Jan. 31, 2022

How to Raise Your First Round | Marc Boscher, Founder of Unito

Ask most early-stage founders what they need most and you'll likely get the same answer: money.

Especially early on, before you have much traction, raising money can be daunting. If you don't have much of a network, it's hard to even know where to start. Who are these angel investors and how do you find them? How do you get them to take a meeting? And how do you get interested investors to actually close?

Marc walks us through his first fundraise at Unito. How he leveraged an accelerator to build a network, got other founders to get him investor introductions and used various tactics to build momentum and FOMO.

If you're looking to raise one of your first rounds of funding, check out how Marc got it done.

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

01:22 - Why join an accelerator?

05:16 - Deciding to fundraise

06:45 - Nothing happens if you stay home

08:56 - The power of serendipity

09:50 - Raising a Pre-Seed

13:23 - The power of momentum

15:45 - How to ask for money

17:55 - Raising a Seed Round

19:11 - Running a Process

25:47 - Building relationships with VCs

32:29 - Closing difficulties

35:25 - Recap

WEBVTT

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There's a saying, if you want to raise money, ask for advice, if you want advice, ask for money and I think it's so true for me.

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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 Marc, the founder and CEO of Unito.

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Unito is a workflow automation platform that allows people to build two-way integrations between business apps.

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For example, you can link Jira with Trello so that when a developer updates an issue on Jira, it shows up in Trello and vice versa.

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Unito is based in Montreal, they have 60 employees and have raised$13 million.

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Marc, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, Pablo.

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Thanks for having me.

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The topic of today's episode is how to raise a round.

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And we will start in the very early days of Unito, and take us through, more than anything, the focus on the pre and the during and the post of raising a financing round.

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At the beginning, you started right away, if I'm not mistaken, or a month or so after you had the idea, and you went into Founder Institute, which is an accelerator.

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Let's touch on that quickly because a lot of founders think through joining an accelerator, and I think the case is pretty clear for like Y Combinator o r 500, which are very w ell k nown, and they give you credibility and all this stuff, but there's different thinking around joining all the other accelerators, FI being one of them.

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N ow, for you, it s eemed to have been beneficial.

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But walk me through what was your thinking of joining Founder Institute?

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What was that experience like?

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Yes, sure.

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You have to realize when I started, Unito, I'd been in startups for years already.

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I knew a lot about how to build a startup or build product in particular.

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But what I realized after all these years in startups is I hadn't built a network at all.

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And I was there, like,"I have a couple of ideas I want to try, and I'm ready to jump off the cliff," but I didn't know people, in a way.

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How do you leverage that network to find co-founders or to find early staff?

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The staff part, you have it through your work, but really when you're talking about investors or advisors, you don't know where to start.

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For me, that was the main goal of going through this program.

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Founders Institute are really early-stage idea accelerator, they call it.

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So, you really have nothing at the beginning.

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It's more like a few ideas, and you're going to test them out using traditional lean startup methods.

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For me, the main goal was actually to network more than learning some of these techniques.

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And so, when I came in, it was very focused on that.

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And that's really when the hustling started.

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How to create that network, leveraging the program, which had this really large pool of mentors, of coaches, of people that were willing to help, and not just waiting for the program to introduce you, but leveraging the program to get to them first.

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And that was the main goal.

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And I think a lot of people go into these programs, they don't have a goal, they think that the program will change the trajectory of their business.

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But that's not how it happens.

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It's, what do you want from it?

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How are you going to go and get it from the program?

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It's not school, they're not going to feed you success.

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That makes sense.

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And when we think about the network, you mentioned a few different pieces.

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Being honest, was fundraising the number one thing you were thinking,"I need to put the network because at some point I'm going to raise money" or was it not necessarily number one priority"?

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I'd been in startups that had raised money early on with nothing.

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I had been startups that had bootstrap.

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I wasn't set on the trajectory, on what's the path.

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So, it wasn't necessarily, I have to raise, or I'm going to raise, and we were definitely bootstrapping.

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I knew from experience that when you raise, you're taking on a certain path, you're limiting some of the options or trajectories or directions your business can take.

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So, you have to feel right about it.

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And you don't know when you just had an idea what it's going to turn into.

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I don't think fundraising was the goal in itself, but I know that to grow your business, you need to have a strong support network around you, whether it's people to bounce ideas or to introduce you to people, and that's the snowball effect.

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Starting that early is what led to a lot of the early fundraising success opportunities we got, which were earlier than a lot of people that went through the same program.

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So, you had a team, you already had your key co-founders, you had an MVP and users, is that right?

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A few users and I'd had a few advisors and people around me from the program, from hustling, from calling or connecting with people ahead of meeting them.

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So, that when you meet them, whether it's someone giving a talk or coaching, they already knew about you.

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And then just following up with them and things like that.

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It just created a lot more… we were more top of mind to a lot of those people than the group that they're talking to, it's just this group of founders that you don't know individually.

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Got it.

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That makes sense.

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When did you decide...

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you mentioned at the very, very beginning, you didn't know whether you would bootstrap or fundraise wasn't clear at some point it became clear.

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When did you decide, yeah, you know what, it's time to fundraise?

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Was it right as you were exiting Founder Institute or a bit later?

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We were thinking let's fundraise once we've launched because the idea is the later you fundraise, is quote unquote, better terms you get.

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It was how far can we get?

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And we were using a lot of the different programs or government programs that are available up here to bootstrap a lot of the early stuff.

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But it really started that summer.

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We had one early advisor, his name's Bruno, and he'd founded and sold an API-based, an email API company way ahead of its time.

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But he really got our stuff because it's very API and integration driven, and he had been supporting us through the process.

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Park Bruno for a second, that summer we went, there was an event called Startupfest, which is like a small event for startups and the ecosystem.

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But it was a few hundred bucks to go.

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The night before the event, they literally offer$50 tickets or something.

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So, we're like,"Screw this.

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We're going, grab a...", we bought a few white t-shirts and iron-on printable paper, printed our first t-shirts, ironed them on that night with logos of our first integrations.

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And we went the next day.

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You went with an objective?

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Or you were just like,"Let's go check it out"?

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Well, let's get out there.

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And I think that's the that's the key point, nothing happens if you stay at home.

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There's this concentration of people that are going to be there, of all sorts, whether it's customers, whether it's potential partners, whether it's investors.

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Let's just get out there, and we don't want to be incognito, so we'll print these really recognizable logos on our t-shirt, and people would just like,"Hey, do you work for GitHub?

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Do you work for like a Sauna?" And we're like,"No, but if you know about them, then maybe you need us." And it was like,"Let's just get out there and have things happening." There was one guy I crossed,"Hey, you have to meet Sylvain.

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He's a partner at a VC firm here." And we're going through the event, small event, and we find them in this line up of a food truck.

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I do the one-minute pitch, if you want, the elevator pitch there in the food truck lineup and Sylvain's like,"Yeah, there's this guy I know, Bruno, he'll really understand what you guys are doing.

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I should introduce you to him." And this is the Bruno I mentioned before, one of our early advisers.

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And before I could say,"I know him already," there's this magical thing that happens, Bruno literally appears from behind me on the spot.

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And he's like,"All right, Sylvain, you need to talk to Marc.

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I've been following for a long time." And like this magical thing happens when a VC gets the warm intro or the external validation from someone they trust.

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And extremely, it ticks, checks a really big box and gets you in this fast track lane with an investor because they're looking for proof signals.

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They can believe you, but they'd rather believe someone they already trust who believes in you.

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And the more they can get that, the better it is.

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So, that was this very...you can never plan this up better.

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You can never set the stage and tie things better than it happened.

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But it did, and that ended up...

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Sylvain was like,"Hey, come pitch the partners.

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And eventually, they ended up leading that early stage, very early stage pre-revenue, pre-seed round.

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We'll get into the weeds there, but I have to...

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serendipity is a crazy thing.

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And it's funny because we had a very similar thing happen at Startupfest as well.

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I remember when I was at Gymtrack with Lee.

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Lee, one day, and we were at this accelerator as well, and there was this trip to StartupFest, and we were busy, as I'm sure you were at the time, and I'm like,"Lee, why are you going to go there?

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Don't waste your time.

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Whatever." He's like,"Man, I'm going." He went, and he meets- very similar- he meets Dan Martell from Clarity, and then Dan Martell introduces him to Dave McClure from 500.

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And literally two days later, we're in 500 Startups, and we're like moving to the Valley.

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But, you have to kiss a thousand frogs to get into that situation, as I'm sure you did.

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To be clear, you weren't even really sure that you were going to raise, you just went to Startupfest to meet people, and you got introduced to the right person, right time.

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And then from that meeting, did you just say...

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he set up the next meeting, and you just went through with real ventures or did you start any sort of process at that point, like"Oh, wow.

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Okay.

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I'm fundraising now let's go talk to 15 VCs," the thought process and so on.

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Not so much for the pre-seed.

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I was in mode, getting into broadening the network.

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And that firm was like,"Hey." They had an accelerator of their own,"Come join the accelerator" and stuff, and we're like,"We don't think we're going to get much from a second one because it's the same network anyway." And that eventually turned into still the fundraise story.

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We had a few other people, it's always the same, it happened over Christmas.

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I'd met a few other angels who started getting interested and excited and were willing to put up,"Hey, I'll do a term sheet for a small amount or a note or something like that." And that triggered the VC to get into action.

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And so, it snowballed once there was one, there was a second one, all over the Christmas holidays.

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It's like,"Hey, can you come pitch the partnership on Jan 4th?" And then we'd sign the term sheet a few days later.

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The idea is there's this really long string of events and introductions, and it's really completely improbable if you take that one sequence.

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But as you said, the number of people I've been networking with, the number of people I've been talking to, introducing and pitching, and just sharing the story, there's a ton more.

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And most of these never led anywhere.

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Except for that one, and I think as founders...

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I think that's the big challenges.

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On one side, you're like"Focus, focus on the business, focus on the business and the rest will fall into place." And brutally and aggressively say no to a lot of things.

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But on the other hand, if you don't get out and say yes to a bunch of things, things are not going to happen.

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It's not just say yes to everything or say no to everything, you really have to bucket stuff.

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Okay, if I'm in a...

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I need to invest this portion of my time on this kind of stuff.

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Right.

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So, let me plan that out.

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It's not going to take over all my time, but I need to be intentional about this.

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I think network building for, especially first time founders or anybody that doesn't have like a pre-built network because they already did it before is so critical.

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And the focus thing, couple of things, first of all, sometimes you might have multi time founders talking about focus and being the ones that say no to everything.

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And sure, because when they needed to raise their angel round, they called 15 people, and 12 said yes, and they were done.

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Because they wasted the time way earlier.

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It doesn't really apply f or your first time founder with no network.

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And the second thing is if you think about focus as focusing on what's important and you just say,"well, building a network's important", then you're still focused, it's just, that is a bucket i s as you c all it.

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I think that makes total sense.

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And then the other piece that I just have to mention is, it really feels like this tipping point sort of situation.

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I mean, if you, as you mentioned, just focus on, oh, so you basically ran into the right guy.

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And he was like,"yes, let's do it." That's not the message.

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The message is you really went through all these other meetings, this one worked, and also it worked because you knew Bruno and because all this FOMO happened because of these other angels that were also there as well.

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And so, everything really...

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there was this catalyst event more than anything.

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Yes, I think there's this image of, It's like a wave.

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People call it, there's momentum.

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And momentum it's slow to build, and it's easy to lose too.

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But if you can ride it, it gets pretty strong.

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And networking is a very powerful way to build momentum because people start hearing about you, and they talk to each other about you.

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And it's not that hard to create.

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You can really spark that on your own.

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And I got introduced to Bruno and then someone introduced me to the person, and it just builds up.

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You can be systematic about it.

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I think it sounds like chance and serendipity, but you can provoke it and be intentional about it, create a system to do it.

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It could be,"okay, I'm going to go to one event a week, or I'm going to network, I'm going to send five LinkedIn invitations per day or per week or whatever it is.

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You create a cadence for yourself.

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And that builds out.

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That's what compounds over time.

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But the founder that you're telling about, the one that goes and raises like this...

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There are a couple of things on this.

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First of all, you only hear the success stories.

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I only ever hear the successes.

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And they might sound like that, but the reality is often even that person that has a big track record, it wasn't that easy.

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And second, maybe they got to that point, but that's because they're that second or third or whatever, they still started with the hard way.

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When you're thinking about a first-time founder, raising a pre-seed round and more or less an idea and a little bit of validation, you could go and say,"okay, I need to talk to angels, and I'm going to tell an angel,"I'm raising this much money.

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You're in, and you're out" and whatever, but you risk that you can't run a real process because these people aren't that identifiable and all of a sudden, you're the person that's been trying to raise for four months.

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Are you better off just having casual conversations with angels until a catalyst event happens?

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Well, I think you still want to be in control of your destiny to some degree, and you don't want to let it completely out of your control, it just happens when it happens.

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It's like saying,"oh, I'll just build a product, and they'll come," or"we'll launch it when it's ready." There's got to be a little bit more of forcing functions or objectives, I think, to think about it.

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But I think in early stages, even in later stage, there's this saying, if you want to raise money, ask for advice, if you want advice, ask for money.

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And I think it's been so true for me.

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The earlier the stage, the more they're investing in the individual.

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They're going to be not so much into your idea or your pure charisma, but they want to see how you're reacting, how you're behaving, how you're operating, how you're executing, and they want to fall in love with you and believe in you.

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It's not going to be, you can't go and do this,"all right, we're raising, it's going to be a two-week process or one week process, we're running up, we're doing all the meetings first week, then everybody puts in their term sheets, and then we'll pick" because you can't raise on just objective stuff.

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So, the batter between networking and fundraising in early stages is a pretty thin line.

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And you never know who could be the investor because a lot of people could be angels.

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We had people that put in small checks, but they knew the VCs, and the VCs knew them because they'd invested previous companies.

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That little check or commitment made a huge difference to get the next person in.

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At the beginning, it's that networking.

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You just want people to believe in you and to support your story and to talk about you in their own network and exponentially grow it, things snowball.

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And then the moment you're"yeah, we were thinking, this could be a good time.

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We're thinking that it might be a good timing to raise in X month.

00:17:15.799 --> 00:17:19.160
" You're still not saying"I'm raising," you're asking them for advice.

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Do you think would be the right timing?

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When do you think?

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And then things typically fall into place there.

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You have to be more casual early on.

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You want to be ideally in a position where you're"well, we don't really need...

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We're not...

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We don't really need it.

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We think we could be growing this, but I think there's a huge opportunity here.

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What do you think?" That kind of making them part of the adventure is what a lot of early-stage people like, especially angels.

00:17:45.769 --> 00:17:47.960
So, that led to your first pre-seed round.

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Let's fast-forward.

00:17:48.441 --> 00:17:53.609
You'd raised the half a million dollars, I assume, hired people to build product, find traction.

00:17:53.640 --> 00:17:58.619
When do you start thinking about raising your seed round?

00:17:58.621 --> 00:18:01.380
Where is the company at that stage?

00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:10.799
Similar story, we start thinking about it way before we need it because we want to be in that position where you can say you don't need it.

00:18:10.859 --> 00:18:16.470
This was a little bit more systematic where it's"okay, let's get a list of a bunch of seed investors."

00:18:16.650 --> 00:18:17.279
How early?

00:18:17.280 --> 00:18:24.869
By the way, you say early, you're saying,"let's talk runway." You raised a half a million dollars probably for 18, 24 months, I would think, or less.

00:18:25.230 --> 00:18:28.109
Yes, I've always raised around still a year.

00:18:28.111 --> 00:18:32.549
I could say I still have a year of runway or so, or at least nine months.

00:18:32.550 --> 00:18:53.880
There are different techniques where I would, again, up in Canada, we've got a lot of government programs and different tools we've got at our disposal that I think are not available everywhere, but we were able to have some loans that we could choose to pull on or not, or different programs that we were pre-approved, but we didn't use.

00:18:53.881 --> 00:18:56.400
And we could say,"look, we could still...

00:18:56.401 --> 00:19:06.059
we've got all these things, we don't necessarily need the VC money." And that gave us a lot of leverage.

00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:11.910
And we'll do what's right for the business, which is really the angle you want to do, VC's a means to an end, not in end of itself.

00:19:11.910 --> 00:19:14.160
We start a process.

00:19:14.161 --> 00:19:18.690
We start early because we assume it's going to take a fair amount of time.

00:19:18.691 --> 00:19:23.609
And we just start with the list, we prioritize it, score it.

00:19:23.401 --> 00:19:25.230
Okay, here are my top few.

00:19:25.230 --> 00:19:26.849
How do I get an intro to them?

00:19:27.059 --> 00:19:37.079
But one that specifically for that investor, if you look at that thread, I got introduced to Mistral by another founder that had taken money, from Mistral.

00:19:37.619 --> 00:19:43.710
I'd met the guy at an event again, networking, and I reach out like,"hey, I'm researching this investor.

00:19:44.009 --> 00:19:48.779
Would you mind sharing your experience?" And that formula worked really well for a lot.

00:19:48.931 --> 00:19:55.710
Most entrepreneurs are willing to take a call with a fellow entrepreneur, share their experience about investor good or bad.

00:19:55.950 --> 00:20:08.670
And once they're,"hey, so what are you doing?" And you explain to them, and hopefully, they get,"hey, that's a cool idea." And you can ask them,"hey, would you introduce me?" And that's how I got introduced to you.

00:20:09.029 --> 00:20:09.180
Yes.

00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:20.670
That's what I think is such an important thing with VCs, as much as with angels, a lot of people say,"the VCs, at least we can start with a list and work backwards to who's taking money." But for the angels, you can start the other way.

00:20:20.941 --> 00:20:32.279
You can look at, in your city, who's raised in a million dollar round or whatever, and have this exact same conversation and say,"hey, who are some good angels that you could introduce me to?" because if they raised money, they got angels on the cap table.

00:20:32.549 --> 00:20:39.150
And that's one good strategy because a lot of people, first time founders will start off, and they don't know any angels and the angels don't have websites.

00:20:39.180 --> 00:20:43.619
So, use other founders, I think works for every round and definitely for the seed.

00:20:43.621 --> 00:20:46.470
Quick question on the system, you said you started with a list.

00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:48.579
How did you rank it?

00:20:48.789 --> 00:20:51.910
How did you think about that part of it, and this is who I want most?

00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:59.109
I'm a little bit systematic, maybe overly sometimes, but I'll give you my scoring system.

00:20:59.111 --> 00:21:01.420
It's any sales pipeline.

00:21:04.509 --> 00:21:10.019
There are stages, and you have these prospects, or targets, and then they have you connected with them.

00:21:10.780 --> 00:21:16.509
And is there an opportunity, is there something there, et cetera, are you just nurturing or are they committed, et cetera.

00:21:16.839 --> 00:21:23.349
Business value is how much value this firm or this investor, or this angel bring to the table.

00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:24.849
Is it beyond cash?

00:21:24.851 --> 00:21:25.960
Is it because they're connected?

00:21:26.171 --> 00:21:27.789
They know our space really well?

00:21:27.790 --> 00:21:33.730
Is it because there's portfolio companies or other companies they've invested in that could be potential partners?

00:21:34.330 --> 00:21:36.130
Do they have industry knowledge?

00:21:36.401 --> 00:21:36.849
Et cetera, et cetera?

00:21:36.849 --> 00:21:42.490
It's just a one, two or three score, Then there was like, how much of a fit is it?

00:21:42.490 --> 00:21:48.009
Based on their thesis of the kinds of companies they invest in, how well do we fit in there?

00:21:48.010 --> 00:21:51.250
Then we have, what's the relationship?

00:21:51.250 --> 00:21:52.750
Is it purely cold?

00:21:52.750 --> 00:21:53.769
Is it warm?

00:21:53.770 --> 00:21:55.029
Or d o we already have a relationship?

00:21:55.030 --> 00:22:00.309
I h ad an o verall probability, but that's something I would update along the wa y.

00:22:00.310 --> 00:22:04.210
At the beginning, you just score on business value and fit.

00:22:04.211 --> 00:22:10.480
That's how you get your top five, ten, or whatever, and you go down the list that way.

00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:16.539
You often pick a few that you have good relationships, or you can get in tros t hat aren't necessarily high value.

00:22:16.661 --> 00:22:25.210
These will be your test subjects in a way that you're go nna b ounce, test the story on, see the reaction, get the feedback.

00:22:25.211 --> 00:22:33.190
Maybe they're interested, but they're not necessarily your top story, but they'll help you prepare for the ones that you care the most about.

00:22:33.191 --> 00:22:37.569
The founder intro is one of the most powerful intros you can get to an investor.

00:22:37.570 --> 00:22:49.509
I n my experience they trust their own portfolio companies, or at least they know if they can or not, and if they say it's a good fit, you'll get the back d o or entrance, you'll get a call back b a sically.

00:22:49.990 --> 00:22:52.089
Now, there are two schools of thought on this.

00:22:52.330 --> 00:22:56.829
One of them says, once you have this list, wait until the perfect moment.

00:22:56.830 --> 00:23:00.339
So yes, go ahead and figure out how you're going to get into each account.

00:23:00.340 --> 00:23:01.779
Figure out who the warm intro is going to be.

00:23:01.780 --> 00:23:05.799
Maybe even talk about warm intro and say,"at some point I'm going to want an intro.

00:23:05.819 --> 00:23:06.039
Yes.

00:23:06.040 --> 00:23:07.480
Okay, cool." And you've got it already.

00:23:07.480 --> 00:23:19.150
And then, when the story is just right, and obviously, you're factoring in the runaway too, at some point you got to go, but, just do it with the best, you put the best foot forward, and you drive as much FOMO as possible.

00:23:19.210 --> 00:23:20.140
So, that's one school of thought.

00:23:20.141 --> 00:23:24.609
The other one says, if these are the 10 or 15 that you really want, start building relations.

00:23:25.871 --> 00:23:30.549
Figure out a way to chat with them now, say you're not raising, but just have that discussion.

00:23:31.661 --> 00:23:34.990
It seems to me you're more than the latter, but is that the case?

00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:36.369
And if so, why?

00:23:36.940 --> 00:23:42.700
I think it depends what you're raising for cash, then you're optimizing for something else.

00:23:42.730 --> 00:23:50.119
And I think that maybe the first option gets you, potentially, the better result because they know less.

00:23:50.121 --> 00:24:01.190
But if you're optimizing for getting the right people into your company, then you have to understand the fundraising process is also like a dating process.

00:24:01.191 --> 00:24:03.799
You're going to get married and there's no divorce.

00:24:03.800 --> 00:24:06.740
The divorce is not split halfway.

00:24:08.780 --> 00:24:11.569
It's not going to be in your favour as a founder.

00:24:11.570 --> 00:24:16.190
If it doesn't go well, it's going to be painful, and it's not going to be 50-50.

00:24:16.191 --> 00:24:28.400
That relationship building is also for you to figure out who you want to work with because they're going to get, maybe they're on the Board, maybe they have certain rights or veto rights.

00:24:28.430 --> 00:24:36.619
If you get the wrong person in and becomes shitty, your life is going to suck.

00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:55.519
And then you'd be like,"yes, the extra validation or extra money I got, I would give it back because right now it's either zero or I have to deal with this completely incompatible person." Especially at early stage, the people that invest, they're going to be there for a long time.

00:24:55.910 --> 00:25:07.759
And there's some really massive, massive differences between the people that are awesome and those that aren't, that are shitty and the people that are a good fit and the people that are not a good fit.

00:25:08.601 --> 00:25:18.410
If you're doing this very, it's now or never time constraint, everybody put t heir blind bets, you're also doing a blind b et.

00:25:18.769 --> 00:25:22.609
You're also going to be picking on just what's in the term sheet.

00:25:22.970 --> 00:25:33.769
But behind the term sheet, t here's a human, that's g oing t o sit on your Board and be either super beneficial or possibly break the company.

00:25:33.799 --> 00:25:46.549
That investor, that fit investors, they're not necessarily bad i nvestors in itself, but that fit can be just as destructive for a company as the bad fit co-founder.

00:25:47.180 --> 00:25:49.819
That all makes sense and sounds really good in theory.

00:25:50.509 --> 00:25:58.940
In practice, how do you build that relationship with counterpart that CEOs are super busy, most VCs either are busy or pretend to be busy.

00:25:59.510 --> 00:26:05.839
So, how are you framing those discussions and saying," hey, let's have a chat, but I'm not raising"?

00:26:06.470 --> 00:26:13.130
All investors, in my experience, in that intro call or whatever, they'll be"yes, well, let me know how I can help.

00:26:13.820 --> 00:26:20.240
I'm happy to help in whatever way," and so you pick up on it, you hold them to it.

00:26:20.569 --> 00:26:33.920
And, typically, you want to involve them into some mini project, mini objective or mini problem or big problem, whatever it is, that question that you're asking yourself as a business.

00:26:34.550 --> 00:26:37.759
The idea is that, first of all, you call them out, like,"okay, y ou're willing to help?

00:26:37.760 --> 00:26:41.150
Well, here are one, two, or three ways you could help me."

00:26:41.420 --> 00:26:42.349
What's an example?

00:26:42.351 --> 00:26:43.769
What are a few examples of things you've used?

00:26:43.769 --> 00:26:44.130
Yes.

00:26:43.769 --> 00:26:48.690
Insurance, like,"I'm looking at an introduction into your portfolio companies here.

00:26:48.960 --> 00:27:05.309
I want to talk to this, this person for X reason," or"I'm revising some of our pricing strategy," or"we're wondering if I should go up market or down market." Just some of your big questions that you could imagine having in a Board conversation or asking an advisor.

00:27:05.369 --> 00:27:16.799
That don't assume are going to uncover everything of your business, but you looped them in, you get their tie into the cup, the grinder.

00:27:16.800 --> 00:27:23.789
They start getting involved into the future of the company, and if you get to work with them, it's like a pilot project.

00:27:23.790 --> 00:27:27.109
I used the dating analogy.

00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:28.259
You want a date with them.

00:27:28.650 --> 00:27:33.750
And after the first call, do you want to see them again?

00:27:34.039 --> 00:27:37.680
But then you create a reason for seeing them again.

00:27:37.681 --> 00:27:48.480
And those people that aren't serious, they're not going to help, and those that will find a way to help, and you'll get to know them and they'll get to know you and get to know about your business.

00:27:48.480 --> 00:28:03.089
And also once they start helping you and are going through these decisions, they see how you think, and they have sort of have some personal skin in the game, but, attachment to it.

00:28:03.210 --> 00:28:04.890
I think that's how you keep it.

00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:06.480
You're like,"hey, can we follow up on this?

00:28:06.480 --> 00:28:09.660
Can I send you some information?" And you just keep that thread.

00:28:09.810 --> 00:28:18.569
You just need this bucket of questions or challenges that you can pull out of your bag with the investor.

00:28:18.720 --> 00:28:20.160
So, that's the strategy.

00:28:19.621 --> 00:28:22.980
How did it work in practice with your seed raise?

00:28:22.980 --> 00:28:30.210
So, you have this list of investors, you start getting intros mainly through founders, you start asking them for help on XYZ.

00:28:30.060 --> 00:28:31.980
Who are you talking to?

00:28:31.980 --> 00:28:33.480
And you don't need to...

00:28:33.651 --> 00:28:34.470
we could talk names, but...

00:28:34.681 --> 00:28:37.920
How many and what kind of conversations, and how does it lead to something?

00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:48.599
I probably listed a good 50, I pursued maybe two thirds of that or so that we had contacts with.

00:28:49.680 --> 00:29:00.299
A fair amount if you want, but some of them are just one call one insurer or whatnot, but a few of them kind of like,"yes, let's talk and share." And that's what happened with Mistral.

00:29:01.079 --> 00:29:06.430
The person I was talking to started asking questions, started helping, introduced me to a bunch of people, introduced us to customers.

00:29:07.829 --> 00:29:22.019
And of course, they're doing this too because they're learning about you, and they're"hey, if I introduce them to this potential customer, how do they serve them, does the customer, see the value?" And if it does work out, then they are getting proof points for the traction of this business.

00:29:22.019 --> 00:29:28.859
And in early stages, they can't rely on a lot of statistically significant numbers because your numbers are small.

00:29:29.250 --> 00:29:35.460
So if they can get proof points from other companies that they know or things like that, that's gold.

00:29:34.921 --> 00:29:37.829
And that gets you ahead of the game.

00:29:38.069 --> 00:29:39.690
Ultimately, there was a trigger.

00:29:39.691 --> 00:29:46.359
I also put all these people into our monthly updates.

00:29:46.990 --> 00:29:54.250
This is another tactic that worked out quite well in the early stages is I always did my monthly update.

00:29:54.279 --> 00:29:57.250
And I had a few versions.

00:29:57.250 --> 00:30:07.359
One for our existing investors or very close network, then a slight subset of that for people that were watching us or keeping an eye on us, the broader network.

00:30:07.819 --> 00:30:12.730
And every time I'd meet someone that, I thought, would be valuable, I'd add them, and"Hey, do you want to keep track of us?

00:30:12.730 --> 00:30:21.849
I do a good investor update, I'll send it to you." And of course, they'd say,"yes." And I could track, because of Mailchimp, who opened it and all that stuff.

00:30:22.839 --> 00:30:24.220
And that's how it triggered the round.

00:30:24.221 --> 00:30:27.440
It was,"yes, oh, look, numbers are looking steadily good, let's...."

00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:29.710
You did monthly updates.

00:30:29.711 --> 00:30:30.970
You committed to monthly updates.

00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:33.250
And I had done that at Gymtrack.

00:30:33.670 --> 00:30:39.910
And my reality was, and maybe yours was different with Unito, but some months were good, and some months weren't good.

00:30:39.940 --> 00:30:51.369
What I ended up doing is, you know,"screw that, I'm just going to have updates and number 1 and number 2 and number 3, and I'm going to send them when I want because I'm not a public company, so why not just send them when I want to send them.

00:30:51.371 --> 00:30:53.980
And sometimes it'll be covering two months, and someone times one month.

00:30:54.099 --> 00:31:01.480
Is there a reason you think it's just about the updates and do it whatever way it works, or is the reason why monthly on a cadence is a better way to do it?

00:31:01.509 --> 00:31:02.140
Any thoughts on that?

00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:23.500
Well, I mean, I have a very big focus on transparency, and I like to put it u p f ront, even with potential investors at the risk of,"yes, I'm maybe not showing all the good stuff," but often I'd get r esponse from people that end up investing later on, like"yes, we know summer's tough for everyone.

00:31:22.901 --> 00:31:33.430
Keep at it." The reality is nobody's a fool, all investors have seen companies from the inside, and they know what's goes on.

00:31:33.431 --> 00:31:36.670
It's not all pretty and there's good and bad months.

00:31:37.029 --> 00:31:41.559
So, if you're just showing your good side, they know wh ere y ou're ju st c overing on the bad side.

00:31:42.549 --> 00:31:52.089
An d i f you start sharing some of your growing pains, th en t hey know that you're going to continue doing that, you're going to be intellectually honest with them and transparent post-investment.

00:31:52.119 --> 00:31:55.660
So, I did this, I shared it with all the staff as well.

00:31:55.661 --> 00:32:00.009
So, it was a good habit for me, kept the company on a good cadence of KPI tracking.

00:32:00.010 --> 00:32:07.029
There's all these side benefits of doing good monthly updates and just keeping at it because the easiest thing...

00:32:07.059 --> 00:32:13.809
it's like going to the gym, the moment you skip a week or whatever, you can lose that habit.

00:32:14.470 --> 00:32:18.190
And I don't know a lot of firms that still do them after, we still do them.

00:32:18.490 --> 00:32:29.470
And it's an opportunity to show your personality too, and be,"hey, if you can't stand this cheap humour like mine, then maybe we're not going to get along."

00:32:30.190 --> 00:32:30.190
Right.

00:32:30.279 --> 00:32:34.089
It goes back to finding fit, which I think is the theme here.

00:32:34.390 --> 00:32:37.240
So, you're sending these updates, you've got a few people on the hook.

00:32:37.421 --> 00:32:38.019
Then what happens?

00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:56.660
In Mistral stories, it's funny because things started getting in motion, but timing was really bad because the managing partner had major back problems and was getting shots and got back surgery and was in the hospital for a long time.

00:32:56.661 --> 00:33:06.470
So, how do you get this stuff happening when the main person is literally on painkilling drugs most of the day.

00:33:06.471 --> 00:33:20.539
And so, it ended up being,"well, the only time we could do this is where you can come and pitch all the partners and stuff to formalize" because we had discussed already all the terms and okay, this could work and stuff.

00:33:21.049 --> 00:33:38.240
Now we need to get just a stamp and the formalities and ended up being"okay, well come pitch in Ottawa on the 21st of December." At the same time, we were having our second child, my wife was due at the end of December.

00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:42.950
So, the day before the pitch, we go to the doctor's, no baby in sight.

00:33:45.381 --> 00:33:53.299
So, I'm"okay, I'm going to Ottawa tomorrow." People imagine that fundraising happens in that boardroom and that pitch, but the reality is most of it's already done.

00:33:53.480 --> 00:33:58.430
I'm in that room, and I'm like,"folks, I'm not going to turn off my phone.

00:33:58.431 --> 00:34:09.320
If my phone rings, I have to jump back in the car and, go get the baby, which was really funny and weird.

00:34:09.380 --> 00:34:17.599
But anyways, the pitch goes well, we negotiate a term sheet over Christmas and sign the term sheet on the 29th of December and the baby arrives on the 30th.

00:34:18.019 --> 00:34:21.050
So, it's what are the odds of that happening?

00:34:21.050 --> 00:34:30.440
Did you shop it around, but did you try and get terms from a few other VCs as well to see what's fair and what's not?

00:34:30.440 --> 00:34:32.510
Or how did you think about competitive dynamics of it?

00:34:33.199 --> 00:34:41.510
Even if you don't get official term sheets from a lot of people, you can still validate some of the valuation because you're still having those discussions with others.

00:34:42.409 --> 00:34:57.500
And the moment there's an interest from one, you start, that's your trigger for a lot of the others, So you can plan your trigger, tell everyone,"this is my process, and it starts there and ends there." But a lot of the time you don't have...

00:34:58.099 --> 00:35:03.440
that's a risky approach in the early stages when you're not well known because best might not want to just jump in.

00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:08.300
And then you end up with, you've wasted that, you can't tell we're doing another one.

00:35:08.599 --> 00:35:10.280
It's kind of a one-shot deal.

00:35:10.489 --> 00:35:16.519
Versus if you keep a lot of irons in the fire, at some point, one person...

00:35:16.940 --> 00:35:24.920
you're nudging and one person that says,"okay, let's do this" then that you can use to really set a fire under everybody's ass.

00:35:25.820 --> 00:35:29.000
We're going to wrap it up there.

00:35:29.751 --> 00:35:51.210
To recap, you started your journey at Founder Institute as an accelerator, and the goal was to create a network, and you've kept that throughout your journey, always investing in, probably more and sometimes less than others, but always investing in, not just creating a network, but also in creating relationships and really finding fit.

00:35:51.469 --> 00:36:02.219
And you use that to get many, as you said, get many fires going and oftentimes some sort of catalyst event, which is just a result of serendipity.

00:36:02.221 --> 00:36:11.639
But you putting in the work led to, and triggered a fundraise, that's what happened in your pre-seed, that's what happened in your seed round.

00:36:11.641 --> 00:36:20.460
And, now you are 60 employees, you've raised, even a series A from Bessemer, have grown considerably since.

00:36:20.460 --> 00:36:21.900
So, thanks a lot, Marc.

00:36:21.900 --> 00:36:25.679
I really appreciate you sharing those stories, I'm sure founders will find them very helpful.

00:36:26.699 --> 00:36:27.389
My pleasure.

00:36:27.391 --> 00:36:32.699
And just remember to give serendipity a chance to do her work.

00:36:32.701 --> 00:36:35.789
You got to provoke it a little bit, and you can be systematic about it.

00:36:36.360 --> 00:36:36.900
Magic then happens.

00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:39.449
Thank you so much for listening all the way through.

00:36:39.510 --> 00:36:40.469
It's been a pleasure having you here.

00:36:40.471 --> 00:36:43.019
Make sure to subscribe, so you don't miss the next episode.