Fundraising preparation for founders

This is a big reason why founders fail, right? Is they just can't get past the intro call. And a big reason for why is they are not treating the intro call like it's meant to be. So you've got the founders who are treating it in a certain way, and then you've got the investors treating it in another way.

Because they've got this two different ways of thinking, it just never gets past, right? So the intro call is... The problem that founders have with intro calls is they think the intro call is The call that's going to make an investor invest, and it just doesn't work like that. I believe it was Mark Susterer, could be wrong there, a very famous VC from Silicon Valley.

And he coined the term that investors invest into lines, not dots. And what he means by that is it's not a single meeting that makes an investor want to invest into a founder. It's many meetings connecting that makes them excited. Hey everyone. We've got an action packed episode for you today with Jian Sirai.

He provides so much good information when it comes to fundraising. He shares advice on how founders should approach the intro car with potential investors. Top reasons why founders fail when it comes to fundraising and more. Let's dive into the conversation and don't forget to subscribe. If you enjoyed this episode.

Jian Sirai, excited to have you on Innovators Collab. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing very well. Thank you. I've had a very, very productive week so far. Yeah. Can't complain. All right. All right. Let me give a little background for the audience here. Gian is the founder of GS advisory. Where he helps founders raise venture capital But before that jian was co founder of pebble labs that developed solutions to increase natural crop yields And also an investor in part of the octopus ventures Which is one of the largest venture capital firms in europe managing over 1.

8 billion dollars in investment so jian first question I have for you is what is something interesting about you that People, most people don't know they're not going to find it on your LinkedIn profile. What is it? Yeah. So I guess something that really, I mean, no one will really know about is it's a long time ago now, probably about 15 years ago.

No, not that long ago. Probably about 12, I guess, years ago, I was a competitive gamer in World of Warcraft, so I was in a top 100 guild. Going for world firsts about, yeah, about 10 to 12 years ago. So that's definitely something that probably no one knows about. Yeah, but a lot of, uh, I was very young at the time, but whoa, I don't know, not long.

Cause then I obviously started to realize I can't do this as a career and I need to focus on my life. So it was only competitively for probably a year or two, but then I'd been playing before that for a few years, like three or four years. But then, yeah, it got to a point where I was like, okay, I should probably focus a little bit more on more important things.

But yeah, I loved it still. It was a great time. I consider myself still quite good at the game. There's a, there's a theme here because you're the third guest I've had on that played World of Warcraft competitively. Shahbazado, founder of OptiMonk and Devalatine Radu, founder of OmniConvert also used to play competitively.

For many years. And so when my son starts playing video games, I'll probably let him play. I probably won't say, Hey, it's a waste of time because now I know three people who are highly successful who used to play video games. Yeah, I think, I think it's a, it's a, especially for MMOs like world of Warcraft, I think there's, there's, there's a, it's a kind of fine line, right?

There's a lot of people go into the, the bad area where they, you know, put all their whole life into it. Don't do anything else, become depressed, come addicted to it. But. And I've spoken to other people and my friends and, and, and even work colleagues and other people in my, in my network about this, who've done something similar.

And if you don't go into that side of the fine line and you go into the other side, especially something like MMOs and, and, and all those things, but, you know, it taught me from a young age at, you know, 13, 14, 15, 16, actually how to socially interact with people, economics in terms of trading, putting work into something and actually getting something out of it.

Actually competing in some way and, and, and potentially winning and working as a team in, in terms of that, because at the time they're, they're called raids, but there were 25 people. Right. So you had to work with 25 people over. Yeah. Team speak. Um, you know, things I kind of were doing now. So all of those things actually taught me a lot and pretty put a base in terms of now what I've done everything.

And I was lucky enough to be on the line of another side of the line where I didn't, you know, just dedicate my whole life to this and not, not get anywhere. But yeah, so I'd always say that it's like, you just need to make sure you're on the right side of the place. Yeah. Otherwise you're on the wrong side.

It's not good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What was one of the first entrepreneurial things that you did as a kid or young adult Gian? Yeah, so I wasn't actually in particular apart from I guess that, which, you know, there a lot of entrepreneurial stuff I did in the world of Warcraft, which, you know, like I was getting very technical now, but it was herbs and I was basically buying and selling herbs for the cheap.

So, I guess that was like the first hurrah into it, but it wasn't actually until I was about 18 where I really fell in love with entrepreneurship. It was actually. It's a weird one to go into, but, uh, how I went into it rather, it actually started with me. I was studying economics. I loved economics. I then found out about Austrian economics, which is a school of economics.

And in particular, a Austrian economics economist from, I can't remember, like 1940s called Schumpeter. And he was talking about how To really change the world for the better, entrepreneurship is the key and innovation is really what moves the world. And I basically just fed the novels of that. And that's what really put me onto the entrepreneurial journey.

And then I basically just started loads of different stuff based around students, right? So things such as hiring services for DJ decks, actually hiring DJs, you know, ticket selling. It was many around events, obviously, as you do it, um, delivery of food, et cetera, all of these kinds of things. That was the kind of first hurrah I really, really, really went into in entrepreneurship and like, how can I actually make money from this in real life?

Okay. All right. How were you doing? I mean, were you making like a few hundred dollars like a month or was it something more and more than that? Yeah. Like I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't trying to, you know, change my life on this. It was, it was a pocket change. Some of the stuff was actually doing very well, but you know, no, no, nothing crazy.

You know, it wasn't like 10 K months or anything like that, but you know, it got me through. It got me, it allowed me to, you know. Be at university and be pretty comfortable and save a little bit at the end of it. Most people couldn't, but no, it wasn't. I wasn't making loads of money. No. Okay. All right. All right.

Okay. What was the best advice that either your mom or dad ever gave you? That is a great question. I would say my dad was, it's comes from my dad and he, Is still a lot better at this than I am, but he would say that you have to put 100 percent into something and you can't half ass anything. And if you do, it'll probably end up in failure.

He told me, told that to me from a very young age and, you know, working in the garden with him or doing whatever around the house. Where I try to cut corners all the time and not do something properly. He kind of took that out of me and made sure that I, you know, if I do something, I have to make sure that I'm actually doing it and it's, and it, and it works right.

Rather than just half assing it and hoping for the best. Okay. So that's what led to these entrepreneurial ventures in the field of agriculture or planting and seeds. And can I buy your dad? He was in the garden. I mean, that's where you got the influence from, huh? No, no, no, actually, no. It's an amazing story though.

So throughout university, I'd started a lot of different companies, right? About six or seven, most of them were like, like I just said, more just, you know, first rounds or entrepreneurship, just trying different things, not necessarily successful. Two I actually tried to make were tech companies. So I tried to raise money for them.

They did, they didn't go anywhere. They absolute failures. So, I was around 20 years old, 20, 21 years old, last year of university. And at that time, everyone was, you know, going into consulting or investment banking or going to London to the city to find a job and having summer internships. And I was still obsessed by entrepreneurship when I was like, I love entrepreneurship.

And my lofty goal at that point until literally 35 years ago was. I want to be a VC backed founder. That's what I want to do. I think that's, that's awesome. And I really want to, you know, change the world for the better by building a tech company. At the time, I didn't really have an idea. So, and I'd applied to go to like, investment banking, consulting and everything.

Failed profusely at it. Just didn't, nothing happened. And that was okay. It was... It was, you know, I just, I didn't have, I didn't have the heart looking back. I just didn't have the heart into it. I didn't want to just go into a nine to five corporate right in London and again, be like an accountant or a consultant.

So, as I failed it when I was 20, 21, getting any of these, you know, graduate jobs, I decided, Hey, I love skiing. I'm going to go for a year, have a gap year, be a ski instructor in Whistler, in Canada, which I've always wanted to do. And I'm going to, yeah, just take a gap year and then kind of see where I sit and maybe then read, you know, start my own company after that, after a year of just a gap.

And it was actually a crazy story, but it was, it was my, it was my test. Uh, they're called CSIAs, which is... Basically, the accreditation of being a ski instructor, and I went to be a ski instructor in Whistler, and it was my level one. So my, my, my first ever accreditation of like level becoming an official ski instructor, and I could officially work on.

Canadian mountains as a ski instructor, it was my level one test and we done the three days of tests at this point and I'd been, I just come to Whistler, right? So I didn't have loads of money. I just spent most of my money on getting this course, which is quite expensive. I think at the time it was about 3000 pounds to spend all my, all my pocket savings on that barely had any money was running on fumes and.

So I couldn't really afford food on the mountain, I had to make my own food. So like, you know, sandwiches or something, right? And I do the same, you know, all of the people who were obviously doing the test and all my friends were the same. So I was basically the bad guy. I would, I would bring my bag. And I'd put everyone's pack lunches in and, but when you're being taught to be a ski instructor and they're, they're testing you on your skiing abilities, you can't have a bag on your back because they need to see, you know, the way your body moves.

So what we usually do is we put the bag at the top of the mountain where, where you have lunch and then I'd pick it up at the end of the day and I'd ski down and I was okay with that. You know, I get to ski a bit more. I don't mind. So we were at the middle of the mountain where the beginner slopes are.

Again, just testing some stuff on, you know, how we teach people and all these things. And it was the end of the end of the test. And the instructor said, okay, you guys are done. Come back to me in here at this point in like three hours. And I'll let you know if you've, if you've passed and you can become a ski instructor and actually start working from next week.

So everyone was like, cool. Yeah. I'm going to go see down and, you know, get a shower and, um, we can meet there. I was like, cool. Yeah. Well, I'm just going to quickly go get the bag from the top and then I'll see you down and meet you guys. Thanks. And so I got on at Midstation, which is like the middle of the mountain.

So, usually at Midstation there'll be obviously people who've come from the bottom of the mountain and going up. So I got on and there was a lovely Canadian couple. opposite me. And bear in mind from mid station is about 15 to 20 minutes to the top of Whistler. So I, being me, myself, anyway, I'm quite, I'm quite an extrovert.

I just strap a couple conversations. Got 20 minutes, I may as well talk to someone and end up being that, you know, talked about my experience and how I love entrepreneurship. I'd started these things and I tried to, tried to, you know, raise money and it didn't necessarily work. And. At the top of the mountain, they basically gave me an offer to be a co founder as a COO um, in these two biotech companies that they were building.

And then basically, yeah, I took it. And first year, I was kind of still ski instructing whilst building these companies. And then from that point onwards, whilst I was still in Canada slash US at that point, I was building these companies. So that's how I actually started. Crazy story. Yeah, very much. 10 minutes either way, I would have probably not doing what I'm doing right now.

That is so bizarre. And it just goes to show that, Hey, it's not so much about networking with who, you know, or you think you want to meet. I mean, just a random conversation with anybody and who knows what happens. Oh my God. That is, it's amazing. That's amazing. Now, I loved how you shared that you tried fundraising for the first startups, uh, that you were tried building, but you didn't get any, you didn't have any success, but now.

You're advising a lot of startups on how they can raise successfully. And so before you started doing that, you were actually a VC. And one of the questions I have for you is what was one of the biggest sins you made as a VC, Gian? Oh, there was a many, I would say, I would say two different things. I actually made a LinkedIn post about this today, but I'd say, I'd say two different things.

One of them was. Sometimes being a bit too truthful to founders when they didn't want to hear it, which she would always just come back to me and I would say, so that was more on the kind of people side on the side of being a good VC or not. And this, I always talk about how founders need to be like this, and this is me being a bad VC in terms of, I literally lost an investment because of this was.

I didn't act fast enough in terms of, I was just wasn't sure it was taking my time, you know, didn't, you know, wasn't really just directives like following up quite fast saying we're excited. Let's do this, et cetera. Um, so I let my foot, my foot off the pedal or fall off the gas and lost the company and that company did end up being really well, still is doing really well.

So I missed out on that investment purely because of my hubris. Okay. Okay. All right. Now let's get into for founders here. There's a few questions I have for you, I have for you when, when a founder has an intro call with a potential investor, what should they really focus on during that intro call Gian?

What, what's your recommendations? Yeah. And I think this is a, this is a big reason why founders fail, right? Is they just can't get past the intro call. And a big reason for why is they are not treating the intro call like it's meant to be. So you've got the founders who are treating it in a certain way and then you've got the investors treating it in another way.

Because they've got this two different ways of thinking, it just never gets passed, right? So the intro call is the problem that founders have with intro calls. They think the intro call is the call that's going to make an investor invest. And it just doesn't work like that. I believe it was Mark's sister.

It could be wrong there of a very famous VC from Silicon Valley. And he coined the term that investors invest into lines, not dots. And what he means by that is it's not a single meeting that makes an investor want to invest into a founder is many meetings connecting that makes them excited, right? And that's either pre fundraise over a long period, or even during the fundraise, it's not going to be that single meeting that makes it so for founders, when they're thinking about the intro calls, they shouldn't be thinking, how am I going to make this person invest into me?

It needs to be, how am I going to make this person want to speak to me more and want to spend more time with me? And there's a few things about that, right? Again, it's not about, I need to invest in you now, it's, wow, they've got some amazing insights and I really want to learn more about it, or I think there's something here and I think I want to work with it, or I just really love this founder and I want to keep speaking to him or her.

It's these kinds of things that really move you closer to a, someone saying to themselves, I want to meet this founder again, or I want to spend more time rather than. Information dumping and investor with everything, you know, just in the hopes they'll invest into you and then it's just too much for them and they don't want to invest.

Yeah. Gian, the way I see it, your 15 minute ride to the top of the mountain with those people, those strangers was your intro call, but you didn't even know it was an intro call. You weren't pitching. You were just talking about yourself. Right. What do you think it was for those people to decide after that 15 or 20 minutes, the time with you that said, I want to continue working with this person, getting to know this person, having this person be a part of my journey, what, what do you think it was?

Yeah. I think that's where fundraising and job interviews are very similar, right? Because I do believe that fundraising is basically just a big job interview as you have of a founder. And the big thing is, is two things. It's do I like this person and could I work with them? And are they, is there a back and forth in terms of power dynamics?

Even for example, in, if I remember correctly, the gondola in the 15 minute thing, right? And they were discussing. What startups they were building. It was me as well, kind of pushing back on them of like, does that make sense? Are you sure about that? All of these kind of things. And that's another thing the founders don't really do very well in intricate calls is they don't treat it like a two way street.

They're very much like, Oh, I need to pitch. That's why I don't like to really the word pitch because. You're not necessarily pitching to investors, because that comes across like you're, you're the, you're the bad, you know, you're the lower rung of the, of the priority. And you'll kind of make pitching to them, these money bags that, you know, they doing it, whereas it should be, I'm a founder.

I have an amazing opportunity. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about it, but I also want to learn a bit more about you. I want to find out, you know, what makes, what makes you good? Well, how are you going to help us? And it needs to be that two way street. Otherwise you can never really. You can never really build a relationship and that's what it is.

Should a founder be even sharing any sort of pitch deck or a few slides during the intro call? I mean, what's your recommendation on that? Yeah. I mean, this is why I dislike a lot of the fundraising advice out there because it really depends. There's, there's no right answer here. You know, I've met found when I was still a VC, I met founders that pitched off a pitch deck and they were amazing.

I've met other founders that pitched off a pitch deck and. They were extremely boring and I got, I literally nearly fell asleep after 15 minutes, 30 minutes, right? I've known founders who, I know founders who pitched without a pitch deck and they were amazing and I was like, I just want to learn more. And I've also met founders who looking back, they were probably told don't use a pitch deck because it's boring.

And then it was just discombobulated and confusing. I didn't know where they were going and I didn't know what was going on and then decided to reject them, right? So there's no, there is no right answer. I think it depends on, on the founder. It depends on the, um, circumstances. It depends on what they're trying to do out, get out of it.

So I'd say all these things. Um, the one thing I would say though, over zoom is you just need to make sure that you, you are doing the right technology within zoom. And what I mean by that is when you share a pitch deck and zoom, like when you share a pitch deck in real life, right. Or be on like a TV screen or something.

But they'll still be, you'll still be in the room and there's ample opportunity to, you know, look at someone in the eyes and, and it's, and it's fine when you're, when you're looking at it from a zoom call, for example, and you share your screen, the big problem that is, you know, you're both your face is going to nothing and you can't build that connection.

So I would say if you, if you want to pitch off pitch deck and you think it's better, that's fine. Just make sure when you're sharing the screen, it's not full screen. So you're still, you know, they can still see your face. And then they can also see the pitch deck and that's the best way. That's the only thing I'd say on pitch deck versus not pitch deck is just, if you're going to share a pitch deck on zoom, don't just make it the whole screen and they can't see your face.

I am a total believer in that, not just in pitches, but in webinars. And when I was pitching like an hour long webinar and I was just showing just the slides, I felt like there was no connection. With the audience and I, I switched it over so that they could see my face and my visual cues and everything.

And it was just higher engagement, better connection, more comments in the feed and more people asking questions. So big believer in that. I think that's a really good advice for the audience who's listening and is going to be doing zoom calls with potential investors. Now, what are some of the things that you, like, if somebody.

Hires you and says, yeah, I want to work with you. I'm going to be trying to fundraise. What are some of the first things that you do with the, you know, with the founders? Do you have like an audit or what do you put them through? John? Yeah. So I'm, I I've, I've productized in terms of how I work with founders.

So now it's a three month. I call it an operating system, but it's, it takes around three months to build that operating system. And there is somewhat of an audit, but it's more about information gathering on two different things, right? It's well, three different things, actually. The two major ones are the deeper reasons for why the founders building their business and thinking about the story of what, who they are and what they are and why they're great.

The second one is. What they actually want to be building and what the future looks like on that and what the, what the future that they could create from that. So these are two of the narrative things. And then the third one is, is, is, I guess you could still call it an audit, but it's really understanding where they are with their network.

How are they thinking about their CRM and what connections. So those are the first three things that we go through to kind of get the information gathering. Once, you know, then. It's about improving them, making them better, understanding it. And then as we get closer to the kind of one and a half to two month mark, it's thinking about how do we then start to build the right process?

So how do we prepare? Right. How do we launch and how do we complete a fundraise and all of those things, you know, take a lot of time and, and, and thought processes in terms of the information gathering, does it, does it, does it vary by industry or do you recommend like a certain range of potential investors, like a hundred to 200 when you're, when you're researching.

Yeah, so that the network side, 100 percent depends on the stage of where you know, how much you're raising, what you want to raise with it, like PCs versus angels, all those kind of things, industry, definitely in terms of the narrative stuff and the process. These things are pretty similar across stage, across industry.

They're really just about making sure that you're actually doing the necessary work. The biggest thing that I've seen founders and the reason why they fail is twofold. One is they just focus so much on their pitch check and spend all their time on it when they don't need to. And they're just perfecting it for no reason.

And the second thing is, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And 90 percent of the founders that I work with, they don't even come across. They just aren't doing the work that they need to do. They think that they can just turn on fundraising and it's all fine without doing the necessary prep around, you know, their narrative around how their process of how they're going to prepare and warm up everything and then launch and complete it, how they're thinking about their network and prepping that in the right manner.

All of these things are sometimes tedious, long, takes a long time to do and. You know, needs some level of knowledge in terms of what to be working on. And if you don't do these things, you're kind of, you know, trying to find a needle in a haystack. And that's the biggest reason why founders fail to fundraisers.

They just don't know how to either meet investors, make investors excited by them, or actually have a process of how they make investors want to give them a term sheet. Okay. If they do know what to work on. Then, realistically, how much time should they be preparing, like how many months before they actually go into, I guess you would say, fundraising, fundraising mode?

Yeah, look, that's like, that's like asking how long is a piece of string, right? That, that really does depend on, again, founder, stage, network, etc. I would always say at least three months, and even then you're kind of cutting it short, but anything over six plus months, especially on the narrative side and network.

Is much better and beneficial because then you can have a much more long term gain from it, you know, the strategies change in terms of how you think about that. And you can, especially on the network side, you know, you can't really build a network in 2 months. Especially if you don't want to come across transactional, you need to, you know, make sure you're jumping calls with these people.

And again, it doesn't have to necessarily be investors, but jumping on a call because, you know, showing your domain expertise, actually helping these people as much as possible so that when it does come time for you to fundraise and ask for connections and ask people for help, it's not this guy had met me last month and he's already asking me for something.

And that's the only reason why I want to speak to me. It's I know, I know this person so well and they've helped me so much and I believe in them and I'm willing to do it. Okay. And Gian, given your experience and also background growing a company, working at a VC firm, who is your ideal client? Like what stage are they in?

Where are they at? Can you describe that for us? Yeah, it's look, it's exactly the same as investors investing well within reason because obviously they have, they have mandates. But for me, it's not necessarily stage or industry that I necessarily care about. For me, it's the same way the investors say it is.

It's about the founders. And what I mean by that is two things, are they coachable? Like, are they actually willing to learn and improve? Because some founders just aren't, and I will always reject them. And the second thing is, are they actually executors? Are they actually going to work? A big thing that I do with founders, you know, a big part of what I do is not just the knowledge, right?

It's accountability. It's making sure they do the work. And for some founders that I work with, and definitely a lot of founders that I don't and reject. They just don't, they just, I know they're not going to do the work or they literally don't do the work and I have to shower them and being like, you are not doing the things you need to do.

So for me, those are the, that's the perfect founder. It's, it's, I guess it's the third already communicator, but it's someone willing to learn someone who actually does the work and executes and doesn't try and make excuses for it. And then someone who's a, who's a great communicator. Got you. Okay. Well, I've got some rapid questions for you.

So just give me the, the first answer that pops into your head. Are you ready? First question for you. Yes, I am ready. What's the most interesting thing you did in the last 26 days, Gian? Sparred in Muay Thai. Where? Sparred in Muay Thai, like Thai kickboxing. Alright, alright. Okay, what is your favorite martial art?

Thai kickboxing. All right. All right. And what is an unusual food or drink that you consume? It's called, in Indonesia, it's called jamu. It is a ginger and turmeric juice. All right. It sounds good. I like ginger beer, so maybe I would like this. It's very good. It's, it's, it's quite intense, but it's very healthy for you.

And I have it in the morning. Okay. And the last question for you, your next startup will be blank. Fill it, finish the sentence, John. Curing cancer. All right. But I'd love to think it is. All right. Okay. Gian, thank you so much for coming on the show. I will include links to your LinkedIn profile as well as at your website.

This is, this has been fascinating. I enjoy your content on LinkedIn and I think anybody who is a founder should definitely be checking you out there and reading some of the stuff that you're sharing and insights. This is a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

It's been, it's been a great chat. Yeah. All right. For those listening, if you enjoy this, if you got some value, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, whether it's on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube and tell others about it. Until then, I will see you next week. Cheers. Hey there. I want to thank you for listening to the show.

If you are new here, I interview European startup founders and ask them to share their best strategies when it comes to scaling their business. Gian is an exception. I've been following his content on LinkedIn and found it so valuable. That I wanted him to share his knowledge with you guys. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show and tell others about it.

You can also send me a note on LinkedIn and let me know you're a fan, which would really make my day. Alright, this is Eric signing off.