Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory Podcast.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Rachel League with Bestseller By Design. Our founder, Travis Cody is the bestselling author of 16 books and we've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own bestselling books as well. Through that journey, we've discovered a fascinating pattern. Most businesses really struggle to break past the seven figure revenue mark. On this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they used to scale way past that mark so you can do the same.
So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now. Today's guest is Rob Matzkin, a seasoned entrepreneur, investor and strategic advisor with a powerful track record of building, scaling and guiding businesses across industries and continents. Rob is the Managing Partner of Singularity Ventures, a VC firm with 50 million AUM. Investing in cutting edge technologies in automotive, cybersecurity and AI. He's also involved in structuring and executing complex deals in the sports, art and entertainment sectors in partnership with global family offices. Over the course of his career, Rob has helped lead and Advise on over $24 billion in business operations, bringing a rare strategic lens to high stakes investment and growth initiatives. He also leads the Rob Matzkin Group advisory firm where he serves as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Strategy Officer for corporations and family offices. His specialty scaling ventures, crafting smart revenue strategies, optimizing performance and driving long term value, all with a deeply intentional, results driven mindset. With over 16 companies founded and multiple exits under his belt, Rob now blends his operational experience with his coaching practice, helping founders unlock clarity, overcome burnout and build businesses aligned with both purpose and performance. Rob, welcome to the show.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Thanks so much. That was quite, quite a mouthful. Thanks for, thanks for sharing all that.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Well, you've done so much. I mean, really excited to have you on the show today. And speaking of accomplishing so much, you've watched 16 businesses. That's an incredible number. What motivated you to keep starting new ventures even after achieving success with earlier ones?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I don't look at it as it's an so everybody's like, I used to, I'll say this, I used to not think I was a very creative person because I didn't know how to draw right. And my creativity is really expressed through business and through Entrepreneurship where, you know, I guess it's Michael Gerber called an entrepreneurial seizure where I have an idea and, you know, the ideas are the easy part, but the fun part is the execution and the building out. So really I keep having these ideas and I want to go out and do them and express them and try them and have fun with them and, you know, bring. Bring my friends along and seeing what we could do together.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: What was the first company you built that really took off and how did that experience shape the way that you approached the rest of them?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think it was probably the fifth or sixth entity that really started taking off that was called Booze Carriage. We invented alcohol delivery in the US and in 2010 when last mile delivery was difficult and hard, and I didn't think Instacart or TaskRabbit had a chance because I didn't think anybody would want to pay extra to get things delivered. But turns out I was wrong on that. But really it just took off where we found a niche. We found a product that people wanted which was, you know, things delivered within a half an hour and their alcohol delivered right now. And we went out and delivered it and executed. And it was fun and it was sexy and it was a lot of hard work and it seemed really cool, but it was just a lot of hard work in the background. So that was the first.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Tell me about the process of going from ideation to execution and how you scaled.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, whether it was Boost Carriage or any, any company, it was, you know, the ideation part that's kind of the fun part way where you kind of get to really be. Be clever and think of the next five years. And what, what really then, then comes to mind through the ideation phase is what one simple thing do I need to prove? What is this minimal viable product that I need to showcase to not only myself, my team, and to investors that, hey, there's actually something here that people really want. And how do we just ruthless, ruthlessly and simplistically prove that out and just drive that? So that's really, I think, step one to any org there. I think most people get the most lost in that, where it's like, oh, I need to enact my huge vision and they make it really big. But doing something really, really well, really simple and proving that out and then bringing people on and bigger and bigger teams and more is the way I look at things.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: What did that look like for this company specifically?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: What did that look like for this company specifically for Boost Carriage? It really looked like, okay, we need to deliver alcohol, right? It's like booze delivered. Okay, great. So now what do we need to do? All right, how are we going to deliver that? How are we going to make it legal? All right, let's figure out those two questions. Well, how do we make it legal? We can't actually sell alcohol. How do we deliver alcohol? And how do we actually process and transaction? Well, we partner with local liquor stores. Okay. They do the deliveries. They do that. Okay. Now it's how do we actually get users? Where do we acquire users? All right, how are we actually going to do that? And how are we going to facilitate the delivery? So all these questions pop up and checking them off one, one by one, right? So a boost carriage, it was, right? We're going to have the local liquor stores do deliveries. We're going to give them, you know, they're going to process transactions. We're going to do some sort of rev share combination thereof. And then we keep moving forward, right? And then new problems arise, like, how do we do the development? How big of a tech stack do we need? Do we need an app or not? And along. And you just keep going down the rabbit hole of what challenges do we need to solve? How do we get to market? How do we get to market as quick as possible and as lean as possible? And then how do we get people behind us to invest? That answer your question A little bit?
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Yes. And so how different was the end product of booze carriage from that MVP where you were really just trying to.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Prove out the concept, you know, a boost carriage, Coincidentally enough, it was actually really similar. Like after the first month of me refining it, it didn't adapt too much. It was still that core concept. Now, was that a good thing or a bad thing? We eventually were acquired. Could we have done much better in the acquisition and growing much quicker and bigger? If I was, I was 27 at the time. If we adapted and changed and adjusted, maybe. I think in most of my other companies that I've pivoted quite drastically from the original concept. So I don't know if that was because I nailed it or that's because I was so arrogant and had so much.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: That sounds like it was a success with those other companies that you made pivots in what was different, what made you want to change?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Market demanded it.
Like really simply the market demanded it. So I remember there was another company that we were doing. It was an education and technology company and we raised quite a bit of money to like, partner with social Media influencers and we're going to build all these educational products with them. And turns out working with social media influencers sucks. Them doing any sort of partnership is a nightmare. They just want to be paid. That wasn't going to ever work, that wasn't ever going to scale and we're never going to see product market fit. Oh, it also turns out social media influencers, a lot of their audience, audiences don't actually drive business. So that was just, and we found that out in like 2016. So that was just a colossal fail of a go to market strategy and a thesis. And we had some really great core underpinning tech and we, you know, I remember realizing, I think a few weeks before everybody else it wasn't going to work. And I started whiteboarding a solution and we had a new solution where we could take our core IP and figure out, well, who else really would value what we've developed business consultants. And we really pivoted hard into business consultants and that created a really thriving business that we were able to raise quite a bit more money around that. That showcased the ability for business consultants to really thrive with our, with our technology.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: You've mentioned fundraising a couple of times. Tell me, when in the process of building out a company do you think now is the right time to bring in outside capital? And how critical has that been to the success of your businesses?
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah, so I mean the easy answer is as soon as possible. So capital is a lifeblood of everything. Right. But it's not capital per se, it's cash flow. It's how are you actually going to use the capital to actually deploy and solve problems? Right. So capital doesn't solve any problems, but it allows you more resources to do things quicker. So when is the best time to raise capital? It depends. And it depends on the idea. If you have something super deep tech, some ideas just need capital from the beginning. Now how are you going to do that without, with just an idea in 2019 or 2018 that was pretty easy. In Silicon Valley you just have a tech idea and you know, you had the right credentials or you went to Stanford or Wharton or whatever it is and you know, you'd be able to get a few million bucks with an idea and a team. I think today's way different. I think fundraising at the speed AI is just intimidating and difficult. Right.
Because of how quickly people, things are moving. But I say this when I, when I look to raise capital is my philosophy and I have a few fundraising philosophies that I work with my clients on, but it's how do we have a core underpinning idea, how do we prove and showcase that idea that we have real data here? We don't just have an idea, we don't just have a team, but we have a real product. We have some semblance of, hey, we've made a test and we validated that test with real market results. Therefore we have what's called really, see, we're in a seed round of funding where now we have results, we have the first semblance of, hey, there's something here, there's some semblance of product market fit and, and we could prove and validate our thesis, right? Not only that our product works, that we have a market opportunity, that the market likes it. Now, sometimes that's building out a product and sometimes that's not building out a product, sometimes that's just creating a waiting list for people that really want that product, right? And sometimes it's, we built that a minimal viable product and people are paying us and we're doing well with it. It really all depends. But I do think in fundraising today, this concept of pre seed funding, which my definition of is, you just have that idea without much else is really, there's very little, there's very few angel investors that invest in it with very few dollars seed funding, which is, I have the first semblance of an idea and I've actually been able to prove some bit of that, that seed funding, that's where most of the angel investment capital is, and that's where I think you need to go after.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Was there ever a time that you struggled to raise capital? And why do you think that was always?
[00:10:59] Speaker B: I still don't think it's easy. And if I thought raising capital for a startup was hard, like how raising capital for a VC firm is like 10 times harder.
And especially in today's day and age, it's never easy to raise capital. What, what makes it easy easier is the mindset that people aren't giving me money so I could go fulfill my dreams. They don't care. People aren't giving me money to go fulfill my purpose. They don't care. People aren't giving me money because they think my ideas are good. They don't care. Why are people giving me money? And why are people giving me money and knowing it's extremely risky? Now, I've done this a few times. People like me, they know me, they trust me, they trust my reputation, they trust that I can execute. But even for me, why are they giving money because they want to see an excise return. They probably want to see 100x return. Right.
When it's easier to get money is the closer I am, the more I've de risk something and proven to them that this is going to make them that 100x. And the more I could de risk that and do that. And unbalanced scales versus this is super risky and no semblance of success. The more I could tilt that this way, the quicker I'm able to raise and the more success I'm able to have fundraising. And that's for me, that's for my clients, and I think that's for anybody.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Give us an example of when you've been able to do that really crisply.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Whenever I've been able to do it really crisply. Never.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Or the, the what an example that comes to mind of when you thought, well, I really nailed it at pinning down that messaging that spoke to them.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, sure, right. I look at crispy as like, oh, now that money just come. Comes running. But I think there's quite a few different times, right, when, when I really have product market fit where people are just coming to me or coming to my clients and they're saying this clicks and the, the total addressable market is there when all the metrics, right? Everybody's like, oh, you need all these metrics to raise money. You need the total addressable market. You need like your, your go to market to be effective. You need your cost per acquisition low. You need your lifetime value of customer needs to be high. You need your, you need to have a consistent and scalable way of bringing those clients and proving that. When, you know, in my world, you could hear it's more from a SaaS driven world with those metrics and a B2B SaaS work for that. But with that in mind, when all your numbers are there and people get it and you're not exaggerating and they can't poke holes, that's when everything just starts to click. And the biggest thing with fundraising and investors is everybody's a herd investor. As soon as you get one great person to come in, the round will really, really solid.
So a lot of people. So there's, there's two ways of, of going about that, right? There's one of, hey, I want to raise. Let, let's just call it a $2 million round or $10 million round. And I get somebody and they come in from $4 million and they're my anchor investor and they come in and they're Big enough name and then the six, the other $6 million will, will flow. The other way of doing it, which is what people have had to do the last year, is do small enough rounds where you don't necessarily need that one big check, but you get that one check. That's the critical mass that I know I could get $75,000 check. I know I can get $100,000 check. I bring that in and my round is 250k, 300k and I bring that in and I just kind of keep extending the round or extending that note out and doing things a little bit differently that way. But there's many different ways of skin and the cat. So anyway, winning, it's easy to answer your question, all the numbers are aligning and it's right. Remember, investors are really investing at 1% of what they see.01% of what they see. I think most VCs, if they're making 12 investments, let's say 10 investments for the sake of my back available mass, will see 6,000 decks a year, come across their email, come across their desk, they'll maybe what, look at two a day, they'll maybe look at 400 a year. They'll take meetings with a hundred and invest in 10. Right. So. Or let's say invest in six so my math is easier.
Right. So that's 0.01% that they're investing in. We're conditioned to say no. We want to say no. We want to find that one gem. How do you be that one gem? That one night in the rough.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: It sounds like unlocking that capital really does, particularly in the SaaS context. Open the faucet to be able to scale. I understand the needing the metrics on the paper. Tell me a little bit about how pre funding particularly was something that can be cost or capital intensive like building software. How did you get some of that early traction? Was it bootstrapping your own personal capital? Was it doing sort of a Wizard of Oz style product where you didn't have the tech but you did it? Tell us what that looked like.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: All the above, right. So I, you know, my booze carriage, I sold my car, I had $22,000 of capital. Kick it off. You know, I was doing some side projects on the side. I had, I had a little bit of savings but I leveraged everything to go do it because I believed in myself, right. And I wish there were things and I know our first software build, I found a product that I was able to like reskin and bastardize and it was good enough and it cost me $3,000 and then everybody said it wasn't good enough and I spent another $300,000 on dev. That never worked.
But it's all the above, right? Here's the thing, it's climbing a ladder. Everybody wants to like, skip these rungs and ladder, but the way I look at it now, it's really simple. It's how do you climb one rung at a time? And everybody's like, well, how do I prove to investors what to do? It's really simple. It's what metrics, what KPIs, what are you measuring yourself by? You get to set the ground rules, right? What are you measuring yourself by? That denotes success. Now that success metric better be something valid and better be something impressive. But you get to set that goalpost now show that you could get to that goal post and if it's a good metric, people will come in because you've reached that goal post and you've proven something really substantial, right? So that's. And however you got to do that, it's guerilla marketing. It's wizard of Oz. It's, you know, and wizard of Ozing. You know, it could look like many different things, but it's, you know, you could put up a landing page. You could say this really clever AI that produces these fancy, like spreadsheets or whatever, these, these great financial reporting and you could just take in that and you could spend 12 hours doing it yourself and compile and yourself and say, here's your output. Sorry it took so long. We needed more computing bandwidth. And you could give that to somebody and say, an AI did it and that's what your AI is going to do. And you can say, look, people are paying me $500 to do this. When we have the AI, we're going to get 10,000 people because of that. And we should absolutely do this. We could automate it. Look how cheap we could do it, right? So there's many different ways of doing it. Now you've proven that people pay you for that, I. E. Then investors could should come in because your financial rejections are there, right? The other thing that makes fundraising really easy and straightforward is everybody thinks it's a deck, everybody thinks it's a one pager. Everybody thinks they're going to say these magical words and they're going to like, be like Fiddler on the Roof and like, everybody's just going to like fall in a line because they said these magic words. Now, by the way, there's a few Investors, Adam Newman, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, they have something called reality distortion field. When they speak, people listen and they, like, bend reality and everybody thinks it's true. I don't know how they're able to do it. Right. They're some of the greatest fundraisers of our time, no matter what you think of them now, are you going to be able to do that, especially in your first startup? Probably not. Now, here's what you can do and here's what most and depends what region. If you're in New York, this absolutely applies. Everybody really comes from Wall street money. They speak, they listen through numbers. So your financial projections, your financials are going to be everything.
And I could look at financials and go, I could tell you exactly what this business does. You didn't even tell me what this business does. They sell a widget. This is how they grow. This is what their team is. And I get their business because the numbers speak to me and the numbers tell my story. So if you tell the story through numbers, it's everything. Right. So your financials are everything.
And it's not about, oh, I'm gonna be at this number or that. It better have a nice little growth path. It probably should grow 20 to 40% month on month. You should probably be able to validate that. But you need to tell the story through numbers. That's what I think most founders miss. And they, and they downplay that.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Do you think there's a big difference? I know you mentioned New York, Wall street, between East coast versus West Coast VCs and their approach to.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: I think, I think every city is different based on the characteristics of that city and how the wealth in that city was created. Right. So San Francisco, everybody's a tech founder. Everybody's worked in tech dreams and aspirations and changed in the world. And everybody drinks their own Kool Aid on the west coast and has insane inflated projections. And you can see I'm not from the west coast because of how I speak to it.
And I'm definitely New Yorker through and through. I'm the, you know, in New York, it's, you know, the ecosystem has definitely gotten a lot more sophisticated since I built there. And it's, it's less of this now, but it is still rooted in the big wealth, is still rooted in Wall Street. It's rooted in numbers. Right. I'm based in Miami. These days, Miami is a whole different ecosystem, but the real money in Miami is still real estate development right now. Is that who's necessarily investing in service? Yes and no. So I think every city has its own different characteristics and whether you're in, you know, Berlin or Tel Aviv. And that also holds true. Right. And all those things are going to kind of be slightly different based on what ecosystem you are, what investors are in those ecosystems.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Smart lining your business to what those investors is looking for might be a good strategy.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Or maybe you don't. If you can't, then it's also like investor market fit. Right. Maybe you should be in that, in that pool. If your idea is really lofty, maybe you should be on the west coast and in Silicon Valley. It's always the best place to raise, it's always the noisiest or Austin or wherever else you feel that you will have the best traction.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: How important do you think it is in this new remote, friendly, hybrid world to physically be in an ecosystem like that versus with all of our zoom connectivity, being able to reach out to investors in different locations?
[00:21:16] Speaker B: So it's certainly way less important. I'd like to think personally I'm in my own deluded reality that it's not so important because I'm fully remote, because I want to be fully remote and I have a much better quality of life doing so. I think there's absolutely especially a first time founder to be in an ecosystem of people going through the same thing as you and having a support system that's readily available, always available, that's forcing you to be in that world, I think is highly a huge advantage for a first time founder and I'd highly encourage that. Right. Luckily for us now, in every city that that's there now, investors used to be like, no, you need to be down the road. For me, I need to be able to walk into your office at any time. I've never have and I never will, but I need to be able to think I need to do that now that that attitude has has broken quite a bit and people will invest anywhere in the right company with the right metrics, with the right idea. But it sure does make it easier when you could go to pitch events and pitch nights and know the ecosystem and get intros and like create momentum there. And I tend to spend quite a bit of time traveling and going to events, but now also events and there's two events every month for eight months of the year that you could be going to to, to kind of create that. So it depends if you want to be on planes all the time or just be local. It's up to you.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Tell us about that early support system that you gathered around yourself. To help get those businesses off the ground in the early days.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: I still do, right? I still, I mean my friends happen to be everywhere now and I still have that support system. But I think for me, for in the beginning it was imperative. Mine was actually built. We was built around. We work. I was in a wework office space. It was one that was like this. I was in the second space in New York City or the space ever. It was just a really amazing environment with really great entrepreneurs that I still know today. I have some really great connections there, both in, we were corporate and throughout everybody that was in that space. But it was always nice knocking on my neighbor's door and commiserating or shooting the shit or having a drink at night. I always had a full bar because I was in the alcohol industry. So everybody came to me.
Uh, so when we didn't want the tap beer, we did the alcohol, uh, and, and, and commiserated that way because it's freaking hard. It's 16 hour days and it's a grind and you don't know if it's going to be successful or not. You're sacrificing everything for it. So it's a grind. So having that support system is huge. And a lot of what I do with my clients today is just having that wisdom and somebody having your back that believes in you to really make sure you're making the right decisions is really where I spend a lot of my time. More anything else.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: And I'm sure with all the different hats that you've worn, you have good perspective of different angles of viewing a business to give someone that perspective. But how did you personally keep yourself going aside from having that support? Like what self talk, if any, did you do? How did you know when it was the right move to keep moving forward or when you should pivot?
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, first off, the conversations that you'll have with yourself are the most important conversations you'll ever have.
You know, the definition of crazy is, I guess people talk out loud to themselves. That, that also defines being smart. But we're gonna have conversations with ourselves. And you know, I think cutting off this, the negative self talk and nipping in the bud and just taking action and how do you know what you don't know? And that's what makes it scary. Right? And the thing that scares me the most is there's a, there's a, there's a picture out there that wanted to depicts this really well. But the greatest failures in life never know how close they were to success. Right? And there's this picture of like this guy chipping away and there's diamonds right on the other side of the wall. The wall is like paper thin. And he's been chipping away and he walks away. Right. And you never know when that next break is and the next breakthrough is. And you just have to believe and keep going and until you don't. I mean, I have friends, I have co founders that have been going 10, 15 years, I've been slogging away at it. And you know how many companies, like I remember I saw Monday.com, which is a huge company now. I remember meeting them in Israel. I lived out there for years. I remember meeting them. They. I think they just closed their A. It took Roy eight years to close the A round thing. Closing the A. Three years later, they were at like a $10 billion valuation. And everybody's like overnight success, 12 hours in the making or 11 years in the making, whatever it was. And it's like, we do that with everybody.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah, right. It's easy to glorify the successes and act like it all came together naturally when you're not in the mind. You are there for the whole journey.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: You're just getting by. You're just getting by. You're just getting by. I asked this question to a client of mine literally just before this call. And the way I look at things is that I came up with the Scots up for Bond Summit, which is our purpose driven summit that we do twice a year. And it's called a ninja move. And I kind of just renamed something that's been out in the ethos for a while, but it's. You're looking straight up at a mountain and you're getting your climbing gear on, you're going to go ascend that clip. Then you're going to be like, I'm going straight up. It's going to be like amazing, right? Somebody's going to go climb El Capitan and it's like, I'm going to get there. And they get to the top and they're like, oh my God, that was like the most epic thing ever. And then there's just people sitting there and they're like, how the hell did you get there? You like, I go, we hiked. It was an easy hike. Like, huh? So it's like, where's the hiking trail? Or it's like Pikes Peak in Colorado. Where's the bus tour? Right? So everybody looks through these soda straws and looks at things myopically and it's like, what's the ninja movement. Not that, you know, where's the easy button? Where's the easy path? That maybe we're just looking at it in such a way that this is the only way to do it. We're climbing this cliff. Maybe there's a hiking path, maybe there's a bus path. Right. So it's looking eyes wide open and zooming out and going, is there a better way of doing things? Is there an easy way of doing things? Because again, it's climbing a ladder. It's not. Yeah, we need our North Star. We need to get to here. But how are we going to get there? One step at a time. And the next thing, it's not that it's like, let's go in this direction. But what's that next thing that we need to prove? Not all this. We just need to prove to the next investor that we have the next milestone. That's really great that our product just needs to do this to get this many new clients to do this. So sometimes it's simplifying things. I forget the original question, but hopefully that that addressed it for you.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like you have a unique skill for the milestone setting in a way that it's lofty enough that it inspires investors that there could be that 100x return. But it's also something that feels achievable. How do you find the balance between something that's exciting but you think you can hit?
[00:27:41] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's the difference between a five year goal and a three. A three month goal, right. And it's having a 3, 6 12, like it's having goals every quarter that you could hit and hit repeatably. I think the best example of this is Adam Newman at WeWork, right? Everybody's like, we work. Why you raise so much money? What did Adam do that was mind boggling, the fact that he's ever did this? Adam went, first of all, he was a co founder of another company that did it. His partner didn't want to do WeWork. They wanted to do something else. They want to do what they're doing. So knew the numbers. Adam went to an investor and he goes, I'm going to get this much per square foot, which is three times what you make per square. Per square foot. When I do this, you're going to give me $10 million. And the investor goes, ha. If you do that, I'll give you $10 million. Well, guess what? Three months later he did that and they gave him $10 million and he kept doing that he goes, when I do this, you're going to give me $100 million. I go, if you could do that, we'll give you $100 million. So it's coming up with a huge promise, but you know, you could fulfill on it seems huge the outside, but you control the insider knowledge that you know you could execute on it. So that was like the brilliance of how we work. Was able to raise all that money but it happens all the time. So it's yes, set a milestone, that's impressive. But that you know, you can make me, right? And then keep doing that every few months and you're going to impress investors because they're going to be like, well, I believe in you. Well, if you could do these numbers, yeah, this is impressive for this stage. And I can see you getting to there.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like the key to unlocking that scaling capital really is understanding the mindset of an investor. And I know now you sit in an investor seat, but how did you kind of get into that mindset when you were first starting your companies and learn the language of VCs?
[00:29:21] Speaker B: I did. I was fumbling around in the dark and I didn't get it. So that's why I keep preaching it to people like the thing like nobody really understands an investor's mindset, right? There's different mindsets with the angel investor. You have a dentist that's playing around in startup world, you know, thinks he's, you know, playing the lotto, right. Or you have a sophisticated VC or you have a first time VC fund. The thing that most people don't get is a lot of VC funds, you know, they're $10 million fund just the way they work that, you know, they have very little operating capital, they're working on 2%, they're getting paid $200,000 a year. Half of that is going to their lawyers. They're eating ramen noodles just like you. They have to be in that business for 10 years. These are things that I had no idea until I became one. You know, they have to do that business 10 years to succeed or fail. I could fail and they still have to do it. And if they don't raise another fund, although they're stuck doing this on the side while they go get another job, right. They're going to make out of a $10 million fund, I don't know is going to make what, 20 investments and leave a little bit for follow on.
Maybe they're only making 10 investments. Those they have to have two that have huge returns so if they're talking to you, they're betting their life, their career on you. They're not looking to take a chance, they're not looking to take a risk. It's your job to calm their anxiety and fully trust that you're going to be successful. I didn't get that right. I didn't get that even into the last few years. My job is to be so trustworthy in execution that they believe in me that we can't fail. Not that how good we are. And look at the opportunity.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: I think it's such an interesting and valuable point around listening to those around you. You know, you talk about the founder experience can be a lonely journey. That's why it's important to have this community around us. But it's not just about listening to your customers and what do they need but thinking about to get this scaling capital. How did they think? How do you de risk them? What is the risk profile that they're measuring against? And I love how you put it that they are risking their careers in talking to you. And we always think about the risk sitting with the founder, but it's really on both sides of the table. And being able to de risk the venture not only for yourself, but for those that you're asking to back you with capital is a really important point.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Yeah, people really ask me a lot of times when I do it, the consulting and why I do it. And it's so simple. It is this. It is you are speaking not only trying to speak a language you don't understand, and you might be speaking it, but you don't understand what's actually happening. And there's all these things happening in the background and games being played that you don't even know about. So there's what you, you don't even know. You don't, you don't know what you don't know. And seeing the unseen in this investor world. And it's not just about I built a deck, I built the product and I built some financial plans. People are going to come because I have a great idea. It doesn't quite work like, so it's really. There's so many nuances of how do you actually get to a point that is really impressive, that gets investors to say, yes, people do it every day. And not saying it's not trying to make it came out really like intimidating. If you're raising money, if you're raising capital right now, I think it's really straightforward what you need to do. You go execute and prove to the world that you have something great. And the more proof points you have, again, the more you're going to de risk something and the more you're able to show how big the opportunity is, people are going to see the upside. Right. So control those two factors and people will invest.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Yeah. The importance of storytelling in a way that really connects with your audience, complimented by that execution in that wizard of Oz style, I think is a great way to make sure that you're able to get that scale.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Well, what are the best stories? The best story, like every Hollywood ending, I mean, a lot of them, they come from reality. Right. We just embellish them a little bit to, you know, sex, make them a little bit sexier. But the best store is the ones rooted in reality. If you're not rooted in reality and rooted in execution, there's nothing there.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Rob, what does victory look like to you today?
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so, I mean, for me, victory looks like it's truly getting to do every day what I love to do and having a great balance in life where I'm able to do things I love at work and make a difference in the things that I do and have, and have a great income and investment portfolio and still able to, like, literally be present and smell the roses and have a good time in life. So having that. That true balance is everything to me.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: And what piece of advice would you give your younger self?
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Trust yourself, Trust the path that you're on, trust that the universe has your back, and trust others.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: I love that. Rob, thank you so much for your time today and a wonderful conversation.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: My pleasure. Thanks for.
