Jan. 3, 2022

How to Build Hype | Solon Angel, Founder of MindBridge

Many people say that hype leads nowhere, that instead you should keep your head down and focus on building. But hype- or raising the profile of your company, as Solon calls it- brings many benefits. It means more potential hires, more investors, and even more customers.

As you'll see, Solon is the master of creating hype.

Find out how Solon raised the profile of MindBridge to get a multi-time founder to join as CEO, to poach key technical talent and to raise money well ahead of building product.

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

01:37 - Always sell before you build

03:04 - Over-promise and deliver

05:20 - Focus on de-risking

06:12 - Get commitments

08:34 - Early-stage founders need to do it all

09:35 - How to raise the profile of your startup

14:45 - Raising your first round

16:53 - Introverts can build hype too

21:52 - Get the right people on the bus

24:59 - Leverage momentum

26:50 - Recap

27:25 - What it feels like when your startup is hot

WEBVTT

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People test your credibility.

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And how do you gain credibility?

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You say openly you're going to do something and you get it done.

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Welcome to the Product Market Fit Show, brought to you by Mistral, a seed stage firm based in Canada.

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I'm Pablo, I'm a founder turned VC.

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My goal is to help early-stage founders like you find product-market fit.

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Today we have Solon, the founder of MindBridge.

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MindBridge is a risk discovery platform that uses AI to help auditors do their jobs much more efficiently and effectively.

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They're based in Ottawa.

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They have 200 employees and have raised over 40 million dollars.

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Solon, it's a pleasure having you here today.

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Thanks for having me, Pablo, always a pleasure to see you, it's been a while.

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It's been a while for sure.

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So, the topic of today's episode is how to build hype for your startup.

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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.

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All you know is that it's really, really exciting, it's really, really hot and it tends to...

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and people have different perspectives on this.

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Some people, say you should just be heads down and don't worry about the hype, but let's face it, hype helps.

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It helps you bring people along, it helps you land customers, it certainly helps you raise money.

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And Solon, you are the master hype machine.

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At least as far as I know, so I think it's amazing to have you here today.

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So that's really what we'll talk about, got this AI for fraud idea.

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And you can't build it, let's face it.

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You can't build it.

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And so as I understand it, your first step was to get people around the table that could help you start building it.

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Although, maybe let me ask that actually.

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Was that the first step, like,"okay, let's go build it," or did you also try and go sell it first?

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How did you think about your first step?

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Pre-sell, pre-sell, pre-sell.

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Look, man, an advice for everyone.

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I know this is controversial, but I do not abide by the lean startup strategy.

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I hate it, actually.

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I think it's an absolute disaster for ventures that everyone pigeonhole themselves.

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This is great for people that are first timers.

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I get it.

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It gives structure and all that.

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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...

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think about this, building something first on a handful of small customers, you will have...

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your pivot will be brutal.

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Whereas if you find five customers...

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I basically had a full deck, collaterals, webpage, v aluable position, USP.

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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.

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And in mind I'm like,"okay, it's g onna be eight to nine, but you know, a bit of...

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"

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There's the hype, there's the hype coming out.

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No, that's not happened.

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I learned this when I was very young.

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I'll share a personal story.

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I remember, I tried to be smart.

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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.

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And I arrived in Silicon valley, I arrived on the Sunday, I'm invited for brunch.

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And I thought it was going to be relaxing Sunday.

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It was a Board meeting.

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I didn't realize it was a Board meeting of the startup.

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And then I arrived there and then I was stressed the whole time.

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And I tried to do something smart.

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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.

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When I sa id that, everyone is started laughing at th e t able.

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And then one of the guys t u rned a r ound, I think he wa s Israeli, th i ck ac cent.

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No, he was Persian.

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Yeah.

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And he is li ke,"Hey Frenchie boy, dude, do yo u see around you what's going on?

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Your competitor is ove r sel ling, your neighbour is over se l ling.

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Everyone's ove r sel ling.

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And they bust their ass t o over-deliver be hind it.

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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.

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This guy is a monster.

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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.

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And this is where most people completely misjudged me.

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I'm not saying that I was able to deliver, I said I'm going to try to deliver.

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And this is the vision we think is unique in the world that nobody gets, and this is the help I need.

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Would you to try to help me in making this a reality?

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You don't go and say,"yeah, for sure.

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We're going to deliver." But no, this is our assumption of what could happen.

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And we are going to try within six months to make it happen.

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Six months, it could be more, it could be less.

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It turned out to be a lot longer than that.

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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.

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But that wasn't the plan.

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My plan was to de-riskify the market first.

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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.

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It's a very low investment.

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I became a very simple capitalist.

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How much money do you spend, how much value you have and validation you have.

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So what do you want to do?

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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?

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In the meantime, you have salaries running...

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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."

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So, walk me through that first part.

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You're testing the market, you are promoting this big vision.

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It's called aggressive timelines that are still possible, but who knows.

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But what are you trying to get out?

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Is it just people nodding their head?

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Is it a signature, a pre-order?

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What does that look like?

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Commitment.

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So, commitment, a verbal commitment and it starts with verbal.

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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.

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And at some point he says,"Dude enough a lready, you know h ow to do it.

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What are you waiting for?

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What is it?

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Y ou lost y our cohones?

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You're scared?

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What happened?" He just went crazy on m e.

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And I was so upset.

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I came home.

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I was so upset.

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How dare he talks to me l ike that.

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The next thing I did, I sit on my computer.

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I literally send something 150 Li nkedIn i nvitations, 20 people reply, and I got my first meeting.

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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.

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And then I said,"okay, I need to start hiring engineers."

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And so the validation for you was just people saying, yeah,"I would buy this for this amount"?

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Yeah.

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Got it.

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And not just that, not only people saying,"that's interesting." That was the first stage, the first three to four months.

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The second phase was commitment to the next level, which is people saying...

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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.

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That's actually the key.

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Yes, to the price, to the investors, you have to, and ideally, don't educate your competition, don't create your competition.

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Don't go write an article on TechCrunch or Betakit, get some traction first.

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And then to the buyers though, you need to be to the micro level.

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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.

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Like,"we're just going to take this.

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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.

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You see what I mean?

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Don't think surely when you're an early stage founder, you need to do everything at the same time.

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I don't want to hear excuses.

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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.

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When you're a t the early stage.

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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.

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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.

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Try to think about what it i s to replace that if you t ry to do both.

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And, the human mind is not trained to think like that naturally.

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We have only one hour to do that or that.

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S o, you have only one hour.

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How can you do this and that?

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So, yeah, absolutely.

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So, it's very important.

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And so by the time that I was...

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so there was t he first phase, which was a b it r aising profile.

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Second w as still r aising profile, but now getting some self-commitment.

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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.

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What is this noise?

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Tell me about...

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what is that, is that just bumping into people and telling them about it, what's happening there?

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What are the details there?

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So for example, you infiltrate a network, and then you talk to a few stakeholders before you go pitch the next day.

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So I did that.

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Sorry, I apologize in advance for people recognize it.

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I go see just behind the jury the day before the pitch.

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Which pitch is this?

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It was like basically a pitch Fest with lot, a lot...

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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.

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I was i n day 2 and day 1, I went to sit n earby behind t he jury.

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So who w ere the jury?

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And then day 1, t here's one startup who killed it, ju st d i d s o good.

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It just so happened that they were not far from what I was doing.

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It was not the same, but people could...

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it was related to e Commerce.

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I was not eCommerce.

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But I remember my pitch was very simple and it could be confusing for both.

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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.

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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?

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" I sa y,"o h, I' m just looking around, interested in innovation, didn't say I'm a startup, right?

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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.

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And that was the person rethinking of the notes.

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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...

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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.

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And then after that, literally 30 m inutes after I went to s it b ack, next s tartup goes on stage.

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That principal turns around towards a partner a nd s tarts saying"so I don't understand your architecture here.

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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.

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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.

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So here's how the architecture will look like.

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This is high up if you just put seeds, you draw the attention.

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There's a fine line yo have to cross.

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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.

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If I go to compete, I go to win.

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I'm not going to go to be second place.

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You go to be number one.

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Sorry for everyone that tried to compete with me, by the way.

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But, the point is startup is a key portion of building a war machine.

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You need to know the networks.

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You need to know the influencers.

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You need to know who's going to talk when.

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You need to know what matters.

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Never underestimate the spouses, ever.

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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.

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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.

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Got it.

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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.

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It's a lot of just talking to people and constantly a lot of energy about what you're building

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All the time.

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Look, it's simple.

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And I still do it, before COVID I still do it some times.

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So I would do two dinners a night.

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I go for two dinners.

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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.

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And I would have a salad appetizer.

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I would have just a salad, leave probably a quarter or half of the salad on the table.

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And then go to the second dinner where w e have t he main.

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Everyone thought I was like super disciplined about m y weight.

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No, i t w as a g ood d eal.

00:14:02.279 --> 00:14:04.220
So let's go back to these other stories.

00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:10.539
So now you're generating hype and, as we've said, we're doing everything at t he same time.

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But you're generating hype.

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You're talking to a lot of people, you've got customers that are showing more and more interest.

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Now you do need to start building.

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You don't have, as far as I understand any funding yet or the capabilities t o b uild.

00:14:21.211 --> 00:14:21.889
We have.

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At that time, we have...

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Even before you hired.

00:14:24.010 --> 00:14:27.009
So before you brought somebody to start working, you already raised money?

00:14:27.629 --> 00:14:28.529
No, it was the same time.

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So, the first two hires were out of my pocket.

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We used grants that matched it, and then a bit of debt.

00:14:37.441 --> 00:14:45.519
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 raise after that.

00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:45.759
Okay.

00:14:46.120 --> 00:14:46.440
Got it.

00:14:46.441 --> 00:14:47.639
Walk me through that round.

00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:54.559
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?

00:14:54.570 --> 00:14:56.480
So how did you raise that round?

00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:58.840
Networking, networking, networking.

00:15:00.721 --> 00:15:08.559
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...

00:15:09.801 --> 00:15:16.029
I remember there was an angel group that had a lot of potential interesting angels and they gave me the form to fill.

00:15:16.769 --> 00:15:21.789
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?

00:15:22.590 --> 00:15:23.470
I m a de 1 0 phone calls.

00:15:23.471 --> 00:15:26.830
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.

00:15:26.831 --> 00:15:27.750
I j ust ca lled t h em.

00:15:27.750 --> 00:15:30.789
It j ust bypassed the process of the whole thing.

00:15:30.791 --> 00:15:32.419
One of them ended up investing.

00:15:32.421 --> 00:15:39.980
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.

00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:44.179
So, the first five investors were a combination of things.

00:15:44.181 --> 00:15:49.740
They were founders that recognized that I was determined enough to make it happen.

00:15:50.120 --> 00:15:52.250
At this stage, they were investing on the guy.

00:15:52.389 --> 00:15:58.970
Is the guy competent enough, determined enough, crazy enough, whatever you call it, obsessed enough to make it happen?

00:15:59.350 --> 00:16:02.289
And t hey also c ame a sense of, is the p remise is real or not.

00:16:03.190 --> 00:16:06.289
And so you h ad h alf founders, other founders.

00:16:06.950 --> 00:16:08.289
And that I think is very important.

00:16:08.440 --> 00:16:10.210
It's a ll c redit to c ode to have you involved.

00:16:10.410 --> 00:16:11.730
People that have...

00:16:11.730 --> 00:16:12.679
you know what I'm talking about.

00:16:12.950 --> 00:16:19.360
Once you've b een in the trenches of doing t he zero t o one, you ar e marked for that l ife.

00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:27.159
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.

00:16:27.669 --> 00:16:29.879
Those things are super important.

00:16:30.299 --> 00:16:36.070
And at t h e e arly stages, people th at can recognize someone th at's g oing through the same struggles.

00:16:36.779 --> 00:16:42.350
Someone that's struggling to get th rough, bu t he has a c onviction that transcends him because he's seen it right.

00:16:42.809 --> 00:16:50.990
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.

00:16:53.059 --> 00:16:54.299
So, let me just take off in tangent here.

00:16:54.301 --> 00:17:02.100
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.

00:17:02.779 --> 00:17:04.539
A nd so I have a few questions from t here.

00:17:04.740 --> 00:17:07.900
A lot of founders aren't necessarily like that and yet they still need to build hype.

00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:09.740
How how do you think about that?

00:17:13.839 --> 00:17:15.769
Amazing question, amazing question.

00:17:16.029 --> 00:17:17.329
How can you play to your strengths?

00:17:17.330 --> 00:17:18.369
That's the question, essentially.

00:17:18.589 --> 00:17:23.650
If you're an introvert, you're not as social as that half French- half Brazilian guy that is super social.

00:17:24.390 --> 00:17:32.890
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.

00:17:33.529 --> 00:17:40.640
So many times where I have a very incredible capability to see the 10,000 foot view the micro, the macro very quickly.

00:17:40.779 --> 00:17:46.839
I'm able to go down to a detail and nerd down it, and at the same time see the big picture.

00:17:47.900 --> 00:17:52.720
And then some people actually rejoice and enjoy the small details.

00:17:53.269 --> 00:17:54.000
Well guess what?

00:17:54.450 --> 00:17:56.039
Those people might do the same.

00:17:56.040 --> 00:18:04.599
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.

00:18:04.599 --> 00:18:06.960
There's many different ways to raise the profile.

00:18:06.961 --> 00:18:14.670
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.

00:18:15.170 --> 00:18:19.710
All it is...the question is how can you r aise the profile of what you do?

00:18:19.880 --> 00:18:20.430
Guess what?

00:18:20.490 --> 00:18:22.470
We have the best example in town here.

00:18:23.420 --> 00:18:24.190
Shopify s tarted...

00:18:24.670 --> 00:18:24.869
a ctually, y ou know what?

00:18:24.871 --> 00:18:26.710
Let m e t ake a more recent example.

00:18:27.630 --> 00:18:27.630
The guys from Rewind.

00:18:29.299 --> 00:18:30.140
They were o n Reddit.

00:18:30.141 --> 00:18:34.420
They had a Reddit forum w here they asked questions, they asked people, a lso people w ere interested.

00:18:35.450 --> 00:18:38.619
Shopify, you have a page with a s ign u p form.

00:18:39.299 --> 00:18:47.700
H e was coding something in the corner and the community, his brethren of Ruby developers and web developers started paying attention.

00:18:47.799 --> 00:18:53.970
So the hype was built, the profile raised in a community of people that are not socializing face t o f ace.

00:18:54.650 --> 00:18:54.809
They were remote already.

00:18:54.910 --> 00:18:58.930
So there's many roads that lead to Rome.

00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:02.450
There's many ways you can raise the profile of your venture.

00:19:02.670 --> 00:19:05.650
It doesn't have to be with the crazy psi-ops networking attitude that I had.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
It can be to a bolted board and ready.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
It can be to many this somewhere.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
It can be by sharing your code.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
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.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
And guess what?

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
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.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
And one of the most profitable startup I know, by the way.

00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:05.650
So there are many ways to raise the profile of the venture.

00:19:34.470 --> 00:19:42.069
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.

00:19:42.170 --> 00:19:49.750
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.

00:19:49.750 --> 00:19:49.829
Absolutely.

00:19:51.500 --> 00:19:55.619
There's one thing also, again, I didn't know that when I started, I really didn't...

00:19:55.640 --> 00:20:03.059
My vision has been a really transformative experience for me because of the speed, scale, and the success, y ou g o very quickly.

00:20:03.060 --> 00:20:05.259
And I think it's just a n infancy in terms of success.

00:20:05.559 --> 00:20:07.859
You have to be a uthentic at t he end of the day.

00:20:08.650 --> 00:20:13.130
When I, every time I t ry, I t ry not too long ago in the FF g roup.

00:20:13.430 --> 00:20:17.009
so FF is like a group of founders that meet regularly.

00:20:17.010 --> 00:20:20.650
And we had a meeting with six of us to talk about the pr oblem.

00:20:20.651 --> 00:20:30.769
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.

00:20:30.770 --> 00:20:36.319
And tri ed be someone that you can walk with eve ry da y an d rea ct an d pe aceful.

00:20:36.599 --> 00:20:39.759
And I had, I had that person and I switched to arrived in the founder's meeting.

00:20:39.980 --> 00:20:44.759
And I talked the same way that I talk in another meeting i n a, i n a corporate way.

00:20:45.180 --> 00:20:46.279
And they all l ooked at me like that.

00:20:46.599 --> 00:20:48.000
T hey're like, what's wrong w ith you?

00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:48.599
Today's that's right.

00:20:48.880 --> 00:20:51.119
it's l i ke, th ey're l ike, come back here.

00:20:51.121 --> 00:20:52.400
Li ke w e wa nt t h e r e al y ou, right?

00:20:52.401 --> 00:20:58.400
And so the marketplace and the founder and, an d t h e, the same way that ef fect, like people smell.

00:20:58.410 --> 00:21:00.359
Hype can be, right?

00:21:00.890 --> 00:21:02.799
Raising the profile, what you do.

00:21:02.800 --> 00:21:03.880
That's very serious.

00:21:03.881 --> 00:21:04.839
That's not, right.

00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:05.359
People.

00:21:05.940 --> 00:21:13.269
An d, an d b y the way, once you build and you people see it, you lost them forever.

00:21:13.270 --> 00:21:18.710
So whatever you do, it needs to come from a place from your heart, from authenticity.

00:21:18.711 --> 00:21:29.819
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.

00:21:29.820 --> 00:21:30.059
Right.

00:21:30.950 --> 00:21:43.259
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.

00:21:43.260 --> 00:21:50.769
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.

00:21:50.770 --> 00:21:51.049
Perfect.

00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:51.730
So

00:21:52.049 --> 00:21:59.690
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.

00:22:00.009 --> 00:22:00.009
Yeah.

00:22:00.150 --> 00:22:01.329
It was still really early days.

00:22:01.330 --> 00:22:01.569
Right?

00:22:01.570 --> 00:22:04.130
Can you walk us through how you, how you did that?

00:22:04.190 --> 00:22:07.609
And I think it also was related to bringing Eli as a CEO.

00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:09.200
Yeah.

00:22:09.400 --> 00:22:09.880
So all that interesting.

00:22:09.881 --> 00:22:11.079
As soon as things started pickup.

00:22:11.140 --> 00:22:15.039
So I had made a decision, I wanted to go fast and I had made the decision.

00:22:15.200 --> 00:22:16.359
I wanted to be first to market.

00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.599
I went to an event where there was lot investors in Silicon valley.

00:22:19.601 --> 00:22:25.160
And because I was just getting started launching the product, I felt that it was not the right time to show true card.

00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:26.480
I went to pitch in front of them.

00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:28.869
I barely said nothing about the venture.

00:22:29.059 --> 00:22:30.269
Some visits were frustrating.

00:22:30.509 --> 00:22:33.950
Why you on stage, if you're not pitching properly, why are you not discussing what you're doing?

00:22:33.951 --> 00:22:36.670
And I said, if you're really interested, we can see what to one in.

00:22:36.710 --> 00:22:37.710
I want to talk to them and things.

00:22:37.950 --> 00:22:37.950
Right.

00:22:38.410 --> 00:22:41.750
But the reason why there was a certain level, I, I, it's not my first startup.

00:22:41.779 --> 00:22:42.589
It's not my first rodeo.

00:22:43.589 --> 00:22:50.299
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.

00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:54.460
And I had seen a founder make that mistake, right?

00:22:55.059 --> 00:23:06.779
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.

00:23:07.160 --> 00:23:12.250
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?

00:23:15.690 --> 00:23:16.930
The, the data supports it.

00:23:17.730 --> 00:23:29.930
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.

00:23:30.259 --> 00:23:31.559
And then you have a magic combo.

00:23:31.560 --> 00:23:31.839
Right?

00:23:32.220 --> 00:23:39.440
But the reality is that I had decided early on that I wanted my bridge to be as professionally managed as, as possible.

00:23:39.589 --> 00:23:45.160
Also, when you fundraise, it's very useful because they look as you know, at the team slide.

00:23:45.940 --> 00:23:47.680
And so you've been judging every fact.

00:23:47.880 --> 00:23:48.319
So it's very simple.

00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:50.799
I'm, I have no problem admitting it.

00:23:50.800 --> 00:23:52.759
Like I took a very mercenary approach.

00:23:52.789 --> 00:23:54.119
I'll do what it takes to make it happen.

00:23:54.829 --> 00:23:56.400
This is the slide deck people want.

00:23:56.401 --> 00:24:00.559
They want to see market size, perfection, perfection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:00.579 --> 00:24:02.960
And they want team and this and that.

00:24:03.240 --> 00:24:05.069
Well, I make sure that every side was the best possible.

00:24:05.569 --> 00:24:10.869
And I would only go pitch when I felt we were ready for that level of pitching with enough slide that were real.

00:24:11.450 --> 00:24:17.750
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.

00:24:17.789 --> 00:24:19.549
I know how much money the competitors are making.

00:24:19.809 --> 00:24:24.430
So I could actually be super critical on those slides of the total addressable marketplace.

00:24:25.319 --> 00:24:26.900
But, but so what happened with the seed?

00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:30.740
So what was interesting is that I was starting to have momentum.

00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:39.140
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.

00:24:39.141 --> 00:24:40.660
Two of them are in t h e l ike closing stage.

00:24:40.710 --> 00:24:45.259
How many engineers you have ag ain, and I'm like, I'm not having engineers right now.

00:24:45.260 --> 00:24:46.529
And he is, h e just froze.

00:24:46.530 --> 00:24:49.569
I said, oh, I'm not sure that's a good idea.

00:24:49.570 --> 00:24:50.849
You know, it is, i t' s li ke very polite.

00:24:50.851 --> 00:24:58.690
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.

00:24:58.990 --> 00:25:09.400
But, 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.

00:25:09.839 --> 00:25:14.720
They were starting to see me at one conference in Toronto, one in Montreal, semi lot of noise.

00:25:14.859 --> 00:25:32.549
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.

00:25:32.609 --> 00:25:37.430
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.

00:25:38.009 --> 00:25:49.299
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?

00:25:49.299 --> 00:25:52.819
Because again, what it is is you you're just removing risk, right?

00:25:53.009 --> 00:26:05.900
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.

00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:10.450
The number one thing that people look at you is like, how many miles two are you completing?

00:26:11.089 --> 00:26:16.049
If, imagine, I mean, imagine Pablo, you talk to someone that has nothing, two months after it comes to you.

00:26:16.130 --> 00:26:18.049
I have two potential clients, 20 the pipeline.

00:26:18.829 --> 00:26:20.130
I have two people hired.

00:26:20.420 --> 00:26:28.440
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.

00:26:28.441 --> 00:26:32.519
So the other aspect in that one thing in that p hase, that was super important.

00:26:32.520 --> 00:26:42.599
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.

00:26:42.601 --> 00:26:49.319
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.

00:26:50.309 --> 00:26:50.799
Perfect.

00:26:51.160 --> 00:26:53.119
All right, well, look, we'll, we'll stop it there, Solon.

00:26:53.200 --> 00:26:54.559
I really, really appreciate it.

00:26:54.560 --> 00:27:16.430