Ask Me Anything with Kevin Jurovich

Really excited to talk to people today.

This is gonna be really cool. So as you guys are coming in, yeah, so you're gonna pop, um, as I said before, if you are just coming in, um, we are gonna do it. So please put your questions in the comments, um, in the chat, and then we're gonna be selecting it from there. And then I'll read the question out. I'll say, Ray has this question. I'll read the question and then I'll ask that person to come off mute. You'll have around a minute to give context, and when you're giving context, please keep it brief. Um, we don't need a backstory. We want to make sure that everyone gets a time and gets the chance to ask a question. So just give a little bit of context. And then, um, you and Kevin will have around 5 minutes to go To go back and forth. And I know a lot of the questions will be kind of around the similar themes. So do not fret. You probably— your question might get answered, just maybe not in your context, but for someone else's context. Yeah. Perfect. Okay.

And if for whatever reason, if we don't get to the question, We can connect on LinkedIn. I'm around. I'm happy to answer any questions that I can.

Yeah.

Fab. Okay, let's begin. So thank you everyone for coming and for the people trickling in. If we haven't met, I'm Sasha. I'm head of community here at Hubble. And this is, this is our first official Ask Me Anything. We usually have done fireside chats. So this is really exciting to go really deep into one Yeah, with one person, Kevin, and have him basically answer all of your questions. And we also are joined with Kat, and she's our new head of marketing. So Kat's gonna give a little wave. So if you haven't connected with her, please do. We have some really fun things lined up. If we're not connected, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Shoot me a message, and we have— I can give you all the things, all the ideas.

Give me—

yeah, love to connect. And chat all things Hubble and how we can help you. So we're gonna start with this Q&A. I'm just gonna pass it off to Kevin to say, to say a few things, and then we're gonna start collecting some questions and start, start the Q&A.

I love it. Thank you, Sasha. The thing that I was thinking about as you were talking, you guys remember when like your elementary school teacher would be like, hey, there's no dumb questions? And I really want this to basically be that, right?

right?

I think in entrepreneurship and my time in tech, a lot of people have imposter syndrome because they think they're supposed to know everything and they think they're supposed to have all the answers. The truth is, like, founding a company, even if it's your first company or second company, you're just trying to figure it out. Most of the day-to-day stuff, you actually don't know what you're doing. You're just trying to do the best you can. You're not trying to, you know, people are trying to be right. I always like to say, We're not trying to be right, we're trying to get it right, right? So how are we going to get it right? We're going to ask questions, we're going to figure it out, we're going to run experiments. So this really is a casual, you know, people say this a lot, but this is a safe space. This is a space where we're just going to talk, we're going to be real, we're going to be honest, try to be helpful. Because I commend anyone who's starting a company, it's having the courage to leave the safety of the shore and that steady paycheck Right? It's like we all— most people, we worked at a big company, or we worked at a company where we're getting a paycheck. When you decide to start your own thing, whether it's a restaurant, a tech company, a shoeshine business, you're leaving the safety of the shore, and it's not easy, and we got to help each other. So with that, uh, Stella, yes, I will try to accept your friend request. If anyone sends me a request, by the way, on LinkedIn, put a note in there that you were here on this call so that I can see it and I'll make sure that I can accept it. Yeah, with that, like Sasa was saying, this is our first time at this, so we're all going to be learning together. Should we get into this first question?

Let's do it. I actually love this one. As obviously an American in London, Karan, I'm going to have you come off mute in a second, but how easy is it for a US VC to invest in a UK startup?

That's a good question.

Or a global startup in that sense. So yeah.

Yeah, let me just share a story, um, and then I'll kind of answer that directly. But so Hubble just raised— is completing a seed round. So we launched in, in March of this year, we raised the pre-seed. This most recent round, if anyone wants to take a guess, where do you guys think the VC is located? Let's see if someone can get this. Put it in the chat. We got Vietnam. That— okay, this is, this is funny. Vietnam is actually the VC that led our pre-seed round. But no. Dubai, China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, San Francisco. That's a good guess. All amazing guesses. Okay, no, we're not even in the same continent. Antarctica. That's funny. No, they're actually in South Africa. Actually in South Africa. I say this because prior to COVID, a lot of VCs, I live born and raised in Silicon Valley, they were all on Sand Hill Road, right? In Menlo Park. Then they all went up to South Park in San Francisco, and you basically had to be at these locations to get meetings, to meet in person. And the story that I just shared, I never— we never met our pre-seed investors before they invested. They're from Vietnam. We still have not met this seed investor that's going to invest almost $3 million. They're from South Africa. So let that just be a feather in your cap. It doesn't matter where you're from, doesn't matter where your company is. All that matters is that they have conviction in you as a founder and in your business. So always go into any meeting never letting geography play a role or factor into, ooh, I don't think that this could happen because I live in X or because I live in Y. Money is everywhere. It's just really about them believing in you as the founder more than anything. Thank you for that question.

Aaron, do you have any additional things, or does that answer it for you?

Sorry, yeah, I'll just jump on. Thanks for asking that, Kevin. We've just raised a pre-seed round of £250K in the UK with 4 angel investors. And one of the things you've always said, Kevin, is a CEO's main job is basically don't run out of money. So I'm already thinking, what's the next raise gonna look like and where's it gonna come from? So I'm already thinking we've got a burn rate of 18 months. In 6 months, I'm probably gonna start looking again. So do I have to restrict myself to the UK market or not? So yes, you've answered the question.

So thank you for that. I'll say one thing too about this. Yes, you're being a good CEO because even though you closed one round, you're already thinking about the next. This is just what it is. One thing you can do is I would meet with some seed stage VCs and I would— what's the name of your business, by the way?

Suren AI, that's the name of the company.

Suren AI. I would literally meet with— I love that you got the merch, that's great. I would literally— oh, it's on the back too. Hashtag marketing. I would meet with some seed stage VCs now and I would say, hey, here's what we've done. What would Suren AI— what sort of metrics would you need to see from us to make it impossible when we announce a seed round early 2027? What would you need to see from Suren AI to make it impossible to pass on our round? This is gonna give you some good sort of data points going into next year, and that's gonna give you a lot of clarity too and remove a lot of this doubt. So as you guys build more momentum and traction and revenue, you're gonna actually have targets and milestones to shoot for as those 18 months become 10 months and 9 months of runway and so on and so forth. So yeah, that's what I would do.

Fantastic.

Thank you, Kevin.

Cheers, mate.

Cheers.

I love that. It'd be nice if you guys would have your names as your names and not your companies.

That was embarrassing.

I apologize. There's another question, actually. This is interesting. There's a lot of people here in the UK, and I'm sure quite in global. I'm just pulling up the person. Marty asks, in the UK, the VCs are quite unresponsive and quite dismissive, and there's a lot They're a lot more risk-averse. So Kevin, how would you go about navigating the more risk-averse markets? And then when do you think it's time for a company to move into the US?

I would just— it's already hard enough raising money. I forget what his name was, but Suren AI, that's not his real name, but his company's name. He just raised from some angels, right? It's hard to raise money no matter where you're from. So why would you go try to raise it in a market where the stakes are more challenging, or they want to see more traction, or they want to see higher revenue? I would go to the places where money is easiest, you know, and it's not easy anywhere. It's not like, oh, you live in San Francisco, you could just have an idea and raise money. That's like a fallacy. The only way you can raise money on just an idea almost all the time is if you're a repeat founder that has had an exit. Or if you may be some wonder kid from Ivy League dropout Stanford with some crazy algorithm, right? If it's not one of those 2 things, it's hard to raise money. But I would try to say, it's already difficult, where can I go to make it the easiest possible way? And that's going to almost all the time be angel investors if you're early, angel investors in the US. This is still going to be challenging, but that's going to be— I guess the easiest with the least amount of traction possible for you to get an investment. Did that answer your question, Marty?

I think it did. There's been— so there's a few questions in here around angel investors. I'm going to do this as a broad Yeah. Of like, how, what are some ways to get access to angel investors if you don't have a network? And if you were to raise your pre-seed again, only through angels, how would you do that?

Our pre-seed cap table. So the cap table is basically just all the stakeholders of your company. They go on the cap table. Our pre-seed cap table had 44 angel investors. So I think the best way to go about that is we were pretty fortunate with the type of product that we were building, right? It was a network. There was a ton of angels. There was a ton of founders already on it. And so when people would get onboarded, they would naturally be like, oh, this is really cool, after they got a couple calls. Are you guys raising money for this? So it was a little easier for this one. One of the easiest things that you can It's not easiest, but one of the most efficient ways that you can connect with an angel investor is actually through another founder. And I'm not suggesting everybody on the call do this because this would be overwhelming for me, but you could literally look at, okay, I'm connected to Kevin. I know Kevin. Kevin knows my business a little bit. Let me see if there's any angel investors that he's written about or he's connected to. Because think about this, an angel investor, they literally just write investments from their checking account. There's typically very little due diligence. And if the trust is already high when you're meeting them, or somebody that knows them has already vouched like, hey, this guy Raymond's awesome, like his company's really interesting, you got to meet him. They're already going into this meeting with optimism, like, oh, this is interesting, right? So that's always something that I don't think people take enough advantage of. They just try to go directly to the angel investor. That angel investor is getting just like the VCs. It's why they're unresponsive, Marty. They get bombarded with cold emails, cold DMs all the time. If you can come in warm through a fellow founder, that's always the best way. Marty, you raised your hand.

Yeah, thank you, Kevin. Thank you for having me today. My question was, Because I'm a repeat highly technical founder with live products that is growing rapidly. I actually launched on 1st of December and currently onboarding about 100 users per day, which is quite a strong signal that this is something people want. And the problem that I have is I'm solo, right? So I'm building literally day and night, and UK investors are quite ignorant. They're not responsive. And And the problem I have is that they know me, many of them know me personally from my previous businesses because I have 2 exits already over the past 12 years, and on the other hand, I have many VCs that know me from USA as well, and those from USA want to invest in my company at the moment, but they want the company in US, they don't want it in UK, so my question is, should I keep it in UK or move it immediately to US?

I guess it depends on how bad you want the money, you know?

Well, it will accelerate the things quite significantly, let's say.

Yeah.

If you need the money, right? If you need it, only you will know this, then it's probably worth it to do that. If you know multiple investors and maybe there's one that they don't care that you're still in the UK, then maybe you don't have to. But if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, like I always say, the CEO's job, we got 3 jobs. We set the vision of the company, we hire great people, and we don't run out of money. So if you're about to run out of money, Maybe it's like desperate times call for desperate measures and we create a Delaware C-Corp and we move the company to the US, which in the end is probably going to open you up to more investors anyways for later rounds. But yeah, that's what I'd say to that.

Awesome. Thank you very much for that.

Yeah.

Sweet. Okay. Could we pop questions in so we don't go off track? And then I will call you if you raise your hand just so I can have some context. So both Raymond and Yazan, could you pop your questions in your— in the chat, and then I could read them out and we can go that way? That way we are just going through, going through the list. I think another one, I actually like this one a lot. Ade asks, apologies if I mispronounce your names, guys, is what is one thing that surprised you the most post-funding that you thought you'd figured out pre-funding?

It's a good question. I think the first round that we closed was like $900 grand, and I had this very same familiar feeling of like, oh, okay, cool, that gives us 10 months. Well, I need to start already prepping for the next raise. So that was unfortunate because I wanted a little bit of a break. And then I think this latest round, I've just kind of more taken this idea of fundraising is like, it's a responsibility. Like, these people are entrusting you with all this money. It's not your money. And it's a tool. And it's a tool to increase the impact of your business, you know? And it's really about, okay, it's a cool milestone to celebrate, but the stakes then get increased. And it really becomes, how can we make more of an impact in what we're doing and use this as a tool and a resource for that? Rather than just celebrating, hey, we're rich now, we have all this money in our checking account, which is kind of when I first started my very first company, that's kind of the way that I was looking at raising rounds.

I love that. I think this is a question I've seen a lot as well, is like, when would you start taking investment is like one question. And then the second part is for people who have booked a ton of calls on Hubble, sometimes they get conflicting responses. Christina, I'm looking at you for this question. How do you kind of think about who to listen to and like, what do you, like, what kind of gut checks do you need to make? Yeah, and I'll let Christina, you can come off mute and you guys can chat about this.

Yeah, I think I'll answer that first part of that thing about like when it's time to raise money. So you have angels and VCs. I almost never would just go to a VC and just start doing a bunch of cold outreach because I feel like it's a waste of time. You almost want to have traction to the point where VCs are reaching out to you. And I always love to say, if you can just focus on your customers and your business and your growth and your product and making all those things more attractive, if you just focus on that, Eventually, the investors start knocking on your door, and that's a good signal that it's time to try to raise. And in a perfect world, that's how it works. I know in reality, we usually need money well before this, but if we're being honest, that's the time to raise, where the product and the traction is so visible and undeniable that the investors are knocking on your door. That's when you really want to raise, because you're going to be raising from a position of strength and not always out of necessity. If you really need money, which I know a lot of people do because I was in this camp for a long time, I love this advice of, okay, you need to raise a pre-seed. Let's say your company's name is Shiran AI. Shiran AI. We're gonna use this example. It's literally what I just told you, but we're doing it for a pre-seed. We meet with some pre-seed investors and we say, what sort of metrics do you need from Shiran AI to raise a $1 million pre-seed round? They'll tell you. Then this is uncomfortable. You get an old school sheet of paper like this. This this is a little notebook, but and you spend a day, and you can put me on this list. You spend a day, and you write down every single person that has either worked with you, that knows you, that might be related to you, that is professionally connected on LinkedIn, that you think, and you can make this number up, but that you think could write like a one k check or a twenty five hundred k check or a five k check. Some sort of Smaller minimum. And what you're going to do is you're literally, once you have that list written out, you're literally going to pick up the phone. You're not going to text these people. You're not going to send them a DM. You're going to get face-to-face just like this or a phone call. And you're going to go down the entire list and you're going to say, hey, you know, I started this company, ShareAnAI. Do you know? Okay, cool. We just met with 3 pre-seed VCs. They need to see these 3 things before they would be interested in backing us. Because of that, we're about 6 months away. We are putting together a small angel round, minimum investment $1,000. If you want to know more information, I'll send you over a deck. We want to close this round by January 15th. Let me know. And you go to the next person, you go to the next person, you go to the next person. I promise you, if you guys do this, I promise you, you guys will at least close one person. When you close one person, it's going to feel really good and you're going to start to get some momentum. And just like anything in life, when we have momentum, it feels good, we're more confident, people will sense that, you know. And then you can tell those pre-seed investors a month later, hey, thank you so much for taking that meeting, we actually just closed our first angel, thanks again. And you didn't even tell them, you still have not even asked the pre-seed investor for money yet. And they're like, what the heck is wrong with this guy or this girl? Like, they're coming to me, they're listening, they're executing, they're getting other investors to invest in their company, they still haven't even asked me. Now this person is intrigued about you, your company. They're going to start reaching out to you and be like, hey, what's going on? What's the traction like? And all of that stuff, then you're going to close a second and a third. And at some point, you're going to have like $25K or $50K. At some point along this journey, there's actually going to be a legit, like, professional angel And you're going to be able to tell them, here's the traction, here's how much money we've raised. They're going to say, hey, you know what? I want in for $100K. You know? And that's kind of your first big break. Yeah, that's what I'd say to that. Anything else? I forgot who asked that question, but if you want to come off mute.

It was me. Thank you so much for like this awesome advice. I think honestly it sounds like you're underwater. Thank you so much for creating this community. Yeah, it sounds like you're a robot. Okay, no worries. I will just text in the chat. I'm so glad it helped. Give some emojis, guys, if this, if this, if this helped and if this, if this makes sense. Use the emojis. I forgot to say this at the very beginning. We love an emoji. If you've been to any of our calls, we love emojis. So this is really helpful for us to kind of know that we're on track. The next, I really liked what Jay said, and we're going to kind of continue on this theme, or sorry, what Ray said around the pre-seed. So Kevin, what traction did you have going on in your pre-seed versus when you raised seed? trying to gauge for seed rise for the seed round. So, Ray, when you're ready to come off mute, you are ready. Yeah, you are welcome to.

Hey, Ray.

Hey, Kevin.

Thank you for doing this. I'm torn between focusing on growing revenue and raising. I'm looking to secure pre-seed in February. I have $100K committed, we're trying to raise $550K. Those who pass want to see more traction, more retention. So wondering how you balance that and like what were the benchmarks between pre-seed to your successful seed round? And your traction was pre-seed versus seed. Yeah, so just focusing in on the pre-seed, I think literally if anyone— this might sound a little harsh, but if someone at the pre-seed is like, hey, we want to see more traction and we want to see like Yeah, duh. It's like we're a pre-seed company. Of course you want more traction. Of course you want to see a better product. Of course you want to see like all these things. Those come when you have more resources, right? And they come in time. I would, at this stage, at the pre-seed stage, it's literally you want to find somebody that you connect with, that believes in your vision, that when you start talking about your company and the impact it's going to have and like what the goals are and where it's going to be in a couple of years, they get equally as excited as you. Right? And they're gonna write a check because they, yes, believe in the cause for sure, but they trust you that you are the one to make it happen, you know? And I think really leaning in at the beginning stages, you should always care about your customers and your revenue for sure, your product experience, that should be like almost priority number one all the time. It should never go away. But if someone is like dragging their feet or if they're just kind of like giving you the runaround or they wanna see more of this and more of that, Yeah, stand in line. Everybody wants to see more of this and more of that if you wanna make a pre-seed bet. Pre-seed bets pay off in spades because they're risky, right? Because you have to have a lot of faith. That's why they're called like angel rounds. That's why they're called angels. There's a lot of faith that goes into making an investment this early. So I would spend time on the people that get it, that get it right away. And if someone's giving you the runaround and you're feeling like you're spending too much time and it's going nowhere, it's probably never gonna turn out to be anything anyways. So I would just try to get another person, get in front of another person, get in front of another person. And if someone says no, or if someone says wait, it's all good, great. But like, do never hold on to that person and say, okay, like we had a good conversation with this person last week. Like maybe eventually they'll come around, just go to the next one, you know? So that's, it's really a game of just that at the pre-seed stage. At the seed stage, I think still it's early and it wildly varies. I just kind of had this in my heart. I was like, we want to raise it at a $25 million valuation. If you looked at our revenue, we're not worth $25 million, just from a pure revenue multiple standpoint, but our network is powerful. I think our vision is grand. I think as you start to get into seed pitches, I would take feedback a little bit more at face value, especially like the first 20 investors we pitched, they all passed on the seed round. And about 7 of them kept talking about, hey, if you're just a marketplace, you're going to need to have a lot of calls to be worth $1 billion one day on Hubble. And after the 7th time, I took it as we need to have more meat on the bone of our company. There needs to be some other aspect of our company than more more than just an advisor plan or a one-off call. And it forced us to think about what that would be. And there was an incredible, I guess, idea that turned into— and I'm not going to talk about it yet because we're not publicly talking about it. But then once that new idea got injected into the story, all of a sudden we weren't just a marketplace anymore.

Yeah.

And it was almost kind of like before. Does this person believe that our team can execute on this? Obviously at the seed stage, you're gonna have tons of traction. You know, still, you're still trying to find product market fit. You're still not a well-developed company. You're still in the earliest stages. And investors should know that. If an investor is expecting you to have all your T's crossed and your I's dotted, they're probably not the right person. They should probably be doing Series A investing or Series B investing, and they're just thinking they're an early-stage investor. Amazing. How much weight on the narrative of this new idea versus your growth rate? And what was your growth rate? Yeah, we were month over month growing at 40%, and we were capturing GMV, which is just gross merchandise value, just all the transaction value on Hubble. And then our take rate is our revenue. But yeah, about 40% month over month. So the growth was strong, but the story, like you want to have, you got to have a graph. You got to have a graph if you're raising a seed round for sure. There's got to be some sort of traction graph that shows up and to the right, but it's going to be your story again. It's going to be literally connecting with somebody. Our lead investor, I connected with him. So I live in Pleasure Point. I'm not going to turn my camera around, but the ocean is right there and it's really incredible. I love it. And I just moved here when I met him. And he's like, oh, I love that area. And he's like, and he turns his camera around and he's looking, he's in South Africa, he's looking at the Indian Ocean. And it was like that little bonding moment kind of kicked off that relationship. And that, not just that little moment, but that first call was all about connection.

Mm-hmm.

And at the end of that first call, he's like, hey, I want to invest in your company. We didn't even really talk about like, the specifics, the revenue. It was just pure love for what we were doing, impact for where I saw Hubble going, the team. So yeah, there's still a heavy dose of that, and I think it's important to not miss that and just think it's all about numbers. Amazing.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

Let's pop it over to team for a second. There's quite a few questions around hiring and like, how do you hire, um, you know, your first, your first, let's say, 50 employees? Um, this was This is one of Ariel's questions. I'm gonna pick the second one from, from what you asked Ariel. So how do you kind of go from, you know, a pre-seed founder to, you know, a founder, like more of a CEO of, you know, 10, 20 to 50 people? What does that look like for you personally? And then also as like a general overview?

Yeah, I'll, I'll kind of hone in with where I have more skillset, like that first 15. Because I think also that's where most people are, that first kind of crop. I would lean into hiring people that have this attitude of like, I'm just going to figure it out. You know, like they don't have to come from all these big brands or these big schools. They just got to be hungry and they got to have this mindset of, I'm going to take ownership of something. Like I'm going to take— okay, I'll be in charge of our social media page. And then I'll figure out how to make our posts better over time. I will take a person in the early stages that hustles, that is like bought into the mission over somebody that has a cool pedigree or went to Harvard or worked at Meta.

Those—

if you get somebody that works at a big tech company and you're too early and they've never worked at a startup, they're automatically going to think you have all these resources and like They're gonna get used to like, oh, oh, I just like give it to somebody else that does it, right? Uh, Jesse and Kev out here living on the beach like Baywatch. That's funny. Um, but yeah, I would lean into that. And then as far as like growing your team, it's incredible when you hire someone who has that mentality and that mindset. It's infectious to the team and that culture, your culture, that bar for That attitude and showing up is going to be set. And then naturally, like Sasha— I didn't know Sasha. We had somebody who was writing for our company page, and I actually gave them— I said, hey, you want to be the head of community? Because we knew her. And she's like, I actually have the perfect person to be head of community. Her name's Sasha. This is really how your beginning first 15 hires usually happen. Like, you're gonna do some cold outreach to get a few people. But that first kind of core founding team is going to come organically through existing relationships of people that work on your team. And I think that's actually the best way to do it. And then as far as we didn't— this is not specific to this question, but I think this is really important. We got to talk about firing because I think this is actually more important. You need to get rid of the people that aren't on the boat, that aren't rowing in the same direction of everybody else.

Yeah.

And my advice for this is put everybody on this before you hire them. Say, hey, and keep it casual. Hey, for the first 2 months, let's just test this out. You know, we think we want to work together. We think we'll be a good match. We think your skill set, you know, is going to bring something to Hubbell and our company and move the ball forward. Let's just try it out for 2 months and we'll see how it goes. This basically is enough time to assess if it's working out or if it's not. And at the end of the 2 months, just ask yourself, is this someone, knowing what I know now, is this someone that I would hire again? And if the answer is no, or the answer is maybe, you gotta let them go. It's not personal. You guys are trying to build something worthwhile, something that's special. I came from team sports. I'm very loyal to people. But if the answer is like a hard no, like I would never hire this person again, knowing what I know now, The end of the 2 months is over, you know, and we tried. It was almost like an experiment. Didn't go— it didn't go how we had hoped, but it's okay. Hiring is very difficult, but maybe the most important part of hiring is letting go of the wrong people and doing it quickly.

Kevin, uh, thanks so much for answering my question, by the way. Uh, if it's okay, just for 10 seconds, it's like, this is the reason why I logged on in the first place. Uh, I've had I've obviously been working as a customer success manager for 5 years now, but in the back of my head, there's always been this huge grand idea that I want to pursue as a startup. But my biggest issue and problem is not only breaking it down, but I know there are many outlets to use to like actually make this, you know, there are many MVPs I can use or do to start this off, but it's almost like I'm worried about choosing the wrong one because I'm thinking if I don't do this, if I, or if I choose this route, everything might fail. So it's like, how do you, you know what I mean? So how do you go from, as a first-time founder, from just a small idea or a big idea in your head to actually making it that first, which was the part 2 question, like the, your first 15 or 50 employees?

Yeah, that's fantastic. It's a great question. I think a lot of people feel that. I'm going to let you in on a secret. Nobody's first version of their first product ever works, like never. Like your very first launch of your first product is not going to go well, I promise you. The very first version of your first MVP, people are not going to care, which sounds kind of sad, but in reality, that should be freeing. Like people are not going to really care, so there's actually no pressure. And so look at this, this mindset when you launch something is, and I said this earlier, but we're not trying to be right, we're trying to get it right. So how do you get something right? You put something out there, you talk to people and you ask them questions. Hey, did this solve your problem? What do you think about this? Okay, after you've done 20 to 30 of those discovery interviews, you come back to the drawing board, you iterate, your next version is a little bit better, and so on and so forth, right? So there's literally no pressure in the beginning. The thing that I would say to you is pick a problem. That you truly care about, that you're passionate about, before you build anything, I would hire a designer just to sketch out some of these prototypes on Figma. And then with those prototypes on Figma, go start talking to people that you think have that problem and ask them about it. And then just say, hey, I'm just going to iterate for a while until I have enough conviction that this thing has legs, that there's a little bit of soul to this thing that people are connecting to.

Thank you so much. Is there a way I could like kind of chime in with you once a month and keep you updated?

I would love for you to keep me updated. I can't commit to a ton of extra stuff, but I will definitely— if you send me a connection on LinkedIn and you keep me updated, I promise you I will write you back and I will help you.

Appreciate it. Just remember, my name is Dariel, okay? I have to log off for a call right now. But it was great meeting you.

Thanks, Ariel.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of people kind of struggle with that or feeling like it needs to be perfect or feeling like, what ideas should I explore? Or what if people don't care? And I think it's so freeing knowing the first version of your product is not going to work, so it's okay. And that product launch, No one's gonna care about, so it's totally okay.

Has everyone read A Shitty First Draft? You wouldn't know what that— go read it. Yeah, Richard, I see you raising your hand. My creative writing teacher made me read that, um, in college, and it changed my life. So I want that to be on everyone's reading list for December, for this Christmas period. It's called A Shitty First Draft. It will, it will change how you think of product and writing, even like social media content creation, product, everything. Because yeah, it gives you that freedom as Kevin said. I don't know if it's an audiobook. I think it might be an essay, honestly. I think it's literally like an essay from this really famous author, A Shitty First Draft. I'll type it in the chat. And I wanna— There it is. A shitty first draft. And I wanna reiterate with what Kevin said when like he, yeah, hired me is, yeah, we had like, I think 3 calls. And it was, yeah, through a connection. And that person also took engagement photos for one of my best friends. And we've never met that girl. Yeah. The person and I, we've never met before, like in person. It's always been, it's only been through Zoom. And so like build those relationships offline. line and be a human and be a person and actually care. And you have no idea where something can go because this came out of left field and here we are. So that's the coolest thing. There is another question that I had that I really, really liked. Give me 2 seconds.

I just saw Colleen throw a heart. Colleen.

Hi, Colleen.

Holly and I have worked together from the very, very, very beginning. When—

well, oh, go for it.

Sorry.

Well before Hubble, like that very, very first product that sucked, she's been with me from the very beginning.

What was the first version of Hubble?

Uh, it wasn't even Hubble. It was an app called Hyuga, which then became Circles. It was a social discovery app. So this is like kind of before TikTok was even a thing. We had noticed the trend in people discovering places using vertical video, whether it was a restaurant, whether it was a bar, whether it was like a vacation spot. There was a trend that was changing, going away from reviews. And so we said, hey, what if we could have like a consumer social app that was almost like a TikTok feed before TikTok or an Instagram Reels feed before Instagram Reels that was all location-based that would help you discover? And then we discovered that when you go up against Instagram and TikTok, 2 of the most addicting apps in the world, it's very, very difficult to take people away from that for these sort of one-off problems that are less significant, that only happen maybe once a week. Um, yeah, so we've pivoted a couple different times, but I just saw the heart, so I had to give her some love.

What's up, Raven?

Hey, I had actually asked that question and that's really cool. And I'm curious like how you went from making— sorry, I forgot the name of that— to Hubble. Yeah, because it is quite different. And I found like the same thing with like consumer social apps, like that experience, or I know that about that market. And I'm making something that's somewhat similar, but I honestly think that you'll love it. It's really, really tight product. Um, but yeah, how'd you, how'd you transition into creating Hubble from that? And also, if you don't mind me asking, sorry, one other question. Um, what was your average check size for those 44 angels?

Uh, average, the big, I don't know the average, but the smallest check was $2,500 and the largest was $150,000. Average, probably like 20-ish, something like that. Um, that first question, this is kind of a long answer, but I'm gonna try to speed through it. So I, I notoriously— everybody's gonna go through this— your time in the desert, right? This is the time as a founder where you launch something and it's not working. Most founders actually get stuck here and they never ever get out because it's a long time, it's painful, it sucks. It's why it's called the desert. It's a metaphorical desert. It's not a real desert, but I was 4 years in and Colleen and I had been working together. We had a couple other folks. I was 4 years in and when you're in the desert trying something for that long and not having success, you can't help but to have empathy for other people. And right around this time, I kind of like discovered that LinkedIn, like people were writing on LinkedIn. It wasn't just like this digital resume anymore. And I was like, you know, I want to start writing on LinkedIn to like educate and inspire other founders because the desert sucks and I'm still here. But if I could help other people learn some of the things I had to learn and maybe they only have to be here for 2 years instead of 4, cool. So I start writing, just sharing losses and wins and everything. And my following started growing. And what ends up happening is your following starts like growing fast. Or you have a piece of content that goes viral or whatever, you're going to get a lot of inbound messages from people being like, hey, like, thanks for this post. This was super helpful. And basically what I would do at the end of every day, I'd set aside like an hour a day and I'd get on Zoom calls like this, but they were just 5 minutes. And I'd be like, hey, Ray, thanks a lot for like sending that message. I know you just asked a question around raising money. Tell me about your company. Here's what I would do. And I would just help. So I did this for 14 months and I did it until like I kind of started getting burnt out of it. And I was like, man, I still have a CEO of a different company. I'm doing this other thing on the side. One of my early investors, his name is Timo, of this other company. I was driving home from a failed product launch from the last company. I'm driving home and I had set up this booking link for me to help other founders so they can book calls. And I was driving home and he's like, hey, how's that booking link thing you told me about? And this failed product launch for the last company, we were kind of out of ideas.

It was—

we had been doing this for 5 years, and I think it's a good time to pivot when you don't have any more great ideas, right? That's a pretty good signal. And he goes, hey, remember, you know, that booking link thing you told me about? How's that going? I'm like, it's great. I was like, but here's a couple things I don't like about the product that could be so much better. And he's like, hey, look at this, uh, look at this. So I opened my laptop, and if anyone's ever seen the movie Limitless, this is exactly what this moment was like when you pop that pill and he became limitless. Bradley Cooper. You guys haven't seen the movie, go watch it.

It was like—

and it was like this picture of this expert profile. It's like this pink or this purple gradient, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks right in that moment. That like literally the last 7 years were kind of preparing me for this moment, for something like this that I cared way more about. And I felt it right away. I felt like this is going to be the new direction of the company. Like the next day, called all my employees. I said, I know this is crazy, but if you guys want to still be a part of this, this is what we're going to be doing. I know it's crazy, but if you want to join, here's the expectations. And I set the expectations really high. Because they deteriorate over time. When you don't have success for a long time, the motivation of the company totally declines. Then on Sunday, I called all my investors. I told them. They were actually the ones that right away were like, I want to invest more money. So the first like $300K, and I wasn't even calling them to like ask for more money. It was just like, here's our pivot, here's what we're going to do. And they just felt how much conviction I had because I had been living it. for this long period of time. And yeah, 3 months later we launched Hubble and the rest is still being written. But as they say, it's history.

That's awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

I love this. This question here has everyone's yay emojis.

Use the emojis.

I think this has a perfect follow-on for this. There's 2 questions. One is, how did you balance trusting your intuition about Humble while also getting customer evidence to back it up? And the second question is, what did you need money for initially? Is it mainly to sustain founders' lifestyle or to pay for other team members, engineering, founders, sales, all of that?

Yeah.

And then how do you personally kind of keep afloat during the beginning stages?

The first part of that question, I'm just going to focus on that, and then I totally forgot the second part. So conviction in anything, especially in like building product, it's impossible to really, unless you're like a little delusional, it's actually really impossible to have 100% conviction right away, right? Conviction comes over time. Raven smiling. Or you might have a brilliant idea, right? There's always a chance that that's true. Conviction comes from talking to customers or people interacting with your thing. and seeing how excited they are and seeing their lives improve and seeing them get excited. The more conversations you have with your customer like that, and when they start knocking on your door like, oh, we can't wait to use this, or we love this thing, that's really when your conviction is going to go through the roof. And that's when people and investors, they'll feel it because you can't fake that. You can't fake that level of clarity. And when they ask a question, you can say, well, based on the last 20 conversations we've had with our customers, here's what they're asking. So yeah, I don't know if that answered that first part, but I would just say that supreme conviction comes in time, the more customers you talk to and the more customers you impact in a positive way. And then what was the second part?

The second one was more kind of off the back of your pivot, and that was, what did you need money for initially? Is it mainly to sustain Like the founders or to pay for other team members, engineering, founders, sales during the beginning stages? And like, how should, if you're building something, like what are ways to kind of sustain yourself and keep afloat?

Yeah, well, I just needed money because we literally had like $15,000 left in the bank, so we were about to run out more than anything. So we just had this pivot and we needed money to get traction. 'Cause remember that story that I said earlier around like, hey, meet with some seed stage investors. see what they need. I knew it was like, okay, based on what they need, we're maybe like 8 months away in a perfect world. We're going to need resources to build this, to hire more engineers, to hire a designer. So that's really where— but when I called the investors, another thing that's not part of the question, I always kept my investors or our investors up to speed on all of our pivots, our ideas, what we were working on. So the moment I called them with this pivot idea, they were like, we want to help, we want to put more money in. And if you get an investor, always keep them updated. The first of every month, it's one of the most important emails you as a founder can send out. I have a template that you can use. If you ask me, I'll send it to you. Super short and sweet, But these people are the first people that want to help. So communicate with them, share the good, the bad, not just the good. I think there's like an epidemic of founders just talking about the good. We need to talk about the realities, which are 90% bad. Talk about that. Talk about the struggles. Talk about what you're struggling with. That's normal. If you only talk about the good stuff, people are going to be like, this person's a liar. There's no way things are going this good, you know, because if they were—

And then did the investors get— there was a question from Maddie saying, did the investors in the original company get a special offer to invest in Hubble?

No, they just literally had an opportunity to. So they got the same valuation as before, they just got to increase their allocation.

I love that. And then kind of moving back into like product, there's been a kind of few questions coming in around like finding customers and users. Yeah, I think that's gonna be a big question of just like, what are some of the different avenues when you're starting out to just get people to give a shit about your product and get them excited about what you're building and getting them on board?

Yeah, one thing that you gotta believe in your mission and your product first wholeheartedly before you expect anybody to care. And early on, I think picking that problem and picking a problem that actually is a problem versus like, oh, this just is a nice to have. If it's just a nice to have, it's gonna be really hard to get people to care about it. And this doesn't like exactly answer this question, but if you're If it's a struggle literally to get anybody just to try the thing and you've done it to 50 different people and they use it once and they just don't even care, it's either something's wrong with the current version of the product or they're the wrong customers. But you should really get a sense of people being like, oh, can I sign up to this? Or, hey, when is this available to the public? Or, hey, when can I use this? You want some sort of feeling like that. That's typically a sign that you're onto something. If you do not have that signal at all, you need to change something, whether that's the product, the messaging, the onboarding, the customers you're talking to, somebody. So lean into that pull and try to find that pull. It doesn't mean that you have to have a full-fledged product. Whenever you have an idea, I never say hire engineers first. If you hire an engineer first, it's literally like, You want to build your dream house and you literally just went and hired carpenters to start building. You would never do this, right? You would hire an architect to sketch out your vision of what your dream house would look like. And then you would go to your husband or your wife and you'd say, hey, what do you think about this? You go to your friends, what do you think about this? Oh, let's raise the roof a little higher. Let's make the closet a little bigger. And then you go with your architect, which is your designer. And you just make those little adjustments until you feel pretty good about it. And the husband and the wife analogy is your customers, right? And then once you get that signal and that pull and people are asking, hey, we want this, we want this, like, when is it available? That's when you start building. I got time for one more question. By the way, I've really enjoyed this. It's so cool seeing everybody's face and answering these questions and We need to do more of this community type stuff because if I gave all of you a microphone and you guys all talked about your struggles and the things you're going through, I guarantee you, you'd be like, holy cow, everybody else is feeling like me. You know, there's a lot of people that are in this together. We're all kind of fighting the same fight. Um, so don't feel alone.

Um, pardon me. The last question is a bit of a technical one, but I do like it. I think this is the stuff that's not talked about at all. It's like when it comes to raising an angel round, this is from also from Raven. Um, how do you determine the terms and evaluations, uh, like safe market cap, kind of the nitty-gritties around like equity and how much equity should you kind of give away?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. So always think, what I like to think is, what are investors used to nowadays? Almost every single startup is signing a post-money safe. So log in. I'll just I'll put this in the chat. Y Combinator financing docs. Y Combinator.

There they are.

Okay, I'm gonna put these in the chat. So this is just visit this. They have SAFE financing docs that you can literally copy paste. The reason we're using a SAFE is because startups, 90% of startups right now are raising using a post-money SAFE. When it comes to the pre-seed, we want familiarity. We don't want to be different, right? Um, so there's that. The valuation, what I would do— do you guys follow Peter Walker on Carta? Have you heard of him? Go on LinkedIn right now and type in Peter Walker. Peter Walker is the head of data at Carta. Carta is a cap table company. A bunch of startups have their cap tables inside of Carta, so there's a ton of data on startups that he posts. Look at Peter's post. There's going to be a graph somewhere. He posts stuff all the time that says median pre-seed valuations by company type, and there's like an x-axis and a y-axis, and then just look at the type of company that you have And look and see, okay, based on the type of company I have, I'm also pre-seed. What is the average valuation that companies are raising and what is the average money that they're raising? That's a great place to start.

Thank you.

That was a great answer. Oh, my one thing is, is in raising saves, post-money saves, and in doing my angel round slash friends and family round, My friends have been skeptical as to like why we would be raising post-money. They're like, why would I buy something at a value for what it will be worth versus how much it's worth now?

The post-money part of it just gives them— it's actually better for them because they know exactly how much they own.

Right.

So you can tell them that, well, the reason we're raising a post-money SAFE is it's going to give you the percentage of ownership of the company right away. Even though you're not going to get the shares yet, they're going to convert at a later stage when you raise that next round. But without it being a post-money SAFE, there's actually no knowledge on how much ownership that they're owning. So that's the reason.

But if they were to raise like, let's say $1,000 at a $100,000 pre-money valuation versus $1,000 at a million-dollar valuation post-money, then they would be getting the percentage based on the pre-money. Valuation.

Now we can talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about this specifically. The reason though you want to do the post-money is that it gives them clarity into the percentage that they're going to own. It's more straightforward. We're about out of time.

Fab. Thank you guys so much for coming. Give a little round of applause. Thank you guys so much.

I love seeing everybody's faces and questions, and we'll definitely do this one again.

I have a question.

Yes.

I raised my hand, but I'm waiting in a queue. So we weren't doing hands, we were going by the chat. So I've messaged in the chat saying please put your questions here. Because we weren't doing the hands. Okay, so thank you, thank you guys, thank you, thank you so much. We'll have, um, Kevin, do you have time for one more? Or do you have a call?

I don't, I have an onboarding call, but Stella, you can send me a connection on LinkedIn.

I have sent already, but, um, up to 2 hours I will have a meeting with an investor and your guidance and your advices will be very helpful to make, uh, I am in, um, right here.

Amazing. My advice to you is just treat it like a first date. You are, you are going into this thinking, do I want to be partners with this person also? It's not, it's not just a one-way street.

Yeah, true. Thank you.

Perfect.

I'll stay on for another couple minutes if anyone has any other questions. I'm happy to answer some things as well. Thank you, Kevin, as always. Um, I'm happy to answer any questions around, yeah, also, yeah, founder life, things like that, and also what we have coming up for, um, the next couple of months.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Sasha.

Thank you.

Thanks, Kevin.

Does anyone have any other questions? I'm happy to stay on for another minute. Stella, yeah, to your point, yeah, treat it, really treat it like a first date, right?

Mm-hmm.

Don't go in guns blazing. As soon as they smell desperation, as soon as they start to kind of feel like you want something from them, as Kevin said, the more you talk about your product, your passion, what customers are saying about it, how much they love it, And how, you know, you've seen all these results, like, here, like, this is a perfect example of what we're building, you know, at Hubble, and, like, going to an investor and be like, we just had this call, we have these people, all these questions, this is what's happening. They immediately feel that and then be like, ooh, like, tell me more. Versus, here's what we're doing, like, money. So it's starting to treat it and maybe not even mentioning Yeah. You know how much you're raising and what you're doing. But really, again, you're not asking someone to marry you on a first date. You wouldn't really expect someone to invest money into you on the first date either.

No.

Does that help? And back yourself. You know, there's going to be a lot of nos and it really is like you need to back yourself and there's going to be that one yes that's going to catapult so many other things. And I say this all the time in my calls, But the amount of rejections I got from applying for jobs was like so many, so many. And then this came out of left field and Kevin never even asked for a CV because, because we had that call. He's like, I don't get it. Okay. You know, so there's that, there's that no, no, no. But as soon as that yes, and that person loves you and feels who you are, and I always say, like, it might be philosophical, but The right people will say yes, and what's meant for you will never pass you. And don't always go for the money because that may also— if you have a bad feeling about an investor, trust that, because what you don't want is a really negative someone on your cap table and having to deal with that. Yeah, sure. Thank you so much. Of course. Any other, any other questions? Oh, you're fine. If you guys didn't leave a note while connecting with me, like, I know I remember your names, so I will respond back. I will be happy to connect. Yeah, yeah, connect with me, and I will accept. I will accept. Enjoy your day. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Yazan, do you have a question? Oh, maybe. Yes, question? Yeah, one sec. I think you're— I can't hear you.

Oh, you hear me now?

Yeah, perfect.

Okay, yeah, my apologies.

Literally on a plane to our cooperative right now, so flight time. You're so quiet. You can hear— just type it, type it in. I'll go to Marcel and then you type it in and I'll answer. Does that work? Perfect. Marcel, do you have a question?

Yeah, I do. So can you hear me good?

Yeah, perfect.

Yeah, so like, as like a community manager, like when you're like posting on LinkedIn, like how do you, like what's the best way to like attract like likes, engagement and stuff? 'Cause like I've posted stuff on LinkedIn before And like, I had one, um, post where I talked about like how I met like my co-founders and it like really popped off, right? And then like, I haven't had that much traction like since, like on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

So like, how do you like, is it, is it the, 'cause I see like all these like people writing these like long posts and stuff and like they get like a lot of traction. Is it about how long like your post is or how meaningful it is to like The, like, the users?

Oh, I love LinkedIn. I love talking about LinkedIn. So if you also, yeah, connect with me and we'll chat more about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social platform. So as soon as before you wanna post, comment 10 to 20, you know, 10 to 20 comments that immediately warms up the algorithm that you now are like, you're about to post. So that is like the most helpful thing. Because what you want to do is start to engage people, right? You're not just like— it has to warm up the algorithm. The second thing is like you need a good hook, you need a good rehook. So that first line and then that second line and like make it baity, make it fun. Like LinkedIn is so boring. Is everyone bored on LinkedIn or is it just me? Like I'm, I'm, I scroll and I'm like, I'm so bored. Everyone is, everyone is so— yeah, exactly. It's so AI. So the more that you can showcase your humanness and your So if you like read my content and now that you hear my voice, you'll read my content in my voice because I write like how I speak. And finding your own style, finding your own funny, you know, way of doing it, finding, and then it's writing short sentences. No one, if you think about how people use LinkedIn, they're not like sitting there like reading every single thing, they're scrolling. It's an in-between, it's a transition process.

platform.

You're on the bus, you're on the tube, you're on a train, you're, you know, you're in between different things. You're not just sitting there, you know, scrolling for hours, unlike TikTok where you're doom scrolling. Because I don't know people who doom scroll LinkedIn. I sometimes do, and I—

I doom scroll LinkedIn.

I regret it. I regret it at the end. I'm like, I'm bored now.

Yeah.

And so you want to be short, snappy, single sentences, line spacing, and talk about things that aren't talked about You know, the way that you got your co-founder thing, that's gonna pop off because people are nosy. People love the reality TV ideas. We're all addicted to reality TV, to the behind the scenes, to like day in my life, to all these things that for us is so simple, but for other people is like, holy shit, this is, you know, this is real life. And so kind of think about, you know, I say this to a lot of founders, like your reality is someone else's dream. Even though you're dreaming of some other reality, your reality is someone else's dream. So kind of showcase that. If you're a student, like, talk about, you know, what it's like being a student and building a company. Talk about, like, the day-to-day, the different, the different, like, problems that you're facing, the challenges along with, like, the wins. Like, we just talked to this customer, obviously, like, with everything, like, look at custom, think about privacy and don't just like screenshot and then like put things. I have a problem with that. A lot of people do it and I'm like, I don't know how I feel about that. And talk about stories, like the stories that when I do my dinners, my meetups, all of that just pops off because people are like, holy shit, no one's doing this. This is so cool. And that for me is my like area that I've gone into. I've also been, I'm a founder psychologist. I'm an organizational psychologist. I was an So I talk about all these different stories, but pull in my thread of community and human potential and performance has always been my through line. But finding all these different areas, my most viral post was on crochet. There's no method to the madness.

Random stuff goes viral. I saw some guy post about Clash Royale, some game on an app, and this guy's like, oh, because I made this one post, I gained like 10,000 followers because of it. I'm like, how? Like, don't overthink it. I ran good TikTok accounts, but like on LinkedIn, it's just like, can't crack it on LinkedIn for some reason.

I don't know.

Because you're trying too hard. LinkedIn is like, there is no algorithm. There's no beat. Like everyone, my friends work at LinkedIn. They're like, we don't know about, no one knows the algorithm at LinkedIn. And you have to think about it as like, you need to like give yourself 30 to like 60 days. And post every single day. Like, post every single day, engage every single day, and tell different stories and start to see what clicks and like the different formats. And you'll kind of find even putting some of the more TikTok-style stuff on LinkedIn starting to do better because again, everything is so AI-generated. So have fun with it, showcase your personality. The more personality you have, The better, the better your, your LinkedIn will be. And even though you may not get a ton of likes, the engagement and the, the messages, the connections you'll get are gonna be incredible.

Yeah.

I've never had 1,000. Yeah, I've never had anything crack 500 really, because I'm not in a pod. Also, a lot of people are in pods. A lot of people are hacking engagement. So that's the other thing. So, It's okay to go low and slow, but just showcase personality, engage beforehand, use a good visual, use a good hook, use a good rehook, and you're gonna be golden. And like, message me and we can chat more and I can point you in like some directions.

Yeah, like send us like your LinkedIn or whatever.

Yeah, let me put that, I'll put that in right now for you guys.

I actually wanted to jump in on that. And for anybody that's looking to curate content specifically for their own branding, I took the, um, the challenge with Emily. I'm gonna pop in her.

Yes.

Oh my God, she is absolutely incredible. I really did it to just see what her system was around posting, because she has the best— I would say like I'm like brand evangelist of all of her posts. That's her link to book with her through Hubble. You can find her on LinkedIn, Emily Dunlap. But she is incredible when it comes to like being committed to doing that 30-day posting and showing up authentically, like exactly what Sasha just said. She's just absolutely, I would say, like top tier. She's been doing this for so long. Her story is absolutely incredible of how she got to where she got to. And I mean, she's consistently just churning out from free content all the way up to her paid content. 100% worth it.

She's amazing. She's one of my really good friends. So like, also as a side note, but the cool thing about being on Hubble is that literally all my friends are like, yeah, it's just, it's fun now. But if anyone ever needs like personal branding content, book Emily. I promise you, you'll not be disappointed. And she, like, investing in your personal brand is one of the best investments you can make right now. And because that is what's going to solidify for investors, they're going to stalk you. They're going to look at you. They're going to try to understand who you are through your LinkedIn, through your content. So by having something and showcasing them how you think, how you right, your interests, what you do, what you're passionate about, your product, it's an immediate starter, starting point of they know something versus I look at some founders and there's like nothing. Like they've never posted once. I'm like, dude, like at this day and age, you're gonna lose out to people who are posting and who are consistent and who have built a personal brand. Look at where the conversation's going with consumer brands especially, it's all influencer-led now. And it's also, it's all people who've built a personal brand, who've been a creator, building a product off the back of that right now. So that is gonna be what we're gonna be seeing a lot more of in the future with like startups and product and all of that. So build your personal brand. I double dog dare you and book in with Emily to chat more about it. I love that you did that, Kat. Yeah, I was gonna do— I'm gonna do the one in January.

Yeah, she's amazing. Highly recommend just even her challenge. Worth it. And it gets you on this rhythm and this schedule, which I feel like— I mean, even I'm stuck in it because I'm so consumed by my work. But exactly what Sasha said, you just have to do it, commit to it, sit down, write for an hour. And don't use AI. Be authentic.

And people will read through that. As I was typing, use Stanley. Stanley is the one AI tool to use. If you were to use LinkedIn, something for LinkedIn, it is Stanley. There doesn't matter right now, like days, times, my posts go like, go off like 2 days later. Oh, there should— oh, go on Hubble first. There should be a— Kat dropped her link in, and then her LinkedIn is on her Hubble. Here you go. So click that, and then if you scroll in her profile, there's gonna be— she's the one that has like the orange salmon background, blonde.

Yeah.

But Stanley AI is the only thing because that on the days where I have a lot to do, we, we do use it and it writes like me because it scrapes all of my past LinkedIn posts. It is able to, to dive, to dive into that. So if you want a referral for a 3-day free trial, let me know and I can pop, I can pop you over my link, but highly recommend. And then let me get to your question. I, Just realized I missed that. Yeah, if we're seeing great growth and we may not really need investments, we possibly go for one as I keep hearing that I need to. Honestly, actually, I'll be interested, Yuzan, if you read my content, let me know which ones you think, or yeah, if you think any of it's AI generated. I'll be very curious. From your perspective, because I have a few that are sprinkled in. So, Luke, can you tell it's AI?

Yeah, I can, because I was a writing tutor, but I think Yaz just said that he can't. And Yaz and Katherine, we all know each other from Founders Circle.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I use it every now and again, but also I write in a very interesting way, so it's fun. For, yeah, for like the, for meeting, like going for funding. Honestly, this is, this is a personal question of like, for you, it's, it's really interesting because like you're, you— The VC space is like, everyone's like, you need VC money, you need VC money, you need VC money. You don't. And honestly, you could unlock more growth, but really, would you? At the cost of what? It's always like, at the cost of what? And so that's going to be a conversation between you, your team, your investors, or not investors, if you have advisors, or having a couple calls on Hubble with some angel investors or some some people kind of in that space and seeing like, here's what we have, here's what we want to get to. Do we need investment to bridge that gap or can we do it organically? Because you may actually be able to do it organically. And if you can do it organically, you can do it organically and you don't have to then equity and investors and have all the messiness involved in that. So yeah, we can connect and I can shoot you over a few people to like to chat to, if that would be helpful. Because obviously Kevin, like asking Kevin, asking— there are a few others. But yeah, you don't have to. That's kind of what Kevin said. And I think one of our previous— I think our last fireside chat, just because everyone's going for VC doesn't mean that you have to go for VC.

Yeah.

And like, that's— you don't even need an investor, you need an advisor, right? So again, using Hubble to break through that door, figuring out who you want. And then we have actually— I have him sitting with me. We have a Hubble person, like a kind of a learner, and he had a few Hubble calls, and then Bettina is now on his board. and is now an advisor for the company. There's equity involved and that's it. And now she's a huge proponent in introducing, getting people. So as a really good person to open doors, I would look at Bettina Britz on Hubble. She is one of our queens, as we say, and she just knows everyone and knows everything and is such an incredible angel investor. That can also— an advisor as well. So kind of, I would go the advisor route for the fear of the unknown. If you don't need capital, you don't need to give up equity in that capacity. Does that help? Perfect. Any more questions? I have time for like another one more, I think. Also, shout out to Luke for being so involved. Thank you. To organize with everything in the chat, I was like yes. Fab. Okay. If you guys need anything from me, yeah, you have my LinkedIn. I will be a bit slow this next couple of days, just with lots of lots of events and and things happening. So you could tell a little congested as well. But shoot me a message and I will get back to you by next week. And I'm so happy to help in whatever way possible. We have. Some really fun— oh, thank you so much. Well, yeah, my little sidekick here. Incredible. And what was I gonna say? Yeah, we have some really fun things planned. As you've met, for the people on the recording, you've also all met Kat, who is gonna be head— yeah, she's head of marketing. And we're gonna have a lot of really cool things planned in the upcoming year. So we wanna hear from you as well, like what you want, What you want more of, what's missing in this space, done really shit, and what we can make really good and make it honestly the place to be. So really happy to connect with you guys, and thank you for staying a little bit longer.

Bye.

Bye.

Thank you, everybody. Bye. Thank you.

Thank you.