Speaker 1: Maybe see you check us out of the first Black
Speaker 1: Effact Podcast Festival, happening Sunday, August in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1: Tickets are available at black effact dot com. Forward Last
Speaker 1: Podcast Festival and live podcasts of your favorite shows are happening.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited because this is the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever been able to do I've been to a podcast
Speaker 1: a long time, and this is my first ever time
Speaker 1: being able to do one live in front of an audience.
Speaker 1: So come through, come check us out. Eighty five South
Speaker 1: is gonna be there. All the smoke's gonna be there,
Speaker 1: Black Tech, Green Money's gonna be there. Get tickets today
Speaker 1: at black Effact dot com, Forward Last Podcast Festival. Will
Speaker 1: Lucas here. We're gonna go back just a little bit
Speaker 1: and introduced to my guy Nash, a man who's a
Speaker 1: serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Undocked, an
Speaker 1: AI meeting platform built for the future of work, and
Speaker 1: he embought a year so ago. He raised a one
Speaker 1: point six million dollars seed round to put some fuel
Speaker 1: in the tank to grow the business. And I asked Nash,
Speaker 1: but how previously before he found it Undocked, He found
Speaker 1: himself running multiple small businesses at one time, and how
Speaker 1: running those businesses led him to founding this company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the second wave of multiple businesses was running into because
Speaker 1: they're all tangentially related. So I was in the telecommunications
Speaker 1: industry and there would be an opportunity. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this business doesn't do it, but it looks easy enough.
Speaker 1: It looks like there's a lot of money in this
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna try it,
Speaker 1: and I end up starting to businesses. One was a
Speaker 1: voice over IP company and the other it was an
Speaker 1: infrastructure company, so literally installing the fiber optic cable that
Speaker 1: runs to your house. Um, you believe as I've read
Speaker 1: in the concept of shipping fast and getting getting your
Speaker 1: thing out into the wild as quickly as possible, And
Speaker 1: how important, how important has been has building in the
Speaker 1: public eye, you know, and making mistakes in public you know,
Speaker 1: and iterating in full view been to the success you've
Speaker 1: achieved so far. It's the best for saying function you
Speaker 1: could have, especially for someone like me who has two
Speaker 1: major problems with giving things to the world that you're building.
Speaker 1: I uh, procrastinate and I'm a perfectionist, right so that
Speaker 1: gives me every reason to say this is not ready
Speaker 1: for consumption yet. So I have songs that I've made
Speaker 1: ten years ago or started ten years ago, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that trumpet is not hitting. Do it again, do it again,
Speaker 1: find another person to play this melody like. So doing
Speaker 1: something in public with like public deadlines is huge for me.
Speaker 1: I've started doing that. You'll see we we had an
Speaker 1: event November twelve. We're having another event, uh February seventeen.
Speaker 1: We're having another event uh May twelve. So whatever I'm planning,
Speaker 1: it's going to happen, and it has to happen because
Speaker 1: it's out in the public eye. So it's a very
Speaker 1: good forcing function for me to make sure that I
Speaker 1: keep building and delivering and not waiting for perfection. So
Speaker 1: so you encourage people too, even if they haven't, you know,
Speaker 1: told the world the whole thing, put it out. I
Speaker 1: have not that something is happening on this day. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've only given uh tidbits of the big picture publicly,
Speaker 1: but like I said, I'm calling it progressive disclosure of
Speaker 1: what the startup UH fully is. So I encourage just
Speaker 1: even if you start with your your friends and your family,
Speaker 1: just telling them like, hey, I'm working on this, So
Speaker 1: the next time you speak, we're gonna say, hey, Will,
Speaker 1: how's that thing you're working on going? And that's just
Speaker 1: more motivation to to put it out there for sure?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's just for people who have, you know,
Speaker 1: this idea, they's got to be perfect? Or do you
Speaker 1: do you encourage anybody you know, whether or not they
Speaker 1: they're going a hundred miles an hour thus miles an hour,
Speaker 1: or if they're just afraid to put it out who
Speaker 1: do you think? Who do you advise that too? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell your idea is definitely not going to be perfect.
Speaker 1: There's a high likelihood that your idea is going to
Speaker 1: be wrong and you're gonna end up building something else.
Speaker 1: So that's why you kind of have to just get started.
Speaker 1: But if you're a person that has a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas like I did, at least spend a little bit
Speaker 1: of time filtering through those ideas and putting some logic
Speaker 1: and reasoning behind why you think this idea of yours
Speaker 1: is better than the next idea. There is no excuse
Speaker 1: to ever work on an idea that isn't your best idea.
Speaker 1: If you don't think it's your best idea. If you
Speaker 1: don't think it's your biggest idea, if you don't think
Speaker 1: it's your thing that's going to get you widespread impact,
Speaker 1: don't work on that one. Work on your best idea, period.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. It took me almost a
Speaker 1: year talking about procrastination and perfectionists to select which startup
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to work on, and then when I
Speaker 1: narrowed it down to two, I launched them or I
Speaker 1: registered them both and was planning to work on them
Speaker 1: simultaneously until I can make a decision. So I have
Speaker 1: that like crippling disorder where I just like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I selected on DOC, and uh, that was the right
Speaker 1: decision for sure. I want to dig in on that
Speaker 1: because you know, I think that's a really, really good
Speaker 1: piece of advice and to only work on your best idea.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine there's like two groups of people.
Speaker 1: That's people who have they know what that best idea
Speaker 1: and there's people who are trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: that best idea is. Um for those ones that are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, I would imagine you would say
Speaker 1: work on things like you did until you figure out
Speaker 1: which one is the best idea. How do you know
Speaker 1: when it's the best ideas because you came up with, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the this is the one I want to do,
Speaker 1: or the market told you right. Uh, it could be
Speaker 1: either or sometimes you have to do have to go
Speaker 1: with your gut. But for me, it was a lot
Speaker 1: of It was almost fifty different ideas and websites that
Speaker 1: I had started, and for me, it was which one
Speaker 1: do I genuinely think can have the biggest impact, the
Speaker 1: biggest distribution, and then the biggest financial outcome for myself
Speaker 1: and also one that I was excited to work on.
Speaker 1: It was a big problem for myself and it was
Speaker 1: on the back burner for quite some time. And then
Speaker 1: I'm literally living the experience where like I need to
Speaker 1: solve this problem that I have and nothing else exists.
Speaker 1: That was a moment for me that was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to build something and I've already had this
Speaker 1: idea and now I'm going to execute on that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: not all of your ideas are good. So I can
Speaker 1: easily look back at a third of those ideas and
Speaker 1: say they are holy trash? Right now? Is this because
Speaker 1: you you found out later they were trash? How did
Speaker 1: you go through that process of distance so recently. Bias
Speaker 1: is something that you deal within data, but it's also
Speaker 1: something you deal with with yourself. That that moment, that
Speaker 1: initial in sighting moment that you come up with any
Speaker 1: idea you're like, yeah, that sounds good. Revisit that idea
Speaker 1: in six months to see if you're like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean it's cool, I guess, or maybe somebody might do it,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, giving it some time to marinate is
Speaker 1: very important. UM, talk about this a building a startum,
Speaker 1: not specifically undocked, but period step by step, because if
Speaker 1: I understand, UM, what's your opportunity was with undock was
Speaker 1: you know? Cale Calendar synchronization is just the first step
Speaker 1: in master plan, I would imagine, right, And I read
Speaker 1: a story about where you come out. You came out
Speaker 1: the gate thinking you could replace all the big boys
Speaker 1: like Gmail, Slack, you, Zoom, Trelo, you know immediately and
Speaker 1: but how important is it for startups to take out
Speaker 1: chunks on their journey and as they do the smaller
Speaker 1: things well scale from there. I think that's huge. That's
Speaker 1: one of the biggest lessons that I learned because I
Speaker 1: was stubborn in the beginning, I was like, no, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I can build this huge platform that's going
Speaker 1: to be better than all of them. And one investor
Speaker 1: reached out to me and was interested, and they said,
Speaker 1: but you're competing with X, y Z before you've even
Speaker 1: released your product. It's like, you don't much money you're
Speaker 1: gonna need. This doesn't sound realistic, And I didn't believe him.
Speaker 1: Then I was like, no, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. It took me a good six
Speaker 1: to nine months before I started to pare down the
Speaker 1: short term scope of the product. And you're just you're
Speaker 1: just limited in in capital, you're limited in engineering resources,
Speaker 1: you're limited in time. You're limited in how well you
Speaker 1: can solve more than one problem. Like calendar ing and
Speaker 1: scheduling is such a deep, deep, nuanced problem. But I
Speaker 1: could spend the next ten years if I wanted to
Speaker 1: building the best scheduling or calendar application, if I thought
Speaker 1: that was the most valuable thing. So, uh, it's really
Speaker 1: really tough. And this is another thing where if you
Speaker 1: take a step back from it. So if I would
Speaker 1: have started and say, hey, here's my big idea, and
Speaker 1: then started working on it, just take a step back
Speaker 1: for like a week and talk about the realities of
Speaker 1: building this giant, monolithic app. It wasn't going to happen
Speaker 1: out of the gate. It was gonna a long, long, long,
Speaker 1: long time. And if I would have actually made that
Speaker 1: decision to pare it down even three months sooner, two
Speaker 1: months sooner, a month sooner, I could be a month,
Speaker 1: two months, three months, five months, six months further along.
Speaker 1: So definitely definitely recommend that we're still building a really
Speaker 1: big application, um, but not quite as big just yet.
Speaker 1: So how do you advise other entrepreneurs and even yourself
Speaker 1: looking back and in that discipline, because I would imagine
Speaker 1: you think, well, if I just build this little nugget,
Speaker 1: like what, how does that make progress in the marketplace
Speaker 1: when people have all these other options. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it was definitely just like pure hubrists thinking I got
Speaker 1: this not out and I'm hearing from multiple people just like, hey,
Speaker 1: just just strink it a little bit, like I was doing. Email.
Speaker 1: Email is so so so hard to build, and there
Speaker 1: are companies that are have spent like Superhumans are really
Speaker 1: good email application. They've been buil holding it for five, six,
Speaker 1: seven years and they're still improving just email. UM. For
Speaker 1: for me, I guess I probably wouldn't assume most people
Speaker 1: are just overly competent in their ability to build something
Speaker 1: like that. They just might think it's a really good
Speaker 1: idea and someone should do it. And you see that
Speaker 1: a lot like the all in one solution is like
Speaker 1: the first thing UH founders gravitate to because like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have all these problems. What if I build one
Speaker 1: thing that solves all these problems? And that's usually going
Speaker 1: to be the wrong solution. UM. One thing I love,
Speaker 1: UM that I've I've read that you've said before is
Speaker 1: you know, entrepreneurs need to learn how to talk about
Speaker 1: their business, right and UM, And that there's a difference
Speaker 1: between talking how you talk about your business at a
Speaker 1: bootstrapping stage, um, and versus when you're at a fundraising stage.
Speaker 1: And so let's take this step by step. So, how
Speaker 1: how can entrepreneurs at the bootstrapping stage, and even those
Speaker 1: who don't plan to raise maybe they're building a lifestyle company, UM,
Speaker 1: how can they learn to introduce their product or their
Speaker 1: company to other people who have no idea what they're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually going through a third phase and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I don't say recalculating, I am studying this phase and
Speaker 1: learnings like in uh put it down in writing and
Speaker 1: repeat it later down the line. I'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. But the first thing I think you
Speaker 1: need to do is have and I say this to
Speaker 1: a lot of founders that I meet with, is have
Speaker 1: something really exciting about what you're building, even if it's
Speaker 1: like a sock company or something. Have something really really
Speaker 1: exciting for you, exciting way to tell it to your
Speaker 1: your friends, exciting way to tell it to potential customers.
Speaker 1: It has to be. There's so much noise out there
Speaker 1: in the world that if your thing isn't exciting, it's
Speaker 1: never going to take off. So find something exciting about
Speaker 1: your your business. Uh. I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in my accelerator working on a one line description of
Speaker 1: the company, and that like her sometimes like, but no,
Speaker 1: I can't just say all of it in one line.
Speaker 1: But find something exciting about your business that you can
Speaker 1: iterate in one line. You can message somebody to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm building and they're like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: really really cool. So that's like the first hurdle, Like,
Speaker 1: is it something that's exciting for people, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: always play like if you're a climate tech company, that's
Speaker 1: only going to excite a certain number of people. But
Speaker 1: if you're building a consumer app or a B two
Speaker 1: B app, something has to be exciting about what you're
Speaker 1: building in the in the early bootstrapping phase, it helps
Speaker 1: you stay positive about your idea. It helps you track
Speaker 1: interest from customers, and helps you recruit employees too. I
Speaker 1: had the easiest time recruiting. I still have a pretty
Speaker 1: easy time recruiting when we talk about what we're building. UM,
Speaker 1: So I think that's really important. But when you move
Speaker 1: into the fundraising stage, before you get it, before you
Speaker 1: get there. So let's look that's because it's really interesting
Speaker 1: when you said, you know, you spent you know a
Speaker 1: lot of time just working on one sentence at least
Speaker 1: six weeks. Wow. Yeah, And it changed and it fluctuated,
Speaker 1: and in the times you get frustrated and you're like
Speaker 1: why am I doing this? I think after week three
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm not changing this sentence again,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't matter, it does not matter. And ultimately
Speaker 1: that one sentence wasn't what turned into business excitement or
Speaker 1: fundraising all other stuff, but it was able. It was
Speaker 1: giving you an opportunity to distill what you're working on.
Speaker 1: If you cannot distill it in one sentence, is going
Speaker 1: to be very hard to get people excited. So and
Speaker 1: I would imagine and it's every word matters. When when
Speaker 1: you're down to one sentence, yes, we learned, uh better,
Speaker 1: fewer words, right, and try to enroll some excitement. So actually,
Speaker 1: don't even use the line anymore. But it was a
Speaker 1: line that worked over and over and over again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was instantly scheduled meetings without ever looking at a calendar, right,
Speaker 1: and then just wrinkles people's brain like what do you wait?
Speaker 1: How instant meeting schedule of no calendar? Tell me more?
Speaker 1: Every single time. And I was in a cohort with
Speaker 1: twelve other companies, and when I would give that line,
Speaker 1: regardless of the audience, room full of investors, potential customers, partners,
Speaker 1: all the questions, not all, some of the questions, A
Speaker 1: good chunk of the questions would come to me because
Speaker 1: it piqued their interests, like this is a problem. You
Speaker 1: stated what the problem was, You tell me how fast
Speaker 1: you're gonna do it, and then you gave me this
Speaker 1: novel away that's just like wrinkling my brain and I
Speaker 1: don't like quite understand. I figure out, what what is this?
Speaker 1: What is this? And I used that over and over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over and over again. And
Speaker 1: I did use it like in my demo investor pitch,
Speaker 1: like as a one liar to start it. And I
Speaker 1: also used it in our our launch thing, but from
Speaker 1: like month four, two months, seven, eight, nine, ten, didn't
Speaker 1: use it at all. But it was like the starting
Speaker 1: for it's the kindling, right, and I can always refer
Speaker 1: back to that too. And did that one line that's
Speaker 1: six weeks that you spent on that one line? Where
Speaker 1: how much progress did you make? Like did you raise
Speaker 1: your first dollar with that? Like? Where did it get you? No?
Speaker 1: Did not raise the first dollar. Um, it got me
Speaker 1: a lot of places because the way I was talking
Speaker 1: about the business going into the accelerator was it was
Speaker 1: not great, it was not great, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to fit a mouthful in and and say that this
Speaker 1: this this this this this this this this this this
Speaker 1: um it gave me uh again, like good framing and
Speaker 1: good confidence when I delivered that line, and it was
Speaker 1: the lead in for my investments. So when we started
Speaker 1: doing our presentations to investors and we had a demo day,
Speaker 1: like that was the like the thing that people remember
Speaker 1: about that, well, two lines that people remembered about the presentation.
Speaker 1: So I think it put me in a really good
Speaker 1: place going into the investment. And if everybody, anybody asked,
Speaker 1: you know, what is it you're working on, which is
Speaker 1: a common question you get, it's also like an accelerated question.
Speaker 1: They say what are you working on? And they always
Speaker 1: want a one sentence answer. That's the answer you give.
Speaker 1: And so how how much would you estimate that most
Speaker 1: opportunities are lost because people don't spend that time working
Speaker 1: on that You're you're losing of people even just from
Speaker 1: like the fact that they're no longer going to pay
Speaker 1: attention to whatever it is coming out of your mouth.
Speaker 1: After that, it's it's like eyes glazing over, not interested.
Speaker 1: And there's some people and this is again I was
Speaker 1: one of those people that you'll ask for like, hey,
Speaker 1: what is it you're working on? And then they're the
Speaker 1: only answer they can give you is like a five
Speaker 1: minute answer. Actually said this for probably a good six
Speaker 1: to nine months when I started the business. It's like
Speaker 1: I can't explain what I'm working on in a couple
Speaker 1: of sentences. But if you give me an hour, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you're gonna want to use the product and invest.
Speaker 1: And they're like, yeah, but you're not. You're not You're
Speaker 1: not not getting an hour here. So um, it's very
Speaker 1: it's very very very important. It'll change, it evolve. It
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily matter if that's the one right intents, but
Speaker 1: the fact that you're able to distill what you do
Speaker 1: and make it exciting and interesting in one sense, that
Speaker 1: you can use that over and over and over. And
Speaker 1: that's what the accelerator made us do. So whenever we
Speaker 1: met a new mentor new potential partner, customer, or investor,
Speaker 1: like that was the line, and that that was the
Speaker 1: line that was critiqued. So by the end of it,
Speaker 1: anybody that came into for critiquing just said, yeah, it's good,
Speaker 1: I'm interested to tell me more. And that's all you want.
Speaker 1: Your goal of telling people what your businesses or what
Speaker 1: you're doing is for them to say, tell me more. Okay.
Speaker 1: What's the different thing about the raising stage, about how
Speaker 1: you talk about your business. It starts with that ability,
Speaker 1: and that's something that investors will look at if you
Speaker 1: have the ability to, you know, succinctly distill what you're
Speaker 1: working on. But the conversation with investors is not the
Speaker 1: conversation you have with your friends and your family. It's
Speaker 1: not the conversation that you eventually ultimately have with customers
Speaker 1: are already having with customers. They want to know about
Speaker 1: potential scale, right, They want to know about differentiation in
Speaker 1: the market. They want to know about your go to market,
Speaker 1: and they want to know that you have deep, deep, deep,
Speaker 1: deep deep product insights and know about your industry. And
Speaker 1: it's not about like listing off a bunch of facts
Speaker 1: that you read online. Is having a deep, deep, deep
Speaker 1: understanding of that. And that's one thing, but then you
Speaker 1: have to learn how to convey that to investors. So
Speaker 1: we had our first two weeks of meetings with investors
Speaker 1: and it was like, oh, that's cool, that's cool, Not
Speaker 1: for us right now, not for us right now. And
Speaker 1: we almost considered like backing the truck up and waiting
Speaker 1: a few months to fundraise. Just kept getting at going
Speaker 1: after it getting better refined. We would have like game
Speaker 1: day breakdowns of our investor calls after the call happened like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that answer was terrible, that answer was really long, that
Speaker 1: answer was irrelevant, that answer was not compelling. You have
Speaker 1: to be that real with yourself every single time, for
Speaker 1: his long until you start to get that interest, until
Speaker 1: those conversations start to go well. And that's what we
Speaker 1: were doing. Breakdown if you had a twenty minute call
Speaker 1: or an hour long call, even if the call went
Speaker 1: great and they said they were interested, or if they're like,
Speaker 1: let keep us in a loop, same thing. Break it
Speaker 1: down what went well, what didn't go well. Some people
Speaker 1: suggest even writing down all the questions that you had,
Speaker 1: recording all the answers, listening back to that I didn't
Speaker 1: do it. You know that deeply, have a pretty good memory,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm brutal with myself, Like I'll get off
Speaker 1: a call an investoral like smile or say okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I get that to an answer, I'll say that was
Speaker 1: a terrible answer. That was a terrible, terrible, terrible answer.
Speaker 1: You have to be that real with yourself. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about more specifically on doc in the Future,
Speaker 1: that you saw when you started building this um so covid.
Speaker 1: You rarely get these moments when you're building something and
Speaker 1: the world just accelerates to the future. You imagine gend
Speaker 1: when you thought of the idea, right, and um, so
Speaker 1: talk to me about how the pandemic and COVID remote
Speaker 1: work plays into your startup success because you've been building
Speaker 1: this for however long in the world just shot ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, eight years or ten years. It was wild.
Speaker 1: Like in my pitch deck before I started pitching investors
Speaker 1: was essentially the pitch deck to get into an accelerator.
Speaker 1: I was talking about the future of remote and distributed work,
Speaker 1: and I say, it's coming, it's coming, It's on the rise.
Speaker 1: I know it's a small percentage, but it's coming. And
Speaker 1: when it gets here, it's here to stay. And I
Speaker 1: had like charts talking about seven And then we go
Speaker 1: to this accelerator. We come out of the accelerator, we
Speaker 1: start fundraising, and in the middle of a pandemic where
Speaker 1: everyone is literally forced to work at home, that end
Speaker 1: and of itself is not enough for market change and correction.
Speaker 1: The reason it's so poignant and important for us is
Speaker 1: that it's better. It's just flat out better. It's a
Speaker 1: better And it was an eventuality that we were going
Speaker 1: to get to at some point there's a reason some
Speaker 1: people work from home because it was better for not
Speaker 1: for everyone, better for them. And I think eighty percent
Speaker 1: of knowledge work can be done remotely. So of the mean,
Speaker 1: not the fortune fire proners, not knowledge work, but eighty
Speaker 1: percent of knowledge workers will work remotely. That's fifty million
Speaker 1: people in the United States that can work remotely. That's
Speaker 1: a third of the workforce right there. But now you're
Speaker 1: seeing people in other industries figure out how to work remotely.
Speaker 1: Like you would never think telemedicine could be a huge market,
Speaker 1: You would never think remote therapy could be a huge market.
Speaker 1: You would never think yoga would be a huge market online.
Speaker 1: But now you're discovering that, hey, I can get the
Speaker 1: same thing. We're very similar, maybe even at a better cost,
Speaker 1: easier distribution for the vendors have to leave my house,
Speaker 1: right That is what's going to happen. That is going
Speaker 1: to be a large percentage of how work, entertainment is
Speaker 1: consumed and delivered in the future. And it just so
Speaker 1: happens that we're building a startup with that in mind,
Speaker 1: and then the pandemic happened. How do you how then
Speaker 1: do you sell the future? Let me put it this way,
Speaker 1: so is it then pre covid you are specifically looking
Speaker 1: for investors who already get that this is coming, you know,
Speaker 1: like a freight train, or are you trying to convince
Speaker 1: people like, look, this is happening and then you come
Speaker 1: out with your data and then you that's your power point. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh no, there's there's definitely convincing. I can tell you.
Speaker 1: We got into this accelerator. We got investment for this
Speaker 1: concelerator on the premise that we're building software that's for
Speaker 1: scheduling meetings and hosting meetings, which is good for anyone,
Speaker 1: but particularly for remote and distributed teams, was our premise. Right.
Speaker 1: We heard from people within the accelerator early on before
Speaker 1: the pandemic. We would bring up the remote aspect and
Speaker 1: distribute aspect. They would say, I don't buy that. It's
Speaker 1: a very small segment of the market. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: know today, right, but just compare the two experiences. It's
Speaker 1: going to come. It's going to happen in some large percentage,
Speaker 1: not but six. Even if it was you're talking about
Speaker 1: taking the market and quadrupling it in the next two
Speaker 1: years or something. Even if it's right, it's going to
Speaker 1: be much much much larger than that now that people
Speaker 1: have experienced it, And I thought it would take a
Speaker 1: hundred years, a hundred years to get to the place
Speaker 1: where it's just normal because it's better, and I'm an
Speaker 1: efficiency guy. It's more if I don't have to commute, Yeah,
Speaker 1: three or four days out of the week, why right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was still some So we had people that believed
Speaker 1: in the product, didn't necessarily believe that remote and distributed
Speaker 1: work was the future or that it was anywhere near
Speaker 1: closed to happen. You probably have same skeptics on the
Speaker 1: like the self driving which is proven to be true.
Speaker 1: They'll say, you know, self driving cars or two or
Speaker 1: three years away, and then you have a skeptics saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're ten fifteen years away from that being a reality.
Speaker 1: That just keeps happening, keeps happening, keeps happening, and it
Speaker 1: will keep happening until somebody says we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: self driving car in two years, and then detractor is
Speaker 1: gonna say you won't for ten years, and then two
Speaker 1: years later self driving cars are on the roof. That's
Speaker 1: what's happening for us right now with remote work, And
Speaker 1: so what are some of those keys you learned about
Speaker 1: selling the future to people who might be skeptics early
Speaker 1: that other people can apply to their journey. I'm still learning,
Speaker 1: and it's a challenge to sell people on things that
Speaker 1: they either don't believe or have an experience, or think
Speaker 1: it's a far, far far away future, right And I
Speaker 1: think the going back to building excitement number one is
Speaker 1: very very important. Then also give them something that's familiar
Speaker 1: to them, like build a bridge to the eventuality of it,
Speaker 1: like right now on my website. And I do this intentionally.
Speaker 1: I don't talk about remote work, I don't talk about
Speaker 1: distributed work. I talk about you have a problem scheduling
Speaker 1: meetings because of calendar application. That's going to help you
Speaker 1: with that. But they don't realize and they will in
Speaker 1: the next four months when we have our big, big
Speaker 1: big unveil what part of the movement they're joining. But
Speaker 1: right now, for us, we do focus on early what
Speaker 1: we call early innovators, sorry innovators and early adopters. Those
Speaker 1: are people that are willing to use this type of product,
Speaker 1: they're using something similar already, or they know they have
Speaker 1: a problem, they're willing to try anything to solve it
Speaker 1: and you need to focus on that segment for as
Speaker 1: long as humanly possible. So again, even if you're selling
Speaker 1: like sucks, don't go to Miami as your first market
Speaker 1: and try to convince them that sucks. Help checked your
Speaker 1: feet for whatever reason, because that's not the person you
Speaker 1: want to talk to. You go to like Minnesota or
Speaker 1: Alaska and sell your socks right out. The socks companies,
Speaker 1: by the way, are our counterparts are non melinated friends.
Speaker 1: UM don't have as much trouble raising a million dollars
Speaker 1: plus as we do, and so many of us get
Speaker 1: stuck at raising nothing or you know, getting a twenty
Speaker 1: on a check or maybe a five hundred thousand not
Speaker 1: a seed round. Um. And as you've come through this
Speaker 1: recently successfully, you know raising your one point six million,
Speaker 1: walk me through the process you activated to get that
Speaker 1: million plus that you find other people get stuck at.
Speaker 1: I'm always clear when I when I say this, I
Speaker 1: did not run a process, and I don't have the
Speaker 1: best of advice for garnering interest from investors. I can
Speaker 1: give your advice about talking to them, but my process
Speaker 1: was essentially, Hey, I'm working on this really cool thing
Speaker 1: and it's super futuristic. And like it works and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Here's a picture, look at it, right, and then the
Speaker 1: investment interests to step cup. Let me let me rephrase that,
Speaker 1: because this is something you can replicate challenging. I did
Speaker 1: put out again a very compelling framing of my business
Speaker 1: on video right, and I also took time to make
Speaker 1: sure that my pitch deck looked very, very good. So
Speaker 1: when I sent, I had investors see my pitch deck before,
Speaker 1: like very early on, and say, this looks like a
Speaker 1: series A, series B pitch deck in terms of professionalism, sinkness, messaging,
Speaker 1: like get that stuff right. You already have so many
Speaker 1: strikes against Let me let me rephrase that, because I
Speaker 1: don't want people think they you don't. You don't have
Speaker 1: any strikes against you. What you do not have is
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt from anybody that you're about
Speaker 1: to sit across. So you try to remove as much
Speaker 1: doubt as humanly possible, be super on point with everything
Speaker 1: that you're putting in front of them to get in
Speaker 1: the door. Initially. Now, the good advice, and this is
Speaker 1: what I was planning to do, is you're going to
Speaker 1: struggle and just face it, So don't compare yourself to
Speaker 1: the what do you say, less melidated, non melodated, don't
Speaker 1: compare yourself going through the accelerator, Like, yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: probably need to meet, you know, between fifty and seventy
Speaker 1: investors to raise you around. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: need to meet between two hundred and fifty and three
Speaker 1: investors to raise my round. So I'm hearing the number, right,
Speaker 1: I'm multiplying it by five. That's how I'm thinking. So
Speaker 1: I'm putting putting a list together at three different buckets
Speaker 1: of people. I'm like, Okay, these people were in New York.
Speaker 1: There in New York their early stage. That's the best
Speaker 1: connection that I can garner with these people. I'm going
Speaker 1: to start there, right. And then there's the bigger list
Speaker 1: of just seed investors. And then I had a smaller
Speaker 1: list of angel investors that I knew of that I
Speaker 1: was going to reach out to. So put your list
Speaker 1: together and then hammer it so hard all at once.
Speaker 1: If you think your fundraising process is going to take
Speaker 1: six months, twelve months, it very may very well take
Speaker 1: that long. Do all of the work in two weeks.
Speaker 1: In three weeks, reach out to every do nothing else.
Speaker 1: Shut off your phone and your email. If you have
Speaker 1: to reach out to every single one of those investors
Speaker 1: in succession, get in front of as many as humanly possible. Again,
Speaker 1: have as many meetings in a row as possible, and
Speaker 1: practice and be honest with yourself. When you have a
Speaker 1: bad answer, don't show up to the next meeting with
Speaker 1: that same bad answer. If you have a meeting at
Speaker 1: eleven am and you felt you did poorly on an answer,
Speaker 1: and you have another meeting at noon, you should already
Speaker 1: have a new answer prepared. Right, A short and I
Speaker 1: don't do this very problem like pocket, be very short
Speaker 1: with your You don't need to keep explaining it. So
Speaker 1: if you're the question is like, um, why is your
Speaker 1: product different bullet one bullet to bullet three? Next question? Right,
Speaker 1: So just be ready, be a machine in this and
Speaker 1: you will get through it. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that you're um your disadvantage or discounted in any way.
Speaker 1: You do not have the benefit of the doubt. But
Speaker 1: you can get that from them by showing up prepared.
Speaker 1: How did you know one point six million was the
Speaker 1: number you needed? Because I did you set out for
Speaker 1: a rounder number like one point five and you got
Speaker 1: another hundred, or you set out for two million and
Speaker 1: you fell shot up by four hundred. I how did
Speaker 1: one point six happened? I started off with seven fifties,
Speaker 1: seven hundred fifty thousand. I was convinced to do a
Speaker 1: million because I said, that's really not enough for what
Speaker 1: you want to do. But it was and it is
Speaker 1: more than enough. So I set out to raise a
Speaker 1: million dollars and after getting to about nine hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: like confirmed it was just a snowball. And this was again,
Speaker 1: this was for me, in my opinion, a factor of
Speaker 1: showing up prepared and even I started my first meeting
Speaker 1: like the last week of May and had a pitch deck.
Speaker 1: I probably changed my pitch deck four or five times
Speaker 1: in four or five weeks and just kept improving it,
Speaker 1: kept improving it, and kept improving it. But the answer
Speaker 1: has just got so much better, so much sharper, that
Speaker 1: by the time I got to the end of the process,
Speaker 1: this is just five or six weeks later. I got
Speaker 1: yes is on almost every single meeting, and I had
Speaker 1: to turn around to my co founders and say, hey,
Speaker 1: now we're telling everybody no, We're like no, no, I know,
Speaker 1: I set this meeting with you two weeks ago. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the round closed, it's over, it's done. I only needed
Speaker 1: a million. I only planned to raise a million, and
Speaker 1: we ended up getting I originally stopped at one point
Speaker 1: three because like, this is all we need, more than
Speaker 1: what we need. But then another investor came in at
Speaker 1: the last minute, um, and they were interested early on,
Speaker 1: but they had to reschedule for like two or three
Speaker 1: weeks later, but we ended up squeezing them and that's
Speaker 1: how we got to one point six. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: nice round number looking for one million. But when you
Speaker 1: have investors that are super interested in the business, they
Speaker 1: that's no thing that if you have the opportunity and
Speaker 1: you can choose your investors, and I said this, which
Speaker 1: was scary, but I'm like, if you're investing in this
Speaker 1: business because you think it's a scheduling company and should
Speaker 1: stay a scheduling company, because it could be a billion
Speaker 1: dollar business, as Callardy has proven by being a scheduling company,
Speaker 1: you're investing in the wrong founder. I am not building
Speaker 1: scheduling only company, and I want people along for the ride,
Speaker 1: even at the earliest stages that are not going to
Speaker 1: push back on that, and almost all of our investors
Speaker 1: stay shooed their word on believing in the bigger, bigger,
Speaker 1: bigger vision. So um yeah, that was a very very
Speaker 1: interesting time and that it just felt bizarre because the
Speaker 1: tide in the very beginning was cool, I like, what
Speaker 1: you're working on, let us know, keep us in the loop.
Speaker 1: And the tide after that, towards the end was can
Speaker 1: we write to check? Can we writer check? Can and
Speaker 1: writer check have too much money? And then after you
Speaker 1: have too much money, they're still saying either existing investors
Speaker 1: that were in the round three weeks ago for a
Speaker 1: certain amounts saying can I double that investment? Can I
Speaker 1: add another check to that investment? And it's a bizarre
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll ever well, we're experiencing it
Speaker 1: right now, but after this, I don't know if I'll
Speaker 1: ever feel to be in that comfortable of a position
Speaker 1: from a fundraising perspective, as fundraising is hard, and I
Speaker 1: was fully prepared and I had my doubts that we'd
Speaker 1: be able to raise in six months. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going through the typical process. If it takes six months,
Speaker 1: i'm gonna work twice as hard. But it's gonna take
Speaker 1: me six months, and it took you know, six eight
Speaker 1: weeks to get it done. And you and you attribute
Speaker 1: that to pounding out the work in the early days
Speaker 1: is of fundraising. Yeah, yeah, Like I said, my my
Speaker 1: co founder even suggested, like, let's pause the meetings and
Speaker 1: pick them up in a couple of months, And I
Speaker 1: said no. And I just also started taking to all
Speaker 1: the calls by myself like maybe he's right, Maybe he's so,
Speaker 1: let's not use both of our time for this. And
Speaker 1: I just hammered it, hammered it, hammered it, and hammered
Speaker 1: you just got you just you just gotta do it.
Speaker 1: You gotta pound through it. You're gonna even if you
Speaker 1: have a successful round and your company is obviously worth
Speaker 1: every penny that the investors are putting in, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of news. You're going to get it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get more nose than yes. This period, Luber
Speaker 1: got more nose than yes? Is Google got more nos
Speaker 1: than yes? Is? Jeff Bezos probably not? He probably Like
Speaker 1: how do you know when you're getting those knows that
Speaker 1: maybe your email needs to adjust or maybe this is
Speaker 1: just the parting that wrong, Like what are you doing
Speaker 1: to iterate on your reach out? Well, I didn't have
Speaker 1: much of a reach out process, but what I did
Speaker 1: to iterate on the the answers and this like I'm studying,
Speaker 1: like the investors body language is all video calls, so
Speaker 1: I'm studying their their body language, their eye rolls, their size,
Speaker 1: the types of questions that they're asking for it. I'll
Speaker 1: give a very specific example. In the beginning, all of
Speaker 1: our meetings, the entirety of the meeting was about product. Product, product, product, product, product.
Speaker 1: They couldn't even get off of product or like, well,
Speaker 1: what does it do well? How does it work well?
Speaker 1: How's it different from that? Are you sure it's different
Speaker 1: from that? Do people really care about that product? Product?
Speaker 1: Produc product, pduct, proud product. I'm like, we're never going
Speaker 1: to get to investment if all they're doing is talking
Speaker 1: about this cool tool. They understand the problem so deeply.
Speaker 1: Their investors, all they do is have meetings. All they
Speaker 1: do with schedule meetings, so their understanding of it lead
Speaker 1: them down the path of all right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: this product, all right. So I'm like, how can we
Speaker 1: move off of the product and talk about the vision
Speaker 1: later on? What we're building, talk about the market, size,
Speaker 1: the opportunity, why now, all these things that you need
Speaker 1: to get an investor on board with before they cut
Speaker 1: a check. So that was the first major problem that
Speaker 1: we called out right away, like we're only talking about
Speaker 1: product and comparing it to other products. We're not going
Speaker 1: to get anywhere with that. So that was how can
Speaker 1: I deliberately move it off? And I started taking my
Speaker 1: answer is for product questions and adding pivots to differentiation,
Speaker 1: to market to vision on each of those answers. So
Speaker 1: if somebody asked me or why is it different than this,
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, because of this, this is this,
Speaker 1: And I think that's important because this market is only
Speaker 1: you know, five pc. This isn't any one of this market.
Speaker 1: There's only you know, fifty million calendar automation tools, and
Speaker 1: in two years we believe there's gonna be five million
Speaker 1: calendar automate So that's was a deliberate pivoting of the
Speaker 1: way I'm answering a question to get it to talking
Speaker 1: about the money, the market, the opportunity, the big vision
Speaker 1: why it's a great business. So that's an example of iterating, iterating, iterating.
Speaker 1: It is tough to iterate on outbound messaging. But if
Speaker 1: you're not getting any responses it hurts, does not hurt
Speaker 1: at all to change it and change it and if
Speaker 1: you get and this is also probably not something a
Speaker 1: lot of people are going to do, but I started
Speaker 1: asking our investors towards the very end, what interested you
Speaker 1: about on DOC even before they got to the final check,
Speaker 1: or where did you discover us? Like what made you
Speaker 1: want to to reach out? Because I was curious and
Speaker 1: I want to repeat it. So right now in my
Speaker 1: fundraising I'm not fundraising, I mean right now, in the
Speaker 1: investor discussions that I'm having, they're all going so well,
Speaker 1: like too well, that I'm asking myself what is it?
Speaker 1: So I'm not even resting on the laurel that these
Speaker 1: conversations are going well. I'm saying, what is it about
Speaker 1: these conversations that are going well that I can not
Speaker 1: only replicate but refine and make it even better and
Speaker 1: better and better. And I probably sent three messages to
Speaker 1: my co founders saying why do you think this is
Speaker 1: going well? And there's like, oh, it's because you have
Speaker 1: a great team and great mark. I'm like, that's not it. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's because you have a great product for I'm like,
Speaker 1: those are things are all true, but that's not why
Speaker 1: investors are frothing at the mouth. They've seen companies in
Speaker 1: the calendar in space, They've seen companies in the future
Speaker 1: of work or conferencing space. They've definitely seen more accomplished
Speaker 1: founders than myself. And I'm looking at competitors in the space, like, oh,
Speaker 1: these two guys were at Facebook and they started a
Speaker 1: calendar company. This guy sold his company too. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to shout out the company. This guy sold his
Speaker 1: company to another big company three years ago, and now
Speaker 1: he started a calendaring company and he's not getting this
Speaker 1: level of interest. There's something in there about and I
Speaker 1: figured it out by the way. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: spill the bean about the way I am positioning and
Speaker 1: talking about the business. And I did not know what
Speaker 1: it was, but I had so much curiosity about finding
Speaker 1: out what that was that I've now been able to
Speaker 1: write it down, put it into a list, and make
Speaker 1: sure that every single conversation that I have, I reiterate
Speaker 1: that operationalized yes, yes, and it's it's it's going to
Speaker 1: be huge, Like I had I shouldn't say this publicly,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I had some very good meetings with investors
Speaker 1: this week, and it led me to like want to
Speaker 1: figure And I spent all weekend thinking about it and
Speaker 1: reading and researching and like digging into mental models and
Speaker 1: frameworks and trying to figure out which ones that I'm
Speaker 1: using and why it's resoning with investors. You have to
Speaker 1: go that deep. You have to, or if you're a brad,
Speaker 1: just write it on a nappin and get your money.
Speaker 1: Black Tech Green Money is a production to Black vit
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