Female Investor + Founder Panel: Insights on Early-Stage Funding Trends

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome. I see everyone joining us here in the room right now. Thank you for joining us this evening, afternoon, morning, whatever time it may be depending on where you are in the world. This is the Female Founder Investor Panel. We're going to talk about insights on early-stage funding trends, and I have some amazing ladies with me here today, and I'm super excited to introduce them to you. First and foremost, please put in the chat where you're calling from today. I'm calling from the Bay Area, so I'm joining you from the East Bay specifically today. And my name is Rachel Sheppard. I'm the Director of Global Marketing at Founder Institute and the co-creator of the Female Founder Initiative. The Female Founder Initiative is a platform powered by the Founder Institute, the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. We operate in over 180 cities in 75 countries. And our goal is to help as many women as possible launch companies all over the world in all of those different corners. And we support women through newsletters, Slack channel, partner resources, office hours, and calls like this where we bring together experts where you get to ask questions and we get to talk to them and learn from them about their investment experience and about what they're looking for as investors, how they evaluate companies. So it's gonna be a really great conversation today. If you're interested in learning more about the Female Founder Initiative, you can go to www.femalefounderinitiative.com. If you're interested in learning more about Founder Institute, we're currently enrolling across 6 continents. You can see the full list at fi.co/enrolling. And so without further ado, I'm here to introduce these amazing ladies who've given their time to share with us their experience, their insights into startup investment, early-stage investment, and there are even some specific industries we're going to cover today as well. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce my first speaker. Here is Kiki Mwiti. She's the founder and CEO of Divid. DIVID is the tech industry's first diversity and inclusion platform and digital community for VCs and startups. Welcome, Kiki. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience today?

Thank you, Rachel. That was an amazing intro. It's such an honor to be here under the auspices of the Founder Institute alongside such powerhouse experts like Mariah and Jean out in New York. Yes, I'm Kiki. And born and raised in Kenya, which is on the East Coast of Africa. I do see some, some attendees here who are from Africa. It's such a pleasure to meet you all and connect with you. I've been in the tech industry for about 12 years or so. Currently live in the Bay Area and really Divid was an answer to a problem that I had when I first started fundraising in the Bay Area. And literally, it's just a platform that gets you in front of investors with as little funfair as possible. I think the number one problem that I had when I was fundraising, when I first moved to the Bay, is just getting in front of investors. There was lots of lists, there was LinkedIn, there was lots of resources, lots of articles forwarding you to a lot of investors' websites where they encourage you to fill out forms or reach out to them via their inbox. But that really doesn't answer the pervasive problem of access. As we know, founders of color and women specifically have a much harder time than white men in America to raise funding or even get in front of an investor. And so with our platform, we strictly focus on females, women of color, men of color getting in front of investors without a warm intro or an elite network. I'm happy to answer your questions as we go on. Definitely put them in the chat box. Great to meet you all.

Thank you, Kiki. And we have a lot of people calling in from all over today. Canada is showing up. Welcome, Canada, from lots of different locations. We got Australia, Chicago, another Bay Area. Welcome, Vic. Thank you so much for joining us. My next panelist I'd like to introduce is Moriah Lichtenstern, founding partner of Diversity Ventures, Aspen Tech Policy Hub Fellow winner of 2020, and startup advisor and investor. Diversity Ventures accelerates scalable technology-enabled companies that have positive social, economic, or environmental impact and demonstrate high potential for outsized returns. Mariah, welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you. It's such an honor and a privilege to be here. And I echo Kiki's sentiments to, you know, just be here with you, Rachel, such an advocate and a trailblazer for women and female founders. And, you know, Kiki and Jean, it's just such a pleasure. We have to plan, plot, strategize offline. And although I can't see the women on Facebook right now listening in and our allies, I'm super excited about addressing this audience because I truly believe that women are going to lead the way in solving a lot of the problems that the world is facing right now. And we need to be encouraged, inspired, empowered, and uplifted to do so. And it's not a time to shy away and be a wallflower. It's time to lead. So I'm really honored to be here today and hope that I can contribute to that cause.

Absolutely. We're excited to have you. And our last but not least, our final speaker with us today is Jean Sullivan calling from New York. She's an investor and advisor of the ArcView Group and co-founder of the ArcView Collective Fund, actively investing in cannabis companies. Jean is dedicated to changing the game, promoting the regulation, legislation, and economic prosperity in the cannabis industry. Welcome, Jean.

Thank you so much, Rachel, Mariah, Kiki. How wonderful. Your words are terrific. I feel so privileged to be with you and also to promote what we're talking about, how to open doors for women. So we at the ArcView Group know that we are a 10-year-old, uh, community, uh, dedicated to the cannabis industry, uh, first founded under the social justice, terrible draconian things that were going on by fabulous Steve D'Angelo and Troy Dayton. And, and we have formed something called WIN, the Women's Investor Network, which doesn't mean you have to be an investor putting capital to work, but you can, if you wish, but investing in each other, opening doors, because it's just as you said, it's hard to open doors, helping each other, helping investors, helping business owners get going, help, help you if you want to be an advocate. So I just want to share that even though I am all in, in the cannabis industry, I have spent my whole life as an investor in technology, And for the last many years, all in cannabis. But beside all that, I have been fighting as an advocate for women for all my professional years. So this really is a real crosshatch of doing all those things, hitting on all those notes: women, investing, certainly technology, which has been part of my life, and now cannabis. So it's pretty fun to share these stories. Back to you, Rachel.

Absolutely. Thank you, Jean. And you guys weren't on for the first 30 minutes. We were doing our tech test, but it was a great conversation already. So I'm so excited for the hour that we have with these ladies and to talk a little bit about investing. If you have just been joining us, because I see the numbers going up, please do put your questions in the chat. They can be specific to your company or general about, you know, raising your first round if you're an early-stage founder, you know, whatever your biggest challenge might be. So we're going to get started. We'll start with you, Kiki. How do you think COVID-19 has changed how investors evaluate startups? Have you seen any differences in the last 6 months?

I have. I think— and I'll make this brief. We have reached an impasse, I guess, in consumer behavior. All our habits have changed. Our ways of relating to each other has changed. And I think the major industries that were getting the most action pre-COVID are slowly sort of shifting and forcing a pivot in the way they approach the marketplace. I know for a fact that the major industries, and I'm sure my fellow panelists can speak to that as well, the major industries that were really getting a lot of attention were businesses in retail and advertising, travel and mobility. When I talk about travel, you talk about the Airbnb situation or mobility with Bird, which is the scooters that we would find littered all over San Francisco. Look at what's happening with rideshares, traditional restaurants, hospitality. That has been— there's been a significant shift towards more telehealth and B2B, specifically in collaboration software. There's a specific reason why Zoom's market cap has boomed and Slack, Airtable, Loom. All these are platforms that are enabling workforces to better address the needs of their workforce. Gaming is huge. E-commerce is a huge thing. We're also seeing a lot of investor interest in streaming and online data security. When you think of like WhatsApp, for those who have family or friends internationally, I use WhatsApp. The fact that they encrypt, end-to-end encryption, they provide that to their users is huge. So there's a big surge in online data encryption and security. So these are just a couple of the different shifts that we're seeing. And what we're telling a lot of our portfolio founders is if you're in a traditional traditional industry, which is pre-COVID— retail, travel, gaming— there has to be a shift or a pivot in order to address the new ways of being that are coming up. We will never go sit in movie restaurants the same. We will never— sorry, movie theaters the same. We will never sit in restaurants the same. We don't fly the same. We don't engage each other the same. And so how can we anticipate? We tell founders all the time, how can you anticipate for the next 5 years? And how can you, at this time, begin to prepare to capture that market share? So I think those are the major changes I'm seeing. I don't know how— what everyone else thinks.

Yes, I know gaming is on the rise. My husband tried to preorder an Xbox yesterday, and that was apparently pretty challenging. So I think there's— I think everyone's doing some gaming as they're stuck in their homes these days. Mariah, any trends you're noticing with COVID at play?

Well, you know, I think part of what's encouraging is that I'm seeing some barriers come down. So whether it's for like emerging managers like myself or for founders, you know, the heuristics have been like in-person meetings and, you know, a lot of travel. And now, you know, that's not even allowed. So in most cases, and so there's there's more online engagement. And when it comes to women in particular, like we had talked about in the pre-call, you know, women tend to experience, you know, harassment and power dynamics differently than other founders. I know I've experienced the Me Too issues myself throughout the years, less so now that I have a little more gray, but nonetheless, you know, still occasionally get it. And, you know, that it's, it's not the same when you're when you're interfacing on Zoom, right? That, you know, the risks are diminished, right? And also the barriers just for women in general when we're parents that are handling different types of logistics. We tend to do more of the caregiving. It tends to be, you know, harder for women to travel. And so the fact that we're doing so many meetings online, I think while there are challenges in terms of care, you know, childcare and things like that, We're also— we're leveling the playing field a little bit and doing more online meetings. And some of the protocols are shifting. I was listening to a regulatory meeting at the SEC talking about, you know, some of the compliance and diligence requirements. And there was like a temporary shift away from like in-person office visits. And they're asking for that to become permanent because technology really makes obsolete, but before COVID I mean, there was no imperative to change those mandates. So we're seeing a lot of those, like, systemic issues that we talked a little bit about on the pre-call being exposed and addressed. And so, you know, those are things that I'm really focusing on that have changed and are changing due to COVID-19.

Absolutely, that's a great point. You know, for many parents that, and particularly moms who take on a lot of the caregiving, that they feel like they're able to kind of, you know, adjust in terms of scheduling, you know, with investor calls and make stuff happen. And it just— there's no drive time and that helps sort of add to the balance a little bit. So hopefully we see more solutions come up to lower those barriers, just as you said, and hopefully make sure that diversity and inclusion remains top of mind as we grow and recover from COVID Like Kiki and I were—

what Kiki had mentioned, you know, about the, you know, driving to get in front of investors and stand in line and all of that. I mean, I have spent so much on gas and so many hours on the road, you know, making those connections to get back in, to overcome the barriers to entry. And so, you know, a lot of that is changing.

Fantastic. Jean, any thoughts on what you've seen?

Yes.

So I have great empathy, as I know we all do, for the small and large businesses that are so suffering, and many will never come back. And when you walk along, to give you just a mini New York City report, it is shocking to see the stores that are closed, and we still cannot dine in our restaurants. There is some outdoor dining, but certainly not all the restaurants. And then all the little shops, the boutiques, many of them could not withstand being closed, and many of them have gone out of business. And so, That part is tough and sad and hard, but I also want to remind all of us that you have to be flexible, and it also spells opportunity. That if you can fill the gap, if you can figure out how to pivot your business, morph your business, do something in the e-commerce way. One kind of clever thing that I saw that I'm just amazed by— many of our kids here are not in school. They're doing school virtually. There's been a whole kind a cottage industry now of nannies and former teachers that have come together and formed little pods so that they can help shepherd your kid through their day. Good thing for that, because that is hard, as I, and I have found that out myself. And being in the cannabis business, a good thing did happen for us. We were deemed to be essential business. So we've gone for 100 years of being illegal, such a hardship about the war on drugs and the plant. And you all know that being Californians that I'm speaking to, but certainly those of you around the world. And now we've deemed illegal to essential. And so a lot of our cannabis industry and businesses have been thriving, certainly delivery, curbside pickup, and some of these products that help bring wellness to bear. So that's kind of exciting. But let me tell you one more thing back to being resilient, pivoting, and being opportunistic. More than a year ago, I'm also a golf lover. And last year, the last several years, golf has really declined. This year you can hardly get a tee time. And so go figure, it's just like the Xbox story. And last year I was paired with a guy who runs Amazon Prime. He's in New York. And he said the way that the US is gonna do grocery shopping is gonna change over the next few years. Look at what happened. I have not been in a grocery store in New York City since March. Everything I'm doing is online delivery. So just look at how businesses, just to your point, behaviors changing, some for the better and some innovative ways that are always gonna be with us. And some of them aren't bad. I don't know about all of you. But I really don't miss flying around. I've never flown and traveled as much as I have over the last 6 years in the cannabis industry. I miss our get-togethers. I miss being and putting on wonderful events in person. But, you know, there are some pretty interesting changes about behavior. So just to share a few of those things.

Absolutely. I think those are great insights, Jean. And we're getting some questions in from the chat, so I want to, I want to move to some of those really quickly. So Poonam says, specific to female founders, what stage can one start looking for money and through what type of investor? Do you recommend any best practices? Mariah, do you want to start with this one?

Sure. I was just like scanning through some of those questions. So I would say if your intention is to— to grow a business that will require funding, or if you're in a place where you think you're going to need funding to get to traction or product, start learning now. Start learning yesterday. Start building those relationships because when you need it and you're going to shut down if you don't get it, it's way too late. It's way too late. And I— and when you're at the early, early stages, that's when there's the most risk, right? And so we want to get to know you when you're really early. Like when you see stories of later-stage companies that are— that say, oh, we're going to close by the end of this month or this time, do you want to get in? Here's who's investing with us. Oftentimes those companies have already demonstrated traction. They've already de-risked. They've already validated KPIs and assumptions. Their cost of acquisition and lifetime value, and they have relationships already that these investors that are coming on later stage are familiar with. And those investors may not be taking board seats, they may not be as hands-on, they're not taking on as many risks. So they may be able to move more quickly, right? But when you're really, really early, there's way more risk. There's team risk, there's product risk, there's market risk, there's all these risks. And so investors are less likely to move quickly. So you want to start building those relationships very early. And it also depends on, like, our institutional capital. You want to start building up those relationships before you need that institutional capital. But when it comes to, like, angels and friends and family, understand that the expectation now is that you will raise friends and family capital, at least enough, or you'll bootstrap to get your product and get into market so that you can at least have informed assumptions about your key performance indicators and your acquisition costs and lifetime value and things of that nature, you know, churn, things like that. So if you don't have friends and family that are able to invest in that early stage, you need to start making friends and building that network. And unfortunately, is a huge barrier. Only between 13% and 15% of Americans qualify as accredited investors, and that's a threshold of income and net worth that prevents most Americans from investing in startups under most circumstances. And I'm sure someone can share the tech funding equity project that I've been doing out of the Aspen Tech Policy Hub that talks about that. We have some handy infographics that you can look at that explain what the accredited investor definition is, what types of offerings require it, what your offering options are. But now is the time to start. Anytime is never too early to start understanding what that is, because one of the sad things that I see is that entrepreneurs will come in and they'll think that they can, especially as women. You think that you can do what some of these guys do that you read about in the news. And it's not going to be the same experience for most of you unless you have some kind of privileged network. Your uncle can introduce you to someone, uncle can write you a check or if you don't have like that network that can get you those early rounds, it's gonna be a different journey for you. So it's very important that you understand what you're getting into, 'cause I can say for myself, I had no idea. I had no idea. I had to, you know, go out, walk the walk, experience those things, and then observe and learn what my peers and colleagues were experiencing to understand that. But I was being told one thing through these existing organizations, and that those weren't the experiences that I was having. So it's never too early to start learning that and start preparing whatever stage you're at. You know, build those relationships as early as possible so that hopefully when you need it, uh, you know, you've already built up that rapport.

But let me, let me add to this, Rachel, because, uh, what's really critical is that especially in the early days, you want to go to people that want what you have—stage, size, geography, subject matter. And see, it's incredible that people like Mariah, Kiki, and Rachel, you with the Founders Institute, are—have the door open for these early days. That's incredible to understand, because if you reach out to, let's say, an institutional investor or somebody who doesn't want what you have, or maybe you're in California reaching out to somebody in New York, you have to understand your audience. And so I think it's important to tune into that. And, uh, I'm just, uh, suggesting that that's one of the big early mistakes that I've seen, uh, for many years.

Absolutely. And, and, uh, Panam had a follow-up question which I think Kiki would be great for you to dive in on, which is, uh, you know Basically, how do you advise we build these relationships at the early stage, right? So if they are looking for institutional capital and they've de-risked some of the aspects of their company, like Mariah was saying, and they're ready to go and meet investors, what are some ways that you've seen founders effectively do that at the early stage?

Great question. And Poonam, I want to kind of backtrack and kind of piggyback on what Mariah and Gene mentioned, which is one of the things that we tell founders as soon as they come into contact with us is, do you really want to raise institutional funding? Is that what you want? Because it is a marriage. And once you take on funding from an investor, essentially they become your daddy, essentially for 20, probably 10, 15 years of the lifetime of your startup. So we seriously sit them down and ask them if this is something that they want to do. If they decide that they want to pursue institutional funding in the early stages, we usually advise them if they're B2B, business-to-business, to see about going a different route for the beginning part while they're concurrently building relationships. And I'll come to that, Rachel. While they're concurrently building business relationships with investors is to look at crowdfunding. So crowdfunding is an opportunity for you to raise under $20,000, $30,000. And what that can do is at least give you a little bit of startup capital in addition to your bootstrapping efforts where you can fund pilots. We have assured some founders to crowdfunding if they're B2C, business to consumer, because then they get quick money, quick cash, $25,000 that they can raise over 30 days, and they can put that towards creating more products. Now, if they're B2B, then think about possibly opening up pilots with with your clients, if you're selling to a business, if you're a business selling to a business, is think about the potential of having your clients pay for a pilot, which gives you some revenue that comes in to allow you to begin to have some kind of revenue to build out later iterations of your product. Having said that, back to your question, Rachel. So we have decided that we want to raise institutional funding and you've decided this is the route that you want to go, and now you want to build relationships with investors. I think of it— I'm sure the other panelists will agree— it is like marriage. It is like a marriage game. When you meet your boo, when you meet your love, you don't get married on day 2. You met him yesterday and you get married today? No. Usually you date for 2 years, right? Like Mariah was saying, a lot of these TechCrunch announcements that you see in the news, some startup goes on TechCrunch and says, oh, we just closed a $10 million Series A. That is a conversation that's been happening for 2 years. That is a relationship that has been ongoing for 2 years. So you want to start thinking, what do I need to do now? If I'm dating, how do I receive love from somebody that I'm dating? Is it frequent phone calls? Do I— do they need to take me out? Do I need to see their name on my caller ID? Equate it to a dating relationship. That's what I think investors want to see. Not too much. Jean can speak to that. I can speak to that. And Mariah can speak to that. It's not inundating them. With a lot of contact but frequent updates. I think one of the things that I really stress with our founders is I don't hear from them enough. I need to see your updates. Tell me last week or last month we had 12 pilots, maybe 200 customers come through our platform. The next month I want to hear that you had 300 customers come through, 25 pilots, engaged. So you want to keep them constantly engaged. And if your thing is not a quickie marriage, then trust me, you cannot expect an investor to be interested in a quickie kind of deal with you. So I hope I answered that question, Rachel. I know some of the founders on the call are probably wondering, well, how do I even reach these investors? How do I reach them? Of course, like Moriah said, a lot of networking, a lot of pounding the pavement. What Divid does, and I think what Diversiti does and what Rachel does, is we erase all of that for you, meaning literally we bring you into contact with an investor. We maintain the relationships for you so that when you come in, like Jean was saying, you have investors specific to your round and to your industry and to the fund. Because a lot of what Jean was saying, I think what Jean didn't expound, which is amazing, and I need to stress this, is you cannot reach out to any old investor that you see on the news. Who writes Series A or Series B checks and tell them you don't have revenue yet or traction. You have to reach out to investors that are specific to the round and the industry that you're raising for.

Right. And let me add something that is so critical. This is one of my best pearls of wisdom. I believe even at the earliest days, you should form your own personal board of advisors. And let me tell you what that can do for you. Pull together some smart people, that you appreciate or can add some domain expertise to what you're doing. Because guess what? When you're ready for funding, even if it's from angel or friends and family, those investors will call your board of advisors and ask, is he or she organized? Does she know what she's doing? What do you think of the product? And so they will weigh in and help you as well as what Kiki was saying, help with this outreach too, because they would have a network in theory that could help open doors for you. So I really believe in that. Have periodic meetings either by Zoom or in person, beer and pizza or whatever, or go have breakfast once a month. Be organized, and that can really bode well for an early-stage entrepreneur.

Absolutely. You saw— you can't see everyone's face, but we're all like nodding our heads like yes, yes, make sure to send those updates, send them regularly, and make sure to send them to the right people and have all of the people who offered to help you over time. I mean, I've talked to hundreds of startups and given them all the same, like, if you want to add me to your email list, please do. And I think I get 3, and I read the ones that come regularly. The most, right? And I know about their company and I know about their updates and I use them in examples when I talk to other people or they come top of mind. So it's just, this is excellent advice. These are, these are gold pieces of advice here. So please keep your questions coming. Again, we're getting some great questions in the chat and I want to make sure that you have an opportunity to ask what's on your mind because we've got some amazing ladies here who are obviously giving some amazing advice. So Onto the next question, which is much more about pitch decks, but what do you look for in a pitch deck and how can founders put forth projections that are optimistic in an unprecedented time? Jean, we'll start with you on this one.

Yes, thank you. I have for many years have a fun gig, I'll call it, that I do called 5 stupid things that entrepreneurs do over and over again. And by the way, I don't leave out investors. I also speak to the 5 stupid things that investors do. And believe me, we do plenty of stupid things. But the number one thing that I feel needs to be articulated in the deck or in the meeting is, would you spit it out your mouth? You would not believe how people, men and women, can many times not define the product or service. What they're offering. It doesn't lay it out clearly. This drives me crazy. I will stop somebody within 10 minutes and say, start over. I have no idea what you're selling, what your vision is. And so that's really important. To your point about the money, I really believe, and I give this advice and it really works. I believe that you should project baseline and a stretch goal. Because first of all, no investor ever believes any financial projections. However, having some kind of a base case with an assumption set and then showing, look, here's an optimistic or a stretch goal, and with these assumptions we can achieve this, and here's how. And the third thing to share is, I cannot believe it, so many people leave out their go-to-market, uh, strategy slide. I go, where's that? Well, what do you mean? How are you How are you going to execute? Because so many people are hung up on what are the features and functions rather than how they're going to execute and scale and build the business. Those 3 pearls are some of my best pearls on how to get our attention and how to get our wallet out.

Awesome. And then a follow-up question from Poonam said, should you send a detailed pitch deck via email or ask for a chance to present it? And I'll open this the whole panel. Any, any, any thoughts on that?

I'll lead off and just say this. There's, there's a different, definite difference of opinion about this, but here's my opinion. I believe you should use the pitch deck to use in the meeting, not send it out. Now, this can vary, but I believe a well-done one-page exec summary, or even a few paragraphs— people have the attention span of a flee. So if you can just get them interested with a fascinating vision that's well done and simple, and then hook the meeting— the whole goal of that is to get the phone meeting or the in-person meeting— that's when I believe you should sit down with the well-ordered deck and go through that in a very good, positive, and clear way.

I would endorse that, what Jean just mentioned. There is so much power in being brief. If you think of the time that we are in now, I think all of us, our brain capacity is having to expand exponentially. I don't know how many of you are on Instagram or on Twitter, but let me speak specifically to Instagram. I cannot tell you how many sponsored ads I come across now as opposed to before. Whereas before COVID I'd see maybe 2 or 3 sponsored ads on Instagram, on my Instagram feed as I scroll. I'd see maybe 2 or 3 in a given day. Now it's almost 7 or 8 in the span of just one swipe. And to Jean's point, people now have the attention of a fly, right? It's— we are so overwhelmed right now. Our screens are overwhelming us at this moment. There's 10,000 Zooms happening. There's 10,000 virtual sessions you're being invited to. Do 10,000 masterclasses and masterminds and master this. And I'm telling founders even more so now than before, you have got to get people's attention, especially investors within the first 30 seconds. And it's very key that you have— I usually advise founders to have 3, and I don't know if Jean, maybe you can speak to that. I usually advise founders to have about 3 different presentations to give. One, which is your teaser, like an executive summary. First, let's just tackle your email. And within the email is just your subject line. Your subject line will get the email opened. Once they open the email, that little blurb, that little one paragraph is what will get them to click on the attachment or click on the link that will lead them to a DocSend or a Google Doc for them to look at. And within that Google Doc has to be like a very brief summary. That is what invites them to welcome you to pitch to them. And then just like Jean said, walk into a pitch meeting, or if they give the opportunity to you to present, go in with your full deck. And if they ask for more, then have the third version of the deck, which is the deck and financials with a breakdown of all your numbers. So I would even tackle, you know, before getting their attention with the deck or what pitch deck, if you're primarily engaging with them via email, First, get your subject line. And there's so many articles online. If anybody wants to reach out to me, I can help with that. But there's so many articles online on how to really put a punchy subject line in your email to get— and the point is, remember, just like your inbox is overflowing, I have 200 unread emails right now. I know everybody does. If your inbox is overflowing right now, think of investors. So you want to get them just to click on the subject, open up the email, literally 2, 3 lines that will point them to an attachment or to an external link. And there is where you capture their attention with only one page, an executive summary, right? That will hopefully get you invited to pitch. Those are great words, Kiki.

And let me support, uh, also this idea. If Kiki or Rachel or Mariah sent me a deal, guess what? I'm gonna look at it. So I also believe in a warm introduction. So if you want to meet with Carol Jones and she's just the right angel for you, you find somebody who knows her and go in that way. So having these kind of touch points makes a difference. Also, having these kinds of discussions and webinars makes a difference. Guess what? Everyone on this webinar, we're connected now. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. You're welcome to find me. And connect with me and say, hey, I saw you on this webinar. Would you be willing to look at this or to connect me with somebody? So that's the kind of way we can help each other, and I believe in people helping people. Isn't that what it's all about? So this kind of warm introduction I think is important for you to really follow.

I'd like to chime in there, and that's it. I'm so glad that you brought that up because And that gives context to some thoughts that I had on the original question. So I know that the warm introduction is a hot topic, especially for underrepresented founders, because a lot of our barriers are due to access because we don't have a warm intro, right? Or because it takes literally years to build the network to get the warm intro. And there's whole Twitter threads about that. And so it used to be that VCs would very openly say I don't respond to any inquiries unless they come from a warm intro. And a few had tried like website submissions and found that they never responded to those. And I just want to give some context in defense of warm intros, but also, you know, to kind of give some alternative ways of thinking about that and to, you know, give my thoughts on what both Jean and Kiki have mentioned on reaching out. In defense of warm intros, me personally, I find that the majority of my meetings are cold calls or they're cold intros, whether it's from email, LinkedIn, or some other channel. That said, if you look at the ratio of meetings that I take from cold inquiries versus those from warm intros, you're going to see that I take about 99.9% of intros from warm introductions, and I take a very, very small percentage of cold meetings. And the reason why is because I'm one person, I have 24 hours in the day, I need to practice my own self-care so that I can be— have a full cup to pour out of, right? And I can't field all the calls. And because so many founders don't do the work Jean mentioned earlier, of making sure that you align with the thesis. So I get a lot of submissions on the website, and it's like, did you read the website before you filled out the contact form? Because I don't even invest in that space, you know, um, and, and that's just what it is. We get a lot of spam, so I literally have to ignore the majority of submissions that come in, either because they don't align or they're just not compelling enough, and, you know, to make me want to respond. Okay. So that said, if Rachel or Jean or Kiki sends me something, I know they know what I'm looking for. They understand and respect my time. They're not new in the game. Right. And plus there's that reputational risk, right? I don't want to let them down. I don't want them to not refer the next great deal to me. Right. And, you know, we want to empower each other as well. And so if I see an email address that I recognize, I'm going to prioritize that. You know, my email is a hot mess. Like, I've tried everything. Like, I've tried all the techniques, all the strategies, all the tools. I just had to uninstall a tool. I was like, no, that didn't work. That slowed me down. I can't even do anything with email right now.

So no zero inbox for you, right, Mariah?

I have tried. I try and I still, I have my folders. I, you know, but it is insane sometimes. Sometimes it's, you know, I'll have, you know, my space or whatever. But when things fall below that fold, Lord help me. You know, now Gmail will bump stuff up or whatever, but this is real life. We're human beings, okay? We're not automatons, you know. And so as long as this is the process, the warm intro helps to get you to the top of mind and it gets that— it's like the subject line, right? If I know, okay, I know Jean, I know Rachel, I know Kiki, I'm going to open that email. Whereas if it's Joe Schmuckatelli, I don't know who that is. It's not a priority. I'm going to open every other email first and maybe get to that one. Unless it's like, you know, something like really striking that like, you know, revolutionary biofuel, whatever, you know, like that really, really lines with my thesis. I tend to take more introductions through LinkedIn. And here's part of what I like about that. On LinkedIn, I don't like, I don't take invitations if it's just an invite. But if there is a description, I heard you speak at this panel. I, you know, saw this article you wrote. This is what I'm doing. And it's succinct and it doesn't take 2 minutes or more of my time. I'm more likely to accept. Now you have a chance to show up in my feed, to engage with me over time. And if you're posting and sharing things that are relevant to your domain and allow me to get to know you, it's like that dating process, right, that Kiki was talking about earlier. And so now I can, I can follow you. And oftentimes I'll take a meeting and I'll tell— I will explicitly tell founders, it's not just for us, but our limited partners whom we have a fiduciary duty to, they are our clients and our investors. They want to see transparency through to the portfolio stage. This is something kind of, you know, like new in our industry, a new requirement that's emerging. And so when we have those updates, quarterly or monthly updates from founders that we can share with our investors, It gives them greater confidence down into our portfolio, right? So if you're not doing that, then my thought is going to be, well, if, you know, the mess hits the fan and you're about to run out of runway, you're not going to tell me until, you know, the last hour and I can't even rally the troops to get you a bridge or, you know what I'm saying? Like, I can't trust that you're going to tell me what you need so that I can help you to overcome what we know is going to happen in any startup. There's going to be problems. So that communication is key. And so many amazing founders I'll talk to, I'm impressed with the founder, I'm impressed with the idea, and I'll explicitly explain to them how important that follow-up is. And they— and the majority of them do not follow up. They don't. They just don't. And so those are— that's part of why I like LinkedIn, because there is that, that way of just allowing us to see your updates organically and see your trajectory, even if you're early idea stage. And if you then translate that into ongoing communication. It's like a courtship, right? And where you're de-risking yourself for us and where we can see you're not like some crazy person, because that happens too. You already got to be crazy to be an entrepreneur, right? But, you know, if anyone has been in business long enough, you've had those toxic experiences, right? And people can wear masks for a long time. So it allows us to see how you respond to vicissitudes, how you pivot, all of that. So, you know, Long story short, the warm intros make it to the top because we recognize who they come from and we have an existing relationship there. If you're going to reach out cold, be very succinct. And if we accept your connection, don't send us a, you know, a novel about your business. You know, you want to get— you want to make one ask. You want to get someone to opt into that next step where they've now given you permission to take up more of their time. And just incrementally let people opt in to learn more, and then they'll give you more because you've shown that we can trust you.

Fantastic. Mariah touched on a lot of different things there, and particularly an answer to the question that was in the chat, which is what about cold outreach, right? Which I think is inevitable for founders. So she just gave you a bunch of tips on how to do that in a way that makes it a little more warm and provides the investor with a little more insights right before they allow you to take more of their time, frankly, right? And set up a meeting. So a follow-up question, though, is from Alina, and Kat had a related question as well, which is, if you get that investor meeting and you're in that room, how can you be your most best self? That's not the best terminology, but how can we be our best selves, especially if presenting is not a strength of the founder or co-founder, but they really are a good fit for the solution? Kiki, any thoughts on that you want to keep kick us off?

I would say if presenting is not a strength, make it a strength as soon as possible. Unless you have co-founders who can take up that space for you. But if you don't have co-founders who are not willing to step up and take up that space for you, then you have to put it upon yourself to build yourself up so that you can take that room. I think for many years, and I think we've— this is sort of inherited inherently over the years, women and people of color subconsciously take a step back when advocating for themselves or for their creations or for their solutions. And I think it's because we're always having to put people first. If you're a woman, you're putting your children first, you're putting society first, you want other people to win. However, in entrepreneurship, if this is something that you're taking seriously and you're taking on long term, I'm dying to hear Jean's thoughts on this. But you have to take it upon yourself to take up as much room as you can in the room. And I'll give an example of myself or people or founders that I have observed. For me, I had to become very comfortable in my Kenyan-ness. I'm from Kenya. I'm from East Africa. I had to own that. I had to be fine with that. I had to accept that. I have an accent. I'm not going to change it for— for nothing. I am of African heritage. I'm not going to change that for anything. That being said, how can I step into the rooms where you have powerful Caucasian men and be able to sit at the same table, speak to their level, and get their attention? I had to get very comfortable with who I am, believe in myself first, and allow myself to take up as much room. You see many articles, and this for all the females and moms on the call, You see many articles of women who are pregnant who said that they shied away from raising funding or they second-guessed themselves all the way while bringing up a family on whether they would be taken seriously if they walked into a pitch meeting with their bump visibly showing. And for the women who had successfully raised funding that happened to be pregnant, they owned their condition. I am pregnant.

Here's my belly. Let's talk money.

That is how you show up. You show up when you fully own. And I think what happens is a person of the other party on the other side of the table recognizes that. Recognizes that you are not second-guessing who you are. You're not second-guessing your identity. You're owning your identity and that allows them to be able to get buy-in. Mariah spoke very powerfully about permission, you know, and getting people to opt into each step of the process in trusting you with their money. You trusting yourself first allows them to trust in you. You owning your narrative and taking up space in the room with your personality and who you are and how you show up and your energy, that allows people to opt in. It's all about permission marketing. You're marketing, you're constantly marketing yourself, baby bump or not, you know, skin color that's dark or not, whether you have a disability, whether you belong to the LGBTQ group, It does not matter. What matters is how much you own your identity. And if you can speak to that with authority, then people will be able to opt in and trust what is coming out of your mouth and your numbers, more so than if you shrink back. I hope that answers your question.

Those are very empowering words, Kiki. Thank you for those. Here's my best pearls on the subject. There is no excuse, not for one person even globally, on this discussion, to not reach out to some other friend or person you're connected with to help you figure out the ropes on how to raise that money or how to conduct yourself for that meeting. That meeting's critical for success because, you know, and there's ways to behave and ways to articulate and ways to present yourself that make a difference on getting that second meeting meeting, which should be your whole goal of the first meeting. And the second pearl is this. Now, men do this too, but I have found in my years that women are particularly not so great with the numbers. And so if that's not your forte, then you need to pull somebody at your side. Let's say even a temporary CFO that can help not only teach you so so you can become articulate, but so that you can walk the talk on the numbers. And what I love to say is this: if I ask you in that meeting what your pre-money valuation is on your last round, let's say you've raised a seed round or something, and you give me a blank stare, you might have gotten this first meeting, but you're not gonna get the second meeting. And the reason for that— and I say that just to be provocative, because the reason to say that is that I want you to be a great steward of our money. And so I want you to be sharp on the numbers, and you can learn this stuff is what I always try to inspire. Because guess what? It's not calculus, it's not trigonometry, it's, it's multiplication, it's addition and subtraction, and it's actually learnable. And there's so much knowledge, and of and of course the wonderful incubator and accelerator work that Rachel does, as well as these wonderful women on this discussion today. We open the door for you. Walk through it.

Yes. Yeah. Standing ovation on that. So a couple things there. Imposter syndrome, number one. We as women cannot afford to have imposter syndrome. There are too many women who are depending on you to walk through that door, have contagious confidence, and to represent. So when you go into the room and you feel that superego trying to tell you that you're not good enough or whatever, you need to shut it down. You can't afford the luxury of ego or superego when women are counting on you to be in that room and represent, and when you can go in that room and take what you've gained in that room back out. So if you're feeling imposter syndrome, that's your ego. And you just have to slap it around. Like I'll say, I have as much ego as anybody, but it's not the boss. So that's imposter syndrome. Pitch prep. Founder Institute is a great resource for pitch prep. You can practice in the mirror. You can do, you know, the different speakers clubs that they have out there, the Toastmasters type of thing. But let me tell you this. I used to have to drink a beer and take Valerian to speak in public. And I'm a rhetoric major. OK, the more that you just do it, the more that your body recognizes, oh, I'm not going to die if I speak in public. So just push yourself when you feel the fear. Do it anyway. And those muscles get stronger. So there's that in terms of just strategy. Practice in the mirror. Count the number. I will work with founders in Founder Institute. You got 5 minutes, 3 minutes, really, most of the time. And it might be— you might have a word that's taken up 5 syllables that you can replace with one that takes up 2. and we get that nitty-gritty to make sure that you are under 3 minutes. And you want to use the simplest language because you want to get to the lizard brain for all of us who have a short attention span until we've opted into that longer focus discussion. So those are the things that you can, you know, that you should keep in mind. Use your visual aids to anchor whatever you want to stick. Keep it simple. Keep it plain language. That's why you see people like Trump and George Bush and they speak very plainly and it resonates with so many people is why. OK, so you don't have to prove you're smart. You'll be smart if you can say it very simply in a way that someone who's not from your domain can understand. Pitch your cat, pitch your kids, pitch your friends. Practice. I used to go to the Founder Institute and I'd be doing my pitch in the car, driving 2 hours and timing myself on the phone, literally, because we'd have to, you know, change our decks and improve week over week. And then affirmations. Practice affirmations, practice conscious leadership, practice meditation to build yourself up, give you the gift of self-care, because we need you out there kicking butt and skilling it. Okay, so, you know, whatever you need to feed your soul, do that. Okay, and again, I just want to reiterate this point: confidence is contagious. So as you work that muscle, it's going to come across. And when I see someone whose voice is not quivering, like, if it is, I'm like, okay, you got some work to do. Let's keep in touch. You know, I'm going to give you some exercises to do, but the more you exercise it, the more you're confident in what you have to say and how your business works, it's going to come across. And you can tell someone who's idea stage and someone who's been around a while and done the work because they start to be like, I don't care what you think, you can reject me, I'm going to do this anyway. And that confidence is just like, okay, okay, I'm sold. Like, if you can project to me your confidence, then I want to get behind you, you know, and I'll take some risks. If you're confident that we can overcome them together. You know, it's like dating the guy who doesn't have a car, or is an immigrant, or, you know, it's like the Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton, we were talking about Hamilton earlier, right? You know, Eliza took that bet, he was penniless, you know what I mean? Maybe Angelica couldn't take the risk, but Eliza could, right? So give us that confidence, that brilliance, that inspiration that we can work with you, right? So those are some of the tips I would say around pitching, building your pitch muscles, and imposter syndrome.

I love it. The chat is getting amped up. They're feeling it. They're feeling inspired by all of you, and this is really amazing because yes, it does, it does take that practice, right? So we have just 5 minutes left, so I'm going to dive into some of our last questions. And if you have any last minute questions, please do put them in the chat. This question is from Dorian. She said, how can a new cannabis startup stand out to investors with the market being so concentrated right now? So I'll toss that to you, Jean, but then as we see a lot of concentrated markets, education tech is one that comes to mind for me quite frequently. So we'll talk about that as well. But Jean, any thoughts on how to stand out?

Well, thank you for that opportunity to share with this wonderful group of business owners and entrepreneurs and, and investors that are in our audience today. I would love to see every single cannabis company or every possible investor who may want to invest in cannabis. I welcome you to write to me. I always answer all my emails, and if I don't, just hit me again. Join with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy to find, Jeanne M. Sullivan. I'm with the Arc Upview Group. We want to see your cannabis companies and open those doors. And if you're way too early, we'll tell you so and talk about some of the things that we talked about today. And Founders Institute will take companies in their accelerator program. So I think these programs are critical for success for the earliest days. And so whatever stage you're at, I'd love to see you. I welcome you to write to me. And if you're an investor, we want to, uh, open the door for you to invest in these companies at various stages. And we really also have a D&I, diversity and inclusion, strategy in the fund that we're investing from today, seeking, uh, people of color, women, uh, and a diverse group, uh, seeing their companies, investing in their companies, at least opening the door for opportunity because we know how hard it is. So that door is open and we know so many people in the business. If what we're doing and our program isn't right for you, we like to refer you to someone who is. So that's, uh, that's one of our, uh, our offers today.

Awesome. And then Kiki, any advice for how founders can stand out with a in a concentrated market?

I think owning your story.

Uh oh, I think we lost Kiki for a second. Kiki, I think we lost your internet. If you can hear us, Mariah, are you able to jump in with any thoughts on how to stand out in a concentrated market?

Just the things that I mentioned before, but I would say, you know, as women and people of color. Is Kiki back? Not yet. Right now is a time when we're recognizing the need to change, and I hear more men than ever say, hey, we had a blind spot. We didn't get it. We didn't see it. But you know what? We're counting on you to lead us out of this mess that we've created. So seize the moment. And like we said before, you know, it's not a time to be a wallflower. It's time to recognize that you bring massive value to the world. If we weren't so powerful, they wouldn't have to work so hard to hold us back. So seize this time and lead the way.

Fantastic. And I think we've sadly lost Kiki before she got to share her final point with us as well. And then Mariah answered some very important questions and resources about, you know, where to turn regarding numbers specifically. So as Jean mentioned, if you are in a meeting, you need to know your numbers. You need to be able to talk about your company in those specific ways. So she— Mariah put a bunch of amazing resources is in here. I'd also add Elizabeth Yin has an amazing blog. She's from The Hustle Fund and she writes a lot of details about venture and her insights there. So I think that's a great resource as well. So final thoughts from— oh, Kiki, I see her coming back online. This is amazing. And so final thoughts, Jean, for founders, your closing words for them today.

Yes, my closing words are, look, it's a line that I've used for many years. We only invest in business owners, entrepreneurs who know what to do and how to do it. So go figure it out and reach for those resources that can train you up and show you the way and help empower you.

Fantastic, Jean. Mariah, last closing thoughts for founders today?

Well, I want to hear from Kiki. I'm going to put a link to the Tech Funding Equity Project, and I would just say, please Please, founders, go there, do the survey, let us know your story. We're looking for founders whose stories that we can showcase and highlight, and we've created a lot of resources to empower you in terms of fundraising. Help us change the rules to increase access to capital and stay connected with us there. There's a lot of exciting things coming. So I'd love to hear from Kiki, her thoughts.

La— 'cause I know we're probably about to blink off. I apologize for that. Yes, email issues. Final thoughts, own your story. Own your story, own your identity, own your unique path towards entrepreneurship. I know from Marianne, for Jean, and for myself, and for Rachel, we all have walked journeys that nobody else can speak to. We all have surmounted challenges that nobody else has. And I think my strength, my personal strength is in my story and in my journey. So own your story, own your journey, be yourself. You don't need to be anybody else.

Be yourself. That's fantastic advice, and I think everyone's going to leave the call today. I've had my first— the first virtual standing ovation I saw today in the chat. So that's awesome. And I think founders are leaving feeling really excited. So I want to thank each and every one of you for your time. You're amazing, smart, awesome, leading women in this world. And I'm so excited to spend an hour with you and to get a chance to ask questions. So thank you everyone for your time. Have a wonderful—

you— thank you, this is awesome. Bye y'all.