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Friends & Family Round to 1st Check - Courtney Brand, Founder of TheLightHouse - Startup Fundraising

Name: Friends & Family Round to 1st Check - Courtney Brand, Founder of TheLightHouse - Startup Fundraising
Uploaded: 2020-08-14T00:09:07+00:00
Duration: 1 min 20 s
Channel: Royston G King
Description: In this interview segment, Courtney Brand recounts how she secured her startup's first friends‑and‑family investment immediately after graduating from…

14 Aug 2020 · 1 min

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1:20

In this interview segment, Courtney Brand recounts how she secured her startup's first friends‑and‑family investment immediately after graduating from the Founder Institute (FI). She explains that the validation and mentorship received during FI gave her confidence to accept personal checks, especially as her own savings were depleting after a year of bootstrapping. At the FI graduation ceremony, she delivered a short public pitch; a woman in the audience connected with the concept, followed up over coffee and a phone call, and eventually wrote the first external check. Brand emphasizes how this unexpected investment from a stranger reinforced her belief that the business could attract capital beyond her immediate network, linking the FI experience directly to her early fundraising success.

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We had— we raised our friends and family round right after graduating from FI. And I think in my case, it took a lot of the validation that we did while we were in FI to be like, yes, I feel comfortable accepting checks from people that are literally writing from their own personal bank accounts, which was a big deal in my perspective. I'd never done that before. And actually, even before accepting, I knew it was something I had to do because I was running out of my own savings to bootstrap the company, which we'd done for a year. But in addition to that, at the end of FI, you present, and there's usually a graduation ceremony, and you do a 3-minute pitch or 5-minute pitch. And actually, at that event, it's open to the public, a woman came, came up to me after the event, loved the concept, totally resonated with her, and she actually ended up writing our first check. And that to me was— and it didn't happen on the spot, right? Like we had probably, 2 coffees, maybe a coffee, maybe a lunch, then a phone call. Like, and I sent her a ton of material in addition. Like, it doesn't happen right away, but the fact that a perfect stranger was willing to invest in the company, the concept, and me gave me a ton of confidence in, okay, there's, you know, this isn't just a friend or family writing a check. So wanted to share that 'cause I think that it's a very clear, like, clear line link between FI and getting our first check.