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Speaker 2: You talked about the competition, which is interesting because not
Speaker 2: only do you have to know your business in and out,
Speaker 2: but you have to kind of know this is to
Speaker 2: almost create a competitive mode to be in the space.
Speaker 2: So like you're doing this by yourself right at this point,
Speaker 2: there's no partner with you, right, it's just you.
Speaker 1: I had a early co founder who was with us
Speaker 1: for about four years, so it was involved in this
Speaker 1: early fundraising. We sparred a lot on this and traded
Speaker 1: notes and really played off each other super well. And
Speaker 1: then after they departed, then it was just me on
Speaker 1: all of my other rounds since then, I was always
Speaker 1: leading the fundraise, so you know, that's why I have
Speaker 1: a particular depth. And then I ended up writing a playbook.
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to that. I wanted to get
Speaker 2: to that, but because I want people to really understand
Speaker 2: the amount of time that goes into this, the amount
Speaker 2: of sacrifice. It's insane, right, There's relationships that get sacrificed, friendships,
Speaker 2: all these sacrifices that no one sees on the front end,
Speaker 2: but like you're actually dealing with that on top of
Speaker 2: trying to create something that again is going to be
Speaker 2: a game changer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean everything I'm describing took in extraordinary amount
Speaker 1: of time. I mean, you know, both seed around probably
Speaker 1: span three years, doing small check after small check until
Speaker 1: he had enough traction to raise like an A round
Speaker 1: which was a little bit bigger, and then our B
Speaker 1: and C and D round. We started to get institutional
Speaker 1: backers who would take big pieces of the round, but
Speaker 1: in the beginning they were long drawn out or raising
Speaker 1: on safe which is this an instrument called a simple
Speaker 1: agreement for future equity, few page agreements that we were
Speaker 1: raising money onto and you know, another thing that I
Speaker 1: did is everyone gets consumed with round size. What's the
Speaker 1: round size? For me? I've always I've raised incrementally, so
Speaker 1: you know, for both. Initially I got a few. Once
Speaker 1: I started to realize a strategy, I got a few
Speaker 1: people to lean in. You know, it was like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna raise a million. That filled up pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: then you know, we're like, yeah, might as well open
Speaker 1: another million. As more people became interested or raised another
Speaker 1: half a million and so, and then uh, when you say, oh,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're actually going to raise two We've
Speaker 1: already raised one and I are fifty percent complete, versus
Speaker 1: you know, starting around saying I'm raising two million and
Speaker 1: I have none. Right, I'd rather start around and say,
Speaker 1: all right, I have a few people for leading. They're
Speaker 1: probably good for half a million, So we're gonna raise
Speaker 1: a million or seven to fifty k. So the next
Speaker 1: person I go to, the round's almost done already, versus
Speaker 1: how most founders saw off with just the go to
Speaker 1: some None of the round is done. If I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk to you about around, it's gonna be mostly
Speaker 1: done already before I'm like talking economics with you even
Speaker 1: those people are forward leaning. I'm gonna wait till a
Speaker 1: few others are forward leaning, and then I'm gonna say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're doing a million, but I've got about six or
Speaker 1: seven hundred already circled up. You're one of my early conversations.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have you involved. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: formalizing your investment.
Speaker 4: The tragic So, and you've raised a lot of money,
Speaker 4: just to put it in context with people, because you're
Speaker 4: speaking from first hand experience, right, So you talked about
Speaker 4: the time, but can you like say, like how much
Speaker 4: time for a founder that's looking to raise what should
Speaker 4: they expect they should expect to put two hours out
Speaker 4: of the day, they should expect to put twelve hours
Speaker 4: out of the day. Like what's the realistic expectation as
Speaker 4: far as the time commitment for a founder that is
Speaker 4: trying to raise money.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're trying to do it properly, it's
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of your life. That's the time for me,
Speaker 1: that's the time commitment. You know, And ideally you have
Speaker 1: a partner or a head of operations or a CTO
Speaker 1: that can.
Speaker 4: Hold over the fort that's running the business, running the business.
Speaker 4: You should just be focused on.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 4: You can't split your time between running the business and
Speaker 4: raising money.
Speaker 1: This is it. This is it. I mean, once you
Speaker 1: get the hang of it and pass a critical threshold
Speaker 1: and you're cool to just take some checks casually here
Speaker 1: and there. Once you're casual and you've you've already crossed
Speaker 1: the chasm, great, But until that point, you're one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Get someone else in your company, give everyone a heads
Speaker 1: up that you're going to be off the grid for
Speaker 1: a bit. Fundraising. This is all you're focused on, one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the focus. And you know, spend a
Speaker 1: couple hours a day on the business, and so you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people get nervous about fundraisings, surely
Speaker 1: because they're not focused on it. So it's never going
Speaker 1: to happen. Because this is a thing that requires such
Speaker 1: intense focus. You need to block off everything else in
Speaker 1: your life spending on one hundred percent of your time
Speaker 1: on this thing. You need to go read my book,
Speaker 1: which not something I did. This is a labor of love.
Speaker 1: What's a book. It's called Fundraising by Ryan Breslo. Start
Speaker 1: off as a playbook that I wrote a Google doc
Speaker 1: that I gave to my friends. This is a labor
Speaker 1: of love. I had no time to write this book,
Speaker 1: but I made the time because founders needed this wisdom,
Speaker 1: because I saw too many making the same mistakes over
Speaker 1: and over again. And so you need to memorize this book,
Speaker 1: follow it to a t. You put your own style
Speaker 1: and flavor on it, of course, but really understand it
Speaker 1: and dedicate one hundred percent of your time to this.
Speaker 2: So while you're doing the fundraising and you're one hundred
Speaker 2: percent dedicated to it, right before this is when you're
Speaker 2: creating the conscious Culture playbook, because you know that you're
Speaker 2: not going to be there on a day to day
Speaker 2: the way that you probably would be if you weren't
Speaker 2: trying to raise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that came later for me, but I was
Speaker 1: creating a playbook on culture. I like systems. Systems scale.
Speaker 1: If your team doesn't know how it's going to operate
Speaker 1: what it values, it's very hard to scale your company.
Speaker 1: And so I don't like repeating myself. I like I
Speaker 1: like methodology and formula as you can tell for things
Speaker 1: that I know work. And so I had a great CEO.
Speaker 1: Coach's names Matt Matari's got a great book Machari Method
Speaker 1: that everybody should read on ceoing. He gave me his method,
Speaker 1: which was my foundations of conscious Culture, and then I
Speaker 1: made it my own. I mean he taught it to
Speaker 1: me intensively for about three months, and then over the
Speaker 1: next five years, I kept the dog being like, this
Speaker 1: is what works, this is what doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: And so I created my own playbook and then I
Speaker 1: ended up publishing that to the world on conscious dot org,
Speaker 1: which we're doing We're going to relaunch. It's not where
Speaker 1: it needs to be right now, but and this is
Speaker 1: the playbook we used to build in scale Bolt and
Speaker 1: the conscious culture came from more of a spiritual aspiration
Speaker 1: to bridge humanity with execution. This is the marriage that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to facilitate, and I think conscious culture
Speaker 1: gets to that.
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