuse me to um just call up those same people and be like all right today is the day like you already kind of got by into this so I would say that that's how I kind of got the friends and family part of the round done and got a few early Angel Investors on board and from there um utilize those connections as much as possible to get intros to the actual funds that could give us much larger check sizes so we set out to do like a 500K pree round that pretty quickly morphed into just our seat round um when we started actually talking to institutional investors um again Golden Days of fundraising so I don't know if this would happen today but we're lucky enough to have three term sheets on the table to ultimately choose from um and ultimately one with the partner that felt like the best fit for us um but you know I think a lot of fundraising is just playing playing the game and um utilizing the the connections as much as possible especially when there's a lot of momentum so like coming out of you know Angel Investors writing checks and being super hyped about your business getting as many intros as possible to funds and just like keeping the ball rolling was definitely a factor in in our success so one thing I would just call out to your audience what you shared here is probably some of the best advice Founders can hear is start start the process as early as possible and focus on those relationships as early as possible you were asking for insights you're asking for feedback on the market um you know they were talking the you know probably more than you were talking and don't pitch them in that idea because you quickly can turn like somebody the opposite direction they're like I I don't like your approach right like you don't want them to actually weigh in on your ability to build this you just want to see if this is an interest same idea to them oh so beautifully said you like don't pitch investors to get investors to give you money it's counterintuitive I know but it is the right way to do things because it allows them to kind of share their insights share their feedback they are doing most of the talking and you're getting all this amazing information to then come back and regurgitate back to them saying Oh yeah I'm gonna do it this way now that's the trick right now I want it I mean at that point you're like I know exactly what metrics these investors want to see right it makes it really easy to come back around and say okay congrats like we made you know we hit these metrics we're here now right and like when it comes to also crafting the storyline you've already heard the Spiel directly from them of what's interesting about this business opportunity and frankly like what's interesting to one early stage investor is going to be interesting to the next right so um I have still done that ahead of most fundraising rounds as like just reaching out to Friendly investors in our space and frankly just like keeping a constant tab on them of like what's happening in our space right like what are you guys seeing in the market what are you guys interested in how are you thinking about valuating these businesses like where are you you know where are you looking to deploy capital and not and just having that knowledge being in the founder seat makes it so much easier than when the day comes that you're like I actually do need to raise money um that that's not just like a do this at the preed you can constantly be doing that and should be doing that you're mentioning so many important tactful approaches to to fundraising but what I also find fascinating is you're still a solo founder like you you're having to go and and run you know build these relationships maintain these relationships while still you know running this company with no one else with the same skin in the game as you um where did that you know create friction for you uh if at all uh while you built and scale the company um it's a good question I think in general fundraising has always been my domain I have a really strong executive team around me but I think everyone looks to me when fundraising time comes around um and so I don't think it's ever really led to any friction I think everyone kind of understands you know we a venture-backed company fundraising is is part of the game and um I shouldn't say the game part of the gig um but uh to be you know uh I would say like everyone's been really good you know like our series a fundraise took months right like when you get engulfed in the full fundraise process it's like all hands on deck and also it just it takes up all of my time for an extended period of time and so I will say my team has been awesome about stepping in and a showing up as needed to the actual fundraising conversations but also like keeping the business moving forward while I'm out of commission so I think it's a fine balance but um I was lucky in that my executive team a lot of them come from startup world people have seen this this Rodeo before so um everyone kind of knew how to mobilize when the time came but I think for Founders who are you know working with like smaller teams or like going out for their first fund raise I think just being abundantly clear about expectations up front um because that is like the most important thing probably to keep the company moving moving forward is getting you know new cash in the bank so C cash is key so um you kind of discount yourself a little bit when you say like oh it was Peak Market we raised you know when it was easy kind of thing but like still raised a series a in 2022 and then you recently just closed what looks like a to be like a series A Plus on top of the you know that that past round so like you still know how to you know do what you got to do and you're doing in you know the toughest Market we you did during the easy part and he also did it during some of the toughest Parts um okay what what was different and you know kind of between those different timing periods and you know why did you go out for an a what was kind of the whole you know story there yeah um I mean things have definitely changed I think um we raised our series a it's funny like from the time that we put the deck together and started to go out and have conversations to when we actually closed the round like the maret had totally changed right like I think the round actually closed in May but I think we went out in March or like end of February and started raising and I remember it took us a really long time to get through like everything from legal diligence to like wrap up you know who are the like little angel checks that you're going to take and so on um and so it was extended for a bit but um you know we had like Angels who had committed to us earlier in the process pull out by the time that we were actually going to sign the final docs because the markets had changed so much um and so in that sense you know the questions got harder and the diligence got deeper and uh to Tiger's credit who led our series a they did a lot of diligence during uh our series a fundraise they actually did probably more diligence than any other fund which was ironic given all of the things we hear about tiger um but their health healthare team does not mess around um but I would say like again I don't know honestly how much of that is like series a versus seed right like there just wasn't as much to assess us on back when we raised our earliest round versus uh when we went into the series a but like we were talking about real data all of a sudden and the expectations were so much higher to be able to tell a cohesive story of like how the business itself actually works you know in the earliest days it was like okay how are you hypothetically going to make money and like what's the story line and why are you important to the story right like why is their founder fit right by the way best advice I can also give early stage Founders is like put a slide in your seed pitch deck that says how we make money because a lot of people forget to do that um but investors do want to know how you're going to make money um but at series a you're talking about like much more you know all of a sudden there's data that you actually have to back up the storyline with right you need to talk about your executive team right like I think just to answer some of your questions around like the Milestones it was like do we have a team that like actually it's no longer just founder fit but do we have like team fit right um from a like traction Revenue perspective you know the golden metric was always do have you know a million in ARR think now that number has probably gone up a little bit um for us it was like you know do we have a really tight story about com uh customer retention um do we have you know clear visibility into the size of this actual Market um being able to speak really like intelligently about the Tam and a much bigger Vision by the time you were getting to series A you're talking about like how big can this company really be right it's like seed is funding the idea series a it's like can we give you a little bit of money to like see this thing scale and then onwards it's like okay can we just like keep scaling this thing right um so i' say those are the biggest changes and then up to you mentioned you know we've done this additional round of funding um that was a somewhat opportunistic round we really wanted to partner um with rethink uh impact which was the uh fund that came in and their founder Jenny Brinson actually went on our board um she's great so so much so that we put her on our board um and that process um you know again like similar to our series that it was very data driven um very much focused on the bigger long-term picture and I think that's just a different expectation of the founder to be able to communicate versus you know selling like the dream it's now like you're selling the dream plus like the reality behind it and how to actually say that the traction that you've seen to date is going to tell a really pretty picture down the line um and I think being really sharp on like the financial view has only gotten more and more important um one thing I regret not doing sooner frankly I came from Finance world as I mentioned but I didn't hire a finance person on our team until earlier uh in 2023 we ended up bringing in a BP of finance and now have two people on our finance team if I could go back in time would have hired somebody probably a year earlier um it really would have helped at the series a to have a real Finance person on the team to help us actually collect the data package the data and help tell the financial story and I have to imagine that for uh companies that are going out to raise now their seriesa the expectations have only gone up just given where the markets are at no they definitely have and the the bar keeps moving up and up um at least from what I'm seeing in current rounds and you know something I always like to ask you know Founders if you can share is like what were some of the Milestones that you were hitting that you were had the confidence to report back to uh to investors to kind of keep them you know looped in and and engaged in the round because yeah you raised the size of little series a but it was kind of right before everything things were things were falling off the clip but they hadn't fallen off the clip yet yeah um you so you you timed it fortunately very very well but um you still a volatile you know period uh and then of course to the recent round here with rethink um how did you communicate those Milestones what were those milestones and tell us a little bit about that yeah um you know I think like the biggest ones for us bookings and revenue um I should know you know for us all of our contracts are we're a healthcare services company but we have sass like contracts and I'll just also the contracts are minimum contracts so every like usage should be tied to the actual uh contract itself so all that's to say like Revenue bookings was a huge metric uh that we were constantly reporting back on um we also spent a lot of time thinking about transparently like one is the best time of year for us to go out and fund raise there's a lot of seasonality given that we follow the school district cycle um so for you know going out to raise in like Q4 q1 we've got like the past renewal season behind us um that is an opportune time for us to go raise and be able to kind of consistently share good feedback so I think that's also really important for Founders is to think about their sales cycle and when are they going to be in the best position to tell the story and then kind of work backwards to plan their funding around that um I think for us also being a mission driven business like actually like our infiltration of these schools and like the more students we were serving that's been a really impactful metric both to Rally around internally as well as externally with investors um I would say some other metrics or maybe not metrics but like conceptual things that were important I go back to team was really important um you know new hires and like the people that are really going to get you to the next level of success like it's kind of crazy how much of an impact one hire can make when you're that small of an organization and so you know bringing in a new sales leader like a new operator or a CTO right like that type of stuff uh goes along long way when you make like the first couple of like really big name hires um so I think those type of things were also helpful um product road map and like our actual like execution towards a product road map um I think those are kind of the biggest areas oh sorry I should say the last thing and again this is kind of Niche to like healthcare service world but outcomes data we definitely have focused since uh the earlier days of like actually collecting the impact data like all the students we're working with seeing them actually improve like that's part of the whole pitch that I gave gave in our first uh couple of minutes and so it's really important for us to actually show investors that we're not just like saying that but we actually mean it so that's going to look like a different flavor for every company out there but I think even like the most tech forward SAS companies can still uh think about what is like impact driven about their company and what does it mean for a customer to have the best possible experience so I would say those were all kind of like the earlier stage things i' would say now biggest things in our mind are probably like retention and turn of customers um overall growth Topline um and then probably like burn multiple and just like being making sure that like cash spend story matches the Topline growth no I think those all you know make sense as you kind of progress at the the different stages I guess a question you know for you being that you're a solo founder and you're kind of the master of the fundraising for the company were you taking all these investor meetings alone did you bring some of your employees into those meetings like what was that kind of experience you know for you um it's a good question I took all the first meetings Alone um I can't remember at what point I looped in my coo but I remember she would join a lot of the meetings uh by the time we were like pitching to ic's and so on um when we did this most recent round of funding you know Jenny independently like sat down with every single person on our team before she actually made the investment in h parallel so it's I've seen it all I think in the earliest days it was like you know 100% me I would come back and be like great we have some more funding in the bank um now it's definitely more of a Hands-On effort especially as we think about a series be in the future like my BP Finance at this point is in most of my uh uh investor meetings and so on so it definitely morphs over time but early on it was very much all in my domain um but you get to a point where you start needing data from other teams to actually be able to tell the cohesive story and then you get to a point where like your team members can maybe tell the story better than you can so plus it's also like a really really good opportunity frankly to highlight like if you team you're really proud of obviously you can tell hopefully by the way I'm talking about my team that I really really love my team um but they're also like a bunch of really impressive people and I want them to be able to interface with these investors I think that it's a really good way for investors to build confidence not just in you as the founder but also and you know obviously the team that they're underwriting um and especially as you get bigger and the check sizes get bigger like that's uh an important thing for investors to see is that they feel really confident across the board with the the entire management team you're giving me lots of great leader Vibes I hope so I don't know I'll let my team I don't know I'm not interviewing your team but uh you know at least what you're saying sounds uh sounds like you really know how to to lead your team and bring out the right people and allow them to do what they do great uh do best um which uh is always a great sign to see in a Founder uh which is probably why you've been able to impress investors and and raise money because Talent is the gate you know at the end of the day you got to have great people you got to be able to attract great people and if you can't get great people to the table then you know you probably can't get the money um yeah but uh yeah I want to kind of go into this topic a little bit because I've been in the tech space personally and worked with other Ed tech companies um you know the sales cycle is atrocious and just every state in county and it's all run completely different and completely thepoke across the entire country it's an absolute headache a lot of investors just have no interest in edtech because of the complexity of the edtech sales so you chose that model but then you're also like well let me also bringing this healthc care into it as well um and make that the actual product so you're taking two of the most one of the most complicated sales cycles and marrying that with one of the most complex you know kind of regulatory products and experiences and marrying those two together and uh you it seems like it's going well but I'm just curious making me sound crazy uh well hey you you know obviously not because it's it seemed to attract the right type of capital and you're making progress otherwise it wouldn't exist um but what's what's kind of been the experience like for you know selling this product and and bring you know scaling your sales team because there's just so much ambiguity and complexity around this type of sales um process like what what's been working for you and what strategies have work for you totally um I mean I think you touched on a lot of realities of both the edtech and the healthcare space like we have investors we talk to all the time that are like or actually I guess they won't talk to us because they're like we just don't go anywhere near edtech um I think we're in a unique space I should kind of preface all this by saying like services are a bit different because schools can move pretty quickly on them in many cases it's like kind of life or death like they need them or they don't um versus is like going and pitching school like a new like LMS system or something like infrastructure like curriculum something where they're going to have to like rip out you know anyone that's like seen Blackboard or canvas right those are like the two big LMS systems right like to change from that to like another system is is very difficult even switch between the two of them right so um I think that's one of the main reasons that edtech gets bad rep is like it's years in some cases of pitching before you actually these institutions to switch over the other thing and as you touched on like the buying cycle is also really short so technically their budget is only open from July to October so like you see a lot of edtech companies that are literally only selling in Q3 um for us and what we found early on is that there is such a demand for the actual people that we are placing in the schools that they can buy these Services all 12 months out of the Year there are definitely peaks in our buying season Q3 being the very obvious one um things pick up a lot in like January February also going into the new semester as you can imagine we start doing renewals right around now um and so we have kind of a unique cycle in that sense I will also note we get our foot in the door with a lot of these school districts by saying like Okay you clearly have a massive need like I can see literally posted on your school website that you have you know openings for speech and language therapists like I can help you with that easy to get somebody to pick up a phone and talk to you um as we develop our actual kind of product offerings right we can be able to actually um infiltrate those school districts with more infiltrate sounds like a dirty work but like the reality is we're actually coming into like really help these school districts operate their special ed departments and so as we offer new Services new product features so on right like that gets very easily distributed so our cheapest way to actually grow as an organization is to continue expanding in the districts that we're already in so for us it's like how good of an experience is our initial you know that customer having in year one and what can we actually convince them to kind of offload to parallel in year two and onwards instead of trying to do it all on campus themselves with their own in-house resources now it's starting to click for me you know that that makes a lot more sense and I can kind of see the people that are the investors that were able to look past the fact that it's another edte company and see and listen to that right there opens up their eyes I imagine in terms of like oh this is this is not you're not going to suffer the you know the same pain we see all these other ones yeah K12 Ed Tech in particular MERS really like run the opposite direction from um so let's let's go back a little bit to to the fundraising experience like you know we kind of talked about all the the positives and kind of how you went through and you know uh raise the capital what what were some of the negatives like what were some are some of the mistakes that you made that you know looking back you wish you could could have done differently uh wow that's a great question um I probably have so many that if I had more time to think about this I would have uh yeah so much to say but I think um a few initial ones that come to mind at least is like one similar to like the advice that we started with of like not waiting to find a co-founder not waiting to go out and fundrais is super important um I I guess I'll cave out that by saying as the founder you need to be in the right head space when you go fundraise and so I've also been in scenarios where I'm you know talking to a fund they're like trying to preempt us to think about you know this was like pre us doing our official series a I would get on the phone with these investors and they sound so interested and wanted to do something with us and I was like not in the head space to actually go pitch the parallel story and like talk about the big picture and the size and the scale and like I didn't have the talk track down and I didn't in my heart of hearts know if we raised $15 million $20 million whatever amount like what we were going to be doing with it and I think like that is something really important for Founders to figure out as like and also just like trust yourself on right as like you will feel when you're like I know what I need this money for right like I know that the momentum is like the wheels are turning and if I had more money like this is exactly what I do with it and it's exactly where I get and it becomes way easier to go you know sell an invest around that um but I will say like at the series I remember you know there was probably a solid like I think like I said we went out and raised in March like I knew on January 1 we needed to go raise our series a or that we wanted to go out and raise our series a and that like metrics wise things were good but like I just kept kind of putting it off and I wanted things to be perfect and I you know spent two months making a deck and I didn't need to do that right like I think there's a certain amount of like especially when you are the solo founder like you got to kick yourself in the butt and go do it a little bit um so I'd say those are two very obvious ones um I think the other thing is just like being ready to deal with the highs and lows like even in all this like you know you're talking about all of our great success like fundraising is not easy and you have to deal with a lot of rejection and be okay with that and like keep your head up about it and frankly a lot of those that will reject you will come back around and like that's just the reality of how this world works right so um I think being literally like mentally prepared to deal with those highs and lows and trying to not like eat into much to your life I also think there's some benefit to be said in like keeping the fundraising kind of separate from the rest of the organization like when you are in deep fundrais no mode your like leadership team should obviously be ready to jump in and help you and so on but you also don't want to tie like the whole company's mindset to like the success of this fundraise especially in today's world um so that's something that you know we we talk about a lot internally as like as we think about a future fundraise like we don't even specify necessarily when that's going to happen because I don't want the whole team to be constantly focused on that or also like holding me accountable to that with um yeah I think those are like the big ones and then the last thing I'll say is like even for me who comes from having worked in banking it still was like a hard um a hard thing to get over of like how to actually talk about the long-term trajectory of this business and like how big it's going to get and how much money we're going to make and like the real like true Financial storyline and so um again I I as I said before like the second you feel like you're out of your comfort zone like at least get like there's plenty of advisers and consultants and people out there that will help you on the financial side if you are not a finance uh focused founder and like that's totally fine but like get the help it'll dramatically change your fundraising experience um and being able to have like a really good Financial mod model like ready to go when you go to fundraise um another just really important piece that will make your life so much easier because then you're not going to have to answer like 5,000 questions about your financial model when you uh get into the data room you've shared so many wonderful insights and kind of experiences of kind of your your Lessons Learned what you recommend and I genuinely appreciate kind of the approach that you have in this process there's just I think something that the audience would want to hear is uh in the kind of process of fundraising and things that you share it just all sounds like wow she's got it all figured out you know everything is all you know easy but as you share it's it's not there is a grind here and it's a lot of work I think to just help them understand your pain on that front maybe try to quantify the level of rejection um or you know the amount of meetings you had to take in the process you had to run to you know kind of help quantify that this was not like I took a meeting and I got some money you know yeah um no not at all I mean like I will give two other quick pieces of advice before I I answer that one there's a uh constant conversation of like do you pack all the meetings together and just like run a really tight process or do you like you know spread it out over a long time and kind of like do it in batches I am very much in the camp one bucket like I probably like took I don't know meetings with like 40 plus investors in a given week at one point um between like large funds and Angel Investors that we're looking to bring on and like that's a hustle and even just getting to the place where you can like generate enough interest that you're filling your calendar with that much um is an effort and that's why I say like the earlier you can start with that and just like making friends with people that are going to literally like open doors for you when the time comes to fundraise and then similarly like having a really really tight deck and you can lean on your current investors for those of you who have current investors on the cap table like to help you put that story line together but having like 12 slides not like 25 slides that are like this is exactly what we're doing and here all of the glowing metrics that are going to get you super excited about it and like think about it as like a real sales deck having that go out in emails and like having everyone you know last investors trying to get those meetings on your calendar in a succinct like time frame um is the best thing that you can do and all that's to say you know through all of our rounds like I have dealt with no so many so so many more times than I have dealt with yes and even like when we got the tiger term sheet like I did not know that that was coming right like we were down to the wire with a number of funds and I was like at my wh end like even the day I remember we got the tiger term sheet I was like literally that morning having a mental breakdown because I was like how do we just get this done right like everyone's dragging their feet nobody wants to put the term sheet in luckily they did um and that kind of like sealed the deal for us but you know it's a really tough process even when things are like seemingly going well you know you're still dealing with so many factors outside of your control and you know you could go like the pitch of your lifetime and any little thing can come up so I think that's what I saying just being in like mental state to be ready with the to do the highs and lows of it and like it's always going to take an emotional toll on you but if you can make sure that you have the best like support system around you it really does help I appreciate you sharing that I think that really kind of sets the realistic expectation of what this really takes and know Kos to you like it definitely I think everyone would prefer to have 40 meetings in a week but to be able to do that says a lot about the offer you know you the team the product you know the company um you have to drum up that interest it's not just 40 bodies you take meetings with it's you probably reached out to a lot more people to you know even be you interested in taking a meeting with you so there's a ton of rejection before you even get to those meetings but being able to even have the opportunity to get those intros or you know get those contacts uh is an immense you know lift in of itself so it just shows you know the caliber of you know leader and founder that you are to kind to be able to make that happen but you still you are the you know right there the you know like the that final thread hoping that something comes through and fortunately it did it's a it's a tough process and appreciate you you sharing those stories and those insights with her with their audience totally yeah most of those 40 were NOS but luckily there are a few that said yes and that's all you need and people say that all the time but it's true you really just need one one yes so so I I really appreciate you joining us on the show today um what's going to be the best way for for Founders to to learn more about you or potentially you know connect with you to to learn more yeah totally um we are parallel learning.com linkedin's probably the best bet to reach out to me directly um you can find me under Diana health fund um happy to chat with Founders who are going out to fund raise as I said Jason when we first started this is like one of my favorite topics to uh chat on so um yeah happy to to be helpful if I can so and if I'm slow to respond on LinkedIn I apologize in advance well you might get a lot of messages you just open up full gate well that's incredibly kind of you and uh I really appreciate you uh coming on there's something to say about how you ran your process what you done today or to date uh for your company that says a lot about you as a as a founder and a leader and it's great to to have you on well thank you for having me this is really fun awesome thanks for listening to the show today we hope you learned something valuable and if you did be sure to let us know in the comments or 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VC we provide a free tool to help you identify which VC family offices or lenders are the best fit for you using raai it will save you a ton of time from chasing the wrong investors and since launching our free tools Founders that have joined our Network have gone on to raise over $1 billion in financing again you can find these free tools at thunder. VC and as a reminder we release new episodes every week so stay informed by subscribing to our newsletter at join. thunder. BC again that's join. thunder. BC and if you or someone you know has recently raised around and want to share your story please email me at Jason thunder. VC and that's our show we hope you you enjoyed it and we see you next week