Expert Tips on How to Go From Idea to Startup

Even when I raised my Series A, I counted. I think I had 75 warm intros, over 40 nos, 2 competing term sheets at the end, and closed my Series A round. Right.

I'm so excited to be here today with you. I'm Diane Bailey. I have multiple roles. I think the announcement showed that I am an advisor to Loyal VC. But really, amongst all of my roles, my goal is to help founders get the information they need in order to be investor ready. I do a lot with helping founders and with their 5-minute pitches. I do free pitch reviews. I love facilitating connections and introductions, and I'm really excited to host the panel today. And we have the panelists coming up now. Good evening, Alitza.

Good evening, Diane. Good to see you.

Nice to see you. Let's see, you shared your camera and microphone first, so tag, you are it. Let me do a brief introduction. Everybody, this is Alitza Stoylova. She is co-founder and CEO at Oomi. They help businesses create their own AI chatbots so they can be customer responsive 24/7. Recently won the UNWTO Innovation Champion for 2023 award. Welcome to the stage.

Thank you, Diane, for presentation. Nice to see everyone.

Hi, Olga. Nice to see you.

Hi, Diane. Hi, everyone. Great to be here.

I guess you are next, everybody. This is Olga Filipova. She is co-founder and CEO at Workcademy, where they help companies grow through collective team members' knowledge utilizing AI-driven learning management systems. Welcome, Olga.

Thank you very much. Looking forward to the panel and Q&A.

And our third panelist tonight is Liza Rodewald. She is founder and CEO at Instant Teams. They are a remote team work a remote team marketplace that connects companies with military spouse talent. They have raised over $15 million in capital and recently were on the Inc. 5000 list. Welcome, Liza.

Thank you, Diane. Good to see everyone.

It's good to see all of you guys too. And thank you for founders for joining as well. I know this is taking time out of your day and I really appreciate you wanting to spend that time with So we have a few questions to ask our panelists today, but really the conversation is about how to generate and capitalize on early-stage ideas. How do we take that vision and move forward with it and turn it into reality? So I'm going to ask our panelists a few questions about how they got started with their, with their companies, how they initially grew their companies, What's it like to manage budgeting and personnel allocations when everybody wants money? And I hear that early-stage founders don't have a lot of money. And then any lasting advice? And we'll wrap up with some questions at the end. So as Sana mentioned, please add your questions into the Q&A. That way we can bring those on screen at the end of the panel. But stick around. If you can stick around for another 15 minutes or so after the event, we will have networking tables. You can join a networking table and chit-chat, have fun, meet our panelists a little bit more, and ask them any additional questions. So let's dive into the panel questions. The first question I would like to ask is around the ideation and concept stage of your startup, identifying the pain points. Were they your pain points? Where was that business opportunity? So I'd like for each of you to expand a bit more on you, your background, your startup, and what was that early aha moment like for you. Would anyone like to jump in, or should I call on somebody?

I can do Perfect. Yes. Thank you, Diane, for the question. I am ex-hotelier with over 20 years of experience in hospitality. My last 5 years before Omnia were general manager of a hotel. So when I moved back from Asia Pacific to Bulgaria, I had to start from scratch anywhere career-wise. I decided to try and do something on my own. I didn't have clear idea what I want to do, But I joined, I joined Founder Institute accelerator here in Sofia, Bulgaria. And I got very important questions from the very first couple of weeks of the accelerator that made me think, what are the pains that I have experienced as a professional in hospitality that haven't been solved the best way? One of them was my personal experience because I grew my career from line staff to GM. The waste of time. Tremendous hospitality industry with tremendous waste of time and tremendous amount of repeating repetitive questions and tasks. And I realized during the Foundry's first couple weeks of Foundry Institute that there are many solutions, but none of them works perfectly. On the third week at Foundry Institute, I had my aha AI chatbots, and that was love from first sight when I learned about the technology. And ever since, that's what I, what I am addicted to helping businesses to automate their communication, the routine part of the communication, which takes a lot of resources, human and other. So to leave people to have more time to be humans.

Perfect.

And for the first, because you ask also how we start. So the aha moment came at the Founder Institute and at the demo day we had our first customer. But here I would like to emphasize the importance of networking while you're creating, you're building your startup, especially for B2B businesses. I'm pretty sure that here at the audience there are a lot of B2B founders and co-founders. Network is extremely important, and this is a lesson I would like to bring to the table.

Networking is super, super important. I'm a huge advocate, and you always want to create your network before you need it. Olga, tell us a little bit more about you.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the story, Alitza. It's super inspiring. And from my side, um, uh, so my background is in software development. I am a programmer, and my partner and my husband as well, we studied together computer science in Portugal, and we are both software engineers. Back in 2014, we helped my brother in Ukraine to launch an online education studio. So while my brother was and is running it and building relationships, network, networking, and creating online educational program, we've been supporting the studio with technology that allows to build and distribute online educational program. And we soon we realized that platforms, learning management systems that we've been using, were not scalable enough, were not flexible enough, were not like you, you name it enough. And it was very hard thing for us software engineers to see how those things were built. So at some moment we decided to build our own learning management system. And this moment was the same moment in time of like workforce development when companies actually started going digital in their learning and development processes, which gave us an idea that we could actually build a business and distribute this tool as a B2B software as a service. Of course, now it all sounds like it's like the idea is shaped and it came like, like this. But no, we We knew that we needed, we needed it. It was from our own pain that the need was born. So it was very important for us, but we still were struggling understanding like, how do we go to the companies? What should we do? And this is how we end up in Founder Institute. And this is where also Workademy was born as also as an entity, as a GmbH entity registered in Berlin in the end of 2019. Yeah, that's our story.

I love how it was just very quickly. So we just decided to build our own learning management system. It's just, we just decided to do this. You know, we have all this time. So I find that that's a commonality between a lot of startup founders. You know, there was this pain point, so I just decided to do it myself.

Love it.

Liza, please tell us a little bit more about you.

Sure.

So much like Olga, I also have a background in software engineering, and I ran my own software consulting company prior to starting Instant Teams. And I had built a couple of other smaller companies too prior to that. So I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur, and I was running my own software company. And I met my husband who was in the reserves in the military at the time. And right after we got married, he said he wanted to go back active duty into the military. And so I said, why not? I mean, my company was fully remote before remote was really kind of a thing or widely accepted anyway. And we moved into our first military area and I became a military spouse myself. And every single spouse would ask me the same question every time I met them, which was like, how are you working from home? How are you maintaining a career? And how can you help me? And they move every 2 to 3 years. So maintaining careers in a traditional environment is very, very difficult. And when I became a military spouse, I actually moved 6 times in 7 years. So if I was trying to climb a typical corporate ladder, it would have been virtually impossible. And so since I had built software and I had scaled my own remote teams. I knew that there was companies out there that needed easy access to great talent. And then I suddenly met an entire untapped talent pool of military spouses that didn't know how to connect to the companies. The companies didn't know how to connect to them. And so that's how Instant Teams was born in 2016. We started building product and figuring out, okay, where is the product market fit? We always went in with the mindset of how do we solve a business problem and give those opportunities to military spouses. And so we iterated on that a little bit until we found kind of the fit that made sense there to start to scale. And when I knew we had that fit, I knew I needed a network. So we talked about networking, which is super important. That's where Founder Institute came in, because at that time point in time, I did not know a single investor I actually didn't even know how venture capital worked. I had never done that. All my other companies were bootstrapped that I had done. And so this was going to be my first like scalable enterprise. And so I knew I needed a network of support. So that's when I joined the Founder Institute, went through that program, and thus started the journey of this crazy founder life that we're now all in.

Yes, it is very— crazy is a good word for it. Hopefully exciting most days, but definitely, definitely crazy. So, and Liza, this is a good segue into the next question because you mentioned about really focusing on the customer problems and then having a solution that follows that problem. And I talked to a lot of founders and they seem to have a solution first that is in search of a problem. And that's the backwards step there. And so I have founders who have this thing that is amazing, and then it's, okay, well, what problem does it solve? Who are your customers? How are you going to commercialize this and bring it to market? So can each of you share your story on how did you go through that initial validation step, maybe some specifics. What were some of the experiments and trial and error process? How do you know that you reached product market fit? And whoever would like to jump in.

Maybe I, we continue the same way we started.

Sure.

Okay, so for me, was not difficult because although our no-code AI chatbot platform from now is industry agnostic and we see, we serve businesses from various industries. Our initial focus was only in one vertical, in one industry, and this was hotels. And my background is from hospitality, from hotels. So I definitely knew that there is a problem and I definitely knew what are the solutions because for 25 years I work in this industry and have used various solutions to the problems, but I had to validate that AI chatbots are the solution that actually is the right one. So what I did was actually not an idea that was aha moment for me, but was something that I'm thankful again to the Founder Institute because it was a task to go and talk to the business. So basically what I did is I grabbed the telephone and start calling hotels and talking with managers, front desk managers, marketing managers, small, smaller business owners, asking them about their communication communication issues and asking them, if we automated and the automation looked like that, what do you think? Would this be helpful? Would you try it? So that's how I start literally talking with maybe over 100— with the time, over 100 different business people from the hospitality. Then we find— we had our first customer where we could implement it. We did it for free for that customer, of course, as a pilot project, but was something that we could get feedback, real feedback from the customer first. Second, we could show this instrument to other people, other hospitality people, and ask them, so now that's how it looks like, not imagine it, but you see how it looks like, would you adopt it? So that was a process of working, creating, at the same time creating the technology, creating the solution, and step by step verifying that this this is the right thing. And even today we continue listening to our customers and for feedback, like what they need, what they miss in the solution. So it will be really the super business app we want it to be for them.

Thank you.

Oh, those customers.

But we are doing it for them, isn't it?

Yes. And it's amazing how difficult it can be for early-stage founders to reach out to those customers, and they want someone else to do all the sales for them. But as a founder, you are the best salesperson. So going out and getting that early customer discovery is super important, because what you think is important usually is not entirely true. And you don't want to spend all of your time, money, and effort building something that people don't want. So that customer feedback loop is really important. Olga, tell us yours.

Yep. Yeah, it's okay. Maybe I'll add afterwards. Let Olga tell.

Sure.

Thank you so much. I'm totally with Eliza that it's not like you found at some point this product market fit and you stick for it for the rest of your life. It just cannot be true because market changes, behaviors change, people change, product change. So we— and what Elisa is doing, and it is crucial for any business success, is constantly talking to your clients. Uh, their demands change, the, the speed change, technologies, AI comes in, and everything change. So yeah, we, we've also done that and still doing. So when we built kind of like an MVP already, we knew that we started solving our pain, but our pain does not necessarily means that everyone has the Spain. So we started approaching learning and development managers and HR people from growing companies and started talking to them. What is that that you do with onboarding or training, upskilling that is challenging for you? What do you use? What have you tried? How did you solve this? And we are still doing this. And yeah, it's, it's hard. Everyone has some problem. That can be solved with a learning management system or with some other technology, but it's not necessarily like one. So I, I think that that point of time when you find a niche, a group of people who all have some specific problem, and you know exactly the point when they have this problem, and you go and they buy from you, uh, That for me, it's super utópico. I think that it exists somehow for some people, but for us, yeah, it's still talking to the customers and adapting the product to the needs and to new challenges found.

So once again, score a point for talking to customers.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Yes.

Well, we're a two-sided marketplace, so we have two sets of customers. Right. Which makes that even a little bit more challenging. The military spouse side was fairly easy. They need remote careers, they need remote job opportunities. So that one was kind of an easier discovery, what they were interested in, those types of things. So I'll just kind of tell you a little story. So when we started off, like, any customer was a good customer, right? Like, just some customers, just so we could get started and we could figure it out. Um, so we onboarded different people, and, um, one of my mentors, when I was trying to figure out, okay, how, how do we get this to scale, like, to scaling point? Like, we're kind of all over the place. And we sat down and we mapped out, okay, what are the commonalities we have in the customers that we have? So is there a specific trend? Is there more of one type than another in the types of like job opportunities that we're getting for our military spouse community? And when we did that, like around 70% all came around sort of like customer experience. And so when I started to look at that data that we were getting in and saying, okay, a lot of, a lot of our customers are very happy in this space, and we're getting more referrals and getting more customers in customer experience. And so why? And so that's when we started developing, okay, if this is the commonality of why they're coming to us, why is that on the military spouse side? And that's because they have very unique lived experiences. They live all over the globe. We can do 24/7 support with all of our workforce. They speak multiple languages. And so doubling down on that customer experience made sense versus trying to be everything to every customer. Because at that time we were doing marketing and we were doing sales roles and we were doing engineering. We were just doing anything, any kind of roles because we had spouses that could fill them. But until we kind of niched down and focused on the customer experience, that really changed the trajectory of even my pitch. Because when I pitched to investors, I could be really succinct and they immediately understood the problem I was solving because all of their portfolio companies had problems with great support, right? Getting people to stay, the turnover is really high in that area. So when I can come in with a value prop of high retention, high quality people, they immediately understood what I was doing from a business perspective and not just a social impact mission perspective. And that really changed the messaging throughout the company and what we were able to use to build on to scale from there.

Yeah, yeah, I think definitely having something to bookend your pitch around. And because when you are talking to investors, you want them to walk away with a certain message. And what is that message? And how do you make them think of you at the end of the day for, yeah, you know what, there was this one really great company, uh, and I remember what they said, and it was It was this piece. So having that memorable-ness is something that's really key. So when founders are going through those early stages of customer discovery and going through product market fit, you hear a lot of nos. So it's no from this potential customer. No, I don't want to pay for this. No, no, no, no, no, I won't fund your company. The list goes on. Could, could each of you quickly share how you got over the constant rejection of being an early-stage founder?

This is actually what I wanted to add in the previous question. Now, it's great answer for my— what, uh, what I found at the beginning was like, oh, who else are you servicing? Am I the first customer? I hated this question because nobody wanted to be the first, second, third, fifth, tenth 10 customers. So what I did is I started going to events as a speaker. So I start looking for events at which my potential customers would go, like managers, owners, and stuff like that, and offer myself as a speaker. And at the very first conference I saw it, because they were like 10-15 hotels that I have approached before for this conference with, let's see, the solution stuff like that, and they rejected me. Then I was in a panel with two men like from international global companies, and I'm the local lady from the— with the AI chatbots and a hotelier. And I spoke from the stage on such a level, high level, and this turned me in 30-minute panel into an expert in the eyes of the people in the audience. So after this conference, in the lobby The same hoteliers I have approached and they rejected me came to me and say, hey, we would like to work with you. And they were like telling to the other hoteliers, we already are working with them. So I was like, really, what changed? I was for 30 minutes in the panel on the stage. That's what changed, really? So that's where I discovered the power of being a public person and being the face of your company. And since then, it's already 6 years later, I always use the opportunity to talk to conferences, go to the TV, go to the radio, speak on the topics of small and mid-sized businesses, digitalization, using AI for the small and mid-sized businesses, talking about AI chatbots. Thanks to GPT, now I am the expert here on that topic on AI chatbots too. And this creates you very easy exposure, free exposure, and give you the image of the expert, so people start to stop asking me, what are your customers? Because they start telling me, oh, we saw you on TV, oh, we listened to you on the radio, oh, you are that lady that spoke on that panel. So this is something I learned at the very beginning, and I never stopped using it, and it has proved to be a very successful strategy for us because it's, it's a little bit difficult to convince people to be a speaker in your topic at the beginning, but then it's like a chain reaction. When you appear a couple of times, then media and conference people, they're always looking for good speaker on interesting topics. And we are innovators. We have interesting topic to talk, to talk on. So then it's really a chain reaction. And that's, I would like to share.

That's very, almost like a growth hack, if you will, to get in front of your customers is be that, be that thought leadership, be that thought leader in the space. And it's amazing how people will start to come to you. Olga, how did you deal with the initial nos and rejection?

Oh, it was very hard for me in the beginning. Sometimes I even cried. But then, of course, With time you learn to deal it. With time you learn that it's never personal. People just say no because they don't want, it's not the right time, and it's never like rejecting you. And now that I know to deal with nos very well, I hear them less often. And I'm totally with Eliza on the showing your expertise part. We also started doing this like on the, maybe second year, we started doing with webinars. So we have like monthly webinars on some hot topic in the learning and development area. And people start realizing that, hey, you're an expert, you have a great network of experts who come to your show. And that of course creates a lot of respect and people tell no less, but now we also deal with it much better. So Yeah, it's— I think it's maturity that comes in.

I like that. Maturity with experience. Yes. Liza?

Yeah, I think maybe just come at it a little differently on the no side. Like, you are going to hear nos, but if you're talking to customers and you're consistently hearing no from the customer, then we also need to know when that's is feedback and when it is actually something you need to push through. And sometimes those are hard to know, you know, which one, but you have to take the time to analyze it. Like, if I've heard no from 15 customers in a row, well, maybe there's something wrong with either my pitch, there's something wrong with my product, something is not resonating, right? What do I need to change in that? Um, and then from the it, you know, the investor side, that's just part of the conversation. But also learning which investors you need to invest the time in and which ones are never going to invest in your company because they don't invest in that technology, they don't invest in that space. And so you have to be very targeted whenever you go out so that you don't waste time and you don't hear unnecessary nos, right? Because if you go pitch to an investor that doesn't pitch For me, if I go to an investor that doesn't pitch in marketplaces but only invests in very high-tech AI, I'm going to get a no because they're not in my space. And so I've just wasted my time and their time, right? And so understanding where to also place your time for the best outcome is really important in those stages. That way you're not unnecessarily hearing no so many times. But even when I raised my Series A, I counted I think I had 75 warm intros, over 40 nos, 2 competing term sheets at the end, and closed my Series A round. Right. So there was lots of nos along the process. But much like Olga, you just keep going. That's a push through, right? That's a push through moment where I know I'm going to make it. I know I've got the right thing here. It's a good investment. I just got to find the right investor, the right fit for both of us. So that's a push through. But on the customer side, there were times where I changed our offering and our product because I realized, okay, what I'm taking to market needs to be tweaked. And that's not a push through. That's a, that's a reflect and change moment.

Yeah, definitely. You have to ask why when you hear no. I mean, that's when no has value, isn't it? No, it's just a word. No, en, o. So it has value for us when we ask also why. Then you know reasons behind no, and no help you grow. I'll just add this listening to you. I would just like to add this.

Yeah, definitely.

I think that's great. And just approaching each of those conversations with curiosity and not so much, this is going to be a yes, no, and then I possibly will never talk to you again. Leading with that curiosity is, is a good, good mindset to have as, as an entrepreneur. Let's talk a little bit about early resource allocation. Resource allocation meaning you're bringing on your initial team, you are creating software, and software is expensive. How do you bring on a team? How do you prioritize where to spend those limited funds. How does all of that come together in order to start that company building phase? Eliza, would you like to start again?

Sure. That, that part's difficult because you have to flex into what your strengths are. And then in my experience, we tried to hire for things that we didn't know as much about in the beginning. So for example, I'm a software engineer, so I built our original MVP and I kept working that. And I brought— we brought in somebody that was more of an expert in HR because that was kind of the gap that we had. So we didn't really have the knowledge there. So I kept building as we kind of allocated resources. You have to be scrappy and nimble and figure that out and also figure out when it's time for you to step out of that role and into more of a leadership CEO role, right? So there was a point in time where I had to stop messing with the technology myself and hire on an engineering team, um, and not let myself go down that rabbit hole and stay up here and do the, the vision and the direction and stuff of that. But when you're scrappy and you don't have any money, you just kind of do what you have to do to get to the next stage and then spend whatever money you have wisely. So like my co-founder and I, we didn't pay ourselves, but we paid our team members, um, in the beginning, right? So we paid anybody that came on. You also have to be a really great salesperson of your own company to convince people to come on to your team, right? Because you gotta, you gotta sell the vision, you gotta sell, sell where you're going, for them to want to be involved because you're not paying them top dollar. You know that, right? So you have to be really good at communicating your own vision so that you can get others just as excited about what you're building so they're willing to come on to your team and help. Because those early days, it's a heavy lift on everyone that gets involved.

Agreed. Eliza?

Okay, for us, um, It was a decision that we made with our co-founder. And when I started, I didn't have a co-founder and I don't have a technical background like Liza and Olga. So building a platform, I totally needed a technical co-founder. So first, what I did, I did— I again, look into my network and look for people I knew. And we start like part-time people helping me volunteer. So we didn't start with hiring people at the beginning. For a very long time, we were a very small team of two co-founders and a lot of volunteers who did a lot of tasks for us because of the network effect and people believed in our idea. But at the very beginning, we also sit with our co-founder and make a few decisions, very important, like what are those routine tasks that we can automate, what we can live without and where we need humans. So from the very first day, we decided that we will be a digital company. No offices, completely remote work. And we are talking about 2017, which at the beginning was like, you don't have office? Oh, you are not a legitimate company. You know, thanks God to COVID, finally that now we are legitimate company not having an office. But that was the first. Then second, we start looking into what are the routine tasks we do that we can automate. So our path is like a lot of automation for everything that is routine. And having key people where really human power is needed. Emotion, feelings, special know-how, vision. That's where humans are needed. That's how at the beginning we decided to walk it. So even today, we instead of— because again, we continue to be a company that we're bootstrapping mostly. So we work a lot with outsourcing, using our network. So, and as Liza said, no salaries the first years at all. We paid our friends, we paid commissions, we paid— we find ways to pay to people that help us, but we didn't pay ourselves salary. So that was how we use, use the limited resources we had.

Nope.

Olga, what are your thoughts?

Uh, I maybe share my mistakes, uh, because they might be helpful. Uh, so I think my mistake is that we hired some people, we hired some people, and then I feel that something is wrong. Uh, we hired the salesperson and this person doesn't sell. We hired the marketing person and this person doesn't do marketing. So, and I feel that something is off, but then I give people chances and you just don't have time and resources to keep giving people chances. Unfortunately, within this scene, you have to hire slow but fire fast. And that's something that I realized. With the— yeah, with myself, with my own mistakes. That's what I want to say.

Yes, some of these lessons you have to learn a few times.

Yeah, that's correct. Unfortunately, yeah.

Yes, we do have a lot of really great questions in the chat, so I think I want to ask one final question to our panelists so that we can get into to the questions a little ahead of time. So for the, the last question for the panelists, and Olga leaned into this a bit, any final thoughts on what early-stage entrepreneurs should do in order to realize their vision? Olga, you mentioned a particular challenge. Any other challenges, uh, words of wisdom, advice, things you would have done differently? It's a very open open-ended question, I understand, but essentially any parting advice to the founders who are joining us today.

Okay, I can start. So I think that everyone knows that, that the big challenges for founders is emotional roller coaster. Sometimes you become very exhausted, sometimes you're super happy, and that's hard to deal with. And my only advice that I give to not only founders but to everyone is please do sports, because this is something that keeps you sane and helps your head and mind and body. Of course, that's from my side.

Yeah, I would actually, uh, back, back you up. Burnout is I think if there is a founder that doesn't have a burnout, this person is very lucky. We joke that we run, we play game with the burnout, hiding from it constantly. So, but that's the reality through all gates. And very often this is emotional roller coaster with the lies, us counting no from the investors, no from the customers, vendors that don't respect you. I mean, family issues that come because you're working not 8 but 12 hours a day and over the weekends. It's important to look for a way to balance your life. Doesn't matter if it's sport or meditation or you get a dog to walk you to the park every day, twice a day. That's an important and also very important thing. Don't do it yourself. Really, co-founder, I would suggest people that are just at the beginning and thinking, oh, I can pull it myself. Yeah, with AI you can do a lot of your stuff yourself, but it's like marriage. You don't live alone because you can do everything and you have a washing machine and kitchenware in your kitchen. You're getting a girlfriend or boyfriend because the path has to be shared. So having a co-founder with you is really important because you're alone. At your lows, there is somebody to back you up. So I would suggest people that are thinking with co-founder or without co-founder, really look for your spouse in your startup.

I guess my parting advice, since this is Founder Institute panel and many of you are probably early stage going through the program or maybe just just finished the program is to really dig into the relationships that you're building in these accelerators. This is the beginning of maybe your network. That's how it was with me. Founder Institute was the very beginning of my building a network of supporters and investors. And after I went back and raised my Series A, I kind of retraced my steps and my intro to my Series A, the lead investor, actually threads all the way back to my beginning in Founder Institute from networking connections that I had made through that, which is a great story, but it's true. Like, you get what you put into it. And I'm to this day now I'm sitting on this panel invited by Founder Institute because I still talk to everyone there, right? And I went through it in 20 2018, 2019, somewhere in there. So it was like a while, a while back, right? Um, but I still get support from the network. And so when you're going through these programs, there's knowledge that you get out of it, but there's also relationships that you get out of it. And those are the things you continue to nurture and continue to foster. Um, and one of the things I did, as soon as someone writes you a check send them updates. Send them updates. Keep them updated. Keep communicating with them. I trace that back to my ability to raise money later because I had all my investors knew me, knew my updates, knew what I was doing, knew that I had achieved the goals I set out to achieve. And when I went to say, hey guys, I need help getting to the next level, they all went to bat for me. And I know that's because I kept communicating with them and a lot of them would tell me, you don't know how many founders do not send updates, do not keep us updated. And I just, I just assumed that was part of the deal. Like, you know, I'm supposed to do that, right? So I didn't even think about it not doing it. But it really does set you apart and it really will help you get to the next stages because you'll have a relationship with them.

Yeah. When you are doing your accounting, you're doing your monthly reporting to everybody who support you. That's, that has to be a routine. And I think also, Liza, maybe even people that didn't write the check.

Yeah.

They have to hear occasionally from you because they may write the next check.

That's right.

That's great. I love all of that. Let's jump into some questions from the audience and remember founders stick around past the top of the hour for the networking session. Give, give our panelists a chance to sit at their tables and then jump in, and then you can ask additional questions directly. Our first question, I really like this question. I haven't seen it in a panel before. What are the most important skills to become a CEO? What are the most important skills to become a CEO? And whomever would like to answer, jump in. I knew it was a good one.

It's, uh, we are becoming CEOs of our companies not because we want and we desire it. I mean, uh, somebody has to do the job, isn't it? If you're alone or you're two co-founders or three co-founders, somebody has to get the job. So You have to learn to be the CEO. Sometimes the skills are learned, you're not born with them. But I would think that the, it would be ideally for the CEO would be to be an outgoing person that loves talking with people, can forgive people, have a thick skin for the no, and it's an optimist. That's in one sentence.

Yeah, I would say resiliency, right? You have to be extremely resilient as the CEO, and you have to be a really good communicator and know what to communicate when and to who, right? Because your messages have to be changed for different audiences, and you have to understand. And then you also have to be very self-reflective and understand when you're operating in your own superpower and when you need someone else to come alongside you and do something, when to let something go and when to hold on to something. And to do that, you have to be self-reflective and to step back and say, okay, what am I doing? Am I in the way or am I pushing things forward? Do I need someone in this skilled over here or do I need to kind of upskill myself in this area? Like every phase of your journey, your CEO job changes. It's different than it was in the early stages. We have 500 employees now at Instant Teams. And so my job as a CEO now is much different than it was when we had 20 employees at Instant Teams. Right. And so I've had to learn, too, when to insert myself and when not to insert myself. So again, self-reflective. When I'm helping and when I'm getting in the way. Like, all of you have to just constantly be analyzing yourself, your company, and be willing to make those changes and it not be about an ego thing, but just about whatever is best for the company in the moment.

Yeah, I can only agree with everything that has been said by Liza and Elisa. There's nothing to it.

Yeah, perfect. We mentioned how important having that co-founder is, and we do have a question about co-founders. How important is it for co-founders to be located in the same place?

I'll go first. My co-founder and I have never been located in the same place since we've built the company, so— and we've been able to be successful, so Would it be preferred? Yes. But as military spouses, we're both military spouses and we've never been in the same place while we've built the company.

For me, I like it that we are at the same place. We are not same place, but the same city, because this would allow us to have these human moments when we gather together, we brainstorm. We are virtual company, but human touch is important.

Important to keep.

And so even today we keep it for the team. We do go to the mountains for a week altogether. So this kind of fun brainstorming sessions are good to have. These are the important, important for overall innovation in the company. If you are remote, find a way to do it.

Yeah, so I guess we are coming all the way from super different places to live in the same city. And to me, we are— we live together, sleep together, eat together. And yeah, this only shows that if you are committed to your idea and are willing to develop it, it doesn't really matter. It works.

It's great.

Yeah, that's fun. We all had different experience.

Yes, yes, that is very interesting. Our next question is, how do you find mentors and investors? How, how do you go about that initiation? How do you initiate that first point of contact to find a mentor or an investor?

Accelerators. I mean, for us, and we're here gathered by Founder Institute, for me, if it was not Founder Institute, I would not get my idea. I will not get my mentors. I will not switch and pivot. I pivoted in the Founder Institute a couple of times during the 4 months to get to my idea. I was kicked in the ass by the mentors and advisors. To go through the program so I have a business at the end. And these mentors and advisors were the ones that gave me the know-how to continue. And I keep in touch 6 years later, uh, still with them the way Liza said. That's extremely important. And these are the people that created my initial network. These were the people that connected me with other people. And these are the people that even today I look for advice, uh, when I don't know something. I know somebody else knowing it. I don't need to discover cover the wheel. I know somebody who has the information. So for startup, for, for newly, for newbies in startup world, I would suggest them, suggest to find accelerator. It will really be a shortcut through a lot of things.

And founders, just so you know, none of our panelists were paid to mention to go through an accelerator as part of this. It just must have been a really great experience, huh?

It is. Yes, that's why we're willing to come back and give back, right? Because we all believe in the, the power of it, for sure.

Would anyone else like to share how to find mentors and advisors, or mentors advisors, investors?

If you want, if you want alternative, check your LinkedIn, check the people you know, what skills they have, and who are the— and look, the people you're interested in to be your advisors and mentor, who they know. Go to different events where these people go, meet them. Don't ask them immediately to become your mentor. Meet them once, meet them twice, talk with them, have a drink with them, Talk about your vision without asking nothing from them. And fourth, fifth, sixth meeting, tell them like, by the way, I know that you're the guy in this area. Could you please advise me? So, uh, if you don't want to go accelerator, go through LinkedIn and find these people, find the places they go and go there.

Alrighty, let's move on. Uh, this question was initially intended for Elitza. It talks— uh, the question revolves around you mentioning cold calling as part of your customer discovery phase, and the question is around how— what was your success rate in cold calling? There were some additional questions on how do you you find these cold calling lists? And then also cold calling doesn't seem to be a tactic that's working anymore. How can founders do a similar tactic now, or is cold calling still something that's viable?

For me, cold calling was pivotal because when I started doing the cold calling, that list of just got into the first online list of hotels in Bulgaria and start finding hotels that are in my target group, that I thought is my target group, and went to their websites, got the phone. I mean, that's how the initial research was done. Remember, 6 years ago there was no ChatGPT that time. So for me, cold calling was pivotal because when I pick up the phone, I was validating different ideas. But after the 30th call, I find out that everybody said to me, you know what, this we will find a way to solve, but we have problem with communication with customers. And after doing these 100 calls, I was like, gosh, I have a wrong idea what I have to do. And that's the moment I pivot to what I do today. So for me, that was extremely important because if you ask people that who you already know, they will tell you what they think you want to hear to please you. And this is extremely important to talk to people that don't know you, don't know anything about your idea, and just ask them, what's your problem? And if the solution is like that, what do you think about it? For me, there is a place. Cold calling can even— when you go to speak somewhere to— right now it's cold calling, guys. Would you get a chatbot with artificial intelligence? I mean, when you speak to events where you go to networking, it's still cold calling. You're meeting people, you're talking with them, you are telling them what you do, and you watch their reaction. And it's a— it's a— how to say— it's an organic reaction. It's not like your mom's reaction, your friend's reaction, people. So I think cold calling is extremely important still today.

Any other thoughts?

I can only agree. We've also been doing cold calling, actually cold messaging on LinkedIn, and then trying to get those people on a call and it was extremely important for us to understand the spectrum of our customers, what they think, what, what they struggle with. So I, even if, so there was a question about conversion rate. Conversion rates, if you ask me about LinkedIn cold approach, are extremely low, but they work for a long run because you this network keeps around you, they stays around you, they see your content, they see what you post, and they, with time, they start trusting you and trusting your expertise. So it's a good long-running strategy, and also it's a good strategy to understand really your customers.

I just want to say that when I said cold calling and I pick up the phone, I didn't tell people, hey, you know, I have a chatbot and I want to sell to you, what do you think? I told people that I'm making research on the topic. So there was no obligation there. People didn't feel any sales push in the conversation and were more free to talk and express their opinions. So it's also important how you do the cold calling. Yeah. What is the form you're using?

That, that is a trick. Pretend that you are a university student. And if you're going through an accelerator, you are a student, so it's, it's a gray area. But I'm a student at XYZ University, we're doing a research project on customer service, can I ask a few questions? And it's amazing how quickly people will Dive roll. Everybody likes to talk about their problems. So if you can get your customers to talk about their problems, they will share more than you ever thought.

And most of the people have kids and they feel like, oh, the student ask question. What about if my kid, somebody, my kids are there and ask question, let me support them with answers.

And yet you are, You're the poor founder who's just trying to figure out their place in the world. So it's— there's a lot of analogies there. Let's see, this might be our last question before we jump into the networking lounge. There is a question on here about how do I tackle the fear of having my idea stolen by investors? I hear this a lot, by investors, by co-founders. How can't I have everybody sign an NDA and then we're fine? So can I love to share your experience around getting over that fear? And is it even a fear to begin with?

If somebody can steal your idea and create it the way you would create it, because remember, you're a unique person. Then your idea is not very original. Every day people get ideas, at least 20, 30 people around the globe right now, we might have the same ideas like you. It's not the idea, it's the execution. So the more you talk about, the more people you find around yourself who support you, you'll find your co-founders, you will find people that want to be your advisors, and then your investors, because our Our investors came through being our advisors and then really believing in what we do and supporting us further with investment. So the more you talk, the more you learn about your idea, the more your idea grow. And what make it unique is you as a founder. That's what I would like to say.

I completely agree. The only thing that I can add to it is like If you think people have nothing else to do than to close themselves and forget about everything and just keep implementing your idea with no money, no nothing, anything, you are very wrong about, about people's lives. So yeah, yeah.

I think it's also important just to understand the way the industry works. Investors don't sign NDAs. They're not going to sign an NDA. So you're just gonna have to kind of know that that's just an industry norm. And they'll tell you too, you know, their reputation is also on the line. So if they're stealing founders' ideas that come to them, they're not going to have any founders pitching to them and they're not going to have any companies to invest in. Right. And so it's a two-way street. They don't want to, you know, take any ideas or they're not— that's not the business they're in. They're in the business to fund great ideas that come to them, right? So you don't have to be scared of them taking your idea. They're not going to sign an NDA. You just need to get comfortable with that and then understand that their business is not to create companies. Their business is to found people who want to create the companies. And once you kind of understand that as a mindset, then sharing with them can become open, um, and you won't have to worry about it.

Sounds good. I think that is— we are right at the top of the hour, so that is it for our time today. Thank you so much, panelists, for joining us today, and thank you, founders, for joining us. Remember, we do have that networking portion. I see Sana is back. I think she is going to lead us into that transition, but thank you all. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and hopefully I get to chat with some of you on the other side.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks everyone. Thanks you, Liza, Eliza, and Olga, Diane, thank you for being here. We are very proud and happy to have you as part of the FI community. So everyone, you can join the networking lounge. You will find Liza, Eliza, and Diane and Olga will have like their tables. I don't know if you girls are gonna join or if you have some few time to dedicate for networking. Keep in touch, we have many events coming up next, like, all the upcoming weeks. So keep an eye on our, uh, website. And thanks everyone, have a good day.