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[14] Startup Growth Done Right

Ralph is a proven senior executive with 20 years of diverse blue-chip leadership experience across strategic finance, corporate strategy, and operations at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 companies globally. Over the past 7 years, he has also advised extensively high growth technology companies, helping them navigate through early-stage strategic and operational growth.

Currently as the Chief Financial Officer at Jyve?”

Throughout his career, he has strategically built companies, teams, and partnerships that sustain strong growth. He has also successfully helped companies scale, transform, and exit; completing 80+ strategic transactions and exits for $90+ billion of M&A value and raised $60+ billion of equity/debt capital.

Ep 14 SVS transcribe

 Shawn Flynn  0:00 

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. On today's episode, we have Ralph Liang, who is a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, who has since gone on to create his own company at age ships. It's a company that helps startups grow. So let's learn a little bit about him.

 Show Announcer  0:23 

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to give the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and tell you to become the next Silicon Valley success

 Shawn Flynn  0:44 

Rao. Thank you for coming on Silicon Valley success. And thanks for having me. Can you give a brief introduction of yourself who you are what you're up to?

 Ralph Leung  0:52 

Sure. So as you mentioned earlier, I found that Ada ships but a year and a half ago at chips is a growth and innovation platform focused on helping corporations find innovation and startups helping them grow and scale. Prior to that it's been almost 20 years honing my career in a variety of strategic roles. Everything from being an investment banker in New York, and in Hong Kong, helping tech companies and FinTech companies from being a principal investor, Principal m&a person, as well as being a strategy consultant.

 Shawn Flynn  1:20 

Wow. So tell me about how that 20 years of experience kind of leads into Ada chips. How did that help you with what you're doing now? Right.

 Ralph Leung  1:28 

Well, that's, that's a good question that's at that was the real foundation of how I founded the company, as ships know, when I took a step back and look back into my career and thought, what have I learned over this, this 20 year path, right? I've worked with amazing leaders from enormous companies like Alibaba to work with earlier stage startups, all throughout Asia Pacific, and even in the US. And I learned a significant amount of seeing companies make mistakes, seeing companies grow. And then scale seeing companies go from being an early stage startups to a growth equity company to become a public company.

 Shawn Flynn  2:01 

Okay, some of that lingo that you're saying right there, some of the audience at home may not know it was growth equity, short, and all that.

 Ralph Leung  2:07 

So early stage startups which which I understand a lot of your people on the show talk about is

 slightly later than two guys talking an idea or you actually have a product, you have an early stage business, but you're finding that early traction, early business growth equity is primarily in the phase right after that you've raised a few rounds of capital are raising money. So we can focus on scaling the business, right, not to prove a concept to prove whether it works or not. And then right after that, you know, some people some companies tend to go public, right, if they choose to go public listed on NYSE or NASDAQ, for example, they become publicly traded corporations

 Shawn Flynn  2:44 

interested. So when do you step in and start working with those companies?

 Ralph Leung  2:48 

On the leadership side? Yes. So at chips will typically step in the earlier stage of the business. What will work with people with technically, oftentimes, technical founders, okay, have a product, they have some early revenue, they have proven that there was a market fit for this, or they don't have a business built around it. So

 Shawn Flynn  3:09 

an accelerator is that still too early for you? Or is that the right time?

 Ralph Leung  3:12 

That's typically the right time, right? So they've gone through either an incubator program and accelerator program, they have something built, but they don't really have a team to focus on the business, they don't have the capital to hire a bunch of C level executives around them to build a business. So he would come in and we help build that real business for them. Okay, tell me more about how you help help them build that business. Sure. Okay. So when you when you take a step back, right, peel the onion on what makes a business successful. Okay, you have to start with a product, you have the core product, and that's what they ideally should spend time focusing on building and making sure there's product market fit, whether it's by themselves through an incubator and accelerator program, okay, but around the round the product you have to think of how do you go to market? So how do you sell this? How do you sell the product? How do you take it to market what really is your market,

 Shawn Flynn  4:01 

this isn't necessarily just a physical product, right?

 Ralph Leung  4:04 

software, it could be software could be, you know, something you see on Shark Tank, it could be, you know, it could be anything, but something that somebody would pay money for cable service doesn't matter, then you think about how you go to market, how do you sell it? How do you build your core competencies around the functional areas around it. So any good business beyond the product and selling you have to think finance, you have to think accounting marketing, you think branding, you think advertising, you think legal, right? You think HR and recruiting talent, and infrastructure and operations, all of these elements that that really formed around the product, that's what he focuses on. Now, every company is a little bit different. Some companies may, depending on the founder of the founding team, they may have certain expertise on certain areas. So we usually spend time studying the company working with the founding team, understanding where the biggest gaps are, when come in to help them out in the areas

 Shawn Flynn  4:55 

now, now, everything you just mentioned there, you can't do that alone. Obviously. Tell me about your team.

 Ralph Leung  5:01 

Sure. So we, we what, let's take a step back. Right. There are plenty of great players in the market, especially in Silicon Valley that help startups right, yeah, look at the list of incubators, accelerators, just one every four blocks. So there are definitely a lot of players in the market, the way that we want to differentiate ourselves is taken, taken execution approach to helping startups grow. So not an education approach, which is typically the approaches that accelerators incubators to that they follow. Because they weren't big batches, Oh, we don't run big batches. And we go bespoke one on one a companies a year maximum on the startup side, we take a very hands on execution based approach to helping them scale.

 Shawn Flynn  5:42 

Okay, so tell me about when you meet one of the stars for the first time, what does that look like, you just sit down with the founder and go, Hey, I saw your product and you're not doing anything with it. I think we can make you guys something or is it they come to you, like, hey, we've tried all these things, we don't know what we're doing.

 Ralph Leung  6:00 

It's a combination of both right. And, and there's three elements. So we we haven't done any advertising and marketing, everything's through referral. Okay, so usually comes through some of that we, as a friend of yours, a friend of a friend, someone that we worked with, in the past, they come through a referral channels, you know, they say, hey, so and so has a has company, you know, he or she started a company, they have a great product just came out of whatever accelerator program,

 they're thinking about doing a series A or Series B fundraising, or they're really struggling trying to get in front of a large corporation to try to sell that big enterprise deal, right? Then, when we sit down first meetings like this, this just one on one get to know each other? Well, first, we have to see we get along, okay. Because if, if you don't like me, and I don't like you. So yeah, this is not working out at

 Shawn Flynn  6:43 

three take that

 Ralph Leung  6:45 

you know, but it's do is the understand each other, okay, just to see, we get a law giving you a chance to understand what it is that you're struggling with what you are trying to accomplish, right. And then after this first meeting, then we have a second meeting, what typically they do is they start up with send us information, right?

 Shawn Flynn  7:01 

So this is typical, what type of information is your market information?

 Ralph Leung  7:04 

Or no, we just be your typical diligence pack, right. So, again, what will diligence pack for companies that we have that haven't gone through a certain stage yet, I don't expect them to have a lot, but I do expect them to have at least some semblance of a business plan. Okay, not necessarily the traditional 50 page Word document business plan that people very familiar with, it could be a set of slides that they've used to capture note.

 Shawn Flynn  7:26 

So like a 15 Deck slide, that would be enough for you to

 Ralph Leung  7:31 

give me something, something to show that you've thought about your business, I thought about your product, thought about your roadmap, right? Doesn't have to be fully baked, does not be fully developed, that's what we would help you with, okay, but give me something where I can go home, study your business with my team, my understanding where your challenges are, give us a chance to assess where what we think about your business, right, because we approached it just like we're investors, really, because we only, we only spend time with a company's maximum, you know, same way that a VC would have X amount of capital them to invest in premium content. So you have to be very picky about who you want to work with. And this is a long term partnership. It's not, we're not consultants, right? We don't come in, do a three month McKinsey style project, and then we take off, but you never see us again, that's not how we operate. So we operate as it were partners together, which means we're in it for the long term, which also means we have to get along well, we have to really believe in the business believe in the founding team

 Shawn Flynn  8:23 

interested. So let's go back Say, say you've met that startup, you get along with them, you want to help with them, the first thing they say to you is we don't have money or we're trying to raise money right now, what information does a startup founder need to know about raising capital?

 Ralph Leung  8:41 

That's That's a really good question. And I think there's, there's a lot of confusion in the market, depending on the stage, right, just based on the stages that we talked about before, I think with with technology these days, a lot of people can look up Cora, they can go to Google and just just look up, what do you need in the fundraise deck? Right? What do you need in a picture tech and they follow certain guidelines. Now, my advice to founders that are going through this process is take a step back first, understand, fundraising is not a one shot deal. It's an ongoing effort. As you continue to grow the company and your your goal is not to raise money, right? Your goal is not to raised to send me get my a round, let me get my seed round, your goal is to build a business? And also what do you have to do to build a business successfully over time? I think that's the first step that any founder needs to think through before they think, Okay, how do we raise money, I get that there's pressure, if founder doesn't, you know, they have three months of runway left, six months runway left, does that mean amount of money to keep your lights on for the next

 Shawn Flynn  9:42 

X number of mine? Okay, so they only have three months of runway, right? They even have time to respond in there.

 Ralph Leung  9:47 

Well, that's the first mistake, I would have pointed them out, right? If you only have three months of runway, that means you started planning a little bit too late, but you always have to start thinking about it from day one, as you're thinking about building a product, you'll think about how do you have your sources of capital for how long and it's an ongoing process, right, always think about is an ongoing, long term process.

 Shawn Flynn  10:06 

So how much of your work with the the startups is actually just sitting there and saying, this is your next one year roadmap? Let's break it down step by step, right?

 Ralph Leung  10:14 

It's it's a large portion of what we do, we help them think very strategically about how to build a company, right? We try to get them away from short term, you know, let us sell X number of products get 10,000 users raise $5 million, right? These are very short term goals, we help them think about what is a three year roadmap and then you back into right if for us to be this when we grow up in three years? Okay, in two years, here's what we want to do in one year, this would be what we want to do. And how do you back into what do we have to do today to set us up to we can get you the three year mark? Not the six month

 Shawn Flynn  10:50 

mark. Okay. So a lot of it is goal setting.

 Ralph Leung  10:53 

Oh, yeah. It's think thinking about what the goals are. But also, what is the execution roadmap, like, how do we actually accomplish what our goals are, rather than just saying, you know, what, in three years, I want to be number top three in the market? Yeah, you know, that's, that's not a goal.

 Shawn Flynn  11:07 

If someone came to you with this dream, hey, I have a three year plan. And, and as you're talking to a person, their three year plan is just that goal at the end,

 and working step by step backwards. There's just, you know, so much information there is not there. What happens in a situation like that.

 Ralph Leung  11:25 

So I mentioned earlier, our typical vetting process, right, we don't take applications, but we have a 2.5 meeting process. tomorrow's meeting is what we talked about is the let's just get along, right? It's just understand each other, what our priorities are, what our values are, what drives us, okay, second meeting is we have a follow up with deep dive into the business based on what you send me Okay, we look at your pitch deck we look at whatever materials that you have, we look at your XL models, right? So we understand your finances and we understand your roadmap. Okay, if that's the worst and then the last point five a meeting you know, we discuss what are working arrangement under scope of work is gonna look like to answer your question though, what happens if someone or founding team says we have a very ambitious goal in three years, we have no idea how to get there.

 Typically, we would, we would get a good sense of that during the first meeting. Okay. And if it's that far away, then we think that's company like that may be a little too early for us. Okay? Because we typically work with companies that have done enough, enough of the legwork enough of the struggles to really understand building companies not easy You can't just you know, outsource a hired gun to come and do it for you, you have to go through the struggles yourself. But at the same time, we also understand that you don't have to do it all by yourself. So once you've done enough to get the product into the market, get some early revenue early users are the pilots you know and you're free to accomplish that chances are you would have thought through what your roadmap is going to look like even at a high level then we come in and actually stress test that model for you. So how important is it for the founder to be coachable in in this situation, it's extremely, extremely important, right? Because if you're not coachable, then why have us with you anyway, right, then we just become a hired gun to simply you want to work with the team. But this is it's the same thing as the way that a VC would think about it, right? When I invest money into a company where the founder of the founding team would not listen to any of the advice or they just looking for a check. And you know, and and some VCs may may may be okay with that, but I'd say most of them would prefer to have work with founders who are coachable because building businesses are hard, right? No one really knows all the answers. So you have to work with the team,

 Shawn Flynn  13:26 

how important is it for the CEO to have kind of a financial background? I your backgrounds from investment bank? Yes, go a little bit more detail about that aspect of it, just the financial model and how important it is for founder where they could maybe develop this area, just basically to have a conversation with investors? Because I guess, and if they don't know, the cap table, or kind of the structure? Yeah, that meeting might be lost?

 Ralph Leung  13:52 

Oh, it's it? That's a good question. That's so I'd say most of the founders that we work with, don't come from finance, or don't come from finance, or not former accountants or investment bankers, or anyone in that world. They're typically product folks, right? They Okay, you the engineer, so the product managers, they know the product, right? Because they have an idea, they have an idea, they want to come with something. So they have the product to answer a question, I would say it's, it's not critical, it's helpful. It's helpful, because, like you said, right, when you're it's typically the CEO, the founders who pitch because the investors want to hear from the CEO, they want to hear from the founders, they want to, they want to feel confident that the CEO, the founding team, has an appreciation for finance, for cash flow for working capital, because the number one reason why talk about working capital, what is it working capital is how much money you got coming in, and how much money you got going out on a net basis, are you working capital positive, which means you're collecting more than you are spending, which gives you more runway or vice versa, you're spending a lot more than you're collecting, which means your time is going to run out soon, right? So any founder has to have a basic appreciation of managing cash. Interesting, right? So you don't have to be finance PhD to, to be a good founder, but you have to have an appreciation for the importance of managing your money.

 Shawn Flynn  15:10 

How important is it that the CEO has that, that respect, I guess for for money, and versus a CFO say there's a team of four CEO, CFO, CTO, sales guy? I don't know. Yeah, CFO, CEO, that that kind of relationship right there, right. Okay, so

 Ralph Leung  15:31 

let's unpack that question. Oh, yeah. Right. For typical startup, at an early stage, you're not going to have for sea level titles.

 Shawn Flynn  15:38 

Oh, four guys have named themselves right level titles, right. So

 Ralph Leung  15:42 

if it's nice team, though, if it's a nice team, nice been the team where, you know, the CEO, the CFO and you name the other c Suite's they have complementary skill sets, that would be very helpful, but in my opinion, it's still very helpful, the CEO, right, and the person who is who is building the business to have some basic understanding of it. And again, we're not talking accounting principles are not talking revenue recognition, and, and those deep detail finance and accounting topics, you know, but in depreciation on how to manage money, because ultimately, that's who investors are going to trust.

 Shawn Flynn  16:14 

It's interesting that you brought up the word trust, we had a guest on last week's episode, Bill, who talked about how important trust was in the wholesale cycle, right. So it's kind of interesting how that gets repeated. He brought up in business though trust factor

 Ralph Leung  16:29 

absolute, especially for early stage companies, right. So going back to the phases that I talked about early stage companies, growth equity, when you're older, and then public, or just large corporations, when you're in the early stage, it's all about trust. And you have to believe that the founding team has the ability to execute, that they're coachable that you can trust the founding team to deliver, right, because you're early, you don't really have much more than the founding team to be able to teach, to get investors to be comfortable. When you're a more developed company, then you can actually look get business results. You look at KPIs, you could look at what the company has accomplished, and what's in the growth and pipeline, but when you're early stage

 Shawn Flynn  17:08 

trust is critical. Interesting. And let's go back to you to your life's roadmap. Okay, I'm kind of curious about it. So you form 88 ships. Yes. What was the desire to form it? And why not stay in the investment banking world? I mean, it's Yeah, cushy area. For my understanding you I died depends on your heart attack. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my Ico Can you

 Ralph Leung  17:30 

know copy of it? That's a good question. But why wants to take a step back and start and start eth ships? Yeah, it's the I reflected on my own career path. You know, after 20 years of thinking about where do I want to spend the next 20 years working, I actually add the most value be the most impactful to people I work with the companies I work with is it continued to do more deals which I very much enjoyed right, working with very large corporations around the world, I learned a ton from add significant value or is it to take that knowledge take that skill set and work with earlier stage companies that typically don't have access to the same caliber of help typically don't have access to the same type of advice right, someone or team who has worked with fortune 100 companies and say, hey Sean, this is this is not how you do it or have you thought about this or to put in that level of sophistication much earlier than you typically would be able to afford but to set you up for success right its name for your show

 Shawn Flynn  18:27 

with that yeah, if you want more information on Silicon Valley successes please visit our website Silicon Valley successes. com also on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn but with that let's go back to Ralph and learn a little bit more so so Ralph, tell me a little bit about you know what startup some of the mistakes they make early that might cost them later well

 Ralph Leung  18:51 

soon. So let's talk about fundraising for a quick sec. Perfect. I think oftentimes, startups think about valuation, right. And for whatever, whatever that's worth, maybe just people focused a lot on on the internet, or

 Shawn Flynn  19:04 

even come up with their valuations

 Ralph Leung  19:07 

depending on the stage of the company, right? You can you can, you can add, you can have a variety of metrics where you can peg it to, you know, how many users you have, how much revenue you have, what your monthly recurring revenue, you know, startups typically aren't profitable, right? So you're not able to use this your traditional valuation metrics that later stage companies would use right here, p multiples, and all these other multiples typically doesn't really work for jargon. People can look up on Google. Yeah, so you know, so, but for early stage companies, you know, it's a little bit looser, but all kind of comes down to economics, one on one, supply and demand, right, depending on how much investors Believe in your company in the future potential of your company,

 you know, how many investors are flocking to it, you know, it's supply and demand, they could potentially drive up valuation that your company itself may not be able to defend. So to answer your question, typically I see as as a common mistake because early fans are so focused on I want to maximize my valuation right away right away. So even before they can really defend it, because going back to what I said at the beginning of the show, is fundraising is not a one shot deal. You got to think of it long term, but you have to think about fundraising in parallel to building a business long term if you overstretch on your valuation too early, what does that set you up for in your next round, potentially a down now potentially flat round or your pressure to deliver because you you a call it you got such a high value talking

 Shawn Flynn  20:32 

about down around flat round real quick shortly. So

 Ralph Leung  20:35 

let's say, you know, Sean, yet you have an amazing company, you did your very first round at a $10 million valuation. So investors said, You know, I want to buy 25% of your company. Yeah, at a $10 million valuation. But that's more than what you really deserve today, because you have for users, people are just investing in you, because it's Sean, right? 97 users, right? 97 users, you know, so that's, that's quite a lot of money per user, your that's, that's a very high valuation. Now, fast forward six months, you say, you go back to these investors and say, You know what, we need more money because we need to grow, they'll say shot, where have you gone with your 97 users? Well, I've gone from 97 to 100, I think, Well, okay, that's fantastic. But from evaluation perspective, you haven't really accomplished that much more. So I'm going to invest either at the same valuation and Australia flat round, while I would say, you know what shot I gave you all this money, you just kind of blew it, and you didn't really grow your user base, even generate much more out only invest, instead of a 10 million valuation, I'm going to value at 5 million. Wow. So that's it down.

 Shawn Flynn  21:38 

So you have to give up a ton of your company then to get the same amount of

 Ralph Leung  21:41 

money if you can even raise around because these these just red flags all over the place, which goes back to should you have taken that validation? That 10 million? Maybe, maybe not

 Shawn Flynn  21:51 

right? What's your opinion, then of startups taken

 raising money? Maybe too early? I mean, should they try to raise as soon as possible to early when they're about to run it? Should they wait to they're about to run out of money before accepting a tech or should they from day one beyond the road trying to raise things?

 Ralph Leung  22:12 

I would, I would recommend the latter, right. I'm a huge fan of planning. And I and I understand when you're building a business, especially for startup things don't work out as planned, more often than not, right. But having a plan. being thoughtful, having a roadmap is super important, in my opinion.

 And then you still piecing putting the pieces together as you go along. Right? Okay, but having some plan to go for, right, just like you're jumping off a cliff and trying to build the plane at same time. But having a plan before you jump off the cliff would be helpful, right. So as you in terms of raising money, same thing, don't wait until the last minute because people can smell you're desperate. Right?

 Shawn Flynn  22:48 

So before we had, I think it was episode nine, we had a Groupon that talked about pivoted and the importance of pivot as a startup. Okay? How important is that? See, you have that three year plan, you've worked it out, these are the steps to get there after your water. You go, Okay, guys, we're not where we should be the markets telling us this. Yes? In your opinion, how important is it to pivot? And what happens in that situation? Do you then alter that whole three year period? I know it depends on the situation, right, case by case, right. But in that situation pivoted and your team coming in reevaluate everything. How does that go

 Ralph Leung  23:24 

to get it depends on why you're pivoting. Okay. Right. Is it because your original strategy failed, right or something has changed? Or is it because the market dynamic has changed is because you found other opportunities that may be a better product market fit for you It depends right are you being proactive or reactive to something good or just something bad so that's that's my investment bank every answer to your question devil it really depends but the my my what I would say though, it is very important that the founding team is open minded like you mentioned earlier, they coachable right open minded coach both to consider pivot and maybe it doesn't have to be a full pivot. Maybe you can just be you know, slight turn.

 Shawn Flynn  24:05 

Okay, so a little bit of recap on what we've talked about today. So far, we've had Ralph Leo vest and bacon background. He's not a founder of 88 ships. They have a full team that comes in and helps these companies actually plan out their goals. three year plans, step by step work with coachable founders, founders have just possibly gone out of accelerators or have some type of product market fit. We've talked about raising funds, and what kind of a mindset what they need to know a little bit of information, what they need to have prepared. overvaluation flat rounds. Down rounds. We've talked about run runway, a lot of a lot of terms that were thrown out there today. So go back in this episode, and go on our website for more information on those terms, and to review things. But with that being said, Rob, what have we missed on this conversation? What one important question Do you often get asked?

 Ralph Leung  25:00 

So I would recommend for founders when given the opportunity to to have help, right? think really hard about receiving that help. As in Yes, it may cost you a little bit today, right? Or Yes, it may be it may come early. And you may feel like you're busy with so many things like getting the right type of help is super important to supercharge in that growth. Well, then, question

 Shawn Flynn  25:23 

on that one. I don't even know if it's if it is the right type of help. Well,

 Ralph Leung  25:29 

number one, as you're building company, you want to try to surround yourself with really good people. Right, that includes your advisors that is at ships, right. So that could be a plug. But as you're thinking about building a team around you, a could be immediate team. It could be your advisors could be a board members, definitely your investors, this becomes your sounding board as you're thinking about, okay, am I bringing in the right, help, this could be full time, senior hires Junior highers consultants, you know platforms like ours that would come in because these, this type of help can really supercharge the growth of the business, right. And I've seen many, many times where founders are saying, you know, we're very much interested. But we're so busy with something super myopic, super narrow, super myopic, and they're forgetting about the force.

 Shawn Flynn  26:15 

So Ralph with that we have about a minute left. Can you talk about one how people can contact you who your ideal client is, and anything else you want people to know?

 Ralph Leung  26:27 

Sure. My contact information is Ralph at 88 ships. So that's eight, eight sh, IPS. com companies. I typically work with all technology based, there are three sectors that I typically focus on. One is consumer tech, the others internet, which includes marketplaces, and that works. And the third is FinTech. And in terms of the stage of the business, we typically work with fairly early stage companies that have raised a little bit of money themselves. So their initial seed round a couple million dollars that have a product in the market ready, they're generating early revenue or pilot with a client that feel like they have figured out the product market fit and they say, you know what, we're ready for that next stage that's really focused on growth rather than fit. That's where we come in. And supercharge. We're out.

 Shawn Flynn  27:11 

This was an amazing episode. There's so much information so everyone at home, please visit us at Silicon Valley successes, and we look forward to the next week's episode. We have some amazing guests and we're here to help you. We want to make sure that you become the next success.

 Show Announcer  27:26 

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful and your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

 Transcribed by https://otter.ai

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

💰Sales Done Right, Best Advice for Startups

Phil Solk is a managing partner at Opero Partners. Providing strategic advice and hands-on implementation services to companies seeking to significantly enhance their growth trajectories.

He is a seasoned executive (former C-level, VP and directors) with functional expertise in marketing, sales management, operations, product & technology development, finance strategy, funding & M&A.

We interview him on Sales techniques, best practices, and advice for startups.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

💰Sales Done Right, Best Advice for Startups

Phil Solk is a managing partner at Opero Partners. Providing strategic advice and hands-on implementation services to companies seeking to significantly enhance their growth trajectories.

He is a seasoned executive (former C-level, VP and directors) with functional expertise in marketing, sales management, operations, product & technology development, finance strategy, funding & M&A.

Shawn Flynn 0:00

This week on Silicon Valley successes we have Phil sock who is a business to business sales consultant here in Silicon Valley many years experience and he's got a lot of great information that's going to help startups around the world. So stay tuned.

Show Announcer 0:21

Welcome to Silicon Valley successes. We interview experts and entrepreneurs to get the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and help you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

Shawn Flynn 0:42

Welcome back to Silicon Valley successes so filled Could you please introduce yourself?

phil 0:47

Yes, thank you, Sean. So I've been working in high tech in Silicon Valley, and a couple other parts of the country for large companies and a lot of startups. And over time I saw the pattern and what makes top line revenue grow. And so a couple folks and got together and more recently started a consulting firm to help companies grow their top line revenue

Shawn Flynn 1:11

interested. So Phil, I just want to go right into the questions. So I've heard of b2b sales. I've heard a b2c but what's the difference?

phil 1:20

I think the easiest way to get at that is, is talked about the longer version B to B to C. Okay, tell me about that

Shawn Flynn 1:28

business to business to consumer. Sorry, I should have been a little clear at the beginning. Yeah, all works.

phil 1:33

So let's say you sell software to a restaurant to help them run their business better. Okay, that part is b2b, but your software might also affect consumers, like making reservations, or giving feedback. So even though you're selling to a business part of your functions, go to the consumer. So that's B to B to C, when you get involved with their

Shawn Flynn 1:55

customers interested. So is there any difference though, between b2b sales Peter, see, sales are b2b to see sales,

phil 2:03

there are more alike than different, because in b2b, b2c, or b2b to see your primary customer and concern is still the business you're selling to. Okay, regardless of whether you get involved downstream with their customers

Shawn Flynn 2:15

interested. Now, if I was a salesperson, though, if you're saying it's pretty similar, the sales I mean, how, how do I actually go about it? Can you walk me through the steps of meeting that client?

Yeah, just walk me through it.

phil 2:32

Yes, what tends to work is not come across as pushy, that's rule number one, okay. Because you're having trying to have a dialogue and develop a customer might be a better term than selling. And so if you want to develop a relationship with someone,

it's really helpful to understand what problems are trying to solve, okay, because it's something that's easy to talk to. And obviously, if you don't have a really firm understanding of the problems, it's going to hurt to continue to build credibility with that prospective client.

After you've got a thorough understanding what problems are trying to solve. You don't want to jump into what's in it for yourself, keep the conversation going, and stay on their side of the table. So you can ask them questions like, what have you tried, I didn't want to recommend something that they're already convinced doesn't work, even though it may work. Okay. So it's a good transition to continue the conversation going. And then the next step is still the stay away from your company and my customers, and how wonderful we are, okay, talk to them about what capabilities they see

that would help them solve their problems. Okay, the longer you can stay on the same side of the table, the better the trust will develop, and the more likely you'll be able to connect with that particular customer. So when you go into this meeting with this customer, and you'd mentioned the very beginning you're trying to, to find learn about them, how much research Have you done about them prior? Have you looked at their website? Have you asked some of their customers? How much research Have you done before that meeting as much as you possibly can, but it does gauge on how many customers you have to work with per day. Okay, so if you're like setting up for someone, and you meet a customer, a prospective customer, once every two weeks, just do a lot of research. Okay. But sometimes you have to try to reach out to 10 prospective customers in a day. Oh, wow. So you got it's all over the board, depending on the nature of your business. So matter is proportionally to sound competent, and to start with the impression that you're knowledgeable, and you've done your homework so that they do trust you. Because contrary to the illusion that people buy from people they like in the b2b world is people really buy from people they trust.

Shawn Flynn 4:50

Interesting. So then, let's go to the second part you'd mentioned. So the first was to find out information about the company. And then the second part you'd mentioned was to ask them questions? Is there like a list of questions you normally go through? Like, these are the five questions? Is that a 10? Or how do you go about talking to the person without semen, I guess intrusive or making him uneasy, that you're just kind of trying to steal secrets or something,

phil 5:20

also, you have the concern that even if they tolerate questions, if you keep asking them, eventually, they'll get disengaged.

And it varies a lot by the product. But the idea is, or the service because you need to be pretty knowledgeable about those and know the typical problems that people are going to mention. So you might ask some swift called situational questions about the size of their company, or some things you couldn't find out that are really critical, okay, in your research, but then you need to jump in and and talk about, hey, what types of problems are you working on? And what Where did your interest in talking to us come from, so I can kind of help out and provide useful information. So it is different if you're the one reaching out to them versus them reaching out to you, there's all kinds of nuances. And the key is to be proficient enough in the area to be able to have a flexible conversation where you can get their point of view out. And the reason that the CEO is so critical to top line revenue growth is it starts at the top, okay. And they need that feedback, not only to know how to connect with prospective clients better, but if they're going to guide the how the offering or the product or the service goes, they have to have a first hand feedback. And so they're the most important people to get this process started as they bring on sales, people will feel people will have that domain knowledge provided to you.

Shawn Flynn 6:39

Okay, so let's go back to second. So the CEOs, most important, so if this is an early stage company, early stage startup, say there's four people on their team. Mm hmm. So the CEO how much the sales process say they have a b2b product. Mm hmm. And how important is sales skills for him, and when he talking noise trying to grow the company. Talk a little bit about that, please?

phil 7:03

Well, it's very rare that a CEO and lesser than multiple companies would have that skill,

Unknown 7:10

okay.

phil 7:11

And it's totally fine for them to hire someone with that expertise and employee or consultant because they can't create the process while they're trying to create the company.

The key is not for them to become the most effective sales people, okay, but to understand what their customers really want, and that sales professional or consultant can help them with their knowledge of how these things work, and how to give them feedback in these meetings. But fundamentally, they need to learn to a certain level in order to really understand and refine what market problem they're trying to solve.

Shawn Flynn 7:46

So if later or in these means that they're getting a lot of feedback, and the feedback might be negative, how important is it that the CEO is able to listen to that feedback and possibly pivot the company for the company's success? Or should he just kind of brush it off and go to the next potential client?

phil 8:08

It's kind of funny, because

there's someone who's been in 13 startups, and now we teach you Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia. Oh, and Stanford MBAs are pretty talented people,

but

there are certain of it, and I'm going to go with their judgment, okay. And he went to the administration resigned in the middle of the sense semester, why the students were supposed to talk to 10, people didn't even have to be prospective clients with their business idea. And he found they were just frightened to do it, even these really talented people. And the only solution he had is he went to the next class and announced anyone who doesn't see 10 people, I will flunk them in the class. So that solved the problem. But it was more a competing fair thing, as opposed to getting the CEO comfortable with getting that feedback which you need, even in a big company on the way in order to lead the company.

Shawn Flynn 9:06

So how important is confidence then, as a CEO,

phil 9:11

well, conference, it's kind of an elusive thing, okay. But they're really persistent. People

aren't afraid to make fools of them cells frequently. So it's just more of a persistence thing, then I'm feeling comfortable. Because again, for most CEOs that are doing startups, they have no experience space to feel comfortable from.

Shawn Flynn 9:30

Okay, for people at home that don't really have too much for sales background, we pulled some questions from from some startups. And one of the questions that came up was, you know, any misconceptions in the industry, for example, the importance of being able to close a sale, how important is that?

phil 9:50

Well, it's still a wide misconception in the industry today, that somehow closing

Shawn Flynn 9:57

someone for people that don't know Queen, little bit closer means Okay,

phil 10:02

that's a good thing. So

in the b2c environment, it's easy to talk about is like, you kind of want to buy some shoes now. And if you get pressured a little bit, you'll make an impulse buy. Okay, so it's like, would you like those in brown or black, right, and you're creating pressure on the prospective client. And impulsively they might say, brown and they buy it and you're in great shape their most people don't bet their jobs in the b2b environment on being pressured. And the number one complaint is that the vast majority of sales people or pushy Oh, and so it breaks the relationship very early on. And so studies including one of 38,000 sales call showed trying to pressure and using closing statements to get that by is really correlated to losing the sale. Oh, but it's still a popular misconception.

Shawn Flynn 10:54

Yeah, do you have any stories of aggressive sales people?

phil 10:58

Um, I think the one that confuses people the most is there are certain companies that are well known in the valley. We won't name names that hired super, ultra aggressive sales people, okay. And even after they stopped growing, it's so ingrained in their culture, that they're alienating people left and right, okay. And what's happening is in the beginning, there's so much pull for their product, and you're trying to capture market share. And you can hire pretty much anybody and just aggressively fire anybody who doesn't meet their number because it's less important that you about alienating prospective clients than capturing market share. Because your product speaks for itself. Oh, and so that's a little of how this closer mentality gets continues on

Shawn Flynn 11:45

to try and say the the product was in such high demand, anyone could have sold it. And they basically hired aggressive people thought they were doing a great job because of how much they were expanding. But in reality, it was the product and that's situation.

phil 12:00

Yeah, and there's a lot of, particularly in Silicon Valley, more than any place in the world. There's a lot of disruptive technologies, which are a fraction of the price all new function much more accessible. So that situation happens much more frequently here.

Shawn Flynn 12:17

interested. So back to a startup founder, so startup founder, he was the one doing the sales b2b or b2c. But now they've grown a little bit they, they've gotten some funding, and they're ready to hire their first salesperson. What should that see, you'll be looking for in that salesperson. And let's go back to that CEO really doesn't have sales experience. I mean, he tried it, they've tried it,

phil 12:42

but they still haven't, they haven't got a long track record.

Shawn Flynn 12:44

But now they have the budget to hire that one guy, what kind of questions should they ask, what should they look for? How can they get the best person,

phil 12:55

the people that close the most business, whether they're starting in sales, or very advanced,

always are able to get them their prospective clients or customers side of the table,

they've learned through trial and error, that pushing people isn't something people like. So one of the big characteristics are folks who have really good communication skills to kind of figure out what's going on when things don't work and actually are empathetic and they're not just faking, being interested in the prospective customers problems, because customers, customers, and people in general, genuine in general are very, very, very savvy about when somebody's being genuine or not, okay, if you're not genuinely empathetic, you're not going to, it's not going to come across. Additionally, it's helpful that they've had how to college one real world job, because that's kind of an eye opener, okay. And even better still, if they've been under quarter pressure, some personality types in just very, very distracting to them. And if they have those qualities I mentioned earlier, and they've had those two experiences, you've got good odds of having success.

Shawn Flynn 14:08

Okay, how difficult would it be for a small startup, though, to recruit that person reverse? I'm guessing most of them would go to a corporation or someone that has, you know, bigger expense account?

phil 14:22

Yeah, well, the people who have really pro proven track records are typically not going to go into a startup unless the customer traction is overwhelming.

Unknown 14:32

Okay. Can you talk about customer traction? Yeah, that is,

phil 14:36

you'd be just the CEOs, ideas so powerful that even with their limited experience, and selling just like the example those Silicon Valley disruptive companies, yeah, people just want to buy it because they're already know what the problem is, they're already looking for capabilities. And, and they already can't find them. So in the attic stream, just going out and talking to people without sales skills, you'll make sales, okay. And then there's a big spectrum all the way to something that people don't even understand. And so the more traction the more people are wanting to buy the product without all the skills, but just because it's so needed in the market, that's what sales people are looking for. Because then they can apply their skills and boost the company's revenue and earnings dramatically.

Shawn Flynn 15:22

Okay, one of these sales people say, you hire one, you found him super talented, not sure how you got him. But you got him?

How much leeway how much autonomy should the CEO give him?

phil 15:37

Well, really good people like that are really many CEOs, or CEO and development type people. And so they're very creative. And they if you have a product that's got good customer traction, and they're not selling things that your company can't deliver what you discover,

you want to be able to, to give them leeway. But you need to make sure that their incentive incentive plan is very aligned with the company's so the typical problems that they're measured by revenue, and you're measured by profitability, yeah, their incentive 10 times more than you are to discount. And so they're going to do that to maximize learning, just like the CEOs trying to maximize their earnings. Okay, so aligning the compensation so then everybody's when, when we eliminate a lot of headaches,

Shawn Flynn 16:29

interested, and back to the questions that that we pulled, someone's brought up sales hostage, do you do you know what that is? Can you go into detail, I have never heard that that term before.

phil 16:42

If you talk to CEOs who've had on successful experiences, even startups, they know exactly what it means. And the most extreme example I know is a founder was very, very technical and passionate, he had a way that hospitals could quickly tell

there are people was going downhill, even though people were noticing. In fact, the poor fella lost his wife to the situation.

And he came up with a method that hospitals could use to do this. But he really was so uncomfortable with trying to sell that he hired somebody, and that person actually was executive and they hired a few people could sell. And the problem is, is that person kept selling. And every time he would sell more, he would ask for a greater piece of the pie. And then they the founder, got in an increasingly awkward situation where as a revenue grew, he was more dependent on this person, to the point where almost none of the Prophet was coming to the company. And he couldn't fire this fellow. And so basically, the company was bound to collapse after the Commission's and unpaid and so he basically was in a position to lose his company, because he didn't get involved. And this sales executive had complete power.

Shawn Flynn 17:58

Wow. So for more information on that, please visit Silicon Valley successes, visit us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social media channels. But let's get back to the interview. So Phil, that was an amazing example there. So how much

control could a CEO take back in a situation? Or how does he put boundaries there, so something like that that hostage sale situation doesn't happen?

phil 18:26

Well, the only one I know about is what we talked about earlier, which is you can't be afraid to go out there not to deliver the bunch of the revenue, but to stay enough in contact with your prospective buyers to know when the head of sales is really doing it properly. And to be in a position to take it over. If need be, as long as the person working for you knows they don't have a monopoly on growing the company, you're in a much stronger position. And of course, aligning the plans to make sure that it's a win win when we talked about is also really important.

Shawn Flynn 19:04

So for a salesperson, what type of compensation should a startup give that person should be equity? Should it be base plus commission? Should it be 100%? commission? What What can the CEO gift specially of an early stage company that doesn't have much money?

phil 19:24

Yeah, well, the more customer traction you've got, when you're hiring the person, the more the equity will be attractive without customer traction, you know, a good sales representative is going to be looking more for commissions and dollars.

Unknown 19:40

Okay.

phil 19:41

The other thing too, is, the more convinced the candidate is that they want to be part of your company, the more they'll display an interest for commissions over base, and they'll take more commissions more leverage, because that's their way of telling you, I think I can get a lot of customers and I'm willing to bet my compensation on it interested.

Shawn Flynn 20:04

So with that, what advice would you give for for an early stage founder about sales in general, or anyone at home that really doesn't know anything about sales were kind of just start

phil 20:18

again, I would just learn by get comfortable going out and talking to your target market and understanding thoroughly about what their problems are very thoroughly looking at objectively of, of what you can deliver, and what you might be able to deliver. And then make sure there's a very clear definition for success with those early customers and get that feedback and keep improving the value provide interesting. So,

Shawn Flynn 20:44

so far today, we've talked about b2b to see sales. We've talked about the CEO and some of their sales skills. We've also talked about hostage situation with sales. We've talked about compensation for your sales rep, and recruiting sales rep, we've talked about about many areas, what questions do you normally get that we've missed today?

phil 21:09

I think all of those, we've covered the vast majority of them, but the one is how to put it, I put together enough materials and content

to get the sales people I do hire up to where they're profitable, because once a salesman is breakeven, you can hire another one. So you want to get that learning curve to be as small as possible,

Shawn Flynn 21:34

what are ways to shorten that learning curve?

phil 21:37

Like we've I don't want to harp on it. But I like being out there to understand what works

spending the time to figure out how someone who doesn't have your background can be not as proficient as you but more proficient and what works and doesn't work as you watch them come up to speed?

Shawn Flynn 21:56

And then what sales advice would you give someone that has five or 10 years experience in sales,

phil 22:05

there's this effect where after you've been successful for a while, and you're making a living in sales versus a lot of people who can't and that you've learned all there is to know

so you can ask your prospective clients and the people who didn't buy from you, you know, did you feel I was genuine? Did you feel I understood your problems? Did you understand? Did I make it clear where we might provide value? And overall, did you build trust with me? And they'll tell you, if you really want to know

Shawn Flynn 22:40

how important is it, I'm just going to go back to that question of hiring the salesperson to have that person already have an established network in that area that you're selling.

phil 22:53

Yeah, the challenges and let's see, there's all kinds of different markets. But let's talk about someone with a start in a lot of the tone. The challenge for someone started with a startup, assuming there's not huge traction, in which case you can attract anybody there is someone who really does have that network can everybody will claim to has too many options. And they will go to the place where the customer traction is most established. And they don't have to create the sales process and do all the things we've talked about. So that's the key is don't rely too heavily on the network. Because you really won't know how strong it is. And a lot of people who have a network, what that means is they've sold to them in the past. But that doesn't mean that they've built a lot enough trust coming with something new, it might mean that the company was really desperate and needed the product. And they actually alienated the customer interest. So it's very hard to assess networks ahead of time. People who really have them have lots of options. So just be careful with that becomes too dominant, you're hiring.

Shawn Flynn 24:02

And another question about the CEO and the first sales hire, what type of KPIs key performance indicators should they set for that salesperson, how to go about thinking those up making that those dates in that that quota.

phil 24:19

So the first person you hire is the one who's going to be kind of like your guide in the wilderness they've been to selling so they know what our fees are, and they know how to read signals better than someone just a request for request for prize for press for quote, this is where they mail out all these big documents, and let everybody beat themselves up to win the business, right. So they know all the link of as just demonstrated. So that's that first person, that first person is working with you, and you'll be involved with them very intimately. When you get to the next person who's going to try to learn the map, that the KPI is really how many sales they close and building them a ramp that's realistic. So month by month and month, the level of business they need to develop is accelerating, okay, because you're trying to get them within whatever you know, your training time to be, or what you can afford that if they can't get up to being profitable, and whether that's 6090, you know, four months that they know that it's not going to work out.

Shawn Flynn 25:26

And then for a CEO or a startup founder, what's the one piece of advice, most most powerful advice you could give them?

phil 25:36

Don't be afraid to go out and talk to your prospective clients. It's the only way

Shawn Flynn 25:40

right and Phil, we got a minute left. Could you tell the audience once again, how they can reach you

what type of consulting you do your ideal client, all that all that jazz?

phil 25:51

Yes, certainly,

my clients are. Typically b2b clients are almost exclusively actually. And they took basically, occasionally it'll be an individual CEO who's got something working really well. And they're ready to hire two or three people because they not only know what they're doing, but they're ready to externalize it so they can bring people on but typically it's three or four sales people up to about 40 above that it's very complicated to change fundamentally how they're approaching things

if they want to reach me my email address because I love to have coffees with people you can tell I'm kind of enthusiastic about the topic and they can just email me at Phil at Oprah partners. com. Could you spell that out, please? Certainly. That's o p. r EU partners, all one word.com.

Shawn Flynn 26:42

That's great. And Phil, I want to thank you for for coming on Silicon Valley successes. This is an amazing episode and there's a ton of great information so everyone at home. Our next guest is Ralph Lauren, who is former investment banker who founded 88 ships. So we look forward to for Next Episode. Thank you guys.

Show Announcer 27:04

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Landlords and Overseas Startups pt 4 of 4 Ep 8

0:00

So can a tenant in negotiation ever ask, say, Hey, we don't have money, we want to give you equity in our company. Does that come up a lot

0:08

that came up in the early 90s when I was working for prologue just and some other, you know, counselor

0:13

told me a story there.

0:15

No, I just know that they that that's been a discussion, it's not something that they would always do. Okay. But potentially that came up quite a bit. Yeah.

0:26

Is that happened now that are you said back in well.com time. But

0:30

yeah, I think landlords a little more cautious because they you know, they could have been burned in the past with a lot of that. And they may have new guidelines to that that's not really their core business. So they should just be doing what they're supposed to be doing. And not not investing necessarily in their tenants business. But I know that some do.

0:49

So search, some you got to understand are some that are smaller landlords, they may take a risk big land or the institutional guys I have multiple tenants in your office building, that probably is not going to happen.

0:59

Right. Okay. Interested? So some of our viewers are overseas and countries such as China and Korea all over the world, how's it different for them? When they come to Silicon Valley? What questions should they be asking? I mean, they don't have a US credit history, they may not have a credit history at all, depending on where they're from, how does how did they go about finding a location?

1:21

Well, they partner up with folks like us, who can help us help identify where they would like to be. And this is after we find out you know more about them and more details about them. But, you know,

1:34

I have a group I'm working with right now. And it's just investigation as you go day by day, you know, because sometimes you're dealing with them on a whole different time frame, you know, like, I'm, I'm having conference calls at nine o'clock at night. Yeah. Which is like, their, their morning or Yeah, so you just try to accommodate and figure out what they're looking for. And when they're here, ask them as many questions as you possibly can on on, you know, how are you? How are you established already? Are you a California Corporation? Have you incorporated yet? What's the process that you're going about right now, in terms of how you're going to finance this operation? And

2:16

so if I'm a company from will say, Ukraine from unit city from mats area, who is a guest earlier and I come to Silicon Valley from day one, I found a location How long does it take from when I when I decide to location, or when I connect with you to start looking for a location to sign a lease to be able to move in? Can this be done in a month? Or is it a lot longer, lot shorter?

2:44

Yeah, I don't think a month will do it, in my opinion, depending on how ready their company is overseas. Because I work with a lot of companies overseas, that are just not aware of what the due diligence requirement from a landlord tenant are in a landlord. A lot of landlords, you know, sincerely coming from overseas, that level of trust is not as strong as a local company.

3:04

And it takes them time because they're traveling back and forth. And when they're here, they're seeing things, but then they go back, and then they're reporting their directors. And then maybe those folks need to come out and see the property. And there's, there's a lot of back and forth, back and forth, that initially can happen in the first two to three months of helping this client even identify space. So you'd recommend an overseas founder, one, one of the people on his team to come to Silicon Valley, meet a broker, build that relationship on maybe trip one

3:32

trip to come see a few locations, Chip number three, kind of make the decision and then trip for I mean, that's, that's normal. That's normal.

3:43

Yeah, and I would say anywhere from two to six months. But I, you know, it depends how large of a company you're dealing with to. And sometimes you can find a space immediately if it's, you know,

3:52

maybe it was a smaller space, and you've got a growing company, 10 employees, 20 employees, we've got plenty of options may not do take too long, you get into some bigger size requirements. And then, you know, you want to give yourself a longer window, do anyone from overseas come here with completely off the wall expectations, you know, I want this office, I'll pay this much you go, I'm sorry. That's, that's the price of a chair it Do you ever come across that

4:19

I do. I mean, like, it's not way off. But it's more like, you know, the send somebody else that's not really and real estate or tenant space acquisition environment, they may send somebody from marketing or something, and they may not know what the landlord expecting or how to work with a broker. So there's a lot of back and forth, and we try to help them prepare by telling them that we need access, or the landlord needs to look at your financials and your business plan and that sort of thing. And so they have to be ready to provide that kind of material

4:52

is there any like vocabulary, these, you know, price per square foot or things like that, that if they know before meeting, you could say they have a lot of time?

5:04

Well, you know, a lot of time we're educating them on the on these buzzwords like ti was, you know, tenant improvement. And sometimes we just say, you know, we're kind of tip looking for, and they don't the tenant improvement. And that's important because one client of mine wanted a lab within their

5:22

part of their r&d operation. So then I was asking them about the kind of power that they might be, you know, power needs that they might have. And he he wasn't so sure about that. So that's pretty critical. Because if you're going to do a lot have a lab component, you may need 200 to 400 amps of power in your space. So it's important because then now he'll go back and ask the key questions that he needs to be able to do you ever give potential tenants a list of questions and you

5:49

say, answer all these before the next time we talk? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. What up? What advice would you give a founder out there that hasn't found any office space yet that's still working at home on when they first talked to landlords or what they should be thinking of other than what we've already talked about. So far, we've talked about location of your employees, we've talked about transportation, we've talked about lease options. We've talked about talking to brokers who can make introductions, and this is all amazing. what's what's border to know.

6:21

Another thing that I like to do is recommend a good business attorney. Oh, because, as you know, we're here to help with this least process from start to finish. But when you get into the business points of the lease agreement on what you've negotiated in terms, there's also the boilerplate language within the Leafs and if you're if you know, foreign company company here, you're not really familiar with a lot of leafs language, okay, highly advise that they use business attorneys to review this documentation because we're not attorneys, you know, we help negotiate these deals, but to protect them, that's just an important part. Do you have a business attorney Do you need a reference to a good local real estate attorney Have you see a when that because they didn't have an attorney got in some hot water later on,

7:07

not too much hot water, that

7:09

never really hot water, but it's just something that they, you know, it's not easy language for them to review on their own. Yeah. Okay. And so they should have a second pair of eyes to take a look at that and what their needs are.

7:20

And Carlos, what advice would you give to a founder

7:24

before you met them, you know, any information you wish to pass on to someone,

7:30

as far as leases are concerned, most epic both seem to think about their distributed strategic location where they want to be and if it fits their needs. I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean,

7:42

I think that they allow them made think that they need a certain thing, but a lot of times, it's better for them to be in a shared environment, or maybe find somebody that has a complimentary type of business with them, that they can go in together, there might provide some synergy to them, and you can make those kind of introductions as well.

8:00

That's great. And married before time runs out. Yes, please talk about how people can contact you and a little brief overview of yourself for more time.

8:08

Sure. So again, Mary blazer. I'm with Newmark Knight Frank and folks can reach me at my email which is m blazer at n g. k. f.com

8:19

we have our company website WWW dot NGK f.com as well.

8:24

Carlos Carlos Toronto Kwan, one number 415-608-8409 and we have dedicated 10 representation agents in my firm.

8:34

That's great. So Mary Carlos, I want to thank you guys for taking the time coming here on Silicon Valley successes and people at home. For further information, please visit our website. Silicon Valley successes comm check us out on YouTube, Facebook, and all the other social media and we hope that you got a lot out of this. And in the future we're going to have more guests from investment bankers, bookkeepers, we have some amazing founders coming up with in the next few episodes. So we look forward to your future attendance. And thank you again for taking the time to to watch.

9:11

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Office Space Options and Startups Pt 3 of 4 Ep 8

0:00

as so. So back to the startups themselves, when you interview them? How do you know that they're financially qualified or fit for that for that landlord? Is it they're about to raise their next round of funding, they have money in the bank, or they're talking to investors kind of what stages Could they be at for them to actually have a serious conversation? And do you turn any companies down?

0:25

Typically, I tell my clients that these landlords are looking for a profit machine, a balance sheet and income statement for the last three months, usually for the last two years, but they don't have two years worth of that kind of information. But whatever they can provide. So they're angel investing who their backers are okay, if some big name backers, or an angel that would have VCs, that helps a lot, right. And also, if they have money in the bank, so that they can show they've got so much cash in a bank account that they can support landlord just want to make sure they're going to pay their rent or whatever obligation of service that they have. Because you know, a lot of startups to burn through cash, they've got a high burn rate. So the landlords just want to make sure that because they're investing in that company, when you think about it, yeah, it's, you know, it's money that they're generating every month. And so they want to make sure they're going to pay their bills. And then there's personal guarantees that are often asked for, okay, from startups.

1:21

So with that personal guarantee, say, I'm the founder of the company, is it me and my whole team that's guaranteed Is it just me and the other co founders, the what's the guarantee on

1:30

it's usually a personal guarantee, it could be a person who is one of the corporate officers who would be willing to guarantee the least people are not always that inclined to want to do that, and put their own assets on the line. So sometimes they'll ask for a letter of credit, or an increased security deposit is another option, right. So, you know, they really want to just try to cover upfront costs, like commissions, tenant improvements, any sort of concessions that have been given to these startup companies,

2:00

tell me about the tenant improvements, exactly what that is. And before answering that, so on to make another statement. If you want more information on this or any other topics we've covered, please visit us at Silicon Valley successes. com was Silicon Valley successes, calm right back to you. So what's tenant improvements,

2:18

I'll turn it on purpose, really the the criteria and the preparation of the space for the tenant to operate in their own business operations. So it's a matter of, for example, putting up walls, putting up offices, conference rooms, it could be a kitchen at it could be something like that. So it really up to the specs and design of the tenant. And then that will be negotiated with the landlord who pays for what how much of free rent that they can get. And that's where this is where the brokerage come in. And you can negotiate that on behalf of the 10 and the landlord. So the broker

2:52

come in and you go to the broker, listen, I want one month free rent, or three months for your and what's common, and what areas can a broker negotiate for the landlord or the tenant?

3:03

Well, in a tight market where the rents are really high, and it's very competitive, landlords can call the shots if they don't want to give free rent. They don't have to give free rent in a softer market, I would say one month of free rent for every, you know, two years or two months free rent for a three to five year type term. But that would be really saying a corporation that right? I mean, just a start up what's a typical startup? least six months? A year? Two years? I would say about a year,

3:28

yes, about 12 months, okay.

3:30

And if, say, 11 months in the startup goes, you know, we're have to file for bankruptcy. Sorry, that personal gain T, I really have no money because I spent all the startup what happens that?

3:42

Well, we as brokers can help to market the space and try to get another tenant to backfill and take that obligation off of the tenant. Technically, they're still obligated until we can, you know, relate the space, we can tell the landlord landlord may have another tenant because they do a lot of marketing as well. Some of them, they may have someone that might want to just backfill that space. So it just really getting the word out and trying to help these people and and make it as painless as possible. Do landlords every go to tenants and go listen, I have someone else that wants to pay more than what you guys are currently paying. I'll give you some money. If you leave.

4:17

That's happened. It could happen. Yeah, a lot of times, what happens now is that, you know, the climate is very kind of like, unpredictable. So you have a lot of tenants that are either downsizing or they're expanding. And so they need new space, it may want to abandon the current space, so we can help sublease that space as well. And if they need to leave early, then we can help them something except space as well. So really determines a lot of our communication between us brokers and the tenants and allows Mike Phillips and as well, so how often should the tenant be talking to you every three, four months or monthly, I recommend it because I put a client in a space back in October, and by May of the following year, we were looking for new people, then they had signed a one year lease obligations. So every couple months is a good idea to be just on the chicken them. So you

5:06

say your broker is actually part of you, your team, almost like your lawyer, your accountant, bookkeeper, that one guy always they're looking for that next operator space for you?

5:15

Well, yeah, it's all about relationships. And you want to start early on having these relationships that hopefully build into longer future relationships and growth that you're helping them to achieve. Because I, you know, I've had a client that started small and about 1200 square feet, they, I then expanded them to, like 5000 square feet, and then they move to 15,000, now they're in 30,000, it's just a great success story. So you love when you can stay on that path with them and be in touch with them and, and help them in their growth, especially with

5:42

the amount of people that they're bringing on and their space needs to drastically change when they get to those levels of needing bigger space to brokers also make other introductions to maybe to investors or potential business partners or to brokers ever reach out to their personal network and say, Hey, I have this startup here. I'd like to introduce you to is that ever happened?

6:05

Yeah, that's a good that's a great question. Actually, for me, I do because I take an interest in the tenant, I take an interest in a company because I've learned a lot through the process of helping them qualify. And then in that process, I actually asked them, you guys need help with funding, when's your next event would you like to be close to another type of 10 our type of investors because we'll know who's in a building or who's nearby and so we I like to connect them and it makes sure that they're also successful nervous as hopefully we play a role in that because a stressful 10 that will be a successful future business and they might grow and we can help them there as well. And then the lender will also help out because they will know that the they want their tenant to be financially successful so they can, you know, grow and take care of their property.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Location Matters Pt 2 of 4 Ep8 Startups and Office

0:00

So I have six employees, for example, and I would come to you and go, we need to move out of my apartment to an actual location right now, you would tell me, you know, this is where your next hires might come from these, these these companies, this is where your current employees live. And this would be the best commuting routes. What other information could you give me?

0:21

Well, I mean, what I would really give them as help them prepare for potential space that they're interested in, they may not know that it requires financial qualifications, as well as a business plan, as well as a personal guarantee because Atlanta are looking for a tenant as fully qualified and fits in their building. So it's a lot of preparation work that you have to do with a startup and they might not be aware of they can do you think they might be just like signing a residential lease, but it's quite different is more of a business relationship. And there's a fit with the building as well.

0:53

So you go into more detail about that in Mary, you'd like to add, because I really have no idea about this business really relationship, please tell me more about it.

1:02

Well, from a business relationship perspective, you know, we have our fellow brokers, and that we do a lot of work with, we have the ownership of buildings that we have relationships with, and other, you know, real estate professionals. So we have sort of this inside track on what's happening, and we're on the pulse of the market. So when these companies come along, and they're looking for space, we know, for example, a space that may have just been vacated, or something that's maybe going to come to the market that's not technically being marketed and available to just the mass

1:32

the public. And that's because, you know, the owner of that building, or the landlord, and, you know, the last person's least as six months from now, a year from now,

1:40

right. So we're, you know, that's our job to be real estate, to know what's going on in the market, so that we can service these clients to the best of our ability. And I think that it definitely helps to add value. Because when you think about these, these decision makers of these companies, and how much time they're trying to put into running their startup, you know, it's a lot of time and communication and trying to identify properties in the market. So if you're reaching out to professionals like Carlos and I, to help them identify the properties that could be well located and suited, and help them with understanding all these business points that need to be negotiated in disgust, it'll help save them a lot of time and effort now is the difference from a startup coming

2:20

from another state to Silicon Valley verse in other country to Silicon Valley of what types of problems or situations do the different startups depending on where they come from face when they come to Silicon Valley, I

2:33

think is pretty much the same thing. I think there's an expectation of

2:38

what the land or requires of them, I mean, a lot of them, for example, I experienced with the folks that are doing drones, so they have big, large propellers, or some of them are doing robotics that needs space where they can go down the aisle and these type of things, and they don't know what locations will allow that kind of a usage. So there's certain type of usage, for example, PDF, our production, production, distribution, repair some of the industrial kind of zoning and warehouses that can actually have offices in there as well. So the these are the type of usage is that some of these startups will require their your typical office won't have that type of availability. So

3:17

right. So for example, a client like that might go into an r amp D facility as opposed to a facility with

3:23

research and development, right.

3:24

And so in those types of buildings, you're going to have power requirements that can be different than your typical office building. So with their technology, they may need, for example, some higher amperage in power 400 amps, or up to 1000, and it just depends but they need but that's, you know, we need to ask those questions and, and help them figure out what their needs are. From that perspective. Clear, high rise building high ceilings will look toward the shortage archive doors for deliveries.

3:57

So how much do you actually have to know of the startup what they're doing their product, what they're working on in order to give them the best option for them?

4:05

Well, we that's a really good question actually. Because what I do, Mary is I might actually go visit them first, make sure to qualify First of all, and they say who they are, they say because I will on behalf of the land or the owner of the building, I actually have to go to a site visit and we're currently located they have a current location, understand your operation and see if it's a fit for them, or what's a fit interested.

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Leases, Landlords and Startups Part 1of 4 Ep 8 Startups and Office Space

0:04 

Welcome to Silicon Valley Successes, we interview experts and entrepreneurs to get the world access to the knowledge and experience that is here in Silicon Valley. Our mission is to create opportunities for those who seek them and help you to become the next Silicon Valley success.

 0:23  

Welcome to Silicon Valley Successes. So over the last few weeks, we've talked with investment bankers, we've talked with marketing experts. We even talked to a founder of an amazing start up here in Silicon Valley. Now, today we have two guests, Mary and Carlos, who work with startups to help them find office space or to help them get from their their garage or their living room to a physical location. But let I'll let them introduce themselves a little bit more. Mary, could you first introduce yourself and then Carlos? Sure. Hi, good evening, Shawn, thank you for inviting us to your show. Thank you Is my honor it

 1:00 

Thank you. So my name is Mary blazer and I'm a commercial real estate agent. I worked for Newmark Knight Frank, formerly new Mark Cornish and carry so Cornish and carry was a boutique firm. Here in Northern California. We merged with Newmark Knight Frank. So we're now in about six continents with over 400 offices. So it's given us a bigger global platform to be able to service clients, especially those clients that are startups coming from foreign countries that need to come here in the Bay Area and establish you know, working opportunities for themselves for their for their startup businesses, and I've enjoyed a 30 plus career and my specialty is the leasing and sales of office and industrial properties here in Silicon Valley. Wow. Carlos, please introduce yourself. Thank you Shawn. My name is Carlos Serreno-Quan, the managing director of American real estate and we were formed last year with the partnership between virtual holdings as well as AGI capital. And so we specialize in leasing tenant representation and

 2:00 

As long as well as land or representation, we have offices in Berlin game, Palo Alto, in San Francisco as well. Okay, so to start, let's have a quick question for you. So what issues do startups face when they're looking for office space?

 2:17 

Well, some of their issues are that they, it's hard for them to figure out how fast they're potentially going to be growing. So finding that right sized space is initially a concern for them, okay, you know, you could lease a space that potentially is too small, that doesn't have enough breakout rooms, you create more noise, and then it you know, it creates some inefficiencies with how you flow in that space, okay, or you could take a space that's potentially too large, and then you've just got all these overhead costs that you're paying for, that you don't necessarily need. So I think finding that right sized space for startups and assisting them in that effort is is something that's pretty critical for a startup company. So with that, right, say space, say at a team of four.

 3:00 

People are six people right now. And I came to you is that too early to talk to someone else at the right time? Or once did that first conversation v

 3:10 

that time? Is it isn't it an important time? Because there are small spaces that can still accommodate that team that size team of people, okay? And then it's just determining from that point on at what future point are you going to double your size or triple your size. So when you're looking for space, you might want to be thinking about how long of a term you're going to be in that one first space okay, that'll last you through that period of time and then moving on to the next so with that I'm just going to keep going with this one question just because there's so much to it

 3:44 

from one term to the next is that a normal six month one year how flexible is that so for some of the like Regis centers, executive suites, places where you can rent on a month to month basis, you could probably do something

 4:00 

Short term most landlords and typical office space, I'd say that the minimum terms are about a year. Generally they would like a longer term lease. But if they've got the ability to move and expand tenants within their building or their project, then some landlords are typically a little bit more flexible than others. It just depends on the size.

 4:20 

But as far as term, it just really depends too. On which landlord in the valley you're dealing with. So with the landlord in the valley, be flexible if they know your startup or not. Oh, yes, they would. Sure.

 4:32 

And, Carlos, if you had this same experience when with issues that that startups might face when when looking for an office. Sure, in my experience, it's really about the right location to attract the right talent as well as being a facility where investors may be as well so for example, I know that talent acquisition for startups as is really challenging and so they need to be an area where transportation tools

 5:00 

Location is actually very attractive to allow their future employees or current founders and teams of that nature because have to get together frequently. So it could be something near bar something the Caltrain it could be anywhere from San Francisco to Palo Alto. But it has to be somewhere where it's easily accessible or some something like that, but also to be an area where their investors can use you go to so we're ready to pitch events, etc. and that sort of thing is a really big consideration as well. So when you're showing potential locations to start up, do you actually tell them that they say this offices that are available and you know, nearby are frequent pitch events nearby, or these VCs are these Angel groups. That's why this office space might be a good fit for you. Yeah, I think that's where we can be helpful at brokers to the businesses as well as, you know, the type of business that they may have. It could be a blockchain, it could be a real estate tech startup. It could be anything other startups that

 6:00 

We are familiar with the community. And we know our own group of investors might be interested as well. And they get excited when they hear that, that we know what their needs are. Yes. And one of the things are from can do is we can, we can tour them in the markets. But we can also show them aerial maps of what companies are located in the areas where they would are potentially looking to go. So, you know, if they're trying to interview or recruit people, potentially from other competitive companies, they'll know where they'd like to potentially be located. So if I was a startup, and I knew I wanted engineers from maybe Google or Facebook, I would come to you and you go, Oh, well, if you want to recruit from these companies, a good office building potential might be in this area because they're already used to making that commute every day and go into your office wouldn't be right that's nice. I've never heard that before. And also they're looking at the demographics to of where their employees technically live, okay, and how close they're going to need to be in proximity to where they want to work. So that's

 7:00 

Another absolutely important we can do

 7:03 

we can run demographic studies for them by zip code, you know if they give me their the weather each of their employees live we can kind of map it out for them so they can also from another perspective, try to find a location that suits everyone's needs.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

A Real Startup Founder

Maya Bio and info

 Dr. Maya Ackerman, CEO/Co-Founder of WaveAI, highly-regarded computer science professor, leading expert on computer creativity, and opera singer, is upending the songwriting industry with the first AI-based technology that makes songwriting widely accessible to everyone. Dr. Ackerman’s research allowed her to develop ALYSIA (www.withalysia.com), a machine-learning based system that allows anyone, regardless of their musical expertise, to create original songs in minutes.

By developing new AI technology that makes songwriting widely accessible, Dr. Ackerman and her team at WaveAI stand to revolutionize the music industry, spanning from classical to electronic music. Her team is currently putting together the world’s first opera set to computer generated songs. Dr. Ackerman specializes in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Computational Creativity with over 26 publications in leading venues. She  has been on the program committee of all leading AI conferences and journals and won numerous awards for her research. 

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

A Real Startup Founder Pt 4 of 4

0:00

How was that switch with your co founders from going from a colleagues at the university to now kind of being their boss.

0:07

So my co founders, I think that's that. And everybody says that co founders are key. And getting along with your co founders is life or death. Okay? Is everything and I love my co founders. We were doing the advice and some point that we're doing a yc videos. Yeah. And we found ourselves having somewhere so much fun doing it that we almost put in bloopers. So this there is nothing more important than just fundamentally getting along with them. Okay. And is there any problems, any disagreements treated like, like a marriage, solve the problems talk it out, cuz you want to get back to smooth as quickly as you possibly can? Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's Central. The fact that my co founders and are such a great team. We're great as a as a three people. And we're also great in Paris. Okay,

0:54

that really helps what happens when you want to add people to your team? How have you gone about doing that? Because I'm a three person teams not going to make a billion dollar business, I may come close. But I mean, how have you gone about adding new people was thought process been to add new people to the team. So hiring is is very, very complicated.

1:14

It definitely, definitely much easier when you have more resources, been noticing, it's no surprise for anybody. But you really can get some good people before you have resources to work for equity, happily, what does that look like when you talk to them. So it's not it's a process. So for example, we're very, very fortunate to have a producer sound designer Dustin Morag there who joined very early and what I did what I felt comfortable doing, and it's actually something that I learned as a professor trial periods. Yeah. So even though we had hardly any money, okay, we gave him a little bit of money to do a one month contract to see how we get along before giving equity. Yeah,

1:51

and that was a very, very smart way to go. Yeah, that is trial period. Money than equity.

1:56

Yeah. Because if you can afford money, or thrive, by all means, why don't you know, until then, he's been fantastic. He's just there, you know, really there with us, really, one of us really wanting to see the company succeed in any way, help in any way possible. And those are the kind of people you want, people are gonna be like, I'm doing x, y, z, period, because that's because it's a startup. And if you guys are, you know, we stay up to three o'clock in the morning regularly. This is just this just a regular life. Somebody asked us recently, actually a really good friend. So what are your soft hours? Like, we plan time off? We don't plan time on Yeah, look like, okay, we're getting burnt out. We need an hour off. Okay. How does that look for, for the team to come together and say, guys, we need to just rest a little bit or does that not even happen? People always go, go, go. I mean, when do you see that burnout? Well, if we are, you know, getting very tired with a lot of time, all three of us were starting to get migraines. Oh, we were right.

2:50

I get migraines all the time. And my co founders don't say it was very kind of, I thought, Okay, guys, let's, I think, you know, next weekend, let's take it easier, not working as much. Okay, just so we can reset. You know, we need ourselves to be healthy. So that kind of moderation, but also we really care about each other. So we don't want to push each other to, you know, too far either. We know that we care so much. We're going to do whatever we can anyway. So would you say once you do a startup, like truly do a start, there's really no work life balance or

3:21

work life balance? That's hilarious.

3:23

I think that says it all.

3:26

What type of time commitment is a startup? I mean, for people that think it's all glory,

3:30

glory, somebody thinks it's all glory. I think a lot of people do. Awesome. Yeah,

3:34

I should have a nice, yeah, I live on a boat. There you go

3:37

live on a boat. I think if your goal is to live on a boat, they're much better ways to get

3:44

easier ways to make money, Silicon Valley much easier ways. But it's not. It's not about it's not about the money because money is part of it. It's a package deal. Because you can't succeed with a startup. You don't care about money, fundamentally, right? But if you just care about the money, there are better ways.

4:02

Okay, let's go back. So right now, finding investors where the next steps for you, what are you working on your finishing up our round? Okay, that's, that's really, really exciting. Did you go I know, you can't go into too much detail. But can you talk about that, that that process of presented pitch decks, getting that together meet investors that a little bit more detail.

4:23

Honestly, I've never given the same talk so many times in my life. What's really amazing is that when I look at you, and I'm about to tell you about my company, I forget everything ever said about it. And I just want to explain to Sean what I've done. Oh, gotta keep it fresh. Otherwise, you're gonna die from board. But Ok. Ok. More seriously. Um, we had a lot to learn pitching is I mean, I've done academic talks for such a long time, you know, I've been in the media talking as part of what I do, you know, I'm also a singer. So, like, I live on stage, but it's a is very, very specific. You want to effectively communicate, and that's really important, your business, not your product. Okay. That was a big learning curve for me. Okay. So your product, wasn't it? So your business, right? It's about the team. It's about how are you going to make money, it's about your competitive landscape. And I'm the founder, you know, I know that this is unique, there's nothing like it. It's amazing. It's the best thing since sliced bread, in fact, quite a bit better.

5:24

But other people don't know that. And you have to be patient and careful and explain to them why your business is the most amazing thing in a way that they can understand. So are you adjusting this pitch based on the investor you're talking to them

5:38

a little bit about a lot of it has come off from feedback, tell me about the feedback.

5:43

So at first,

5:46

at first, it was difficult at first, it was your professor now someone's telling them professor, they could be wrong or change

5:53

as professors, you get used to accepting criticism. In fact, the professor is our one of the few people who readily say, okay, you're right, if you give them a good argument, but what I wasn't used to it was more the culture of it, I supposed to go. There's a lot to the culture of startups a lot of how you're supposed to behave when you talk to investors, just so that it fits what they're expecting,

6:15

will say one or two things of how very a beer because we're running a little bit at a time, what information do you wish someone had given you at the beginning of your journey that you know now, but you wish you had known at the beginning? Um,

6:27

yeah, there's a lot,

6:30

I'm going to even start. So we're pivoting for example. Okay. So that was something you know, I mean, I suppose everybody would have liked to know, their final pivot all the way in the beginning. But that came out of a long list of meetings with investors were finally we had an outstanding meeting or felt like somebody somebody was able to explain to us why our market was too small. Finally, they could explain it. Well, we were going to make plugins and somebody explained to us that the most success successful plugin of all time was very far from a billion dollar company. And we felt from the beginning the different products because it could work for everybody. And so we made a massive pivots remade our whole product from scratch. Wow. And created something so that anybody can write a song and five minutes so you don't have to, you have to have like, really zero expertise. Maya, can you tell everyone how they can reach you and your beta test one more time? Absolutely. So you can reach me at what actually all the information is on our website at with elisa.com A li si K. That's the spelling of Elisa, the with elisa.com. You can sign up for the beta, my contact information is there happy to hear from you. Oh,

7:37

so Maya, I really want to thank you for coming on Silicon Valley successes. And for anyone at home that wants more information on the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem. get in contact with any of our guests writing, please visit our website. Silicon Valley successes, calm our next interview is fascinating. We have two people that are going to talk about startups, leases, office space do's and don'ts and things to be careful of. So it's a very important meeting and I look to see you there. All right. Take care.

8:07

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes. com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember, we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

A Real Startup Founder Pt 3 of 4

0:00

Let's go back to my my dad told me about that investor meeting that was I was so excited. And I remember what was

0:07

I felt like suddenly it could be real. Okay. I remember being unable to sleep. I remember being very nervous before talking to Eric on the phone. Okay. Eric doesn't know that

0:15

when you are going to talk to him on the phone. Did you know like, I'm gonna ask him for money? Or I'm gonna ask him to mentor Did you have any idea what you're gonna say, knew that investors give money. That's all I knew. back then. I didn't realize that they can be amazing mentors, I was gonna learn some of the best information from them. Okay. Um, I really didn't know it was it was kind of honest. But what I noticed is how nervous and excited I was about now this information that they could teach you. I mean, you're a professor of machine learning, is it more skills? Or is it more just business? Is it more connections? What type of information can they give you?

0:48

Well, really, all of the above I'm doing a startup is, um, it's different. It's kind of it's some of the skills of being a professor. transferable experience in managing people. I've experienced, inspiring people doing original ideas, getting projects to completion lot about a startup about the business ecosystem, about the culture, even Oh, how you relate as business people, he's not the same way that you relate to your colleagues. For example, I will never forget how interested in an investor meeting that was going very well. Yeah, the investor asked me to brag about myself, okay. And that really threw me off

1:23

because it's just in academia, you know, personal, you know, you're talking to, okay,

1:27

based on their research papers, or their titles,

1:29

like credential these like, you shouldn't have to tell anybody that you are an amazing researcher, that you've done some really important work that you know, that you're on the committee's reviewing on all the most important conferences and journal reviews, okay, for AI. Because for me, people that are taught in academia know that about me, they know they've done find that foundational work in clustering, they hear me talk for 10 minutes about my work. They know I'm amazing. So I don't have to say six, like, okay, but the startup ecosystem brand new, I mean, they're not in my world

2:00

didn't connect on LinkedIn with you.

2:01

They're not Sean.

2:07

And also they're not in my industry, they might not know what does it mean to be a computer science professor? How does it How is it different from just having a PhD world of a difference, but it's not fair of me to expect them all to know that Okay,

2:19

so you would you say that startup founders might have difficulty bragging about that, or, or selling themselves, you just have to be honest about who you are, and understand that investors are not in your world, you simply need to tell them who you are in the clearest way possible. Okay, if people want more information on that, look at the episode where we interviewed doors from Silicon Valley speaks she a lot of great information on your presentation. But my please talk a little bit more about your encounter with investors. And what's happened since then. So this was this was a long time ago, so called capital really helped us get started. And it made it real. So I had a lot of super basic questions like, how do I open an entity? What kind of documents design is really simple?

3:02

Yeah, but it's at first, it seems so obvious right now, it seems so obvious. But back then you have zero experience with it. Nobody around you had any experience with it. When you go online, you get a whole bunch of controversial opinions. That's the biggest problems was just googling you just get these extreme of people being sensational and arguing really unusual perspectives. Yeah. When you just want the basics, okay. And books are often outdated. Yes.

3:25

So I really found myself in this state where I needed the advice of real people, okay. And the mentors are that investor was the one giving you this real advice, yes. How'd you know you could trust the investor and or not?

3:37

Um, for the most part, I mean, I think I think part of it was that we were lucky we really had a person who had our best interest in mind, who really believed in what we were doing overtime, I did learn pretty after a few months that people really have different perspectives. Okay. But I do think that he he really helped us get started on the right foot. Okay.

3:55

And then a few things in a few ways. We also got lucky. So we got a good lawyer pretty quickly. Okay,

4:01

so right now I five question the very often call my lawyer, we have them on retainer. Huge, amazing resource of the people I get along with really well, oh, what resources Did you outsource or go for? That's really up to the team, a lawyer on retainer, an investor, that's a great mentor,

4:19

because we have more, we also eventually you need to go back and look at your own network. In fact, that would be a better place to start. And I know better. So kind of the burger, who is it's been a longtime friend and colleague, he's started 15 businesses, and many of which are successful up IPOs and sold very well. So he is right now our advisor, okay, so how you go about finding your advisors. So it's the he was in our network, and it's so it's sometimes even if you're pretty well connected, you might not people are drawn to business, sometimes they're not used to even using their own network, because you're not used to thinking like that because in regular jobs, even in the professor job, which is fairly flexible, it's somewhat similar to having a business it's a lot more structured, we don't even realize how much structure there is, in our lives. I told there is nobody above you and your company, there is nobody to blame. There is nobody to you know, there is nobody to share the well I have co founders but still there is nobody above me. Yeah,

5:16

then I can sort of defer to Well howdy how that switch go from being the professor where you had people you had to report to, to now being the boss, how was that transition? It's,

5:26

um, it's very interesting.

5:30

Overall, I think I like and I think it's, it's who I am. And it's a kind of very kind of healthy progression in my career. Okay.

5:37

But in a way, there is a very interesting self redefinition that happens it's very profound, okay. I found a lot of time finding myself thinking feel like I'm rediscovering who I am.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

A Real Startup Founder Pt 2 of 4

0:00

Then what was the tipping point that you're like, Okay, there's so much demand, I gotta do this. You know, the one advice I would give people is to move faster. Okay? Because in the beginning, I didn't do a startup to do a startup. Let's, let's make that perfectly clear. Okay, I did a start up because we discovered this thing. And the world has to have it. Okay. It has to have it. And the only people who know how to do it are the people who did it. So we have to do it. And I think that's the only reason to do a startup. how insanely difficult to do that if you have something that you must share with the world. Wow. So that's how it came about. And so to be honest, I realized this has to be a start up almost right away. Yeah, the moment I came up with an idea, and then we had the early prototype after about three months, I started using it. I remember this amazing day, when, how long ago was this? Just, what, three years ago?

0:53

Three years ago? Yeah, okay, go forward.

0:56

Yeah, okay. And I remember that evening, David and I were, by the way after that. We had Chris joined the startup as a founder, but this was very, very early was Chris roll white. Why bring him in. He was my students. And he started he got involved in festival research projects super early, okay, kept the project alive, kept to the growing until we finally decided to start up. So he got in on the ground. Okay. So three years ago, a group of three people came together because of all this demand for a paper that they wrote to actually make it a reality, basically. Yeah, but it was a project for two years. It was a research project at the moment that I realized it has to be a startup was when we had it. We had this very, very early prototype of Elisa and all it did back then. Which is amazing. And nobody's ever ever been able to do it before is to take lyrics. Yeah, any lyrics in English? Okay, and create vocal melodies for them. Well, let's say you type in it is so great to hang out with Sean that sounds a glaring exactly, okay, then it will give you a melody like, it's so great to hang out with Shawn, right. Or that's how I would assign.

2:00

So we got this original version, right? Yeah. And it was terrible. It was in a sense of, there was no user interface with displaying no to normal notation. It we had, like, number of corresponding to each node, and I took it down to my piano and barely managed to read Okay, to create that melody. Okay. But suddenly, I could write songs. Okay. And which I could never before I tried for three years, and I couldn't

2:24

solve the problem that you had. Yeah. Okay. And you knew other people would have the same problem? Yes. So. So team of three right now you're in Florida. When did you said to come to Silicon Valley? Why come to Silicon Valley? Why not go to Waterloo or someplace else?

2:40

That's right. I actually spent a year living in Silicon Valley before, what were you doing? I was I was actually a postdoc

2:48

at UC San Diego, and I commuted every week. Sounds like an amazing University, those alumni from the university probably top notch,

2:55

they are excellent. It was really one of the best years of my life, living in Los Gatos and flying every every week to San Diego. And the whole year I tried to figure out why do I prefer Los Gatos or San Diego and I couldn't decide the whole year

3:07

I mean UCSD alumni for the record. Okay,

3:10

that's right. I knew that. Okay. So.

3:13

So you were in Silicon Valley for a year teams in Florida, and you convinced them to move here. Why it's more it's so expensive here, compared to Florida,

3:21

it took a while It took a while to bring everybody over here. Actually, Chris just recently joined us, he already finished his master that Georgia Tech. Ok.

3:31

And now we're all finally here. It was a process, you know, everybody had to get jobs here at first, because you know, the startup you don't make any money at first. Okay, so if everyone's working, how are you able to do your startup? Was it people had nine to five, and then you guys worked at nights and weekends? How do you guys plan to actually move forward? What was kind of the process was

3:49

a research project for two years. So we did it on the side for a while. And then we decided that he stopped publishing papers about it. Okay,

3:56

and start actually what actually happened to us as an investment board. Okay, tell me about that. Well, how did you get that meeting with the investor has you get the funding? And what would that process look like, you know, think of a brand new startup, the advice you can give them for that,

4:10

you know,

4:12

my advice would be, don't wait for that investor. That actually would be my advice. My problem was, I didn't know how to start. There were no people in my life doing startups, okay. My parents are not business people. It's not, you know, I really don't come from the kind of background where you'd imagine me becoming a CEO. It was a very foreign concept.

4:34

And so I wanted to a few times we were thinking about six months into the research project that occurred to us to do a startup out of it. Okay. And we sort of tried to form it and it didn't completely catch on and we moved on why didn't catch on there wasn't a CEO or a leader of the group for didn't really I think we weren't ready. I think that was we just we didn't have that.

4:56

No, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to make up reasons. That point somehow it didn't stick. It's we knew we wanted to continue working on it. But it just stayed at the Richard project. And we didn't even officially decided to not do it a startup we just sort of, we had the synergy for a while. And I sort of dissipate it for a bit. And then I kept thinking about it more and more, I met up with this wonderful woman, her name is see mom helps helps a lot of women with branding and following their dreams. And she told me that I should go for it. If I'm thinking about it. That was kind of beautiful meeting. Okay. And then she invited me I give a lot of talks and panels and I gave them gave a panel talk at Silicon Valley, it's already in Silicon Valley of the professor already here and see, introduce me to somebody is there an investment group, okay,

5:42

and I gave them my card and I wasn't sure if there were ever gonna call me back it was very ad hoc when compared to the kind of serious fundraising we've been doing recently to this investor group was just a bunch of people in a room and then you present it wasn't just a dinner was it was

5:57

so ad hoc. We got in a way, if you look for so lucky. It was literally a quick introduction after my panel. Okay, I see my introduced me to this person. I'm not even sure if she really knew them. She said, he is Maya. She has an amazing idea for a startup. Yeah, I gave him a card and send a few weeks later. It was a big gap. he emailed me Yeah. Which is really amazing, given how busy investors are. Yeah. And then we met up and then he said, he'll introduce me to some early stage investors. Okay, he introduced

6:25

me to exactly one investor, kilowatt capital and they made it an early investment. Before we talked about that investment. I just wanted to mention that if you want more information on the testers, and a whole startup ecosystem here, please visit Silicon Valley successes, calm and information will be there and more so.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Ep 5 and 6 Aftershow Silicon Valley Successes

0:00

Alright, so now we're here in Silicon Valley successes after show and job, Matt, after being on the show, what things do you wish you had time to talk about why you're on this show that we didn't have time for? Matt, would you like to start?

0:16

Yeah, I am interested in your plans for the future channel, and what kind of event

0:29

is open,

0:34

it's coming back. For this channel itself. There is a lot of plans in the making know hackathons, but pitch events for startups to present their products live, hopefully, to overseas investors, or maybe to recruit engineers or talent that are interested or the opposite companies overseas that want access to the investors and mentors, the service providers in Silicon Valley just to create this bridge between the two bodies Silicon Valley outside Silicon Valley that that's kind of major goal of this show that trying to do you know what I would love to see

1:09

yes, when we have Ukrainian startups come out of our accelerators coming this way if you could somehow show their story as it unfolds

1:18

Oh

1:20

ok. We can

1:23

get them on the show present their product and and talk about a little snippets of their journey in Silicon Valley and presented

1:32

Yeah, you we get a lot of subscribers

1:37

celebrity and unit see

1:42

pictures on the wall.

1:43

Okay, job. What do you wish we had time to talk about?

1:50

I know what the I would have you talked about tools. Oh,

1:54

yeah.

1:54

Yeah, that's, that's what a few as

1:58

you know, when when I started. And as I was trying to really learn about social selling, that was one of the things that I found the hardest to try to learn from people who knew it. And I attended webinars and events and spoke to people and the people who really know what to do that stuff, they just want to upsell you. And so they they essentially just want to share knowledge to a certain extent, and then they kind of breaks down there and then they say, and for more,

2:30

please subscribe to my service. And so as I was getting into, it's like, I will never be like, so if somebody you're not,

2:37

you don't have an upsell right now

2:39

I actually I really don't and so to me you know this this

2:45

there's so many tools right and so you really have to focus on the ones that are most beneficial to you but then you know I'm extremely happy to essentially show people the blueprint of how I how I do things

2:59

okay so just sort of take a little bit about that blueprint now Yeah, of course

3:04

I mean this

3:06

so first thing right I mentioned that in the episode this want to record buffer there's another one called Hootsuite did they do essentially similar things they let you do you manage your social platforms and they let you do essentially creates a stream of content right? So that you don't have to sit there every minute of the day say, Okay, I need to tweet or post something

3:32

and then there's there's tools that help you identify influencers right, so this one, you know, that's called right relevance. It's an amazing tool. Nobody knows it, it's for free and it does have some some paid services but the the free version is absolutely fantastic, shows you great content to share. It shows you who's influential under specific keywords and helps you then reach out to those people

4:02

the second Yeah, what's the name again, right? relevance and then don't don't look at this episode. Live it down. Right. And then there's

4:11

there's another there's another one that I really like for sales people especially it's called a company ACC

4:19

pa and why I think of it as a spelling bee Yeah exactly. So a company gives you a profile of the person that you're about to meet right so it tells you what kind of social media profile says that person on Who does he or she worked for how long have they been working for at this particular place is there an overlap between other people you have in your network so

4:43

the link there is a

4:45

war it is so I didn't and so it's almost like like like you said this report card and as a sales person or even just as a business person when you step out of the car and you can still you know click on that button be better prepared and never social media to better engage with people so this this a lot of things like

5:08

yeah sweet buffer read Romans provide relevant a company

5:15

that that they're here

5:16

with, you actually did remember something. So I did not speak very much of a corporate pilots. Oh, so we have no problem with charging startups. They just love this startups all over unity. What I would like to see is more corporations so corporations that are big and slow moving and they want to innovate they don't necessarily know how now one important thing is to have that startup team that started partner actually off site because you know when there's a bear bear and a squirrel dancing This is a little little animals can get hurt. You want a little bit of distance you want to put the innovative people some distance and maybe Ukraine's a little far I agree but we have an accelerator by which to three months go by you develop an MVP together It looks good then they come this way.

6:15

Okay that's great. And then yeah thank you guys for your time I want to ask you more questions but both of you is there anything else either of you like that to

6:34

bring

6:35

startups

6:38

they'd be great can't wait to share it and all of Ukraine

6:42

follow us there and I will check social media tomorrow to see

6:48

to see the spike

6:50

great

6:54

job anything else? No I just really I think it's a great format a really nice and i think it's it's a really nice setup to to help people understand you know, some of the tricks you know that maybe you know startups can look for, you know, some some of the ways to make it easier to find start really good idea, right.

7:16

So thank you guys. Want more information, visit Silicon Valley successes, calm and please stay tuned for a new episode every week. Thank you.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

UKRAINE AND STARTUPS

The Bay Area representative of Ukraine’s largest tech innovation park, UNIT.City, Matt Lewis is a builder of bridges between Silicon Valley and Eastern Europe. On the one hand he acts as an advisor to US firms seeking talented engineering teams in Ukraine. On the other, he assists startups from Kiev and Moscow to set up operations in the Bay Area, secure customers and attract venture capital. He has some 15 years of experience investing in technology companies, including positions in equity research, private equity and portfolio management. He is also an organizer of private gatherings between VCs and startups through the Bay Area based organization, Silicon Valley Planet.

www.siliconvalleyplanet.com

Tour of UNIT.City

www.unit.city

https://udata.school/en.php

www.scrumduck.com

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Ukraine and Startups Ep 5 Part 4 of 4

0:00

So right now in Ukraine, other FinTech blockchain, what are the developers ahead of their? Yeah, on the forefront of.

0:08

Yeah. So they're their strongest verticals are technological verticals, not so much market. And I just want to stress this point. So Ukraine's shortcoming today is

0:22

a lack of entrepreneurial experience. My Cheryl is a fantastic entrepreneur, by the way, I'm so impressed by him, I have to say, and that part out yet

0:31

or

0:33

not flattering him, and I'm just so impressed.

0:37

But as far as technology goes, and engineering know how Ukraine is near the top. So that would be blockchain. That would be computer vision.

0:49

Let's see. That would be artificial intelligence. That would be Internet of Things. I'm sure I'm missing something. But there are four or five that we have really strong teams in. Okay.

1:01

I say, and what advice would you give to a founder in Ukraine before coming to Silicon Valley or advice you wish? So if you could pass on any, any one key thing of knowledge? What would it be?

1:16

I suppose I would try to engage in some long distance acclamation, I'd read up, I'd watched a lot of videos, like this video of her instance, I would, I would,

1:27

I would learn how VCs do business here. Okay, how did they do them different here than in Ukraine. And this is a gross generalization. Okay,

1:38

we got time,

1:41

I would say that typically, in that part of the world, business men want to control too much. They want to, they want to control absolutely everything, their employees, and they're not capable of sharing. They're not interested in sharing. They're afraid of sharing. Now, my there is the exact opposite of that. And that's why so unusual. He works through partnership. And that's how he grows his businesses, and how he manages risk as someone who's lived in that part of the world for so long. That is, I can tell you that is so unusual and so great to have shareholder like that for our art tech Innovation Park. So an investor invested in early stage companies, he going to try to acquire 60% of the company or when you're saying control it, could you go into a little bit more detail? Well, there, there are a number of venture capital firms in Ukraine, and they're good and they're plugged into Silicon Valley. So I'm not I'm not disparaging them at all. There's not enough of them. That's that. That's one problem. Not enough angels. But as I'm speaking about the founders, the typical businessman, if he's not plugged into the Silicon Valley way of doing things, if he's not trying to get here not educating himself and he's just doing business he just says a new enterprise,

3:03

often he'll want to control everything when he when he sells the company, he'll overprice it he'll want to sell 100% and make a killing immediately.

3:18

Yeah,

3:19

so

3:22

there's, there's a learning curve. Okay. Yeah, a cultural learning curve. Oh,

3:26

yeah, that is different. How about the presentations to pitch decks? And that when the companies come here, are they prepared? Or is that something that they have struggles with as well?

3:38

Yeah,

3:41

they're if they're a unit city, chances are the pitch decks look pretty good, because we have some really talented folks running our accelerators. We've got one gentleman who spent, I don't know, three, four or five years living in New York City. So there are the national mentors. Yeah, yeah, we have those. I my, my pet peeve is that they're too colorful, they're too busy. There's just so much graphic artistry going on. I can't see the words. So.

4:09

So with that, though,

4:12

like to give you some time, how can people contact you and tell them last little bit about unit city?

4:18

Right? Well,

4:21

you'll learn so much more about unit city by coming. And I know the majority of you aren't going to do that. So there will be a link in which you'll see our shareholder walking around the tech Innovation Park. And there's English subtitles below. That'll give you a great sense of what unit city is all about. Also, if you're interested in the events, and there will be some Ukrainian startups every once in a while. At these events. The the the site to check out is Silicon Valley planet. com.

4:49

Okay, can you say that one more time

4:51

Silicon Valley planet. com and unit city unit dot cities the domain name and there'll be a link showing the actual tour of the territory. Okay.

5:04

Yeah, yeah, we can have both those links at the bottom under your bio. Yeah, it's Silicon Valley successes. com America wonder how many times would say Silicon Valley and in a sentence. But with that would like to thank everyone for watching. I would also like to mention our next guest, who will be on the show jock, who is a social media expert. He will be talking about using LinkedIn, Facebook, and many other social medias to benefit your startup. So look forward to seeing you at the next episode. Once again, thank you, Matt. And thank you.

5:43

Thank you. From all of us at Silicon Valley successes. We hope you found the information presented today useful in your path to success. For further information on accessing the resources in Silicon Valley. You may visit us on the web at Silicon Valley successes.com on Facebook and YouTube. Thank you. And remember,

6:04

we want to help you in your journey to become the next success.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Stop Wasting Networking event Ep5 and Ep 6 Aftershow SVS

0:01 

Okay, Dawn, now that you've both been on Silicon Valley Successes, and we've been sitting here backstage, we've had a lot of great things to talk about. I just wanted to continue conversation as this is great information. I think a lot of startups and founders out there could benefit from. So continue talking.

 0:19 

Thanks. Okay. I was going to share that one of my observations with startups, especially when I was in Palo Alto is the is that the younger startups weren't as interested in getting in the vault involved in the chamber. But if it was a little bit older founder, so they had already gone to their first success. Now, they were working on their dream project, they really got a variety, they get the value they did, they really understood that the time investment, I mean, not the time necessarily, but the investment of resources was worth it. And they actually move the needle on some of their projects that way, you know, whether it was getting a whole town signed up for some new concepts that they had, or it was a new world restaurant product that they needed to take out. Now Palo Alto has some startup fatigue. So that's not a spot I would go to at this particular point. But Mountain View, they're still trying some things, maybe not in the restaurant space as much. But an older founder definitely can see the value a little bit more easily because they Dawn't feel like they have to reinvent the wheel, right?

 1:16 

And for me, I totally agree. And I also see that there is such a dearth of opinions out there, that if you're going to be a startup, it's inherently you're 20 years old, right? Right. And guess what, the, the baby boomers, it's a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge market. And there's a lot of baby boomers that are entrepreneurs and creating businesses. And they have the whole package, they have the business experience, they've seen it before, right. So I've always find it interesting, especially with the startups that I work with, that are the 2022 year olds, they're, they're missing so much of the wealth of information that they can get by thinking bit people over 30 have nothing about nothing to offer. And so to me, that's just, you know, do that at your own peril. Because a Not only is the expertise is the financial who's going to buy your services, right? If you're catering specifically to other 20 year olds, that front of the thing, but guess who's going to be buying your products, people that are over 30, right. Yeah, you know, Dawn't dismiss that, or,

 2:24 

and that's that, to add on to that. That is the value of a lot of the resources that we all have and can bring to the table is that we have a little bit more experience, and we can align you with people with experience for for the basic services that you need that you Dawn't really need to reinvent. There's not a value to reinventing, right? Yeah. What do you think, Shawn?

 2:45 

I agree with everything you said. And that just to talk to doors a little bit, what information do you wish you had mentioned on Silicon Valley Successes that maybe there wasn't time for that we didn't cover?

 2:57 

Well, I the only thing I can really think of is just some specific examples, perhaps, of people that I've worked with in the startup

 3:05 

specifically, because I work with a lot of different things, not just startups, but so one of the startups I worked with was an Chinese based company. And there is probably maybe 20 young, they are really young, there's a couple of founders that we're probably over 30, but most of them are 2022 year old Chinese. And it's an online program for education, where you can learn coding, and once you graduate program, Google, Facebook, apple, they're the ones that are going to hire these people. And so they're, they're teaching around the world. So they brought me and I did a four part series of how do the the staff people, how do they not only relate to each other, other than just being on the computer all day, but then also, how do they relate to the students they're trying to attract into their program. And because a lot of it is talking and they're not used to it, per se, because they're so used to the online stuff, and the texting and here in Silicon Valley, is you have to be able to talk to people because, you know, a startup isn't going to be able to do a start up online

 4:17 

justice that they just have to be able to talk

 4:21 

about it. Right, right. Yes. Like, if you want to be as a 20 year old if you're talking to who has the money typically as people that are over 30, yeah, not all the time. But typically. So if you again, discount that as it's irrelevant, then you're discounting a huge swath of your market.

 4:41 

So

 4:42 

yeah, I agree with that. So I yeah, I did a four part series on how to talk to each other, how to talk to stick started, how do you look on video, right? And just getting over the whole confidence thing. But again, it's like if you can't figure out how to talk to different types of people. Yeah, you know, I can get very far and that Silicon Valley is perfect, because it's a melting pot. It is like the melting pot within the melting pot that the United States is, yeah, Silicon Valley, is this finite melting pot, get out there and start practicing on all these different communities. Oh,

 5:18 

that's great. I want to share more about what you do with the businesses that belong to the Chamber of Commerce, right, because it has 50,000 people

 5:28 

that are members that need to meet you

 5:31 

talk about meeting people and a little bit about networking. You talk about the value of that

 5:36 

you go first, and then okay.

 5:40 

I know, I know, one of the things that I was sharing earlier with Doris was just that I meet so many people, and we exchange business cards. And perhaps there's even an offer made for, you know, something, you know, join me at this event, or we have this coming up and they Dawn't find a lottery tickets. Yeah, and I just Dawn't understand it, because that is absolutely the magic is to follow up. Shawn, you're excellent at following up. Oh, that I would listen to one of Yeah, it's

 6:06 

follows up

 6:07 

you do. You're great at introducing people at thinking, you know, like, oh, my goodness I met Doris and Tarsem Dawnna be great, right, let's put them together and see what happens. Totally planned this episode.

 6:18 

But it isn't. It's just what you do. That's one of your that's a tremendous skill of of Shawn's right, but not everybody has that. Right, right. Right

 6:26 

now, people networking. Oh, exactly the same. And also not only the bad follow up, but again, they show up, you know, so a lot of people say, oh, there's a networking event like will use the chambers, because chambers have a lot of networking event shall are going to show up, we'll go there. I know, I'm going to get business and they show up. And they get with who they already know. And they drink the drink. And they eat the food. And they sit with a three people they already know. Or they'll go out and get 22 cards and right, not following they go What a waste of time. And it was because Alright, so for me, I'm all about networking with intention, right? And it's not necessarily if I want to meet this person, this person, this person, and that's the only reason why you're there. Right? But again, it's like, if you Dawn't have a plan of why am I going to be there? It's an expensive proposition, both the cost to get in, but also the time, right, who has all this time? Yeah, to give up to a wasted event is very yummy. You guys spend a lot of your time making it a worthwhile event to go to for a reason. Right? And so it's just behooves people to be smart about how do they network and he had, for me, the key is, what do you say, when you network, right? And that is,

 7:43 

yeah, that's perfect. Because and when I work with new chamber members, I really, really try to manage expectations around that around if you're not going to get 12 new clients or 12 new investors or whatever your thought is, you really need to go open minded, right? And you need to be very authentic and your interactions, right people. So kind of turn that hat around with you, as a business owner, just be a huge Right, right. And connect people find things in modality because the human thing is, especially as a brand brand brand new business owner is

 8:14 

right ago this because I need clients. And again, we all do it. I need clients. And that's what you lead with. So people is all about this energy that you can feel like I have the greatest thing, but underlying that it's funny. clients will sign up, you will feel them. Yeah, translate, right? And yeah, back off. Because, like you. So new business owners, my feeling is they have to go through that because they need clients. But you have to go through that. Because you can say all day long, you Dawn't want to do that. But until they they internalize that they're doing it and what it feels like. Yeah, and they come out through the other side to finally go, Oh, I used to be that way. Now I've made it as like, Oh my god, I used to do it to you. I used to do it. And I Oh, yeah, you Dawn't want to do it. But it was doing it right. But you Dawn't realize you're doing it till you're successful enough that you're going through it to know that Oh, my God. That's right. And for me, it's it's, it's it's teaching by feeling it you have to be able to feel,

 9:24 

you know, what can be helpful. The chamber has an there are a lot of these out there not necessarily chamber related, but leads groups where you can practice your message. So if you go to some of the really big race groups, there's a lot of formality involved. But in something like a chamber organization, we have a leads group they meet every other week, right, they get to practice their 32nd or 10 second, you know, pitch, they get to expand on it, because they're sharing with people that over time they feel comfortable with, right. And then once you know, one another's businesses, it's very easy then to switch that hat, right. That's what I suggest women in networking event, right. I'm going to I'm going to talk about your business and and you're going to talk about mine like, right out of our own way, right. So I'd introduce Shawn and introduce you.

 10:07 

Exactly. me wait. So I have a philosophy about like, if you're in a leads group that meets regularly and say, There's 30 people in it, pretty much after a year, everybody knows pretty much who everybody is and what they do. Yeah, and that's where this practice of standard 32nd elevator pitch is. So my suggestion is, you need to change that up the site, you know, use, keep your name, keep your business name, but every time you say something a little bit different, because when people hear something different, you never know what will trigger say, I have a perfect person for you. But if you say the same thing, every week, people are going to go, Okay, he's gonna say, and they can say it back. They're not learning anything new that okay, or not. But then if you're at a networking event, that's when you you want to absolutely have something different to say, because, again, each event is different. And each person that you come across at the event will be different. That's where the short right Dawn't want to give that the thing that you do at your networking group. That's the wrong thing to say, at a networking event. Yeah,

 11:17 

that's great. That was one of my favorite takeaway. So you talked earlier there, he has to realize how different those messages are. Yeah,

 11:22 

it is different

 11:24 

and how important it's so hard to do one

 11:27 

Yeah, yeah. Right. That it the thought of doing five or seven see well, but that that Gary statements that I come across that because I do a lot of working with people on their elevator pitches. So that's another program I have the mistake people have is, but I do so much, I have to say it all, or they won't know what I do. Oh, they cram this much. And they either talk too fast, and nobody can understand a single word you're saying. Or they just go on and on and on. And on. And on. And after again, second seconds.

 12:00 

And when people start doing that it gives them upset and when you get upset you're going hey, we're only supposed to have 30 seconds and this guy still going Yeah. Are you ever going to recommend somebody that you're not going to know? And now it's your Oh

 12:16 

yeah. Yeah, you know that it's a you're introducing a burden to exactly

 12:22 

what feels like a burden some conversation

 12:25 

on somebody Oh, yeah. But if it was the other thing that's funny is this like you guys Dawn't talk too long because this morning I get up and it's different price me Yeah. And that's why everybody doesn't is because well, I'm different. So I'll do it because what I have to say is important and I need to get everything out there but you guys

 12:46 

against human nature just

 12:49 

yeah cracks me up.

 12:50 

I'd like to do a workshop of some sort where we we work on that word right center

 12:55 

last man I call it my zip line or your ears zip line. Yeah. Because you know, when you condemn files, you sip your file so yeah. Short sharp and then you know the zip line where it goes lickety split fast Yeah, right. I usurped it

 13:08 

I liked it. Eric zip line that's pretty clever. NET great. Yeah. Do you have your zip line with

 13:12 

your last

 13:15 

but I need it

 13:17 

you know people you do. I hope

 13:20 

you did.

 13:25 

Well, this was amazing information doors. Dawn. Thank you guys for for the extra time. You're welcome. And once again, I look forward to seeing you guys on our show again, the future and if you have any questions, please reach out to dawn and doors. What are your emails and contact information,

 13:42 

Dawnna chamber M. v.org doors as Silicon Valley speaks.com. All right. Thank you. Thanks, john.

[siliconvalleysuccesses]

Additional Chamber of Commerce Information After Show with Dawn EP 3 SVS

0:01 

Dawn, thank you for coming on Silicon Valley Successes. Quick question. What information do you wish you'd had time to say on the show? Or a question that I forgot to ask you that you wish I had?

 0:12 

Well, Shawn, I think you covered all the really good points. I thought of a few more things, but it wasn't because of any Mrs. on your part. Oh, great. Smile, by the way,

 0:21 

those compliments on it.

 0:22 

Yeah, well, um, I think it probably like to mention a couple of the programs I didn't have the opportunity to mention. And we were talking earlier, and three examples of things that I'd like to mention our our professionals, women's, our professional women series, okay, our fuel SV, which is future Emerging Leaders of Silicon Valley. So that's for young professionals. And then also I failed to mention that this very weekend coming up. We're throwing a little street party for 170,000 of our closest friends. Are you coming this weekend? By the way? Probably not. Okay. Alright, well, we'll miss you. That would have been a lot nicer to have you there. But

 0:59 

you know what, it's actually was going through the camera.

 1:01 

No, it's okay. It's a good business showcase. Yeah, right. 170,000 people are walking past they are a captive audience for a weekend. Was that incredible? Yes. So there's that. And to double back to the fuel s fee. That is a happy hour that we host for young professionals. People come for a variety of reasons. We market it through meetup. And what is different about that on meetup and other groups is that we are industry agnostic, and people are there for whatever reason suits them. They may be looking for a job, they may be looking for an investor, they may be looking for partners, strategic partner, I've seen so many different kinds of connections made at that particular event. So it's, it's a wonderful, and then we have a professional live in series. So we weren't people in at all stages of their career so that they can connect and network and kind of make some meaningful transformative connections. Wow. Yeah. So so what you just mentioned there is access to possibly 170,000 onlookers to your company.

 2:03 

Yes, networking events where you'll get to meet other young entrepreneurs that maybe focus on different areas of technology that maybe you can collaborate, right? And if you're a woman, founder, extra special attention that could be given to help you out

 2:17 

correct box. Yeah, that's huge. Right? Anything else you'd like to add? Um, those were some of the highlights I wanted to cover. But um,

 2:28 

you're speechless.

 2:29 

I am. Oh, yeah.

 2:33 

Well Dawne. Thank you for the extra time. Yeah. And I look forward for the next time that you're on SIlicon Valley Successes and thank you for also mentioned all those great other people that we we should interview from score, SB DC and all these other groups. Yeah, so I'd love a warm introduction. Happy to happy to do that. Shawn. Thank you. And thank you, again from SIlicon Valley Successes.

 2:54 

All right. Thank you, Shawn. appreciate being here.