Funding Your Startup Without VC: Lessons from Luca Albertinazzi

First question I have is, you know, you've raised over $400,000 without taking traditional VC route. You, you talked a little bit about your experience. Can you give us a high-level overview of how you did it and what are your thoughts about being bootstrapped? You just mentioned you're bootstrapping your side hustle until you're ready to raise funding. Uh, you know, whatever you're comfortable talking about, please do share with us.

Yeah, 100%. So the first thing is like I think like as an early-stage founder, if you're at the idea stage, try to do the best you can to build a team so you can build your MVP internally, not needing funding, not needing like, you know, to pay a software development company, or if you do that, do it in exchange for equity. But I would say that you You should bootstrap as much as you can. And of course, that's different from the different industries. So, and different contexts, different backgrounds, different people around the world. Not everyone have access to the same resources, but do the best you can so you can reach, at least have a strong pitch deck with a lot of validations, with a lot of potential customers, users, et cetera, before you even think about raising money, because that will make your life easier.

What's up everyone, how's it going? My name is Ehan Isaacs, I'm the head of growth for the Founder Institute. Uh, we've got an exciting session, uh, today. It's one of our AMAs around fundraising. We have an amazing guest speaker, his name is Luca. I'll give an intro to him shortly, or he'll self-introduce himself in a minute here. If this is the first time, um, you've joined one of our webinars, we do this quite often. Thank you so much for taking the time out and out of your day or evening or late night, wherever you're in from. We had about 380 to 400 people— I don't remember the stats off the top of my head— uh, register for this event. We have 98 people live. We'll see a lot more people trickle in. I expect about 120 or so. Uh, it should be a fun event. Uh, we're gonna be doing this as a very interactive event. I'll start off by asking Luca a few questions followed by taking your questions from the audience. So let me tell you a little bit about this platform. It's known as Airmeet. It's a bit different than other platforms out there, so I just want to make sure we do some housekeeping. So on the right-hand side, if you're on desktop or laptop or iPad, there's a message bubble or a messaging thing. Please write in where you're calling in from today. I see Portugal, Morocco, Ireland, Worklaw, Romania, Texas, Barça, Copenhagen, Zurich. I'm based out of Dubai, UAE. Luca is based out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. So we have a very international audience. We're looking forward today to everyone. And underneath the chat icon, you can see there's a Q&A button, right? So Lily has already asked the first question. Yes, Lily, you will receive the replay within 48 hours. We'll publish it also on YouTube. But on the Q&A button, please, please, please put your questions there for Luca. As you know, today we're talking about everything fundraising. Luca is very experienced in this. So like just drop in whatever questions you want. I'm gonna ask him the first 3 questions to kind of get the ball rolling. You know, that should burn about 7, 8 minutes. And then I want to do about 30, 40 minutes of just taking your questions. So please use this Q&A function. To feed me your questions, vote other people's questions as well. And at the bottom of your screen, if there's anything that Luca is saying that resonates, you can give a thumbs up, heart emoji, cool emoji, wow, whichever. All right, I think we are there. What I'm also going to do is I want to bring up a poll and let me do that now. So everyone on their screen should be able to see a poll. We have 128 people live. I'm going to leave the poll open. But I want to know what type of company are you guys at, and I think this will help Luca formulate his responses. Are you idea? Are you still at the very early stages? Are you in the midst of launching your MVP? Are you post-MVP, right? So let us know. I don't know, Luca, can you see these results right now?

Yeah, I can see them, and I just voted too.

Uh, okay, perfect. So it seems like we have a mix, mainly idea stage, but we have a close contender of MVPs. Oh, it's getting, it's getting close. So 50, 40, 10 is what we're looking at. So hopefully that's helpful for you, Luca. All right, without further ado, maybe Luca, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, Startup Grind, Bevy, everything? Maybe, uh, let's give an odd— tell the audience who you are, and then I'm gonna start, start with my first question then.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, and thank you everyone for being here. I really appreciate it. Founder Institute is great, and I have been in relationship with you guys for a long time. My name is Luca Albertinazzi. I was born in Venezuela, but 8, 9 years ago, I left the country pursuing my startup dreams. And since that, in the last 8 years, I have been able to do a lot of things in the startup world as an entrepreneur, as a founder, as an angel investor, as even working for another startups and so on. And just to make the long story short, I have created a few startups in the past. I have raised some money from angels, from government grants, from clients, and also I have been able to fund some of my own ventures. But so far, like the most successful venture that I created was called QuickyPay, which is a B2B online payment gateway I specialized in cross-border solutions that we took from one country in Chile to like 6, 7 countries in Latin America. And also because, you know, like this founder life is not easy. I was— our startup grew a lot, but I started getting like, you know, like being massively tired and unhappy because I was being successful, but I had to work a lot and my health was on the— under the surface, you know, on the edge. So basically I decided like I should give like a pause to the founder life and I decided to jump into working into a bigger startup that could give me more knowledge, more skills, and more networking. So that's how I got into first Startup Grind, which I led it in Chile. From 2020 to 2023. And then thanks to that, I got into Bevy, which is a community software platform. And the founders of Bevy are like the owners of Startup Grind and some other companies that they have acquired. And furthermore, like, Bevy is basically a software as a service, as you said, for community building that enterprise organizations in the world are using, like Google, Twitch, um, Meta, Atlassian, Salesforce, Hotspot, all these big tech companies in the industry use our white label solution for community building. And that's have been my background in this last few years, the last 3 years actually, and it's been great. It's like my first time working for other company or for some other organization, but it's been a great experience. And also right now, as a side hustle, I'm building my startup. I already built the MVP. I'm in validation mode trying to bootstrap, uh, until getting sales so I can be attractive to investors. So yes, that's basically the, the long story done short. A lot going on, Luca.

Really rooting for you, uh, I'm really excited to kind of get this, um, conversation going. So like I said to everyone, uh, the reason I like using the Q&A section in Airmeet is because I can do something like this now. So I can literally bring up the questions so everybody can see what I want to ask you. So, uh, the first question I have is, you know, you've raised over $400,000 without taking traditional VC route. You, you talked a little bit about your experience. Can you give us a high-level overview of how you did it and what are your thoughts about being bootstrapped? You just mentioned you're bootstrapping your side hustle until you're ready to raise funding. You know, whatever you're comfortable talking about, please do share with us.

Yeah, no, 100%. So the first thing is like, um, I think like as an early-stage founder, if you're at this stage, um, try to do the best you can to build a team so you can build your MVP internally, not needing funding, not needing like, um, to pay a software development company, or if you do that, do it in exchange of equity. But I would say that you should bootstrap as much as you can. And of course, that's different from the different industries, and different contexts, different backgrounds, different people around the world. Not everyone have access to the same resources, but do the best you can so you can reach at least have a strong pitch deck with a lot of validations with a lot of potential customers, users, etc., before you even think about raising money because that will make your life easier. And in my case, I have never been successful on raising money from VCs. It's not that I tried much, but I just learned and used my creativity to be able to finance my own projects in a way that I don't have to sell a lot of equity, or I don't have— sometimes you think that you have this idea and this MVP and you have like 10,000 users and you say like, oh, I should raise money from the VCs. And then you get $2, $3, $4 million and then you get trapped in 3 years and something's not working. And that's, I can guarantee you, that's not quality of life. Like you can ask to whoever has been through that, this is a really hard way to, to go. But my first fundraise was actually, we did like family, friends, and, yeah, family, friends, and fools around with the second startup I built. Actually, let's talk about my first startup. In my first startup, we didn't have money. We were in Venezuela. We have like 1 megabyte internet, which is crazy. And we were building this game, and we didn't have resources. So we decided as a team to invest into a Freelance.com account. And the first way we financed our own project is we start working for other people doing freelancing jobs. And what we will do is 60% of the earnings will go to be able to finance our own project, and 40% will— it was split between the people doing the work so we can get some money. And that way, in things like 3, 6 months, sorry, we have the MVP, we have the game, we get traction, we finance ourselves. So that's a way you can do it. It's just using creativity. You don't have the money right now, you don't know angel investors, you don't have the network, there are many things you can do. In the second startup, I partnered with an American from San Diego, California. He was living in Chile, I was living in Argentina. And he pitched me this idea he had. But he told me like, "Luca, I can give you a roof, I can give you food, and I can give you a bicycle, and we have 6 months to make something happen so we can be attractive for investors. But let's try to raise from my family, your family, etc." So we basically pitched all our uncles, like cousins, like grandmothers, like all the family from him and myself. And at the end, I remember that we raised like almost $10,000 US dollars. And in Chile, in Latin America, you know, you can survive without like 6 months if you use it correctly, right? And only riding bikes, etc. So that's another way you can do it. So you can validate from 0 to 1, uh, if— sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, I just want to jump in here. Can you just tell the audience, are you an engineer, software developer, are you a marketer? Just tell them your background because Yeah, I forgot that. That might be helpful as well because $10,000, 6 months, like, are you building stuff? Are you talking to customers?

Like, what are you doing in that? Yeah, so my background, I think economics. Uh, I have economics degree from, uh, my university in Venezuela called Universidad de los Andes, but I actually developed, uh, or I actually, um, focus on my Sales and marketing skills. That's what I did after getting my degree, and that's my background. That's what I do— marketing and sales, basically. But of course, like, being a founder, I learned validations, go-to-market strategy, uh, and everything you need to know in the early stages so you can go from zero to one. I have never been— I, I learned some basic of software development, product, and more, but I have never been the founder coding or anything.

Yeah, okay, cool. No, that, that's helpful to know. Um, sorry I interrupted you. You were talking a little bit about, you know, the early days where, uh, you, you raised— you start up one, you did yourself, startup two you did with another individual, you and your buddy reached out to a bunch of your family members, raised $10,000 US. Is there anything else you want to tell about the genesis of Luka or the early days?

Yeah, no, So in those early days, those family and friends around helped us to have a window or oxygen of 6 months so we can go from zero to one. And we had someone in the team, in the founding team, who built like a basically a— I don't even know if it was an MVP, but it was a working prototype. And with that working prototype, we didn't have enough money to market or to do ads or whatever. So we basically, we were solving a problem for university students and no university wanted us to be inside the universities, you know, like, and, but we had to make a decision whether we find a way or, you know, we're dead. So no funding, no money, etc. We start like dressing like students and getting into every university and we got like 2,000 downloads from our app. Just doing that in 2, 3 weeks. And that called attention. First, it was everything happening simultaneously. We found an angel investor that was interested with the traction we got with the less, you know, the few resources we have. But also we start applying to all these like grant opportunities that you can find in Chile. Chile is great for early-stage startups because you have a lot of equity-free grants from Startup Chile, Santiago Innova, Imagine Lab, like a lot of incubators and accelerators that will give you between $10K to $30K to $50K depending on the program and so on. So we got accepted to a couple of them and it was basically because we actually figured out a way to go from zero to one and we proved that we had some value as a team. We were able to solve a real problem and have strong validations and make things, things happen without a lot of money. I think that was the attractive part from us. And of course, like, it's different for everyone, but I believe that by sharing my experience, you can see, like, we went from nothing to something with just little money. It's not too much. Now, $10,000 can be a lot of money in some context, right? Not everyone is able to raise $10,000 from family, friends, and fools. So if you don't have that, try to find someone You know, like in my case, I'm from Venezuela, I was living in Chile, I needed to have a roof. But if you're in your own country and you can live in your parents' house, just live there, find someone who is doing the same, right? And they can build the MVP for you and you just work like crazy so you can go into a place. And then when you have funding, revenue, etc., you can jump into having your own apartment and stuff like that, if you can.

So yeah, revenue is king. I think it's, uh, especially now, like, it's just for dates. Like, when was this?

Like, what year was this when you had to I'm talking about, yeah, between 2018— between the end of 2017 to the end of 2018, everything I just met.

Yeah, this was a while ago. Just for context, everyone, 2017, 2018, I remember I was trying to build a marketplace at that time. To launch a simple marketplace was something like 3 months of dev time at minimum to get a crappy looking marketplace out. Today you can do that in 30 seconds using AI or using a white label marketplace solution like Sharetribe or any of that type of stuff, right? Because there's so many products out there. So the takeaway here is if you're focusing on product development, it's like, you know, you can launch products pretty fast. You need to focus on getting to revenue and generating that early traction metrics sooner than later. Okay, I'm gonna ask my second question, then we can probably, uh, jump into, uh, I would say some audience questions. Hey, I'll bring up on stage. So, and sorry for the audience, like go into the Q&A, upvote the questions, that will help me filter and then obviously add your stuff. What's the most accessible types of alternative funding for first-time founders and where should they start here, Luca? You talked a little bit about grants and a lot of the stuff that you did in the early days, Can we double-click on that and go a bit deeper and just like, yeah, let's talk, just let me hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, and I will come back to the previous question around the bootstrap. Like again, if you can bootstrap, just do it. Like, you know, having control over your company and having the opportunity to be able to, you know, like, to make this happen without external money, I think it's going to make you more attractive for investors in the future if you need it at one time. But I will say that I understand that not everyone can bootstrap, but again, if you can do it or if you are in the process where you think you need money, you can— there are so many opportunities out there so you can build an MVP. And it's so easy today, right? With the AI and everything available, like, I mean, like, again, in 2017 was a mess. You needed someone who, you know, had the skills to develop and things. I mean, it was crazy. But if you really are in a state where you actually need the money, because depending on your industry, your product type, or the validations you have, you really need some cash, I think, like, you need to try to find like early stage or, yeah, early stage, whether incubators, acceleration programs, or equity-free grants. It depends of, you know, like if in the country you live, not every country have like strong programs where they're going to give you $50K for zero equity. But I believe that you have to try to find a way. Now, acceleration programs and incubators, I will try to go for them if you're very new as a founder, right? Like if you haven't tried before building a startup and you have never been part of an acceleration program, incubation program, and you are right now in the process of building your startup, building your MVP or whatever, I think it's a great route for you. Why? Because they're going to guide you, they're going to, you know, like give you money, and they're going to put you in touch with contacts. But if you are a much more mature founder and you're still, you're starting again and you are going from zero to one, I wouldn't go for the acceleration program route or incubator. Because if you already have that experience, you already understand what are the challenges and you already have the network, I think you should focus to just go and sell, sell, sell everything you can and start building relationships with angel investors and maybe getting some equity-free grants in your country if you have them. But for example, Startup Chile, doesn't matter where you're from, you can right now go and apply to the programs. And if you get rejected the first time, it's very likely that you will get accepted the second time or the third time. Because they just have to invest a lot of money every year, they're obligated to do it. So it's not like, um, um, YC or these other acceleration programs that are more picky and they have limited resources. Chile doesn't have enough entrepreneurs applying for this, for these resources. So I believe that from wherever you are in the world, you have a really good chance to get the funding if you have a good deck, if you have good validations, if you have a good idea, if you have a good team, of course. But I would say that for early stage startups, go that route. I don't have experience, okay, I go to an incubation program or acceleration program, I do the best to be there, but I need to— you need to validate, you need to have something, not just like, oh, I had this idea that if I create this AI that does this A, B, C, D, F, I'm going to be very successful and you go to acceleration program and just fill the form and you're going to be all good. No, you need to have validations, you need to have something built before you even are attractive for some of these incubators and acceleration programs. And also every year more people are trying to go the startup route So, you know, like the market is going crazy, like everyone wants to build their own startup. So, um, it's quite complicated. And the other route, like again, bootstrap, build relationships with angel investors, try to raise your family and friends if you can so you can have some oxygen, but be as lean as you can until you get revenue or funding.

Yeah, I know this is super helpful. I'm gonna see if I can I'll put a link here. I need to find the article, I'll try to add it later. But there's a lot of companies doing something called seed strapping, where they're just trying to raise their first $100K to $200K from family and friends to get to a certain milestone. Back in the day, the milestone was, hey, let's get to MVP, get some pilots going, and then use that as a validation mechanism with our potential investors. The reality is, in 2025, the landscape has changed dramatically. What you need to do is build product, and fundamentally, if your product is not good enough, you're not gonna be getting customers. Build product, get your traction metrics, then go to your investor or potential investors. The conversation will change because as of now, in 2025, there's a ridiculous amount of competitors and products out there. Investors can be picky, and if you wanna, kind of stand out. You either stand out by your personal acumen, like, hey, I'm a PhD person in genetics and I'm the only person who can do this, invest in me. So, which, which does happen. Or I'm a repeat founder, I've sold my last 2, 3 businesses, invest in me again, right? Um, that's in the rare exception. Uh, for the vast majority of you, you need to go and get your at least some form of traction, get to $1,000 in MRR because that's validation. You've sold your product to at least 50, 60 people, you have organic growth. Product development nowadays makes it super affordable to do all of this stuff at like a, for a few hundred dollars a month, right? Where back in the day, this whole setup would cost you thousands of dollars per month. I think the landscape here has changed significantly, and I would do what Luca is saying, where it's go and like just use GPT and be like, hey, what are some of these, uh, non-dilutive or equity options within my region, within my, uh, within my country? There's a lot of economic development opportunities, right? So he mentioned the one with Startup Chile. You know, I'm based in Dubai. There's a bunch of programs here for individuals who live here, international people. So you just need to do the research. And now with AI, like, it's— you're like 2, 3 prompts away from identifying that, right? I thought that'd be helpful. Okay, folks, I want to switch it over to audience Q&A. Let's do about 20 minutes of audience Q&A, then we'll break out for networking because I'm sure some of you want to have some time, uh, on the tables with Luca. Uh, all right, so if you guys can just go into Q&A, start dumping some questions in that, and then start upvoting. I'm gonna be picking, uh, them out. I'm gonna put up this question first from Seth, all the way from Atlanta. What's up, Seth? Uh, Luca, so Seth's asking, how do you write out contracts or agreements when you have multiple non-traditional investors? Can you also talk about when you're getting grants and all of this type of stuff, like, um, they don't affect the cap table, but like, what is the paperwork involved in that? Like, do you receive the money right away? Is there milestones you need to achieve? Maybe talk about But what are your deliverables also on that, just so the audience is aware that it's— this is, this is free money, but you still have to work for it.

Yeah, yeah, again, yeah, yeah, again, that's why I also say like, if you don't need the money, I mean, just don't do it for fun, because asking money to the government is a mess, it's a pain, it's a lot of bureaucracy. But starting by how to build the the contracts, et cetera, I'm not the right person to answer that because I hate the bureaucracy part and I always had a partner who took care of that part. But I can tell you that you have tools like Rocket Money, Rocket Lawyer right now that they help you and they give you a lot of templates and they give you a lot of like advice, very cheap compared with, you know, paying a lawyer. But also it depends on where are you from, where you're building your startup. I don't know if they have different contracts and templates and advice from different countries. But yes, there are many tools out there that can help you. And the other things, like if you have the money and you have the resources and you're raising from investors, you need a lawyer. Just get a lawyer. And there are many lawyer firms or just lawyers that they have their special plan for startups and they're cheaper because they understand the situation. But into the grants, I will tell you this. I raised 3 grants in Chile and they basically had almost the same process. First, you need to do the application and during the application, you know, like you fill the form and they filter the— they do the first filter from the application. Then you have to pitch. And after you pitch, you have to pitch again until you go to the last pitch. In front of the decision makers and you're competing with, depending, Startup Chile was competing like 100, but in some others I was competing with 5. Okay, it was different for each case. Then you get accepted, great. They will send you a huge amount of papers that you have to read and everything, and that includes everything like the type of incorporation you need to have, okay. They will usually, this organization helps you to open bank accounts in specific banks. Because so you can get the money. Sometimes when you are not local from Chile, you're not Chilean, you need to open a bank account, but the system per se is not going to allow you to have a bank account easier. So they will help you to open this bank account so you can put the money there. But they don't give you the money until you comply for a certain level of stuff. And then if they give you the money, they will give you whether— in Startup Chile, I received the money in two waves. But in Santiago Innova, which was an accelerator incubator program, we got the money like 6th wave. So before getting the next wave of money, you need to like report how you use the money, how you're spending the money, why you're spending the money this way, uh, what are the expectations of that transaction, whether it's marketing, ads, software development, whatever it is. So you need to report all of that, and you need to send their report 1 week before, 2 weeks before the deadline, and they will come back to you with usually in the incubation program, it was a lot, a lot of like back and forth. So it took a lot of time. Sometimes I was spending more time trying to report to this incubator in order to get my next wave of money. So I actually wasn't able to focus the way I wanted into my company. But in Startup Chile, it was easier. So it's just waves, you have to give them a plan in advance. This is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to spend the money, and until the second wave. In the period from zero to the first to the second wave, you need to change the way you're going to spend the money. You need to contact your POC in Startup Chile. You need to do like application, explain why you want to change and make it, you know, like I spend the money differently, why the changes, where is the expectation. So a lot of bureaucracy there so you can get approval. And then for the— before the second wave, uh, of course you need to present everything, like every single detail. Not only like how I spend the money, right? I spend the money for this, not invoices, uh, you know, like bank, uh, bank statements, everything. Yeah, yeah, but prove it, prove everything.

Um, sorry, I'm just jumping in here. The reason I wanted Luca to go into this, folks, is that I think this type of funding is good, but you cannot be reliant on it. As Luca mentioned, you don't get the money right away. You might get it on waves. You might get it net 30, net 50, net 60, after you provide all the documentation to support it. So to me, it's always supplementary income, not primary income, right?

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so I just want to add to that, Luca.

Yeah, just do it if you really need it because it's a lot of time, a lot of energy. If you really need it and you have a lot of passion what you're doing and you really want to go through that, do it. But otherwise, I'm building my startup right now. I could apply for different programs. I'm just not doing it. I prefer to finance this myself because at the end, also, $30K is not a lot of money, right? How much you can do with $30K in 6 months, 8 months, and having to spend all the time? Better find a job, a remote job from the US, make $150,000 per year, and put 80% of that in your company. Live like as simpler as you can, and that's a better way to finance that. That's what I'm doing right now, but I have the experience. I already went through a lot of challenges and a lot of problems in order to understand that that's more scalable for me at least. So yeah.

Yeah, like, so just 'cause since the title of this event is about fundraising path, What would you like, I'm gonna ask my own question and then we'll get back to audience question, but like, yeah, you know, take a step as like a startup founder, you know, they might be doing this as a side hustle, very similar to you, but if you have to really summarize this fundraising path, what would it look like? Would you start, it sounds like, like let's start bootstrap until we get our metrics and like then what, would you go for the VC round or any angel or like? What's your thinking here? Or would you just be forever bootstrapped?

It depends. It depends. I mean, it's hard to have one answer for that question, but what I can tell you, let's say that I have 3 other founders. I have the technical guy, I have the design guy, I'm the commercial guy, and I have someone in marketing or commercial operations, whatever that is. That's an ideal case for a founding team, right? If I have 4 people that is putting time onto this, I have time to divide the work and everyone can do different stuff. Like, and I will start bootstrap because our CTO can build the prototype while I'm validating the prototypes with potential user customers or whatever it is. And I'm talking about software, AI, or stuff like that. There is no hard tech or it's not health tech. It doesn't require anything specific. Because in those industries it's different. But then you have the COO. So the CEO could spend half of his time going out there and start building the relationship with investors. And how you build relationship with investors? It's very, I mean, it's very easy. Don't go and ask only for money, ask for advice. And once they give you like the, you know, like the advice or they have their conversation with you about your startup or whatever it is, Don't forget about them. Keep writing them every month, not only to pitch your startup, you know, just write him about happy birthday, man. I think you're great. Like congrats, have a good time. I mean, I have been building relationships since 2017 and I still send like happy birthdays or like congratulations for this or whatever to every single investor I have met. So it's taken me 8 years to build relationships with investors. Right now. And right now I'm not even wanting to reach out to them because I still don't have the traction so they can trust me, right? So, but I would say that start with your founding team, divide the specific roles, and whoever is good on building relationships in your team, ask them to start building relationships with investors. Because investors also will give you the context. How's the market going? Why they invest? When they invest? right? Where are the industries, etc.? You can learn a lot from them. It's a very well— is it a really good investment of your time? If you're not going to this, you know, like if you're going to these VC guys that are just graduated from Harvard and they're starting, they're not going to give you good feedback. But try to build the relationship with the one that have been in the fund from the early days. They have invested and have lost their money. And so on. That, that's my, my advice. But bootstrap, build everything you can, make money without the money, and parallel start building relationships. That's what I'm doing right now, and that's what I recommend other people to do it. But I know that we have, what, 163 people here. Everyone have different context and realities and industry, industries and products and ideas, so maybe different for some other people.

Awesome. We're at 34 minutes. I'm going to bring up some questions. Give the quickest piece of answer you can if possible, and then we can break for networking. Let's try to do a few over the next 5 to 8 minutes. Emilia from Hamburg is asking, she's building a mental health platform. Obviously a big market here, um, looking to alternatives to VC funding. What are your thoughts? Where should she— where should she go? I'm assuming she's ideation stage, uh, since she's asking this question, but it's going to be a mission-first company. Well, what are your thoughts? Or could—

I don't understand the question. So it's— she's basically building an AI-powered AR visualized mental health solution. Yeah, have a huge market and revenue, that's great. Okay, however, um, I don't know, like the mission first thing, what it— I mean, what do you believe? It's like she thinks that that can be like a— if she goes for the fundraise, she's not going to be mission first anymore. That's what she's trying to say.

I think she's trying to say is like she wants to do Yeah, I see where you watch. I guess she wants to onboard the right investors. Where should she— where should she begin is where— the way I would interpret this.

Uh, yeah, I, I will go for digital health investors, early stage investors, pre-seed, seed— no, pre-seed, because if you don't have the MVP, go pre-seed and start having conversation with that. How you can know, uh, where are these, um, digital health or health investors, there are so many lists out there. Like, you can find a lot of resources. There are a lot of websites that actually they filter. I don't remember the names right now, but you can even go to Founder— no, how's the name— Foundersuite as well. That's something that may help. And you have some other new platforms, uh, that are using AI to help you connect with investors. And just focus in your industry. That's important. I mean, if someone is not focused in your industry, don't spend time on that. But I believe, like, start building the relationships right now. Don't have expectations that you will raise in the next 6 months. But if you start building these relationships, also make sure that you have some advancement through time so you can send them the newsletters to the investor and see that you are the guy working very hard for this.

So, um, what I would do is— I tell this to a lot of the founders I coach— is like, if you're in a special space like health tech, you're probably a subject matter expert. Go and build partnerships, or go and build your advisory board with different university people and stuff. Amelia, I see your second half of the thing. You, you want to get investors who believe in the mission. You're looking at the angel side. Go and speak to a bunch of angels. Who will believe you, believe in you as a founder rather than in the solution. They just like you as an individual. They know you, you have the potential to solve this problem. They're going to write a $5,000 to $10,000 check to you and then be like, hey, if it comes back, great. If not, that's fine. We believe in Amelia. She's going to go and do some great things, right? I would approach, take— but then that's anyone in the audience here, like Generally, at the earliest stages, if you need the money, you're raising it from people who will believe in you as an individual, or they believe in the, in the industry, right? So in the case of health tech, go and find other researchers, doctors, or whoever that it's relevant for, right? Um, so just like, and that's including like mental health, like go find mental health advocates, mental health organizations that really care about this and be like, hey, do you want to come in on this? And we'll figure out the terms later, right? Um, okay, cool. Let's do a couple more and then we'll wrap up, um, uh, for networking. Uh, where's the— I saw something here about no-code. So James from Philly is asking, what's your take on no-code, low-code during the MVP stage, Luca?

So basically using these tools so you can build your MVP? Yes, probably. That's I look, I remember I have a friend, the startup is no longer active, but I remember they raised the first round by just using Airtable. Um, like literally Airtable. They had a, they had a like a, um, digital health startup and they were introducing like, uh, remember it was like actually they were part of Founder Institute. But using VR for enterprise organizations so people can do mindfulness and meditation techniques to decrease the stress. And they didn't have money. I mean, they spent all the money on buying the devices, right? But now they didn't have money to, or the team to build the website and all the stuff. So they connected everything through Airtable and they raised money with that. So I think like, If you can build a prototype with some of these tools that helps you solve the problem and show traction, do it, go for it. Like, it all depends on your context, but if you don't have a CTO who can build technology— and to be honest, most of the mentors today and most of the founders that have raised money, have sold their companies, they will tell you like, guys, don't build the technology unless you're really sure that people need it. Try to find a way to solve it in another way. Like you don't need the technology. I have made that, I made that mistake with my first startup. We just spoke with a few people, everyone said they loved the idea, and then you build this technology and you spend a lot of time and energy on that, and then no one is willing to pay for it. Try to do, if you have a chance to use some of these tools that will actually help the potential user or customer to use it, to understand it, or to solve the problem for them, try it. I will do it. You know, like, I think it makes sense before going and spending, I don't know, like how long you need today to build a SaaS or something like that. But it's still resources, time, energy, you know.

Awesome. Uh, let me put up this, um, but Nakulash from Bangalore is asking, he's building an MVP in travel What would you suggest launching first to get the most amount of traction apart from Product Hunt? So over the last few— obviously you've done a lot of stuff with Startup Grind, you see a lot of platforms. Are there any good platforms for founders to go launch their products apart from Product Hunt, do you find?

Ah, that's a great question. Look, I have— I'm not too involved in the tourism or travel planning industry, not, not sure, but I can tell you that besides, uh, Product Hunt. There are many other platforms like Product Hunt that you can try and they're cheaper, but they're just not that stronger as Product Hunt. But I have tried Product Hunt in the past and unless you have the money to pay for that, it's really hard to get results. You need to be spending a lot of time and energy there. If you have it, go there. If you don't, you have other resources which, um, I know, hey, um, I can share with you, I have like a, like a 0 for 1 go-to-market for this type of situations where I can share all the sources that I know that will help you to, to kind of find the early stage users you need, uh, so they can test it out and give you feedback. But yes, there are many out there, like probably—

Yeah, for sure. Send me whatever. We're going to send a follow-up email in a couple days, so with the reporting to put it up on YouTube, so we can attach that. And then I've also put your LinkedIn so people can connect with you. And hope you remember your birthday, so they should reach out to you to wish you happy birthday. So you heard it here, folks, uh, reach out to Luca for his birthday. Uh, okay, let's do one more and then we can break out for networking. We still have about 160 people live, and then we'll, you know, but right, well, we should have some people stick around, uh, for Uh, for, for the networking portion, uh, so I like this question by Julia from Denmark. Um, how would you define good validation for your startup?

That's a, that's a great question.

And let me add something. B2B, can you answer and be one answer for B2B and the other one for B2C?

Okay, the first thing that I recommend everyone here is go and read a book called The Mom Test. That is actually a book that was written by a founder who was very shy, and he would just go after potential customers or users and ask them questions about like, would you use this? If I build it, would you pay for this? And everyone said yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. Of course, let's do it. And when he will have like the MVP ready, no one will ever use his platforms. The book is called Mom Test, like the mother test, but Mom Test. I'm writing it here. So basically he will teach you in the book how to do the right questions and the right amount of questions, usually open-ended questions, so you can actually learn what the people actually want, because it's hard. And you have different methods. Like, I remember there is one called the Toyota— I mean, like, Toyota had a strategy to take information out from people, and it's basically asking you the same question 5 times, so people get tired and the energy goes low. So now that is when they actually go and say what they want. So that book will help you with that, because that's the best way that your validations are accurate. So I would say quality of validation over quantity. Some people go like, I have 20,000 people that have registered for the waiting list. That's good as well, of course, a good number. I have done that in the past, but it's better if you have like, like 10 or 20 people that really like what you want to do and they really need it. So you can do like, uh, in the B2B space, so you can do a really strong validation, speak with people, open-ended questions, follow some structures and make sure that whatever you have in your head, you know, like you don't get attached to that. You know, you need to get attached to how people think they have their problem, how it should be solved. And that's a really strong validation, mostly for the B2B space, right? Because B2B is harder, then you have to invest more time and money and resources to build your technology. So don't build until you have really good validations. Um, also having letters of intent You know, that document where if I have this ready, MVP, based on our conversation, are you willing to test it for free and willing to pay if, you know, if I am able to do a good product, you like it and solve the problem? That type of things help. So when you go to investors, hey, I'm a B2B software company and I have like 10 potential customers, they signed this document that they committed to do the pilot and willing to pay if the pilot solves the problem. Boom, that's a way to validate B2B. B2C is quite different and many people use different approaches. In my case, it's just go and knock doors. Again, speak with people and ask the right questions. And again, if you can use some of these tools out there that can give you the opportunity to have a prototype or something and give you good information, great. But I wouldn't do B2B too different from the B2C because I believe the B2C is harder. Like, people believe that it's just putting apps there and everyone is going to download the application. No, it's not. Or the software or whatever you're doing. It's harder. You need a lot of money, time, resources. So you better have a good product before you go to the market. And how you have a good product? Validating, doing strong and real validations. And don't be shy. You need to speak out your idea as much as you can. No one will copy you. No one will try to copy you until you have like 40 million in fundraise and a bunch of clients. So don't even worry about that.

Awesome, thanks. I just threw in a couple links here, guys. If you look at the chat, one is, I don't know, I just Googled MomTest PDF and I got the first link there. And then the other one is a LinkedIn post by this guy called James Murphy who talks about seat strapping, which is a fairly new concept. Cool. Look, uh, I wish we had time to go through all of this stuff. I see a lot of the same questions here. Um, you know, we're gonna break out for networking, uh, for the last 10 minutes over here or so. Luca, thanks so much for joining us. I hope you had a good time and you found this insightful. I hope the audience has found this insightful. Um, before we wrap up here, uh, Luca, what's your one piece of advice for the founders on the call here? Maybe before we all wrap up here?

I will say, and I think many people are saying that today, but when I was starting, nobody told me this. It's like you need to fall in love in the problem, not your product. And that's the base of a startup founder. Like, if you really want to solve a problem, if you really see a problem, if the problem is real, don't get attached to whatever you have in your head. You need to validate and go out and try to to solve the real problem in the real way and the way that people actually care. So that's my first advice. And the second, just to get to finalize, try to bootstrap as much as you can because every single institution in the startup world, from incubators to VCs, have raised the bar, period. Like, there is no longer free tickets to get funding. You need to have validations, you need to have something, you need to show that you're someone willing to do stuff without the money. and the money should be raised when you actually need it. Most of us build startups that will never scale, so you probably don't need the money. Pay attention to those details and don't get attached to your point of views. That's my, my two advices that I will share with you guys.

Awesome, man, appreciate so much. Look, folks, uh, we're gonna wrap up now. We're gonna open up for networking. Uh, Luca will have a table, uh, and you should see that. And then yeah, like hopefully you can join us for more sessions in the few coming weeks. You'll get some of our emails on some of the upcoming sessions. Whenever you want, check out our events at fi.co/events. I'll just put it out there. And then also check out our YouTube channel, which has a bunch of content. This video will be uploaded there as well. Cool guys. Yeah.

And Sorry, before we leave, you have my LinkedIn there. If you have an early-stage startup, I'm in touch and I collaborate with different funds. Just reach me out, let's talk about it. I'm happy to help. I'm happy to connect you with the right early-stage funds. And I mean, I'm here to help whatever you need, guys, just reach me out on LinkedIn.

Yeah, perfect, appreciate that. I had it here, but then I, I don't know where it went. I think I clicked it and it went off, but I'm sure everyone can just find you. He has a very— Luca Albernetti, very on LinkedIn, and we can go from there. All right, cool, guys. I'm gonna end the session now, and then we'll break off for networking. Thanks, everyone.

Bye.