Investor Connect Podcast

As soon as your startup establishes a stock incentive plan and issues stock options to employees or other stakeholders, it's time to work on a 409A valuation. This is a valuation of your startup for assigning a cost basis to the stock options. The U.S. tax code in section 409A requires private companies to show that their common stock options are issued at fair market value. This is similar to the...

Changing the product, the price or the promotion? Today, we'll talk about What to do when the investor says no. In raising funding you'll hear "no" quite often. There are many reasons why investors do not invest. Sometimes, they are busy with other deals. Other times, they are looking for a deal in another sector or stage. If they are saying no because they are interested in investing and want to...

It's important for a startup to have regular communication with investors during the fundraise. It keeps the investor up to date on your progress and helps build the relationship. For updates, find a cadence that fits your business. For fundraising, every two weeks is a good pace. After funding move to monthly or quarterly updates. In your communication in person, over the phone or in email talk a...

I receive requests for introductions from many sources. Startups want to meet investors. Advisors want to meet growth companies. The list goes on. Over the years, I've learned to raise the bar. I could take whatever attachment they have and make the introduction. Instead, I raise the bar by requiring the requestor to make it better. I ask for a proper email address that represents their business i...

I was recently talking with a startup who had a photo service. He spent $3K to test out his business model. He found he could sign up one photographer for every dollar spent and how much revenue he could generate with each one. As he spoke, I found myself engaging with his pitch when he had numbers. He talked about how he spent his $3K to demonstrate the cost of customer acquisition and the averag...

Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. The one key metric for mobile app businesses is user engagement with the app. This measures how much time or how often the user engages with the app. The user needs to engage on a regular basis and over time increase the usage. Some focus on total number of users but if most of those users don't use the app more than a few...

Your One Key Metric: SaaS businesses Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. For a software as a service business it is the CAC: LTV ratio CAC standards for Cost of Customer Acquisition and represents the cost of signing up the customer including marketing, sales, and any other related expenses. Lifetime value and stands for the total amount of revenue from the c...

Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. The one key metric for network effect businesses is organic vs. paid users. The share of organic users relative to paid users should increase over time because as the network expands, more users want to join. Users can come from those who are friends and contacts of other users. For two-sided marketplaces, users can come fr...

Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. In applications requiring FDA certification, revenue is not the key metric, but rather FDA approval is. For medical device companies the key metric is cycle time through the 510K application and approval process. The purpose of a 510k submission is to demonstrate that your medical device is at least as safe and effective as...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Kerry Rupp, General Partner at True Wealth Ventures. True Wealth Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund run by women. They invest in women-led companies with products and technologies in the sustainable consumer and consumer health sectors that more efficiently solve the next generation of challenges. They believe that because women make the vast majority of...

Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. For consumer product companies selling through retail, the key metric is same-store sales. You track ongoing sales by units per store each week or month. This metric tracks your organic growth rate of the product and can range anywhere from 1 to 10% month over month. If selling online the CAC: LTV ratio applies which is the...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Sasha Shtern of Zero G Capital. Sasha is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep ties to the Denver startup community, and known for investing and operating companies in manufacturing, construction services, and technology. In addition, Sasha is the co-founder of Rocky Mountain Blockchain and co-organizer of Ethereum Denver, one of the largest blockchain organizations in t...

Every startup has one key metric to grow their business to the next level. For eCommerce, the key metric is sales conversion rate. Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase. For most sites, the conversion rate is 1 to 5 percent. You can find it manually by dividing the number of people who bought a product by the total number of visitors. In many sites, there are micro...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Vickie Zisman, Owner at Bastet Communication. Vickie is a skilled corporate communications professional. She has led corporate activity in marketing, marcomm, events, as well as investor/partner/international relations. She has worked in corporate PR, digital media & social networks as well as the cross-cultural business environment in the private and non-profit sect...

The first vision of a business may seem grand and clear. Upon launching the business you'll find it doesn't exactly fit with the market so you pivot. It takes 3 pivots to get to the growth phase of your startup. The first is the Target Market pivot-- you take this when you find the right market. You then have to change your business model to fit the economics of that new market. I call this the bu...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Brian Deutsche, Founder of XV Capital Group. XVVC focuses on seed-stage investments across industries in the US. Before XV Capital, Brian was a CPS by trade with a focus on chemical manufacturing. Brian then went on to grad school to get an MBA to transition into the world of investment banking where he was an M&A advisor in the world of consumer and retail. There wa...

Before you launch your fundraise, you'll need to build some basic documents for pitching the investor and following up their due diligence. Start with a basic pitch deck, ten to 12 slides, that includes a non-confidential introductory version of your deal. For first presentations to an investor, keep it simple and focused on the core. The goal is not to tell the investor everything. Instead, tell...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Josh Chapman, Managing Partner of Konvoy Ventures. Konvoy Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund that focuses exclusively on video gaming & esports. Josh has a background in finance and has worked at both BlackRock and Morgan Stanley. He decided that he wanted to use those skills and be a life cycle company. He then decided to get into the venture space and...

I'm often asked where startups should look for funding. There are many sources. First, start with your family and friends, as they already know you and believe in you. Second, expand the circle to include current and previous coworkers. If accelerators are appropriate for your deal, then consider those not only in your geographical area but also in your sector. Most accelerators take companies fro...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Paul Sethi of 2048 Ventures. Paul is a co-founder and Managing Partner at 2048 Ventures. For 7+ years prior to 2048 Ventures, Paul was CEO of Redbooks, leading sales data and intelligence platform for the marketing industry (acq. by List Partners - May 2018). He also co-founded Robuzz, an advanced ML/NLP practice, with a real-time alerts and data extraction engine bu...

For early stage funding there are several types of investors. Angel, VC, Family office, or customer funding. So which type is right for your deal? This depends on your type of business, the return and timeframe for that return. VCs want standard business models in high growth sectors with a 10X return in seven years. Angels want 3 to 5 times their money in 3 to 5 years and have capital preservatio...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Michael Mealling and Steven Jorgenson of Starbridge Venture Capital. Michael co-founded Masten Space Systems, was CTO of Seraph Group (a seed-stage VC fund), is the CEO of the Waypaver Foundation, and the President of the Moon Society. He has helped build several startups over the years ranging from telecom consulting to social media. Steven is a founding partner of...

There are two primary deal structures for your startup fundraise. There's the convertible note which is a debt instrument that converts to equity later. However, if you want to use a straight debt instrument you should use a promissory note. Then there's equity. It gives ownership rights in the company. The ownership is set by the valuation put on the company. An equity deal often comes with addit...

In this episode, Hall welcomes Grant Newlin of Newlin Ventures. Grant started his career as a management consultant at UI, before moving to investment banking, M&A, financial planning, and eventually working in food tech with Kraft Heinz. He ultimately started working with New Stack Ventures doing angel deals, before founding his firm, Newlin Ventures. Grant talks about how the angel and VC invest...

Every day I ask entrepreneurs how much they are raising. Most begin with the big number--the full and complete raise they anticipate to run. This ranges usually between $1m and $10M. It's good to have the big picture in mind. Some actually consider raising it all at once because "they want to get the fundraising out of the way." I remind them that raising too much money on a round will cost you eq...