Desktop T (00:05.682)
We're here at the third episode of the Meet That Capital Startup Podcast. And today I'm with my friend Balak Pillad who's sitting in the UK. Balak is the head of DR Ventures, which is a consultancy helping startups raise capital and has raised capital in many ways and also invested capital in many ways. Balak, why don't you tell us a bit about how you got here and...
I know DR Ventures is fairly new, so how you got to create it, and what do you guys do exactly right now.
Barak (00:39.802)
Yeah, hi Tzachi and hi everyone listening and thank you for having me. It's been a journey getting to where I am today. I worked for startups for many years in the early 2000s and in my early 20s. And following from that, I spent a span of a few years in hospitality. And more recently I raised funds for...
a few hospitality ventures and hospitality tech ventures, which led me down the path of fundraising. On the back of COVID and everything that's happened in the hospitality industry, I decided to focus my efforts solely on fundraising and move away from the hospitality industry, which led us to setting up DR Ventures, which started as a research agency. So DR stands for Dossier Research.
Desktop T (01:38.414)
Okay, and right now, like if a starter comes to you, you help them raise, but you first help prepare them for the raise, right?
Barak (01:47.95)
Yes, absolutely. It's one of the fundamentals of our philosophy. It's called readiness first and investor relations after. Many founders think that the only thing they need is investor data so they can go and reach out, but more often they're not ready. So we don't take that risk, if you like, of reaching out to investors before we've had a chance to make sure that the startup is high.
percent ready.
Desktop T (02:19.566)
Okay, so good. Why good? Because as you know, most of our listeners are startup founders, a lot of them early stage founders, and I think you can help us by putting in order, what are the things that a startup founder needs to have in place to be ready to raise money? Like what are the things that he needs to put together, he or she, how do they prepare for the fund raise?
Barak (02:47.742)
Great, yes. I will tell you, I'll try and share with you the things that I try and teach or work on with my clients. And funny enough, some of those things, everybody knows, everyone knows what a pitch deck is, but you'd be surprised how many pitch decks are not ready to be sent to investors. So I think a big part of it is for the founders to know what they don't know.
So you can ask a founder, have you got a financial model? And they will say yes, but it doesn't mean it's a financial model that you can go and raise funds with. So what I will try and do is work through the list that we are working with our clients with. And I will try and highlight a couple of best practice and a couple of things to avoid. And maybe at each, when we are done with each one of them, you can ask me a question and we can move on one by one so I don't speak for an hour.
Desktop T (03:45.07)
Okay, cool. Yeah, let's do that.
Barak (03:48.099)
So I think one of the, and it's not necessarily in a logical order, but one of the most important things is actually a live pitching skill or expertise or experience, because in the end anybody can do it, but not everybody is ready to do it when the phone rings. So what I strongly recommend founders do is practice their pitch to anybody.
to friends at work, to their mother, brothers, teammates in the sports, wherever they are, in the lift, on a taxi, try and explain a taxi driver in a one and a half minute what it is you're working on. They're always asking you, what do you do? And you just say, hey, I'm a founder of a startup that's doing what? And try and put this in two or three minutes. So I think being able to pitch live is an extremely valuable.
a skill for founders and many founders don't practice it. They leave it. They say, well, when an investor is going to call me, I will be ready. But you never know when you will be required. And there are...
Desktop T (04:57.518)
I think, Barack, if I can just jump in here, there are two things that are relevant here that are equally important. One is the presentation skill, meaning your ability to articulate, your ability to speak clearly, look the person in the eye, be charismatic in the moment where you're presenting your startup. That's one part. And then the other part is knowing how to put.
your startup story together in a concise way that fits into two, three sentences and still is compelling, convincing, and exciting.
Barak (05:31.302)
Absolutely, and you've actually stopped me exactly in what was going to be my next point. This skill actually is two different skills, is your what you call elevator speech skill and a presentation skill. So these are two different things. So I think I was alluding to with a taxi driver more to the elevator speech where you've only got a couple of minutes of attention from an investor and you need to try and make a compelling case for what you do.
And that's.
Desktop T (06:01.566)
So our previous episode was with Motel Kayam, that a lot of what he does is actually helping startups, startup founders build that story so that they know how to, right from the outset, get the person that they're talking to and create some excitement, yeah.
Barak (06:16.082)
Amazing, amazing. It's amazing and people need that. And I think it's funny, there is a guy, he launched a startup called Magic.io, I think, or AI. And it's basically a mirror that has AI features on it. So as you train, you're lifting weights and the mirror looks at you and tells you the shape of your body. So what you need is a kind of a coaching body that looks at you and say, tell me the story and they can bounce it off of you.
So definitely it's great that there are people that can help with this. But the actual presentation skills, when it comes to running a full pitch, half an hour, let's say, with a venture capital or an investor, the way I look at it is it's made out of the same skills that are required in the elevator pitch, because each time you have to be able to answer one question in a minute.
So when they ask you questions like, what is your go-to market strategy? Or suppose you have 100,000, what's gonna be your first hire? You don't wanna go on a tangent. You wanna say, I'm going to hire this guy first and this guy in six months in, or we're gonna spend the first 30,000 pounds there and when we hit that milestone, we're gonna spend the next 70. So you wanna be able to answer questions very concisely, even in a full pitch.
Now, moving on from this one, it's really the pitch deck. And I have to say, everybody has pitch decks, and most of them are bad. And when I say bad, I don't mean from a design point of view, because some of them are really beautiful. And you can see that a lot of thinking has gone into them. But what I say bad is, there are two types of presentations really that you...
You don't have to have both, but you need to think about presentation as two separate types of presentation. One is a presentation that is designed for you to deliver it in a meeting room. So you open the projector or a big screen, and then you can click the slides one by one and say, here is what I have to say here and here is what I have to say. And you can tell a story through the clicks, the pace of your clicks.
Barak (08:41.05)
But when you send a pitch deck to an investor and he's going to read it on his own that logical flow has to be completely different Because you won't be there to click the to click the links and pop up the next question or do any of the animation They just need a document that reads logically from one slide to the next and most speech takes like I come across I just know built up
Desktop T (09:06.798)
Okay, so elevator pitch plus the ability to communicate. That's one. Second part is the pitch deck. There's a teaser deck. There's a full deck for a meeting. What those are, I think most founders would say, would know to say that those are two things that they need to have ready before pitching investors. What more?
Barak (09:29.726)
Correct. They wouldn't know though, I have to say, they wouldn't know that what they have is not good enough. So I strongly recommend, there are loads of people with good ideas on LinkedIn on how to write a pitch deck. I strongly recommend that if you send a pitch deck on a cold messaging or you just send an email to an investor with your pitch deck, it has to be what you call a teaser deck, right? 10, 12 slides.
Desktop T (09:36.843)
Yeah.
Barak (09:57.934)
with delivering a key message in a logical format.
Desktop T (10:00.798)
I say five or six if you're able to. Yeah.
Barak (10:02.65)
Wow, yeah, there you go. So yeah, but that's what I would say you want to send. Now, the next thing is a financial model. And again, many startups tend to neglect it and probably because it's taken as more of a professional area. Like people think, well, I need an accountant for it or I need to call my uncle that works in M&A to build it for me. And...
the reality or some advanced Excel skills. But the reality is that without a financial model, you won't be able to tell the story. So numbers have a way of telling a story. And you have to be able to use your numbers in a way that is telling the story that you want to tell in the pitch deck. And...
Desktop T (10:55.066)
I think a lot of founders, if they're really early stage, they have a problem with this part specifically because they don't really know what to project into the financial plan. They still don't even know that they have product market fit. They're still not even maybe sure what exactly sub-niche of their market. The mirror effect of this is that lots of pitch decks have like,
Barak (11:05.758)
Correct.
Desktop T (11:20.726)
total addressable market, which is huge, which is basically everything, but not anything realistic compared to the certain niche that the startup is likely solving for, but all the related market. And how do you solve that part?
Barak (11:37.566)
Correct. So I think, and you're absolutely right, and I think the first thing, that's why founders, when they come to write a financial model, the first thing they need to do is take a step back and just think of the assumptions. So every financial model has to start with a sheet that says, what are my assumptions? And your assumptions need to be based on what you already know. And I appreciate that.
Many founders don't know a lot of things, but you will know for example how long it takes you to deliver a product Because you know you're planning to deliver it or you will know the price point you're trying to sell it at and You will also know how many people will buy it so you can Estimate it from a hundred people you spoke to 20 will want to buy five will want to buy so you make an assumption
you can assume your life cycle of a deal. So from the moment you pick up the phone and try and sell it until a customer is paying how long that takes. So you can make assumptions. And what you want to do, you want to build a long list of assumptions that says in month one, I'm gonna sell two, and in month four, I'm gonna sell eight, and in month 12, I'm gonna sell 30. And that will be the price point.
And this is how long it's going to take me. And this will be the churn and this will be the costs that I will have to absorb at each one of these points. And the reason you start by building these assumptions is because the next sheets, the profit and loss, and maybe your balance sheet, if you must have one and your discounted cashflow projections, all of these are tied in to the assumptions. So even if you made a silly plan, because you're thinking that your total addressable market is your market. And you think, well,
I'm going to take one and a half percent of a 300 billion market. It's not a problem because it's all built into the assumption when you send it to an investor and if he's a bit clued up, all he has to do is go to your assumption sheets and say, no, you're not going to sell one and a half percent. You're going to sell 0.015% of the market and no, you won't be able to get a 70% profit margin on these things. My experience says you only get 50% profit margin and all the other sheets, they just,
Barak (13:55.326)
have organized themselves perfectly to fit with the assumptions of an investor. So like I said, it's a very simple sheet. You probably need an Excel file with three or four sheets to start with, assumptions, profit and loss, five years projections, and unit economics is a good one. You can do a whole lesson about financial model, but I would say don't try and raise money before you've done this exercise.
Desktop T (14:20.878)
So just to clarify, even if we're talking about a founder with a very early stage startup, and he's really just almost guessing or assuming a lot of the data points and the assumption in his or her assumptions, you still think they need to build the financial model. Because a lot of investors are going to say, what? This is not true.
Barak (14:45.764)
100% talking.
It's not for the investor. Okay? It's for, first it's for the founder. Because let me give you an example. For you to be able to fill in these assumptions, you have to do some research. Yes, and even if the research is a basic research on Google, right? Let me give you an example. Suppose I want to open a bed and breakfast hotel in Wales. In, on a hill in Wales. And I think...
Desktop T (14:50.842)
Okay, okay, so explain please.
Barak (15:17.554)
that I can fill up 20 bedrooms, 365 nights a year. And I think that an average guest will pay me 300 pounds a night and will pay another 30 pounds for breakfast. So my assumption says I have 20 rooms, 365 nights a year, times 330 pounds, because everybody's gonna have breakfast. And I find out that my hotel is gonna generate five million pound revenue. And I really want to buy that hotel.
But an experienced investor will say, no, you know, once you do some research, you find out that the average occupancy in Wales is 50% and the average night rate is only £50 and almost nobody buys breakfast. And during the winter months, you will be completely empty. Okay. And so what happened is I was building a financial model, but I learned about my own business. Like you said, if I'm an early stage founder, with just a crazy idea or
You need that research to validate your conviction. And then, hey, maybe by the time I find out that my hotel is only gonna be full 50% of the time, empty in the winter at 50 pounds a night, I say, I don't even wanna do it. So you're building conviction on your side and that conviction gets transferred to the investor. The moment you send him a pitch deck and a financial model, they know you've taken the time to study. Even if you're a very early stage, they know you've taken, because look.
Before you ask people for money, you need to at least make the effort of run a few Google searches and discover for yourself.
Desktop T (16:47.706)
100%. And also, of course, you want to be able to answer with facts and data when you're going to get some pushback from, and you're going to get pushback from an investor. And you can't just be there empty-handed without any ability to respond. OK.
Barak (17:00.954)
Absolutely. And yes.
Barak (17:07.006)
No, no. And I think that's one of the things where, because even if you're a very early stage founder you just have an idea. You're thinking, you know what, I want to build a dating app that's based on the type of dog you have. So you say, oh I have a whatever, border collie and I take him out at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and the app will find any other border collie owner that takes their dog out at 3 o'clock and you can meet the love of your life, right? And you're completely guessing. You don't know what.
types of dogs out there, you know what? You don't know anything, but it's your idea. Before you're going to talk to investors about it, you're going to do some of that research. And some of that research will help you understand your plan.
Desktop T (17:41.101)
Yeah.
Desktop T (17:52.802)
Okay, no, that's not, we're not gonna build that startup and we don't have to bother researching how many people have what kind of. Okay, so financial model, got it. What's the next piece that we need?
Barak (17:53.615)
No, we're not gonna do that.
Barak (18:00.924)
Right. Thank goodness.
Barak (18:07.97)
Now, the next piece is a slightly controversial piece in early stage startups, which is what I call the data rule. And it scares a lot of people. So I just want to take a couple of minutes and break that down. Cause it's probably less familiar than the first two.
Desktop T (18:24.482)
Wherever there's an Excel or sheet involved, there's a lot of anxiety for a lot of people. And that's where someone like you can help founders overcome that anxiety.
Barak (18:36.014)
Yes, hopefully. Absolutely. So I think people understand pitch deck, right? You see the way we work this. Everybody knows they're going to have to pitch personally. So they practice their pitching skills. They know they need a pitch deck. So they build a pitch deck. Some of them understand they need a financial model. I recommend you have one. And then what is a data room? Now, many people don't know what a data room is. Now, a data
Barak (19:05.546)
A concept that has been borrowed from senior investment activities, so private equity acquisitions that go into the hundreds of millions or mergers and acquisitions where one huge company buys another huge company or real estate deals. And then what goes into the data room is all the relevant documents that are affecting the deal.
But when you are an early stage startup, you're thinking, hey, what can go into my data room? So let me just break it down. First, the data room is just a shared drive folder. That's what it is. It's a folder on your shared drive that you can then send a link to an investor who wants to dig in. I recommend not to send it in the first flush, but once you've sent your pitch deck and somebody says, I'm interested, can you share your data room with me? Or can you answer a couple of questions?
You just say, no problem, there's a link to my data. So data room is effectively a shared folder. And in that shared folder, you want to have every document that is a part of your journey up to date. So that is relevant for the investor. So basic stuff is your legal pack, which would be your incorporation. If you're an incorporated company, your article association.
the bank account, a founders agreement between you and if there are other co-founders, etc. So that's basic. Second is contracts. Even if you're just paying a subscription for HubSpot or Loom or Airtable, all of these agreements, they're affecting your company. So these agreements should be in an agreements folder. Validation. So even if you haven't got any sales, but you're an experienced founder, you want to put your CV on that.
testimonials if you can, references from your previous employers. Of course, if you're slightly more advanced and you've got patents, either registered or pending, if you've got partnerships agreement, affiliate agreements, media coverage, if you were interviewed for a magazine or somebody wrote about you. So all of these activities, everything that a company has done needs to be in that room.
Barak (21:27.066)
Then when an investor says, I really like your company, can you tell me a little bit more about the founders? You just send in the data room and you can find everyone's CV. Or he says, can you tell me a little bit about your traction? Instead of telling him, oh, that magazine wrote about me and I was on a podcast over there and I've got three partnerships, just say, hey, there's a partnership folder and all the information is there. So it's really a convenient way for you.
to collate all of your information for an investor in one place.
Desktop T (21:59.754)
your recommendation is to put as much of everything that you have into the data room? Or do you recommend to be a little bit more curated about what you put in there and what you don't? Is the idea to make it to give the investor a feeling that everything is transparent, here's all the information, go through it as much as you want? Or is the idea to use this as another place, as a kind of like a...
Barak (22:14.34)
Okay, so.
Desktop T (22:30.094)
window sill or storefront where the most important things are there and then maybe an investor can dig in deeper if they need to.
Barak (22:41.222)
What I recommend is to have subfolders inside the data room and you can decide whether you send the main link or you just send the HR or the legal or the financial or the IP, right, if somebody has a specific question. I recommend you load as much as you can on it. And for a couple of reasons. One, because the investor who will ask for it is already warmed up and hopefully you don't send it before you've had a conversation with them even. So...
Ideally you're going to send a cold outreach and then you will have a response that says please share your pitch deck with me and you will send your pitch deck and then the investor will say I'm interested can we book a call and you book a video call with them and after the video call he says I'm interested can I please see all your documents and then you just share the data with them. So that would be the process. I would never share that first off. So you can, like I said, you can.
break it down to subfolders and share them individually or the whole thing, but I would put everything on it. Of course, nothing that is proprietary. I mean, I wouldn't put, you know, code lines in there. I wouldn't put any trade secrets in there. But if you have a partnership or if a magazine wrote about you, you know, why shouldn't be there?
Desktop T (24:00.974)
This is like a Dropbox or is there some, okay, nothing, not a special, it's not, this isn't a special, that's that you're using.
Barak (24:03.814)
Yes, yes, it can be a Google Drive. Yeah.
Barak (24:11.906)
No it's not, it's just a dropbox.
Desktop T (24:14.338)
Just files, okay, got it. Yeah, files and folders.
Barak (24:16.686)
Yes. And again, more senior investors, there are actually companies that you pay subscription and they build data room for you and they host it. And it's got all the credential system and who can access what and who can load the document and who can download document. And it's tracking all the activity in the data room. So who downloaded which documents or who read the document and you can count it. You can sign a document inside the data room. These are really complex products for complex transactions.
But at a very early stage, pre-seed seed, all you need is just a share folder and a drop box.
Desktop T (24:53.666)
Okay, good. What else? What's next?
Barak (24:59.438)
So those were probably, I would say, the four fundamentals. And now we're going into a little bit of, into the depth of it. And a couple of really important things. So one is what I call the big why question. Why do you wanna raise funds? How much funds do you want to raise? Who do you want to raise it from?
What would you do if you fail to raise all the money you are planning to raise? How much equity you want to give? So these are what I call broader funding questions that.
Desktop T (25:39.518)
But they're part of the financial plan in a way, aren't they?
Barak (25:43.698)
They don't have to be. So for example, the financial model doesn't have to have a valuation at the end of it. It just says this is the sales projections. It could be as simple as that. But let me give you an example. Many founders, by the way, they don't understand necessarily the relation between how much money I raise to my valuation to how much equity I'm giving away. And I know it sounds simple, but you want to have that little circle tied up.
and say, I know I need half a million. I know I'm not willing to give more than 20% of my company. So what that tells you is that your base valuation is two million. So at the very least, these are the questions you want to ask yourself. And now you need to ask yourself, what is the leeway? First, why do you need half a million? And yeah, because I mean, no founder takes the time to look at this question, I promise you. Because if they did,
they would not be raising half a million or a million, they would be raising 687,350.
Desktop T (26:46.498)
The round numbers are always suspicious, and I recommend avoiding them, because to the experienced investor, they sound like they're not well researched enough, or that they're rounded up some way.
Barak (27:00.382)
Exactly. They are rounded. And they can be rounded as well, I think. But as long as you understand what you want to do with the money. So you build upwards. You say, the first 50,000 I must have because I need to pay for something. The next 100,000 I must have because it goes to a development. And then the other 100,000, it's because I want to get published in whatever, in financial times. And they said that's how much, whatever.
Logistics, storage, whatever that is you need for your company to run. So you have to have to do this process. Why? Because then the question goes back, if you don't raise all that money, what can you do? And that's the bigger question. Because you can give equity for service, right? Suppose you bring an AI consultant that normally costs 2000 pounds a day and you can't afford to pay him. But you say, hey, why don't you work for me for 30 days?
and I will do the equivalent of 60,000 pounds in equity. And that's how you start building your investment ask based on scenarios, not just on a rounded number, hey, I need half a million. Okay, so it's really important to understand how much money you want to raise, what you want to spend it for, and what alternatives you have if you don't raise the money. And obviously milestones.
which is really important. I hear founders say, I want to raise half a million so I can build an MVP. And I say, okay, and then what? Oh, then I'm gonna raise another million so I can go to market. And I am gonna make it. Nobody is gonna give you half a million today and another one million in eight months so that you can go to market. You either raise one and a half million now so you can build an MVP and go to market, you know, or...
You have to understand your numbers, but you cannot just assume that you can go back with your hat in hand and say I need a bit more money. So milestones are very important.
Desktop T (29:06.518)
I think another part of it is also to really understand the implication of your shares and your holdings in the company in relation to how much money you raise and the valuation. And these are things that can be very easily understood because there are pre-built Excel sheets and charts that you can use. And there are several of those that can be found over the internet. But it's really important to use them and understand.
If I'm giving away 20% of my equity and I have two co-founders and raising half a million, and then we want to raise in another next round of this valuation, what am I going to be left with? What is the implication, people? You need to know that ahead of time so that you understand what you're going into.
Barak (29:55.198)
HAP table scenarios.
Desktop T (29:57.047)
exactly.
Barak (29:59.074)
Absolutely. And cap table is something many founders don't know what it is. So it's just one more thing. So I think that funding consultation is really important. I personally know that I'm flogging it here right now, but I am personally selling consulting funding consultation services because it's a discovery process. Right. You have to be able to justify that amount of money and build scenarios around it. So, yeah, and I think it's key. Right.
before you go to raise funds. You want to be able to have these questions answered. Valuation, it's normally a point that I try to make. You need to validate your valuation before you go to an investor. Not just because you want it. You say, my company's worth two million because I want to keep 80% of the equity when I raise money. You need to be able to validate your valuation.
which is probably a science of its own. And again, the more advanced the business is, the easier the job gets. So if you try and put a value on a company that's been trading for five years, it's easier because you've got track record and assets and projections that are substantial. If you try and value a company that is operating for 15 years, it's even easier because you've got a whole lot more information to work with.
But if you're trying to put a value on a company that is not more than a PowerPoint presentation and the idea and six months of work that a founder put into getting here, it's a much trickier exercise.
Desktop T (31:38.495)
in those are the cases where you use a safe right
Barak (31:44.902)
You can always use a safe or an ASA. I'm a big fan of convertible loans, even though convertible loans don't qualify for SEIS purposes. So in some markets, you might put off an investor. But any mechanism that allows you to defer that question into the future is beneficial. But also I'm just saying you need to validate it. It's not difficult to validate it.
You say, I am, suppose you're, let's go back to our dog walking dating app. And you want, you think it has a value of 2 million pounds. You just need to run a search on Google for news articles or crunch base or sifted or any of those UK technology websites. And you run a search for dating apps that have raised pre-seed funds in the last three years. And you will start finding out how much money they raise. You sometimes find out at what valuation.
So that's a good place to start. Another place to start is your discounted cash flow, which is again, it's a model that you don't have to have in early stage, but you can run, you can use it as a basis for a conversation. There are many methods of how you can evaluate an early stage startup, but I'm just saying, don't just walk into a conversation with an investor thinking you're gonna get a two million valuation because you want it. It's not how things work.
Barak (33:15.078)
and um go
Desktop T (33:15.31)
I'll see you tomorrow.
pieces in place.
Barak (33:20.134)
Sorry.
Desktop T (33:22.69)
We have all our pieces in place, what's next?
Barak (33:26.71)
Only two things left. One is prospecting investors and the last one is outreach templates. So I will just touch on those two. They're kind of connected. Prospecting investors is a really important process. You know, you'd know about it in detail. Just because you go on LinkedIn and you write angel investor in the search box and you get 74,000 people who have angel investor in their
doesn't mean any of them is an investor by the way, but a high percentage of them is definitely not an investor. So what you want to do is you want to create a list of investors that you have personally studied and you know that they are. So you go into each individual profile and you check their feed and you check their posts and you look for news articles and you look for their name on Crunchbase.
And if a friend of yours have access to pitch book or bohurst or any of those research platforms you asked him to go and run a quick search and you want to make sure that guy or lady are active investors in your space. And then you put him to one side and then you go the next one. Okay he's a VC investor what does it mean? Well he doesn't invest he invests in a VC and through the VC it's a different mechanism. Is it is it's fitting to my what I need now? Maybe.
Let's put them to one side, right? And you work one by one. So ideally you want to have between 50 and 100 qualified, studied investors that you've personally studied them before you even start reaching out. Which leads me to my last point, which is the templates. You want to have a template for each of those three scenarios. One is if you are not connected to them on LinkedIn and you have to send a connection request with just a 300 character.
message. The second thing is maybe you are connected to them and you want to send them a full LinkedIn message. The third scenario is an email. So suppose you get their email address and you send them an email.
Desktop T (35:31.202)
Just to say, we say send a blank connection request, and then there's the first message, which is where you put, which also has to be very brief, but that's what you send. The reason you send a blank connection request is because your headline should convey what you're doing in a way that is interesting to the investor if that is the right investor for you. So if you're...
Barak (35:38.982)
Thank you for connecting.
Desktop T (35:59.446)
reaching out to an investor that's actually looking for investments, then you can just have a headline that prepares that, and then just do a connection request. It just saves a lot of time. It's also nicer not to pitch right at the connection request, but only after someone's already connected with you, is what I think.
Barak (36:01.147)
Absolutely.
Barak (36:14.01)
Yes. I sometimes say, you can say something general like, you know, hi Johnny, you know, I'm building a startup in the FinTech space and I can see you've got experience in FinTech, would be great to have you in my network. And yes, never ask for money or go beyond that. But like you say, either a blank or a simple sentence, just put some context to it. And the emails, again, they have to be...
Desktop T (36:28.464)
Yes.
Barak (36:41.754)
personalized. So you want to write to Johnny because he invests in fintech, you want to write to Sarah because she invests in consumer apps and you want to email Rosaline because she invested in a dating app. Because they wrote about a dating app in their post. So you want to be very, very personal with that. And I think that's your kit. There are loads of other things.
But I think if you want to look at your, you're going on a journey and you want to put a kit bag on your back and say these are the 10 things I need, I think we've covered them pretty much.
Desktop T (37:16.098)
So let's list them just one time, all of them, so we have them in one bite.
Barak (37:21.15)
Sure. One byte. Live pitching skill, an actual pitch deck, a financial model, a ready data room.
your funding consultation questions, the why, what, how, what, for how many and how much equity, your valuation validated, investor prospecting, and outreach templates. That's WD8.
Desktop T (37:51.758)
Okay, good. This is super useful and I think it's going to help a lot of founders. And really good. Where should people find you? Where should people reach out to you?
Barak (38:06.45)
I'm quite vocal, I'm active on LinkedIn, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Otherwise drventures.com is our company and you can find me there as well. Or they can ask you and you will direct them to me.
Desktop T (38:09.198)
Okay.
Desktop T (38:20.398)
That's for sure. We'll also include a link to DR Ventures in the note to the podcast. Please reach out to Bach. I know you also do a day where you sit with a founder or a founding team for a day and you get them prepared within a few hours going over all the parts, at least basic preparation so they can... Like a blitz.
Barak (38:26.483)
Thank you.
Desktop T (38:49.349)
consulting. Yeah, and that's
Barak (38:49.602)
It's a blitz. It's a very intensive day, Tzachi. I found that it's working well when I do it one-on-one. So when I go to a client, so not like a course when there are different clients, I go to one client and I can sit with the CEO and the CFO or the COO, whoever is in that leadership position. And it takes about 10 hours. We sit from the morning until the evening.
Those eight things we break down in detail. And by the time I leave, they've got it. They've got a pitch deck, financial model, data room, all the questions answered, validation evaluated. We research investors and we leave them with templates. So when I go, that kit is ready. It's very intensive, but yeah, very rewarding.
Desktop T (39:40.034)
Amazing, amazing. So they're ready to go after one intensive day. Perfect, Bob. Thanks so much. This was great.
Barak (39:47.654)
Saki, thank you very much for having me.
Desktop T (39:49.986)
Thank you. We'll talk soon. Bye.
Barak (39:51.55)
Speak soon. Bye bye.
