How to Build Hype | Solon Angel, Founder of MindBridge

Solon (Guest) 0:00 People test your credibility. And how do you gain credibility? You say openly you're going to do something and you get it done. Intro 0:07 Welcome to the Product Market Fit Show, brought to you by Mistral, a seed stage firm based in Canada. I'm Pablo, I'm a founder turned VC. My goal is to help early-stage founders like you find product-market fit . Pablo (Host) 0:22 Today we have Solon , the founder of MindBridge. MindBridge is a risk discovery platform that uses AI to help auditors do their jobs much more efficiently and effectively. They're based in Ottawa. They have 200 employees and have raised over 40 million dollars. Solon, it's a pleasure having you here today. Solon (Guest) 0:38 Thanks for having me, Pablo, always a pleasure to see you, it's been a while . Pablo (Host) 0:40 It's been a while for sure. So, the topic of today's episode is how to build hype for your startup . And it's a little bit of a fuzzy concept, but everybody knows that there's just those startups out there that you see and everybody's talking about everybody seems to be excited about, and maybe they have something very real, or maybe you just don't know what's really behind it. All you know is that it's really, really exciting, it's really, really hot and it tends to... and people have different perspectives on this. Some people, say you should just be heads down and don't worry about the hype, but let's face it, hype helps. It helps you bring people along, it helps you land customers, it certainly helps you raise money. And Solon, you are the master hype machine. At least as far as I know, so I think it's amazing to have you here today. So that's really what we'll talk about, got this AI for fraud idea. And you can't build it, let's face it. You can't build it. And Always sell before you build Pablo (Host) 1:37 so as I understand it, your first step was to get people around the table that could help you start building it. Although, maybe let me ask that actually. Was that the first step, like, "okay, let's go build it," or did you also try and go sell it first? How did you think about your first step? Solon (Guest) 1:51 Pre-sell, pre-sell, pre-sell. Look, man, an advice for everyone. I know this is controversial, but I do not abide by the lean startup strategy. I hate it, actually. I think it's an absolute disaster for ventures that everyone pigeonhole themselves. This is great for people that are first timers. I get it. It gives structure and all that. But if you're someone that knows where you're going to find customers, if you know the pain point, if you have domain expertise or you're just very much dedicated to make it happen... think about this , building something first on a handful of small customers, you will have... your pivot will be brutal. Whereas if you find five customers... I basically had a full deck, collaterals, webpage, v aluable position, USP. I was selling with nothing beh ind, b ut an in des ign pa ge that was clickable and where I wou ld te ll all the enterprise buyers and buyers, this is what we plan to deliver in six months. And in mind I'm like, "okay, it's g onna be eight to nine, but you know, a bit of... " Pablo (Host) 2:57 There's the hype , there's the hype coming out. Solon (Guest) 2:59 No, that's not happened. I learned this when I was very young. Over-promise and deliver Solon (Guest) 3:04 I'll share a personal story. I remember, I tried to be smart. I remember I was 23 or 22 , fresh off a masters of management science in pretty good school in France, after one year in the UK, thinking I'm smart. And I arrived in Silicon valley, I arrived on the Sunday, I'm invited for brunch. And I thought it was going to be relaxing Sunday. It was a Board meeting. I didn't realize it was a Board meeting of the startup . And then I arrived there and then I was stressed the whole time. And I tried to do something smart. And I tried to say, "well, I think this startup should be careful not to over-promise and under-deliver , we should probably, under-promise a nd over-deliver the strategy." I'm trying to be smart. When I sa id that, everyone is started laughing at th e t able. And then one of the guys t u rned a r ound, I think he wa s Israeli, th i ck ac cent. No, he was Persian. Yeah. And he is li ke, "Hey Frenchie boy, dude, do yo u see around you what's going on? Your competitor is ove r sel ling, your neighbour is over se l ling. Everyone's ove r sel ling. And they bust their ass t o over-deliver be hind it. If you are du mb enough to think that you r li t tle cu t e th ing of taking it slo w to arrive slowly and softly, don't come here to pl ay with us." I was like, "whoa, welcome to Silicon Valley. This guy is a monster. He's telling me you're going to go." So, there's a fine line between what I call lies versus raising profile versus projecting your vision. And this is where most people completely misjudged me. I'm not saying that I was able to deliver, I said I'm going to try to deliver. And this is the vision we think is unique in the world that nobody gets, and this is the help I need. Would you to try to help me in making this a reality? You don't go and say, "yeah, for sure. We're going to deliver ." But no, this is our assumption of what could happen. And we are going to try within six months to make it happen. Six months, it could be more, it could be less. It turned out to be a lot longer than that. And, then my friend, it could have been taken six months if I would've gone to secure one or two more engineer earlier stage. But that wasn't the plan. Focus on de-risking Solon (Guest) 5:20 My plan was to de-riskify the market first. It costs nothing to change the PowerPoint and to say, "I was an idiot, there's no market for this, pack my bags go home." You spend literally your time plus the license of Microsoft Office, you're done. It's a very low investment. I became a very simple capitalist . How much money do you spend, how much value you have and validation you have. So what do you want to do? Do you want to spend a year and a half in your basement building something and then shove it in front of people and have two thirds telling you no and then you have to rewrite everything? In the meantime, you have salaries running... Or you want to spend three to five months testing the market, doing cold calling, emailing executives on LinkedIn, getting meetings as if the product is real , and when you pitch them, say, "we understand you." Pablo (Host) 6:10 So, walk me through that Get commitments Pablo (Host) 6:12 first part. You're testing the market, you are promoting this big vision. It's called aggressive timelines that are still possible, but who knows. But what are you trying to get out? Is it just people nodding their head? Is it a signature, a pre-order? What does that look like? Solon (Guest) 6:25 Commitment. So, commitment, a verbal commitment and it starts with verbal. So it's funny, there is one guy in town that is a very unique character, called Adrian , who was hearing me, used to be my neighbour, and he would hear me talk about that idea obsessively every time we bumped into each other dropping our garbage. And at some point he says, "Dude enough a lready, you know h ow to do it. What are you waiting for? What is it? Y ou lost y our cohones ? You're scared? What happened?" He just went crazy on m e . And I was so upset. I came home. I was so upset. How dare he talks to me l ike that. The next thing I did, I sit on my computer. I literally send something 150 Li nkedIn i nvitations, 20 people reply, and I got my first meeting. And then I did that again and th en a gain, and al l o f a s u dden, yo u h aving 24 o p portunities i n t h e p ipeline, on the po or p o int a n d i n design m o ckup. And then I said, "okay, I need to start hiring engineers." Pablo (Host) 7:24 And so the validation for you was just people saying, yeah, "I would buy this for this amount"? Solon (Guest) 7:29 Yeah. Pablo (Host) 7:29 Got it. Solon (Guest) 7:30 And not just that, not only people saying, "that's interesting." That was the first stage, the first three to four months. The second phase was commitment to the next level, which is people saying... and by the way you said something earlier that I want to be very clear, I did not pitch a big vision to the first buyers. That's actually the key. Yes, to the price, to the investors, you have to, and ideally, don't educate your competition, don't create your competition. Don't go write an article on TechCrunch or Betakit, get some traction first. And then to the buyers though, you need to be to the micro level . And that's actually something that Code kind of mentored me on, it's that you have to go to the micro l evel, s ay " you guys w ork like this today." It's not gonna be a great vision of things. Like, "we're just going to take this. It's gonna be a effortless for you to rip out , it's going to save you a bit of money, and then you'll be able to do the same, just with that one thing along the way." It was actually a very small incremental step for the buyers to envision accepting that new technique. You see what I mean? Don't think surely when you're an early stage founder, you need to do everything at the same time. I don't want to hear excuses. You need to raise the profile organization, you need to fundraise , hire your first people, go get the tax credit, everything at the same time, because otherwise you a re blocking something. When you're a t the early stage. Early-stage founders need to do it all Pablo (Host) 8:53 I think it was you that told me once, "it's not this or that, it's this and that." Somebody had told you a story around that concept. Solon (Guest) 9:00 It was actually a very successful CEO who told me the key t hings sometimes is not to think about can you, should you do t his o r that, but should y ou a dd that. Try to think about what it i s to replace that if you t ry to do both. And, the human mind is not trained to think like that naturally. We have only one hour to do that or that. S o, you have only one hour. How can you do this and that? So, yeah, absolutely. So, it's very important. And so by the time that I was... so there was t he first phase, How to raise the profile of your startup Solon (Guest) 9:35 which was a b it r aising profile. Second w as still r aising profile, but now getting some self-commitment. B ut that time, because of all the noise I was making and people c onvinced that there is something there, I was already c losing $ 300 ,000 of a seed round . Pablo (Host) 9:49 What is this noise? Tell me about... what is that, is that just bumping into people and telling them about it, what's happening there? What are the details there? Solon (Guest) 9:55 So for example, you infiltrate a network, and then you talk to a few stakeholders before you go pitch the next day. So I did that. Sorry, I apologize in advance for people recognize it. I go see just behind the jury the day before the pitch . Pablo (Host) 10:11 Which pitch is this ? Solon (Guest) 10:12 It was like basically a pitch Fest with lot, a lot... there was, I d on't know, 1500 people in the rooms and there was 60 or 50 startups that competed, and t here was five spots or something like that. I was i n day 2 and day 1, I went to sit n earby behind t he jury. So who w ere the jury? And then day 1, t here's one startup who killed it, ju st d i d s o good. It just so happened that they were not far from what I was doing. It was not the same, but people could... it was related to e Commerce. I was not eCommerce. But I remember my pitch was very simple and it could be confusing for both. So I just go t here and then I he ar t he jury, a fter the s tart up, they go have coffee and I t a lk and I s a y , "h ow are yo u doing?" I s a y , "g ood. S ay , w hat are you doing?" I say , "w ell I'm from Canada." they sa i d , "w hat are you doing here? " I sa y , "o h, I' m just looking around, interested in innovation, didn't say I'm a startup, right? T hen he w al ks away and then there was a girl who w as outside, mo re of an analyst type of person. And that was the person rethinking of the notes. So I understood very quickly, one is the partner, one is the principal, I'll just begin to befriend the principal and then also talk about... that person was not technical, so I just said, "how do you evaluate startups that have tangible plans to implement machine learning, reference those that are just exploring?" That's all I said. And then after that, literally 30 m inutes after I went to s it b ack, next s tartup goes on stage. That principal turns around towards a partner a nd s tarts saying "so I don't understand your architecture here. How are you going to be tangibly implementing that?" an d t h e bar j ust ra ised f or anyone that pu t m a chine learning because he kept grinding everyone after that. The day after comes I'm the first one to pi tch a nd I just ra n a n d s a y, "I know the first day was difficult because you guys just cou ldn't ju dge and ga u ge properly if there was real machine learning being put in motion. So here's how the architecture will look like . This is high up if you just put seeds, you draw the attention. There's a fine line yo have to cross . You don't want to do things that are likely too greedy, but it's war and you're there to compete, you're there to compete . If I go to compete, I go to win. I'm not going to go to be second place. You go to be number one. Sorry for everyone that tried to compete with me, by the way. But, the point is startup is a key portion of building a war machine. You need to know the networks. You need to know the influencers. You need to know who's going to talk when. You need to know what matters. Never underestimate the spouses, ever. If ever you are invited to an event and there's the husband or the wife of the decision-maker there, you better be on your best behaviour. It's simple, things like that, build up, do consciously every day for months, it'll expand the amount of people who know your name, dramatically. Pablo (Host) 13:15 Got it. And to be clear, this was kind of one story at one event, but what you're doing is you're doing this all over the place and it's a lot of networking. It's a lot of just talking to people and constantly a lot of energy about what you're building Solon (Guest) 13:25 All the time. Look, it's simple. And I still do it, before COVID I still do it some times. So I would do two dinners a night. I go for two dinners. I go for the first dinner , I ask , "do you mind if we have an early dinner?" People that went through that email, recognized it and insisted to be as early as possible to have dinner with them early. And I would have a salad appetizer. I would have just a salad, leave probably a quarter or half of the salad on the table. And then go to the second dinner where w e have t he main. Everyone thought I was like super disciplined about m y weight. No, i t w as a g ood d eal. Pablo (Host) 14:02 So let's go back to these other stories. So now you're generating hype and, as we've said, we're doing everything at t he same time. But you're generating hype. You're talking to a lot of people, you've got customers that are showing more and more interest. Now you do need to start building. You don't have, as far as I understand any funding yet or the capabilities t o b uild. Solon (Guest) 14:21 We have. At that time, we have... Pablo (Host) 14:23 Even before you hired. So before you brought somebody to start working, you already raised money? Solon (Guest) 14:27 No, it was the same time. So , the first two hires were out of my pocket. We used grants that matched it, and then a bit of debt . But very quickly, within one or two months after the first hire, closed the friend and family round of $300 ,000 and then continued to Raising your first round Solon (Guest) 14:45 raise after that. Pablo (Host) 14:45 Okay. Got it. Walk me through that round. Was that just people that knew you really well or were there kind of angel types that didn't necessarily know you and how, again, that was really much idea stage? So how did you raise that round? Solon (Guest) 14:56 Networking, networking, networking. I did not go for the most experienced and I did not go for the most traditional angel route and things because I didn't... I remember there was an angel group that had a lot of potential interesting angels and they gave me the form to fill. And in my head I was like, "I'm going to spend 45 minute t o f ill that form or I'm going to m ake 10 phone calls?" Guess which one I did? I m a de 1 0 phone calls. I s a w t he list o f the people in there, there was only five that I wanted an d f ive others. I j ust ca lled t h em. It j ust bypassed the process of the whole thing. One of them ended up investing. I know I stepped on some feet and I kn ow I rou ghened so me feathers because I had a really technical at titude to things. So, the first five investors were a combination of things. They were founders that recognized that I was determined enough to make it happen. At this stage, they were investing on the guy. Is the guy competent enough, determined enough, crazy enough, whatever you call it, obsessed enough to make it happen? And t hey also c ame a sense of, is the p remise is real or not. And so you h ad h alf founders, other founders. And that I think is very important. It's a ll c redit to c ode to have you involved. People that have... you know what I 'm talking about. Once you've b een in the trenches of doing t he zero t o one, you ar e marked for that l ife. You t hink that the stress it c a uses o n you, what matters doesn't, un derstanding t o make the difference between noise and signals. Those things are super important. And at t h e e arly stages, people th at can recognize someone th at's g oing through the same struggles. Someone that's struggling to get th rough, bu t he has a c onviction that transcends him because he's seen it right. The other half we re a n gel i nvestors who were experienced enough to understand that there was much more th an meets t h eir e yes and they wanted to see where it goes. Introverts can build hype too Pablo (Host) 16:53 So, let me just take off in tangent here. One of the things I noticed talking to you always, and even here today is, your personality i s such that you have a lot of energy, you talk about things really passionately. A nd so I have a few questions from t here. A lot of founders aren't necessarily like that and yet they still need to build hype. How how do you think about that? Solon (Guest) 17:13 Amazing question, amazing question. How can you play to your strengths? That's the question, essentially. If you're an introvert, you're not as social as that half French- half Brazilian guy that is super social . You actually are someone that has much more of a mental peacefulness and is not always bursting of energy and emotions, well , you play to your strength. So many times where I have a very incredible capability to see the 10,000 foot view the micro , the macro very quickly. I'm able to go down to a detail and nerd down it, and at the same time see the big picture. And then some people actually rejoice and enjoy the small details. Well guess what? Those people might do the same. They just need to take their time to map things out for them before an event, to just understand the levers and they'll do it a different way. There's many different ways to raise the profile. So I really don't like the word hype because it's very negative, and it prevents you from u nderstanding what it i s. All it is...the question is how can you r aise the profile of what you do? Guess what? We have the best example in town here. Shopify s tarted... a ctually, y ou know what? Let m e t ake a more recent example. The guys from Rewind. They were o n Reddit. They had a Reddit forum w here they asked questions, they asked people, a lso people w ere interested. Shopify, you have a page with a s ign u p form. H e was coding something in the corner and the community, his brethren of Ruby developers and web developers started paying attention. So the hype was built, the profile raised in a community of people that are not socializing face t o f ace. They were remote already. So there's many roads that lead to Rome. There's many ways you can raise the profile of your venture . It doesn't have to be with the crazy psi-ops networking attitude that I had . It can be to a bolted board and ready. It can be to many this somewhere. It can be by sharing your code. I've seen that, I've seen a startup do that very well, where they contribute continuously under the same account in a open source project. And guess what? When people come and try to implement it , they run into the problem that they solve, and then they charge them a subscription to provide management. And one of the most profitable startup I know, by the way. So there are many ways to raise the profile of the venture. Pablo (Host) 19:34 So really, the strategy is, I need to raise the profile of my company, and then you figure out which network matters, which community matters, and how you penetrate that community. And maybe it's in person network events, maybe it's behind computer screen on Reddit, whatever, but whatever's going to work for you and obviously play into your strengths. Solon (Guest) 19:49 Absolutely. There's one thing also, again, I didn't know that when I started, I really didn't... My vision has been a really transformative experience for me because of the speed, scale, and the success, y ou g o very quickly. And I think it's just a n infancy in terms of success. You have to be a uthentic at t he end of the day. When I , every time I t ry, I t ry not too long ago in the FF g roup. so FF is like a group of founders that meet regularly. And we had a meeting with six of us to talk about the pr oblem. And lately, because my bri dge is getting more professional and more corporate, I had tri ed to hold back a bit on the crazy energy sol ar fa ctor, right. And tri ed be someone that you can walk with eve ry da y an d rea ct an d pe aceful. And I had , I had that person and I switched to arrived in the founder's meeting. And I talked the same way that I talk in another meeting i n a , i n a corporate way. And they all l ooked at me like that. T hey're like, what's wrong w ith you? Today's that's right. it 's l i ke, th ey're l ike, come back here. Li ke w e wa nt t h e r e al y ou, right? And so the marketplace and the founder and, an d t h e, the same way that ef fect, like people smell. Hype can be, right? Raising the profile, what you do. That's very serious. That's not, right. People. An d, an d b y the way, once you build and you people see it, you lost them forever. So whatever you do, it needs to come from a place from your heart, from authenticity. And for something that you can stand by, if you're not comfortable going to yo ur n etworking ev er a t ou r c onference, because you ar e an introvert don't put yourself in your position, you're go ing t o look awkward. Right. Whereas if you're very comfortable showing code that you bu ild, do that record th e l oom in your co mfort o f your home, where you explain how you build this with a l oom where you ta lk o v er y e llow. No one's looking at yo u f e el m o re c omfortable and send that loom record a l oo video wi th t h e p assword to t he one or two investors that you want you're seeking. Perfect. So Get the right people on the bus Pablo (Host) 21:52 Maybe let's like one more story that I'd like to just touch on is raising your kind of, I don't know , pre-seed round or seed round, I think was just over a million dollars . Yeah . It was still really early days. Right? Can you walk us through how you, how you did that? And I think it also was related to bringing Eli as a CEO. Solon (Guest) 22:09 Yeah . So all that interesting . As soon as things started pickup . So I had made a decision, I wanted to go fast and I had made the decision. I wanted to be first to market. I went to an event where there was lot investors in Silicon valley . And because I was just getting started launching the product, I felt that it was not the right time to show true card . I went to pitch in front of them. I barely said nothing about the venture . Some visits were frustrating. Why you on stage, if you're not pitching properly, why are you not discussing what you're doing? And I said, if you're really interested, we can see what to one in . I want to talk to them and things. Right . But the reason why there was a certain level, I , I , it's not my first startup . It's not my first rodeo. I had enough experience to understand that this , this , when you're a founder, you have that defect , that defect, if she , your baby is beautiful. And I had seen a founder make that mistake, right? I had seen someone that owns business preventing his own staff and team to do what was best for his own interest in the business, because he had the assumption that only him can do it better because he's a founder. And by the way, you can read this article in Harvard , I invite every founder to read The Founder's Dilemma: Do you want to be king, or do you want to be rich? The, the data supports it. Founders do not always make the best CEOs, but the best , the best founders and the ones you want to back and interested are the ones that either set of it or the ones that have the capacity to learn to become. And then you have a magic combo. Right? But the reality is that I had decided early on that I wanted my bridge to be as professionally managed as , as possible. Also, when you fundraise, it's very useful because they look as you know, at the team slide. And so you've been judging every fact . So it's very simple. I'm , I have no problem admitting it. Like I took a very mercenary approach. I'll do what it takes to make it happen. This is the slide deck people want. They want to see market size , perfection, perfection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah , blah. And they want team and this and that. Well , I make sure that every side was the best possible. And I would only go pitch when I felt we were ready for that level of pitching with enough slide that were real. So for example, well , so how can you do that when you don't have sales simple, because I came from the industry, I know how many buyers were there. I know how much money the competitors are making. So I could actually be super critical on those slides of the total addressable marketplace. But, but so what happened with the seed ? So what was interesting is that I was starting to have momentum. In fact, one of my investors him 1 8 calls me one day and says, so yo u, you have like those 25 logos you're talking to right now. Two of them are in t h e l ike closing stage. How many engineers you have ag ain, and I'm like, I'm not having engineers right now. And he is , h e just froze. I said, oh, I'm not sure that's a good idea. You know, it is , i t' s li ke very polite. And then I said, look, I, I don't wan t to over-invest in engineering we' ll ha ve to catch up, but th e re wa s pr obably mistake sho uld ha v e do ne it earlier. But, Leverage momentum Solon (Guest) 24:59 but I remember at that time, there was like people, certain people started tracking me because I had done hyper early on , there was a handful of seed investor, VCs. They were starting to see me at one conference in Toronto , one in Montreal, semi lot of noise . And one of them, we eventually , Sam was a former , like you , he came from the trenches was a guy that was working a successful startup that had all the, the , the scars of the battle and could, and someone w as o nto something and was f ound interesting, but he was waiting that something else h appens. And then a ll o f sudden I come and we w ere, we were starting to talk o r y ou, w e were engaged. And all of a sudden I announced that I I 'm, I'm bringing a C EO o n board that is, that d one it before t hat just had a n, and a lso t hen the conversation t urned and accelerated, right? Because again, what it is is you you're just removing risk, right? It's like when you do those things, you, I call it , the power, moves that by the way, most founder underestimate their power moves, they can do most founders underestimate what they have in front of them and underestimate the possibilities down in front of them. The number one thing that people look at you is like, how many miles two are you completing? If , imagine, I mean , imagine Pablo , you talk to someone that has nothing, two months after it comes to you. I have two potential clients , 20 the pipeline. I have two people hired. And by the way, I 'm about to hire that CEO that j ust h ad a n exit t o, s o r emote i s like this g uy k now, s o to get t hings, s o that's f or b uild credibility. So the other aspect in that one thing in that p hase, that was super important. And this is first one sy s g e t i n to t h e, th e m ind of people get there, but then right away, be careful people test your credibility. And how do you gain credibility is you, yo u s ay openly, you're going to d o something and you get it done. Recap Pablo (Host) 26:50 Perfect. All right , well, look, we'll , we'll stop it there, Solon . I really, really appreciate it. You know, maybe just to recap, we talked a lot , we started talking about hype, but really merge into this idea of raising the profile and why it's so important to raise the profile of your startup , to really find the network and the community that's gonna matter and make sure everybody in that network, in that community looks at you and is interested in what you're doing, starts to follow the story. And then of course, following that up with real results, building a trend, and then it just becomes this irresistible kind of force that everybody is drawn to. Solon (Guest) 27:24 And What it feels like when your startup is hot Solon (Guest) 27:25 it's magical and it's magical when it's in motion, because you know what happened , then you start having inbound. That's when you know that you did something, right, you're not the one pushing the message out anymore. Also, you see emails like I was like, I was having dinner with my friend. I think you should talk to him. He could invest in you. I was doing this. And I , I talked to , oh , you received an invitation to speak at a conference that you did not apply for. Cause they heard someone talking about that's when you know that Pablo (Host) 27:50 It's working, that's the virality. And that's where the broken telephone analogy, which you , which you spoke about. So , so thanks a lot, Solon. I mean, I think this was great. A nd I think founders w ill learn a lot from, from the stories you shared today. Solon (Guest) 28:03 I hope it was you useful and not too controversial. I'll hear from my HR if it was . Pablo (Host) 28:07 Thank you so much for listening all the way through. It's been a pleasure having you here. Make sure to subscribe. So you don't miss the next episode.