💰 VC Fundraising with Prateek Sanjay, CEO at Foundraisr.com

Guys, welcome to another CEO slash sales wisdom podcast. Today we have Pratik Sanjay with us. He is co owner, CEO at foundraiser. Found like a founder and razor without a knee. So just with an R. Found razor. He's in Oslo, Norway. Quite an interesting guy, this Pratik. I love talking with him. Like we have great conversation, different point of views and yeah, that adds a lot of values to conversation when you can get multiple insights and, and different and new perspectives. So Sanjay, welcome to the Pratik. I mean, do people call you Sanjay

sometimes or they go with a name that's easier and I'm okay with them. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, welcome to the pod Pratik, and tell us a bit more about yourself and, and fundraiser.

Okay, so I'm the guy whose life skill set has been to break the ice with complete strangers and making sure that the strangers end up vouching for you to the real hot shot. You can make opportunities happen. And now I offer this skill set as a whole business to people. Basically. When I was struggling to get investment banking jobs in Spain, I realized, man, I think those online applications are something where your application goes to die. You write a cv, you had a cover letter and then they are. And this way you can receive an objection letter 10 seconds later. So I realized, okay, this is not working. So I was one of the first people to think, why don't I just spread my network by meeting lots of actual investment bankers and let them meet me in person physically in Madrid, you know, another student there. And then what happened was they ended up speaking about me to all their big industry contacts until one of them came to me inbound and hired me. And that since then I realized it's not about, you know, doing a hopeless numbers game, applying everywhere. It's about winning those top industry contacts who can just pick up the phone, vouch for you and get you, get you good opportunities coming your way. Since then, this business, what it does is like if we have a particular founder, we'll reach out to development investors in their space in small batches, micro testing the message each week until those investors start talking to each other. And then one big investor says, hey, I heard about you from all my friends. One let's talk and meet. And that's how one client in Dubai, he got a 500k check from a mega angel that, that we didn't even reach out to, but who had heard of us from their, their proxies. And interestingly enough, because these kind of micro testing processes take so much time, the, the founder just bought back 20 hours a week of their time, you know, and that time you used to just used instead to boost their MRR rather than constantly running these kind of tests. And this is a sign that this topic, my most recent learning, your ideal customer, somebody smarter than you. Because if they're smarter than you, they'll use the time of productivity, the time that you save for them. And that's in the show is what I'm doing people.

Interesting. How did you get there? How did you get to investment banking? Why did you choose that profession in specific?

Okay, so I'm in college in India and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. Do I want to be a trader, Took a trading exam, failed horribly, went into my shell playing video games all day long. Then I decided I'll take a fashion modeling course. I saw I enjoy special modeling. And then I thought, okay, maybe I'll try to make a run for corporate finance, you know. So that, that got me these attempts got me a job in wealth management, not corporate finance, but just anything to get me to New York so I can meet actual investment bankers. And then it also got me a master's in finance in Madrid. So in the end, what I realized was, hey, there's something off. Just because I like fashion modeling does not mean that's what I'll actually do in the job. So I realized instead of writing these cover letters, assuming about, hey, I like this job, which I've never done in my life, why don't actually talk to people and, and meet them and learn about what the job is. And, and then I realized, ah, what's interesting about this job is not the financial models or the PowerPoint or the executive summaries. What's interesting about this job is actually learning from industry leaders like how their domain of businesses run. So that's what I realized about my true passion, which is doing anything that requires a deep dive into understanding how particular business works.

Interesting. And were you like always ambitious and kind of motivated by money? Because I was also that way when I was young. But somehow I never thought of corporate finance to, to get to, to the riches, you know?

Well, there is no path to riches in corporate finance, man. I just like number crunching, dude. Let's be honest, man. People who think that they'll become a lawyer and make lots of money, they don't make money in law. People who think that they'll make a lot of money as a coder, there's a lot of, there's no money in junior coding. Really. At a junior level at any job there's no money. You really just do what makes you feel prestigious and good about yourself. Otherwise why else would you apply for a job with a 1% acceptance rate on the process? Yeah, it's successful branding experiment where, where we'd actually pay money to do expensive master's programs. We pay money to do more additional courses and we make ourselves miserable for the privilege of doing those jobs at a, at that level. Gone.

Yeah, well, just for the record, I think these people, they can make money first. The 9 to 5 is very pervasive because you're very time poor and to be rich you need to become free, you know, to catch the opportunity when it's in front of you and and so forth. I do think that since they work well first most of them are like in big cities like let's say New York, their expenses are super high just to go like networking, that the cost is quite high and to live there and so forth. And finally one thing that can play for these people that go for, you know, these classic 9 to 5 that let's say pay 200k a year is the fact that they don't have time to, to spend much of that money on the, on the weekend. So that may help but it's really pervasive because it teaches you to operate some way. And now we're seeing with AI that most of these folks might be replaced. I mean investment banking somewhat different because there's a lot of human skills in involved in charisma and sales. So I think they can accumulate some cash in their bank account and one they have a burnout and then start to understand that entrepreneurship's probably the only way to get to wealth.

That's actually so true because eventually after all these years of first trying a fin in the finance industry and then later on thinking okay, these jobs are becoming redundant very quickly because how much can you pay for making a bunch of fashion models and PowerPoints? Eventually none, because technology replace it. That took me to me trying to hunt for a life in the startup industry. Initially in my youth the motivation was to feel useful, feeling useful, especially if you come from an upper middle class background like I did. I thought man, I'm so spoiled. Parents and teachers put so much effort in me. I need to get back to in some way by being useful to society in some way. And in the end, you know, once your quest to be useful starts burning a hole in your pocket, you realize, okay, I need to find a way to start making money right now. And that's how we end up into the self employment life. At least I did, you know.

Yeah, yeah. What do you recent news yesterday that was listening to what do you think about all these VCs getting into Saudi? We've also seen like yeah the OPEC kind of trying to control the the gas prices. We've heard people saying oh shifting word ordered. Ray Dalio, what what are your thoughts on Adam Newman praising Saudi Arabia as the ultimate startup country?

Three of my last meetings that were booked inbound were from Saudi customers.

Wow.

Okay so their timing could not be better for asking me this man. And as I raise prices and peak my is increasingly attractive to Saudi customers. Here's the thing. We have not noticed that those Gulf countries which we thought were all about, you know, just real estate and oil, they have actually used the money made from this in order to actually start upskilling themselves to the point that Saudi Arabia has the world's second most energy efficient supercomputer. Saudi Arabia has a new supercomputer for analyzing all the investment decisions and all their oil exploration decisions. So they don't need to depend on like you know, the deep technical experts from America. They're going to do it themselves, you know and they are actually having all their technical expertise be homegrown. What I noticed is very interesting about the Saudis is the Saudis are way more protective of their personal time than the Anglo American world. The Anglo American world loves to optimize meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings. More meetings is better, you know, and whereas Saudis think, listen, if I have to explain myself over and over again, I don't want to talk to this person. So actually talking to Saudis has helped me build a, a better quality offer. Which is instead of me having you dumb your language down and talk to people who are not a fit, why don't you only talk to people with people with whom you can be yourself and and nail it. And this particular messaging for Saudi Tesla customers, it's actually kind of interesting because I'm had had the most success produced for clients in the MENA region so far. So the these what the societies are saying is look, this Western consumer branding mindset of explain it to me like I explained to your grandma, it it's they're the ones who are looking at it critically as new outsiders coming into the space saying hey, am I really supposed to explain myself to like, like to your grandma? Because my grandma's not the one buying or investing. So tweaking the whole cold email offer saying hey, you explain yourself the way you want to be explained, we keep your language, we keep you in the driver's seat and we help you vet out and decide who is going to be worth your time or not. This is so attractive to Saudis because they are noticing that the non stop meeting culture in the west is not ideal. And why do they want to avoid non stop meetings? Man? Because when you live in a 50 degree Celsius heat, those meetings in a stuffy office room start to exhaust you. You can't do them and the energy for non stop meetings is bad. And that's why cold outreach agencies are struggling to sell to them, saying, hey, I'll book you more meetings. So he's like no, I don't want more meetings. Stop telling me about more meetings.

Yeah, that's funny. I was about to make a joke that like yeah, once they've got their first precede they can buy some air conditioning or something and yeah, like until then it's like yeah, ramen. Not sure what they eat there like couscous or rice money. But yeah, nonetheless interesting point. Often you know. Well first I think that people jumping to conclusions and I mean I, I make some kind of extreme predictions on my end too but I feel, I feel that I have so much sources of data that they tend to be accurate. But I don't think that the world order is kind of shifting in itself. Yes, a bit more with China and Russia joining force with China and so forth. And I see talent in Saudi, I see talent in China. Me, I always look at the 1% so I'm not evaluating classic cultural factors. But if you look at Saudi's track record, it's pretty fucking bad with start ups like so Maza Son, which is one of my favorite entrepreneurs, he's really extreme but he has like fall flat on his face in the, the f. The, the last couple of years and that's fine. You know like one of my favorite entrepreneur, Elon is also falling flat on his face many times nowadays with the AI open later and, and that. But I, I think that indeed it's going to be super interesting to have different type of mindsets coming to the startup ecosystem and bring new perspective. For example the meeting thing or the. Explain me like I'm five, explain me like I'm five. I kind of agree, you know and it's annoying for people that are like high on a intellectual level and I think the function is most like to, to have under. Have the juniors understand what it's about so that they can communicate and not lash out of frustration. Like, oh shit, I don't understand a word of what they said. And they communicated that to their, to their higher peer and basically nothing happens. But that being said, I think that us and you know, like, not even sure if that's a debate, but people constantly bringing up the world order. I think that US has such a moat and their moat right now is highs valley, cerebral valley. I think that this is going to create exponential wealth, that little part of sf, or at least where the communities are amassing right now. And I think that only AI itself could potentially dethrone us in a big fashion. What do you think about that?

Okay, so let's see. This is something interesting because in order to be a very enthusiastic adopter of AI, you need certain preconditions already in place. You need to have an early adopter mindset, you need to have lots of data, you need to have a data collection process and you have a clear dashboard that tells you that data is doing. Luckily in much of the world those things don't even exist and that makes sure that people who are accustomed to working with that are, are able to survive. It's kind of interesting because the Americans have access to all their data in a structured manner, in a structured place, in a structured visibility. This is not the case in most of the world. And one Saudi entrepreneur with whom I was hoping to work with soon, his expertise is you can leave your data unstructured, you can leave it without time to train, we can just work with what we have and do it on the fly. And their approach to AI is built on the more chaotic approach. So I agree with you. It's not a multipolar world. It's different markets evolving in a different manner. And what you thought works in America will not work outside it because America is a very technologically early adopted country. So it's also kind of interesting that I assume that short and snappy emails have a higher conversion rate, which they do in America mainly. But short and snappy does not work in the Asian countries or the mena. They're like, okay, I, my brain can't fill the blanks. I need you to slowly explain and spell it out to me what's your, what's happening here? And, and that requires a bit more word count, you know. And interestingly, while Americans are becoming big fans of the one minute pitch, the Saudis don't have one because they still rely on old school PowerPoints. I think what's really interesting for me to work with non USS customers is the usual restrictions don't Apply. I'll give an example. When I help MENA clients and they get in touch with Russian or Turkish investors, those people feel so shut out, so sanctioned by the planet that when they get like Mina company coming to the front and like yes, we'll take you to the investment committee in one week. And it happens, which is rare in America. So I'm not going to assume. I don't want to announce an early death of the Anglo American hegemony. I think it's there for a reason. There's a certain business mindset of Anglo Americans and Canadian Australia which really works. What I think is happening is we need to test new hypotheses and new approach or the other markets and if it starts working, we'll see some interesting results.

Interesting. And what's, what are your thoughts and recent experience with AI startups? Like have you seen that explode? Like what's the quality of the checks that your startups in AI are getting? And is it just like saying add in AI after my business name or is it truly having a technical ML person as a co founder? Tell us a bit more about that structure and what you're seeing in the current ecosystem.

I'll tell you a nasty truth. I've known for five years. No one really wants to back an AI business. You know why? Because you tell an AI business telling you, listen, I don't know what results you'll get. You got to pay me for me me to, to even train my morals on your data sets so, so you can even find out what you'll get. In order for you to find out what you're getting, you have to pay me first. That's really scary. That's a scary offer. That's not scalable and people don't like to buy them so. And that's why the most popular AI businesses are leveraging an existing AI module, putting a UX on top of it. And you know what? That's what consumers and small businesses understand to be AI anyway. But then the problem is they don't really offer a bespoke attention to what relevant customers needs are. Let me tell you if you, you and I both know this. If you make the horrible mistake of using an email AI personalization tool, you will see the most ridiculous emails you've seen in your life. And people keep telling me, pratik, your agency is done. Your AI procession will put your agency out of business. Like, dude, I hear about AI for 3 years. Makes me yawn. The worst AI email I saw was and I prevented it from being Sent out right in time. It was. I read on the Daily Mail that you have a child with a woman who's not your wife. And I thought, who the hell would write that investor email that sentence like so that's how I realized. And the other stuff is AI procession. I saw you raise a $36 million funding round. Yes, I know it's on the news. I'm the one who raised it. What's the point of explain to them that they had a. I saw you won an award. Yes, I know. I collected the award myself. But our insight was why don't we dig into the YouTube videos that from five years ago with only 20 views, find a quote by them like, Jesus Christ, you did the homework. You found an old ass video of mine that nobody ever actually watched and you found something interesting. I said it resonated with you. I can't ignore you. Let's talk. That's what my agency doing.

It's like, hey, I, hey, very nice that I saw that you lost 500k at SVB Bank. Glad to talk. It's like, that's the intro.

Yeah, actually like AI personalization references the most damaging personal thing about themselves. Like oh my God, there horrific AI per I've seen. Which is so I, I see that you have 10 years of experience in the pornographic industry before you left and became a startup founder. Like know, like I've seen some horrific AI process because AI cannot tell the difference between good news and bad news. Oh, I heard the SEC gave you a million dollar fine for, for issuing security without filing for exemption. Like AI lacks common sense and we need this kind of human common sense to find out. And the point is that people offering AI personalization think that they've already trained those models and it's already finished product. Whereas we were a human run company. Nothing's a finished product. We're always learning, we're always testing and we keep finding personalizations which don't work. And as a guy in the personalization industry, so to speak, personalizations are goddamn risky. Sometimes you personalize emails for legal reasons, which is you can't have an email that can't be looked like if it's not for one person. That's why we personalize. But sometimes over explaining why you're trying to get in touch with the person too much is also socially very detrimental. That a lot of emails would be better if you just skip the personalization. Got to the point. I'm telling this as a guy who runs a personalization agency that personalization can be very Risky. And that's why we ask our customers to vet everything that we send out in their name. But this is, this is the hard part, which is how are we ever

gonna

people who are liking and commenting and sharing those LinkedIn posts saying hey, here's how I figured out chat GPT. Do you do personal scale? Those kind of posts are attracting people who believe in shortcuts. Who believes in shortcuts. People who have not tried and failed before and are not going to put the effort. When people tag me in this post, I know exactly who to mute on my LinkedIn feed because their customers will never, their audience will never be my customers. I don't want them. My ideal customer is somebody who did the work themselves. They got burned and they learned their lesson, you know. And does that resonate with you as well?

Yeah, I mean Ted, I think it can be game changing chatgpt like yeah, it all depends like how you prompt it. I've been working on something in the past couple weeks me, as you know, I want to hit scale, willing to take risks. I also think it can help on a deliverability side of things. But I think we've got like yeah, different techniques. I think it can be really beneficial depending on how you prompt it. You know, it won't be like magical from day one and write emails the best way possible. It will need human supervision for quite a while that I've been talking with the, the Apollo team yesterday about that.

Oh my God.

And yeah, it's still.

Yes, I know like their product is so good of finding the people but their email quality and the way they send emails is so bad that we switched to Woodpecker and Woodpecker Magic for deliverability.

No, it's good same for well Lemless. It's similar open rates of the ones that I've, I've seen on, on your side. And it's a very interesting question, you know, because I've been studying first when you mentioned like AI like meat. I've, I've started studying AI probably a decade ago and it was too complicated for my brain to make sense but just like Bitcoin and these things, you know, it's like oh, did I miss out maybe or maybe I just arrive at the right time to ride the tsunami wave. But anyway, the point that I'm trying to make here is that I've been fascinating for. Fascinated for quite a while about ML and the, the major breakthrough of ML is, is the sheer quantity and, and the computing power that allowed us to, to get to the recent breakthroughs. And that got me thinking. Is that like the secret key to life? Is it quantity? Is it, is it scale more than quality? Because quality. And if I start using GPT at scale for personalization, I mean it might choose a similar method. But theoretically if all emails are drastically different, then I literally need to, I can't like take scientific data out of it. So it's, it's kind of tricky and a lot of people are talking about using GPT to actually filter the list, you know, because me, I'm. I'm always. Yeah, I'm definitely a scale guy. You know, I don't want to be lucky with like one home run in my life. Make a. Even if it's a billion, you know, like I, I want to reproduce it. And the recent question has been like, will capitalism even matter like anytime soon with AI coming and AGI coming and just. I mean that won't happen anytime soon. But let's say that if we're somewhat conservative, it happens in like 15 to 20 years. Then it will be an interesting world. But yeah, like I want to finish things off. I need to run a pretty work and people find out more about you.

Okay. The best way to find out more about me is to search for my videos on YouTube which I myself did not record but they are from other people's like you know, they are from other people's interviews with me and I'm glad that I got recorded on those things because some of my best ideas are when I have no preparation and I'm ask them off the cuff that even I forget about. And being forced to say something off the cuff reveals all our true expertise just like yours.

I agree. 100 agree. Well, perfect was nice talking. We'll do this again in a couple months. And yeah people go check Pratik Sanjay out. He's also very loud and clear on LinkedIn. I love his posts. So go check him out there.