Co-Founders Confidential w/ Deon Bradley
by Joe · 86 things on Twos
- Deon is an advisor for the 1871 accelerator
- Sales coach and advising founders
- Certified sales coach
- B2B tech
- Two things you need
- A strong team
- Business mentor who understands you as well as your business
- Better yet: An advisory board (3-7 members)
- Growth
- Product Development
- Design
- Marketing
- Personal development
- Finance
- Legal
- Law firms have an obligation to do pro-bono work every now and again
- Sales
- Anything that your current team does not have today
- Advisory shares should be a 3 year roadmap (hold on to every point that you can for dear life)
- Have no problem delaying the conversation about distributing equity 6 months down the line
- "Distributing equity is harder than equity"
- Slicing pie book: determining how to distribute equity amongst co-founders
- Never allow someone to cash out and walk away in less than 2 years, sometimes three.
- Try to figure out what the motivations of the people involved with your company are before delineating equity
- Take consideration of people who are fully retired, they need to be in for as many hours as you need
- Get everything that you can get for free, first
- When you can anticipate your revenues (through product market fit), ask a salesperson if they would be interested in joining the team for an equity/commission split
- Everything is negotiable
- Product market fit before anything else
- "Growth hacking" is bullshit - you need to find people that truly understand your business
- I am not a fan of marketing firms
- "Can you point me to anything specific that you have done for firms like mine"
- You can get individuals who can do the same things that a marketing FIRM would do for you, for a fraction of the price
- How do you properly evaluate the value of a marketing "person"
- Always ask your customers for feedback on your product, A/B testing, focus groups. Find different data points that will give you information.
- You need outside input, you need data
- You must give yourself a fair timeline in order to reach your milestones - that if you do not reach them, you pivot
- If you think a marketing intern, you do not need a marketing person
- If your marketing person does not have at least 5 years of marketing experience, then you can do it internally
- They need to have a plan and execute a plan
- A social media specialist might be a good, but UpWork is also successful platform with a lot of quality candidates
- Is it strategy or implementation?
- Nobody can give you strategy at $12 an hour
- Chicken or the egg problem
- How do I get users without investor money, how do I get investors without more users?
- Grow organically (first)
- You also must know your potential investors first. Not all of them have the same requirements
- What are their hot buttons, what do they normally invest in?
- We need to fly out to Silicon Valley
- You will have a deeper understanding of the climate once you have been here for a more significant amount of time
- Conservative
- The pandemic drove a drunk creator situation where you can raise funding from elsewhere
- Atlanta, Boston, New York
- 80/20 rule - 80% of the investors may subscribe to the B2B sentiment but it is your job to find the 20%
- Research the fund and talk to the companies founders
- What made them investable to XYZ company
- You must tell them what they are going to invest in afterwards
- VCs want to know what the financial path is, what the valuation is, where you are going to get your future investors
- Deon Bradley - Google for the contact information
- Have the initial call with and then let them guide whether the in person meeting works
- "Hey I am going to be in Dallas next week, do you have time"
- Take it one step at a time and let the investor drive the situation
- Bring potential investors to TB Wave and see if we can find the warm intro
- They have to spend, they have to deploy
- Where are they in their investing life cycle
- How many companies have they or can they invest in each round
- How would you do regional investment and figure out where we need to be seeking out investment?
- Talk to people who work in various markets
- The midwest is less conservative than the south, but more conservative than the west
- Talk to the accelerators and incubators in each market
- There are a lot of virtual events through each region
- Tampa: Healthtech, Fintech, Cybertech
- It makes it easier to use round numbers - anything from $400k - $1M is effectively the same amount of money
- Adjust everything up
- They are not going to make it easy to give you money - always search for the warm introduction. Pitch competitions, hack-a-thon, get in wherever you can.
- There will always be list of 20 things that every company should do before trying to raise money
- Try to build the relationship as it builds up to the fundraising conversation
- Being in the area where these people like to relax and giving it a change of scenery
- People are often surprised to learn that money is not the #1 reason startups fail. The #1 reason is actually issues between the co-founders.
- The Founder's Dilemma book: problems with the co-founder team
- Roles
- Relationships
- Rewards
- Startup owners manual: book
- Startup checklist: book
- Deon@BradleyCoaching.com