How do you survive a $15M valuation cut during diligence?

How are you going to convince thousands like hundreds of enterprise clients that use you over Microsoft? The answer which is unfair to your listeners is my I don't come from money. I don't have rich relatives. I wasn't willing to second mortgage my house. I wasn't willing to drain my family's financial security. So, that leaves take on venture. What was your magic trick to get sales? I took the really bad advice that if you're not your company's first sales person, you should never expect anyone else to sell your product. The only replicatable advice I can say as to what we did in those early stages is Everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today, we have Jen Henderson with us on the show, founder of Tilt and quite the successful founder raising, over 30 million post Series B in the HR tech space. Welcome to the show, Jen. Thanks for having me, but chat. So, I just want to go straight and we were talking offline for a minute here about your your capital raising and how you you just not to raise from your typical you have tier one investors and how you have your small cap table, but you know, maybe a lesser known cap table. Let's talk a little bit about your fundraising journey and you know, how you ultimately navigated it to get to the point where you closed a Series B not too long ago. All the way back in the day, right to the post idea stage, but what am I going to do with this idea? I remember sitting at a table with a advisor saying, well, are you going to bootstrap this or are you going to take on venture? And I will be honest in saying I didn't even know what the difference was. So, the decision to to pursue venture came from a very naive positioning of I see a real problem and I want to solve it. What does that mean? And that means I need to take on capital and I need to scale through technology. So, I would say it was almost a known path forward because of the North Star of wanting to help as many people as as fast as possible. And anytime you say as fast as possible in my experience, you probably need to take on capital. And I I don't come from money. I don't have rich relatives. I wasn't willing to second mortgage my house. I wasn't willing to ruin my family's financial security. So, that leaves take on venture. And so, that started that started our very first round in 2019. And so, you know, coming from that position and starting your first round, coming to that conclusion that grow fast, don't put up your own capital. Um where would you kind of get started? Like so, you're kind of relatively new to this landscape. How did you educate yourself on what was the appropriate, you know, type of round and how much to raise and where to go? Well, I think the nice thing about being based in the middle of the country, I sit in Colorado, is options were pretty limited in terms of where I could pursue taking on that first capital. Um again, being a first-time founder with young kids, I wasn't willing to go live on the coasts and and walk up and down and knock on doors. So, I had to be more resourceful. And for that, Colorado has actually the oldest angel um network in the country that's called Rockies Venture Club. Rockies Venture Club is um comprised of just really awesome humans who put on free education, who lead workshops, and who were accessible and available to me to advise me as to how to even go about starting this thing. So, I mean all the way back to what should I put in a pitch deck? And like what competitions do I apply to? There was a point in time where I pitched 60 times in 90 days. Every possible stage I could get on I got on. It was truly you press a button and my pitch came out. Um it was great learning environment for me. It was a great opportunity for me to get our story dialed in. Um and ultimately resulted in our first 190,000 I want to say. Um but that took all of 6 months. And a lot of pushing the boulders up the hill. And uh we we got a torque. Well done. And that uh that was the 2019 uh kind of the first round. And then one thing to go out and sell your story, meet some great people that back you, but what were you building? What was what was kind of the initial concept of the product that ultimately attracted that capital? Tilt was uh born out of personal experience. So I had two really shitty leave experiences in corporate America. And the second so egregious that it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I wanted to um make leave better for others that were like me. And unfortunately, leave gone wrong is a very common pervasive problem. So I wasn't unique. There was nothing special about my situation. Uh but we came out of the box focusing on parental leave because that was my lived experience was having a baby and having it not well supported. I learned very very quickly um that that is one flavor of leave. And I had a really kind CHRO say to me, "You can't leave all my other leaves held together by duct tape and band-aids and only fix parental." So that was all I needed to hear to say, "All right, well, let's expand this." And so very very early on we expanded our services to supporting all types of leaves in all states in the union. Um and that was the product that we came out of the box selling in late 2019. What what I say product is kind of, you know, what did I say? If you're not embarrassed by your first version, you probably waited too long. We did We didn't wait too long. There's definitely um some wow, I can't believe that's what we started with moments, but we did. And I took the really bad advice, I would say in hindsight, that if you're not your company's first sales person, you should never expect anyone else to sell your product. I now believe that there is such an expertise and art and craft to salesmanship that expecting anyone to do that regardless of their backstories is um is flat advice, I would say. And irresponsible in my case. Whatever, I did it. I took the advice. I was my company's first sales person, got the first couple contracts across the finish line. And just for the record for your listeners, they weren't like my network. I didn't call people and say, "Hey, do me a solid and sign this contract so that I could show early traction." This was absolutely like hit the pavement, cold selling, um trying to figure out how to sell you you name it, I was throwing against the wall. Um but that first product did get us our first um couple of contracts, and then COVID happened. And quite literally, we were in a war room in March 2020 trying to figure out how to support our small but mighty customer base um navigating COVID-19 related leaves. And that very quickly spun our velocity. It's the tailwinds founders dream of, I've said before, and I mean it. I don't know where we would be if we didn't have the pandemic um come to the world in the day and time that it did, honestly, with the work that we do. So, you kind of you had the product in place and enough contracts in place to be able to have the foundation to really scale during the during COVID. Um Yep. So, you have this experience, like what are some of the numbers or KPIs behind the growth from your seed to your series A? and like where how did you think about the next capital round? Well, I had everything said to me from as soon as somebody pays you a dollar for your service you've made it to unless you hit your first million you've made it and and anything in between. So, there were a lot of opinions and my uh younger self if I could go back and tell her anything it would be stop listening to everyone because being a first-time female founder I thought well, I don't know what I don't know. So, I'm going to I'm going to listen to all of this advice. So, I I say that under the cover of carefully take advice from in the early days. Um but our KPIs at the you know, back of the napkin so I would say the first half a million um were predominantly traction. Who are we selling to? How big are the contract sizes? How long is it taking us to sell those contracts? We sell annual contracts. So, for us once we sold the annual we had a whole year to ensure that we're getting that renewal because now eight years in as you might imagine the KPI scorecard has changed quite a bit. But in those early days it was velocity. It was are you getting people to buy the product? Are you solving a real problem? You'll hear is this a vitamin or a painkiller? So, all KPIs were pointed to proving this was a painkiller and not not a nice to have or a vitamin. And you know, in hindsight it was kind of as simple as that. It was get sales. Get sales as fast as you can and then get as much as you can of them. What was your magic trick to you know, get sales? What were what were you guys doing? What was the Was it still you at that point? Were you bringing on help to to scale that effort? No, it was not me. Um the answer which is unfair to your listeners is my vice president of sales found me and she was my third hire and she was and is um my magic like ingredient. She's absolutely phenomenal. Um what she has created then and now in this organization from not only the go-to-market infrastructure, but the continual iteration and its continual growth has been honestly a thing of dreams. I my board members are continually just flabbergasted at her ability to continue to grow and scale. So, the only replicable advice I can say as to what we did in those early stages is find an excellent go-to-market leader. Way easier said than done, and I completely acknowledge that. Well, you had to build something and be someone that was worthy of attracting that kind of talent. So, uh, you had to had to had to do something right at that point. Um, and when it comes to the, you know, the capital raise, so kind of walk us through you're you're now starting to get this this breakout velocity, you're starting to recruit the team. Kind of walk us through the the series A. Yeah. Uh, we went through Techstars. So, I made the decision pretty early on. Again, I don't know what I don't know, and that came from a place of if we're going to do this and be successful, I had three, um, hypotheses that I needed vetted in choosing an accelerator. One is I want the street cred. I want the badging to mean something in the market when I go for subsequent fund raises. Techstars and Y Combinator at the time were the two that seemed to get the most legitimacy behind it. Two, I wanted a vetted curriculum. Like I said, I wanted somebody that was going to teach me what I don't know about term sheets, what I don't know about scaling, etc., etc. That again, um, checked out with Techstars and a couple others that I was considering. And third, I said it before and I'll keep saying it, I'm a mom with young kids. I was not going to go live on a coast for 3 months and lock myself in a room and sit around with a bunch of people in hoodies. Like it's just like no, that's not the stage of my life and it was not interesting to me. Believe it or not, probably not surprising to you, that criteria whittled the list down really fast. Um, and we were actually accepted to two accelerators at the same time, ultimately picked Techstars primarily because I had more compelling reverse diligence uh, individuals who were like, yep, get a great MD first and foremost, but worth it. And, um, second, the the MD of our class in particular, it was a very fast, I get it. Like, he knew the problem we were solving. We just There was no double sell in my experience. It was like, wait, why is Lee broken? And I just immediately know I'm talking to the wrong person when it's that type of a posture. So, we did. We took, um, we took the Techstars accelerator, the very first workforce development cohort that Techstars has ever stood up. Uh, and that really propelled the series A. And we were preempted in our series A upon graduating from Techstars. Uh, we worked with that lead to, um, fill out the round. And we were off to the races. And I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek cuz no part of our fundraising journey has been easy, but that was that was probably the best round, I would say, from an ease of process standpoint. And what was your what what was the timing? What year was it? And what was the traction you were at at that point? 2020, uh, about a million. Okay. So, that that was kind of the benchmark back then in 2020, and it was, you know, pretty hot to, you know, for investors to kind of come in, especially for things that were catching the tailwinds of up COVID. And then, you know, how much did you raise in that round? Ooh, that's a really good question. Um, I want to say five plus or minus. Is is what's coming to mind. Okay. So, decent round coming out of you know, especially coming out of Techstars. Usually Techstars a little bit earlier. You know, most people are coming out of Techstars pursuing their seed. So, it sounds like you had a good amount of traction and you going in and then coming out pretty quickly. And Yeah, we were the farthest along in our class, for sure. That's for sure. Yeah, no, it sounds like based on what you were sharing, it sounds like we're you know, I would say later stage and what Techstars would typically come into come in contact with. So, Yeah. Yeah, Sorry, I'm just going to say I'm at point though, I I tend to be pretty contrarian in general and that typical like stage and size of of Techstars, I just I don't know if it's welcome advice or not, but I kind of throw it that out the window. Like if if you need it, regardless of your ARR, go get it and convince them that it's worth it. It was expensive capital. We may not far along, you know, Techstars doesn't do what they do for free, but paid paid off in spades. Every round we've had since Techstars, there's been a Techstars connected to us in some way somehow. Yeah, that's a super powerful, you know, testimonial to them and I work very closely with Techstars, I know them you know, quite well and I think also you've acknowledged, you mentioned it many times like you you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. I think that you know, for the audience to kind of give them a step back, you didn't just you know, you were in the corporate world prior to that, but even before that, you know, I think it's you started as I think a Starbucks store manager and then they you know, kind of scaled your career all the way to to this point of running a series B VC back startup. That's pretty extensive you know, career learning path and you know, I guess Give us the give the audience just a little bit of color of what that career trajectory was Um, and I know you had the pain point that led you to start this problem, but you know, kind of choosing the path of startup as opposed to, you know, corporate life. I started as a barista. Oh, wow. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Um, it's a it's a weird circuitous career path, for sure. And I never pursued startup um or entrepreneurial ventures in any way, shape, or form. I loved corporate America. It provided so many opportunities and access to so many intelligent people. Um, I was really proud to work for the Starbucks um organization for the years that I did. In hindsight, I have tapped into that learning journey more times than I can count. It was truly for a formative professional career like learning ground, phenomenal. The only reason, in all transparency, that I pursued startups is I was really pissed off. I was really, really mad. And if I wanted to effectuate change, it was either, you know, get get gobbled up into a corporate America and do more of an intrapreneurship, which that was an option. I could effectuate change, but albeit like constrained change, and that just wasn't interesting to me. If I was going to go for it, let's go for it. Um, and yeah, I had a really supportive and still have a really supportive husband who's like, "We can live off one salary, a firefighter salary, so like, let's be real." It was clipping coupons. Living life. Yeah, for a while, and that's that's what we did. So, it was um in no way, shape, or form architected. I had no um long-term vision for this. I just was I was really mad. And I will say, in hindsight, that connected tissue to the pain and looking my kids in the eye every day and having the reminder if I don't make this better for them, they could very well have experienced what I experienced, is a hell of a fuel to go through the ups and the downs of being an entrepreneur, cuz they are significant downs. Yeah, it's a it's a it's pretty wild ride. Like the you know, you get the high, but then the low comes real fast. Right after that. Real Yes. Yeah, you got to hold on to that high as long as you can. Yeah, and then convince everyone that you're just going to stay on that high as long as possible before that low hits. So that you can get the capital, get the deals, get the talent, and then try to assume the entire burden of the low to yourself. Now, so no one has to else you know, no one else has to deal with it. So that is how you deal with the dilemma of the carrying the burden. 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. Let 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, onto the video. When it came to subsequent rounds, cuz like you raised a little bit money in the series A, but you've gone on to raise well over 30 at this point. And you mentioned that it was it was no easy journey. What were some of the tactics that you used and leveraged in your subsequent rounds? Every round felt like a new round. And I lead with that as unfortunate news. Um I think I operated with the hypothesis of like you go to the gym every day and it gets easier and easier, this you know, every time should get a little easier. That was not my experience. Um I also operated with the hypothesis that we have proven more and more product market fit with every iterative round. If we've got more ARR, we've got more replicable, you know, behind the scenes machine in our DPM etc. The the truth of it is is the rounds um in in the macroeconomy played significant roles as to how hard easy I can't say easy. There's I can't in my in my good faith ever say around was easy. But unique I guess headwinds were macro determinant and the reason that I say they were all different is man as a female founder the finish line is not only constantly moving but sometimes not even present like evaporated. So where I would look to playbooks as all right, I know I need these top quartile numbers. I know that founders that I've talked to and investors say you know, you need this whatever and our number or year-over-year or gross margin, you name it. Like give me a give me a goal and I'll crush it. But don't give me a goal and then move it on me and that was what I experienced pretty much every time to different degrees of severity in these rounds. So after I got done ramming my head into the wall with those early rounds of like this is this is like la la land I thought okay, well control what I can control. Let's get quicker and faster to disqualify funds that are either pulling that you know, BS of moving the finish line or are misaligned with what we've been orienting our business to be successful around. So that I can save my brain damage and two let's not only get to the top quartile, let's freaking crush it. Right? So let's pick a couple of KPIs that we are going to be next level at and really orient our point of view and our talk track in that process around those. So in the series A two, I think I I always think the semantics of rounds are hilarious. Um this one led by an awesome firm called Origin Ventures who are some of my favorite humans out there. You know, we went in with a really tight um here's our year-over-year growth, here's our engine, our GTM engine dynamics that we can prove you pour this in, you get this out. Uh and at that time, I think our third lever that we were really orienting around was mm probably the automation at that point of the maturity of the company. So, we just we we tightened story. Um and I would say dissimilar to that in the Series B it's all about the numbers. So, my story became very much secondary. And the diligence was in every financial report and um otherwise that you can imagine, which is just a different ballgame. So, what was your process to get to Origin? Origin was Techstars, a Techstars introduction. They found us. Um what I loved about that story is they watched us and we maintained check-ins for probably 6 months a year upon graduation. Um and I I mentioned I'm in Colorado. I'm about an hour and a bit from our airport and one of the partners drove up here to see me and meet with me and have a conversation over coffee and intentionally like talk about the business. That meant something to me. Now, that's not the only reason, obviously, that we went with Origin, but that personal investment in the relationship of founder investor meant a lot. Um but as far as bringing in other investors, going out like to Origins, yeah, they found you through Techstars and been watching and observing did you run a process? Did you wait for them to come to you? What kind of what was the um yeah, did you go out and pitch 50 investors, 100 investors, three investors? Kind of what was the process like? Every single round, five rounds in, so I can feel pretty confident about this data, 100 no's for every one, yes. Every single round, without question. Okay, you left that right there. He's like, "Oh, they came to us." I was like, "Oh, he also did a lot of work." I was like, Well, 100%, so the the they come to us is um you know, I think right that tip of the iceberg of people not knowing all the work underneath it. It's 100 no's to every one, yes. I also, what's interesting about the origin round, is I had another term sheet um issued at the same time. And what was interesting about that is I told that investor, as I've told every investor, "I need the most plain Jane, vanilla, boring term sheet you can pull off the internet because I'm not interested in cute terms. I'm not interested in anything that's going to raise eyebrows in subsequent rounds. Like, let's just stop dating right now if that's your mode is to try to sneak in some sort of lick pref or otherwise, like hard pass. I'm boring as boring can be on term sheets. And I'm very explicit about that from very early stages to to intentionally disqualify and like let's just call it what it is, we're not a match. And this other term sheet that came in, higher valuation, more capital, cute terms. That. And it was a hard no. I'm just And origin lower valuation, less money, totally vanilla plain Jane term sheet. So, um it's interesting demonstration that fund just didn't listen. And is that that in the end of the day, no, thank you. Well, especially if you made it clear to them up front that that's not what you want, and then they still came back with it. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely believe I would not ahead of time cuz I'd rather not find that out in the board room. And so that was the series A, too? Yep. Was the series B next or was there other rounds in between? That was series A two, um, plus or minus 10 on that one. Um, series B came last year. That one almost I almost tapped out. That that was the most brutal, for sure. Well, series B in the last three years has just been atrocious since 2022. Um, so the fact that that's why I was like, "Ooh, you're coming on." I was super excited to have you on cuz like there's just so few companies that have crossed that threshold. Yeah. We we were almost one of the statistics, I'll tell you in all transparency. Uh, I've been given the advice as I think some of your guests have before I've heard of in well-run companies are always investable, right? Like, just focus on building a solid, operationally sound, clean company and you'll always find a capital. I just I wish people would stop saying things like this cuz it's just it's mean. It's mean and it's not true. It's not true. I I've had responsibility of P&L since I was 21 years old. I know how to run a business, but that doesn't mean you're going to get the investment and that's just I think it's it creates false positives unnecessarily and means. Well, it's also right, you know, what type of capital and on what terms. Like, you can have a great business, but is that a venture business? Is it a private equity business? Is it a fire sale business? Like, uh, or and if you're not in like, you know, for some businesses that, you know, kind of fell out of shiny object syndrome in VC landscape in the last few years, it's just like capital dried up for so many well-run, great businesses. Uh, so I can totally empathize with you on that one. So, I guess what was your process like there? Like, how long did it take? You know, how many people were you talking to? What was kind of the general feedback you were getting? The the story that I'll share to start off the answer to this question is I had a founder tell me, "Jen, if you haven't been in a bathtub at 2:00 p.m. on a Wednesday with a bottle of whiskey, you haven't hit rock bottom." And I'll tell you, I hit rock bottom with a Series B, and that was uh that was an experience. We The course of events that happened on the Series B is we um got a term sheet um after running a process of 100 no's to one yes. And this term sheet was exclusivity, so we were locked for 3 months. Um we rolled through the holiday season locked, and it expired, and not a dollar was invested. Not a dollar. They were pulling in other funds. It was more of a syndicate-type structure. It was a lot of um you know, smoke and mirrors and pomp and circumstance, flying south to Florida and having fancy dinners, and the whole thing. We We were completely snowed uh and come out of the exclusivity period, and we were left starting over with 3 months of runway in the bank. So, it was an absolutely terrifying experience of holy like we're restarting a 9 months to a year in our historical data. Um and the first person I called was my Techstars contacts, and we got the word out quickly, um and had, as you might imagine, an incredibly compressed uh process of a lot of phone calls and a lot of back-channeling and a lot of here's the deck, here's the diligence, here's the data room, you want access, you've got access. And we that we met We met and got a new term sheet from our Series B within 45 days. It's what I'm remembering. Um and it was great. That was great. That was good problem to have a progress on. The next part of the story I I just can't make up and I'm nothing if not honest for your listeners if they at least find peace and happens to all of us, I promise. Uh, in the diligence, they found an error in our financial model. And the error was modeling inaccurately. You still agreed to sleeve that they knocked 15 million off the top of the valuation. And it was justified. I get it. That I would have done the same thing. Um, but it talk about a gut punch. I I can't even It's still still raw, right? Like that is one of those uh, punches in the face that you never see coming and nobody did it. I'm like my former finance leader just It's an error. Oops. Life. Like is it just like basically a KPI like a assumption that was basically miscalculated that made it seem like, "Oh, we're going to 3x next year." And then reality was it was like, "No, that's it's like a 2x or 1x kind of." Yep. Oof. That is a I will give my my series B lead a ton of credit. Number one, they didn't walk. Number two, they have made our as you might imagine, hygiene around uh, double triple checking and being incredibly tight on our um, for particularly financial modeling, but hygiene in general, which was already very well done. I said I'm an operator and I stand by that. They've made us better. Um, and maybe someday I'll look back and say, "Oh, there's a silver lining in that experience." Right now, it's just Wow, that was that was scary days. So. So, especially getting the report that they found that and then like the moments of are they still in? Are they out? You know, do you are you one of the many other series B companies that go through something similar and just, you know, wind down after so much money, so much effort, so many amazing people working on something and to have it all fall apart over like one data point. So, kudos to them for repressing. Yeah, it hurts, but at least that was an honest evaluation. I would assume that, you know, was dependable. It just, you know, was a kick to the face that doesn't feel good, but at least you get to keep running your company. 100% 100% and like I said, I don't fault them and um we learned a lot from it. Now, I will say to your point of um another statistic, that first term sheet that I shared with you that expired, was not a dollar written. I absolutely bet your ass wrote that down and I'm like, "What you have done to this organization in terms of impeding us from continuing the success that as a first-time female founder, we're already in the most infantile probability of existing, shame on you. Shame on you and how you can expect anything but karma to come back? Like, I I just can't wrap my head around it. Not only like, okay, the syndicate didn't come together, but to absolutely write not a dollar into this company that you put us through this process, I I have no words and I certainly and to lock in Jakes exclusivity when they don't have the means uh and they like a fund and a non-fund lock in Jakes exclusivity. Yeah. That's that's painful. It's just a, you know, warning to all founders out there, do your you know, do your own work and see what you can you handle and do before getting into any kind of exclusivity. It's not uncommon to go into exclusivity after signing a term sheet, but you know, make sure that capital is actually sitting in the bank account, especially when the market was an absolute disaster. Um you know, that everyone was kind of promising they had money, but in reality they were trying they highly they're probably using you as leverage to go get money from investors. Um and couldn't deliver. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, lesson lesson learned for in all of that advice plus a thousand, yes. Definitely um ask more questions, learn from my mistakes cuz well, wow. You didn't really get into it and I apologize for bringing up what clearly is a sensitive topic. So, maybe we move on to a a lighter topic in terms of talking about your experience in the HR tech space, you know, with the advent of AI and just the general, you know, I'd say slowdown and deal flow, you know, deals um being done by venture uh in the last year or so, like what what are you kind of seeing the industry go in for for HR tech? Yeah. Man, every day is a different answer to that question. I would say uh where AI is going to really make monumental shifts first, I think is somewhat to be determined outside of the known administrative kind of co-pilot um use cases, what we're finding unique possibly probably to HR tech maybe we're seeing this in fintech and health tech when you see PII and you see higher highly regulatory regulatory uh industries is while venture in particular is AI is going to take their lunch, AI is going to replace this, AI is going to be um the the the next the new, right? How how many times I've been asked well, what is the AI first um tilt equivalent being built in the basement coming out next week? Like how does that hit your parent? Well, the reality is we know what can and cannot be replaced by AI in the work that we do today. That's not saying in a year and 5 years. But HR the buyers are not excited to buy a solution in our experience that is making decisioning from an AI agent and we completely understand why. Um so while AI has absolute and indisputable efficiency gains to the extent that it is making a decision in an HR tech application, there are barriers in place and we get it. So, we're we're watching obviously the market. We're trying to read the tea leaves as far as what's coming. We're absolutely respecting our buyers and saying, "Okay, like we're not going to we're not going to step around your CIO or whatever other provisioning that you're beholden to you, but we get it. We deal with PII. That is not a small feat." So, I think that there is an interesting um an interesting conversation in the world of HR tech, HR tech investors, and HR tech founders as to who are we really uh first of all, who are we listening to? Our answer is always our customers. Period. End of story. And how are we making sure that we're bringing our investors along in terms of learning what we're learning, challenging our thinking. We welcome that cuz we don't want to be myopic. Um but we're not here to push our buyers to engage in something they're not comfortable with today. Um so I don't know. I'm here for it. I think AI is going to be revolutionary, but I don't know where where HR tech is going to get out on it. I think it's valid point looking at the buyer profile and just the complexity of enterprise sales in and of itself and then saying that you're going to give all your enterprise data to a startup that you know, to make decisions on its own accord. Um and then that employee like this you're not selling to founders, you're not selling to high risk-takers, you're selling to probably a more a little more risk-averse audiences out there. Uh, and saying that like, "We're replacing your job or what you think is important with an AI." It's like, "Hmm, I'm not in love with this decision. I'm not in love with this product. Uh, I will stick with my slow old software or whatever, you know, whatever they're on or something like that where, you know, they're going to be less likely to uh, to adopt. But also, it's like we're in such a bubble cuz if you're in the tech space, you're like, "Oh, yeah, this, yeah, that." But like, how many people are thinking like that when they're, you know, kind of at between the four walls of a big corporation that, you know, are often kind of at set in their ways. Absolutely. And um, do I think HR is tends to be, to your point, risk-averse and sometimes a little behind the times in its thinking? Sure. But I think there's often good reason. But at the end of the day, if I if I speak very specifically to the space that we operate in, leave of absence uh, is so personal, and I really am hard-pressed to believe when the unthinkable happens and an employee loses a baby, they don't want to talk to a AI chatbot. Period. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to swear on here, but but no. Like I won't I I I I will be hard-pressed to believe it is all I'll say there. They need a beating heart, they deserve a beating heart. They need empathy, and they need hand-holding justifiably to understand where they go from there. What do they qualify for now? How do they Are are they out on leave or are they not out like To put that in a call center or chatbot is inhumane. Very valid point. That's a very complex and just the complexity of what drives leave. It's not just about having babies, there's all kinds of circumstances that Absolutely. force good talent to deal with complex situations outside of work and then need maybe additional space for it. Uh Yep. So, yeah, I resonate with that. That's powerful way to look at it and also challenge those that think a five-coded app with AI will, you know, be the next enterprise, you know, sales uh solution. Um Yes. And so other female founders that are out there, you know, what would be their what would be your advice to other female founders that you know, aspire to to choose the venture path, you know, go to series B and beyond. What would be your advice to them? Be successful. Be successful cuz we have to win. We we have to show we can put points on the board. To start to effectuate 2%. And that is unfair. I get it. We shouldn't have to um win every time, but right now in this moment in time we do. So, figure it out. Don't give up and be successful. Cuz we need it. We need to be able to show female founders behind us that um you know, you can't be what you can't see is real and we have to be successful. And Bernier, yeah, you kind of shared some some stories, but what would be some ways that you can uh tackle that yourself these days? Well, you keep getting up. Like I said, we uh we um Did you put down the whiskey bottle in in uh in the in the bath at 2:00 p.m.? Get back up. We have to meditate and I reserve the right to picking up but um the resilience and the connected tissue to the problem that you're solving, I think are two completely indisputable ingredients to continue to persevere and to be successful, to find like-minded people who get that it's different for female founders and help to be an advocate, um, to open doors for you when possible, to sponsor you when possible is really important, um, and to just recognize the game that we're playing. Like, I put down the fight years ago that all all judgment should be created equal because it's just not. And just cuz I I kick and and yell about it isn't going to change the current state. I need to be more intelligent and I need to come about of actuating change from a different angle. And today, my that angle is be really successful so that Tilt can be a demonstration of it's possible and I can come to the other side of the table and start to invest and put my money where my mouth is because female founders outperform male founders on every report, every year. It's indisputable. We put up better results. So, that's where I want to put my money. Um, and that is not to say my cap table is stacked with female investors. It's in fact not. Some of my biggest sponsors are male investors and we need them. We need them to be champions. And I have found some great ones who are champions. But to be naive to it and to just say, "Yeah, tough." is not helpful. So, we need people and I appreciate you giving me this air time to come on and speak about it. Your newsletter was why I reached out is you see it. You know that this is not right. Um, and anytime I get a microphone or a stage, I do it. Well, it's been a powerful message and, you know, for any founder, let alone a female founder, to to break out series B in the market that we've been in. And it's just it sucks. It's just like all the macro forces against you on top of yeah. Uh, solo female first-time founder with kids. Like, it's just like you stack all those problems against you, plus you know, but the fact that you come out on the other side and you know, hopefully it's continuous uh upward trajectory for you to just successful outcome. But uh that's why I wanted you on the show to kind of share that you know, all these stories of yeah, hell and back is possible. And you got to got to be persistent. Nothing comes easy to you, especially in I just I got to throw some you know, uh shade at the market right now. It's just been absolutely uh atrocious for for so many founders across the board. And uh for anyone that's making it out on the other side, it's pretty powerful. Um Thanks Thanks for so many founders right now. My heart just breaks for them. This is brutal. Brutal. So And Sorry. You Like, what are we What What are we setting ourselves up for long-term, right? We're obliterating this class of founders and startups. What what's going to happen to this I just This is crazy times. Crazy times. It's very interesting. There's one camp that says everything's going to get better because of AI makes everything better, but then you look at the consolidation of technology resources and then uh um talent going to like the big companies, Google, Microsoft, and so on. I'm I see so many startups every day and they're working on this really cool AI tech, but in the reality, it's a it's a feature that Microsoft releases like 6 weeks later. And it's like, how are you going to convince you know, thousand you know, like hundreds of enterprise clients to choose you over Microsoft? And it's just like, it's such a hard uh landscape to be in and there's going to be this I fear heavy consolidation in in the market. That's one one belief. And then there's one there's going to be hyper fragmentation. Um I think there'll be hyper personalization of Yeah. content, experiences, media, things of that sort. But like software likely to be a heavy concentration uh and consolidation into bigger companies. Um we keep talking about M&A is going to you know explode at some point. It's starting to move a little bit. But I think just once liquidity comes back to market we will see more of it but it's going to be very interesting in the coming coming years. Yes, it will. So Jen We're never bored. Yeah, no it it's nothing's boring in this space. That's for uh Yeah. Heartbreaking, exhausting and sometimes miserable and questioning your existence, yes. Boring. Um so Jen, what would be the if someone wanted to follow you, reach out to you or you know see what you're doing at Tilt, what would be the best way for them to get in contact with you? Yeah, we're at hellotilt.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Search my name Jennifer Henderson. I'm happy and and active and actually respond. Um so happy to engage there if I can be helpful. Amazing. I'll make sure to put those in the show notes for the watching and appreciate you being on the show. Appreciate you being just candid and open about your experiences and what you've overcome and you know kudos to you getting to how far you've got. Like definitely an amazing accomplishment. Thank you. Thanks for the time. I'm very grateful. Appreciate it. My pleasure. 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 companies odds of raising capital. If you need help, reach out to us at help.thunder.bc. If you liked today's show, please share with your friends. Give us a like or comment down below. And as a reminder, this show is published weekly. To get notified of new episodes and our newsletter, be sure to go to our website at join.thundervc. 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.