About Manny | Manny Fernandez

So let's give it up for Manny. Thank you. Thank you. I really want to give it up to you guys because you guys are— want to do something different, right? And you guys all have a dream and I want to show you kind of how to get that funded. Is that fair? Yeah. I heard Draper University students have the most energy. Is that right? Yeah. All right. So we're privileged to be here in Silicon Valley. I just want to say that in advance for the many people who are watching online. But we don't want to let the knowledge hidden within this room— don't you agree? Yes. So I'm going to say a few things that are going to be like, wow, did he really say that? Or, wow, I never heard that before. So what I want you to do is kind of take out your phone and let's tweet. So make sure people know about the great knowledge you'll get here today. In fact, someone came up to me earlier and said, "Well, how did you get 100,000 Twitter followers?" Let me show you how. How many people have a Twitter account? Raise your hand. Wow! Look at that. And who has it on the phone right now? You guys? All right. So take out your phone. What I'm going to do is you follow me today. I'll follow you back. The benefit is you can direct message me, and then you can pitch me your startup. Is that fair? Notice I gave you a reason why. What's in it for you? Throughout this presentation, you're gonna hear what's in it for the other person. As you're pitching investors, they're thinking about who? They're thinking about you? No. You? They could care less, right? They think about themselves each and every day. So you got to create your presentation in a story where they'll be interested in what you have to offer. Well, I'm gonna go through briefly my background only because Don't you agree it's important to know who's saying it versus what's being said? Yeah. Yeah? All right. So let me go through this briefly. Yeah? What's your Twitter handle? Oh, very good. What's my Twitter handle? Manny Fernandez. Manny Fernandez. Dream Funded. I'm going to give some good information. At the end of my talk, I'm going to give out some free things. If you have the answer to the question, you will get some things that are free. Like the gentleman in the back there, Jose from Startup Showcase. I've seen his events for over 30 months in a row when I'm here. I funded a few companies through his organization. If you guys are pitching and if you guys say the answer correctly, I'm going to give you a free shot to pitch. Is that fair? Yes. I want this to be an interactive talk. This is not me talking to you or talking to everyone. It's— I'm talking. Let's have a conversation. So if I say something like, I don't understand that, he spoke too fast, just jump in there. Is that okay? Sure. Because I'm actually trying to talk to each one of you. This is a conversation. And this is no holds barred, meaning if there's something you really want to ask and it was kind of shy, you don't know if you should ask an investor that, now's the time. Okay. Who said okay? All right. All right. Boom. Okay. Briefly about myself, a serial entrepreneur. I'll go into more detail about the exit and about the angel group I created and how I was able to amass a few group of people, as well as how I created Dream Funded and the investors we have in Dream Funded and what's happening in May. of this year, as well as things that you heard about already. I'm fortunate that I've been on CNBC Squawk Box numerous times, a couple of times. It's important as an entrepreneur to understand how to do that because that greatly increased our sales. That helped also bring in new investors. We actually closed a round on our platform without pitching to angels and angel groups in a very short period of time. You'll hear about it in the media later on. So here's my Twitter handle. Make sure you follow that so we can continue the conversation. I started off early on in my 20s as a real estate investor, bought my first property, then at 23 created a real estate fund. What I learned from that experience was that many investors were running away from me until I learned, ask for advice. Maybe that's the first tip I can give today. Ask for advice of the investor. Don't pitch them. Then they'll slow down and listen to you. Second part of that is try to work with people that may have a shared passion in what you're doing. So think about who may know what you're doing and ask for advice and see if you can create a relationship with them and then present their opportunity. So way back when I was in real estate, but one thing I wanted to say later on in life as I came to Silicon Valley, No one cares about real estate money. So I had to reinvent myself. And so one of the things I did was I realized there's great leaders like, you know, Tim Draper here has been around for a long time. He had a couple generations of success behind him. So I can't compete against something like that. Don't you agree? I remember networking within Stanford and Palo Alto area and I keep hearing this name Tim Draper. But I always remembered there's never enough leaders. History has proven that. There's always enough followers. but never enough leaders. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a leader today. And you got to realize how to attract followers or supporters of your vision, which may be investors or team members. So— and you got to be able to do it in a simple story where you can just pitch someone in a simple sentence and see if they have any interest in, tell me more about that. You don't want to be real complex. If you're too complex, no one's caring. No one's listening. So you got to be— you got to practice this in advance. One sentence. So I remember I was telling people that the next Google is going to be found in San Francisco. I called many of my limited partners up and it was a very simple sentence. The next Google is going to be found in San Francisco. The next Google is going to be found in San Francisco. Well, I eventually talked with the right person. He said, interesting, you know, Let me connect you to a guy that actually invested early in Google. I said, wow, okay. So you got to think about your startup, about how do you present it in a sentence. And the second part of trying to raise money, going directly is okay, you may get lucky, but you want to think about how to gain access to the investor through a referral. There's kind of 2 ways of doing that. The best way is finding an entrepreneur that already raised money from them. Hopefully a successful entrepreneur. Hopefully one that made that investor money. So you reach out to the entrepreneur and say, hey, you know, I'm working on this. What's your thoughts? What's your advice? See if you can gain a friendship. And then maybe they can refer you to the investor. That is the best way that we've seen opportunities through our angel group. Just applying out of the blue and pitching somewhere, it's really hard to get real investment that way. It's possible, but it really comes through a network. It's all relationship. Do you have anyone have an idea why that's important, a referral versus going directly? Trust. Trust. Anyone else? Good people know good people. Good people know good people. Credibility. Credibility. So in my era, it was You had to study who knows who. There was no LinkedIn. Wow. There was no AngelList. So now it's easiest than ever before. You can type in a name on LinkedIn, figure out who they may know. Does that make sense? So one of the things I did was I went to this event. It was put on by PricewaterhouseCoopers. I wasn't going to go. A couple of people were suggesting I go. It was an event called Money Tree. And in that event, they talked about San Francisco being a new epicenter of Silicon Valley. And in my mind, I said, oh, huh, there's an opportunity there to be a part of an angel group in San Francisco. So I went back, I went home and I kind of Googled and I said, SF Angels, I want to join that group. There wasn't a group. I was like, wow, why isn't there a group in San Francisco? Then I heard about this other group that charged entrepreneurs $6,000 to present. And I said, that doesn't sound right to me. Does that sound right to you? No. I mean, we're trying to raise money. We don't have money. If we had money, why would we be presenting? So I said, well, maybe there's an opportunity of creating the opposite, a group that allows startups to present for free. And so this was the model where there's more money that is currently being funded in San Francisco than any other part of the world. So I decided to lead that through a group called SF Angels. Fortunate that through my network, able to add people, an early investor in Google, PayPal, former partner Ron Conway, angel members of other Silicon Valley groups, and fortunate that we funded over $17 million over very close to 3 years. Through that experience, I was able to go out and promote the group because I have to let entrepreneurs know, like, here, we're looking for investments. So as a frequent judge, panelist, and speaker, what I found is, you know, many great promising entrepreneurs But at the same time, I found many investors say, hey, you know, maybe you guys will find the next Google. I don't know how they found that out, that we had someone that was part of Google early on in our platform. And maybe, you know, we can co-invest together. Maybe, you know, you can be part somehow working together. So I kind of got their business cards and I kind of saved them and I said, you know, maybe. Okay. Then one day I started thinking about what's going on with crowdfunding. Ever heard of Kickstarter? Yes. And I said, wow, what if I could take Kickstarter and make it such a way where investors that are not located in San Francisco could co-invest with many of the smart minds in this room to be able to fund the next startups instead of everyone waiting on, say, Tim Draper's money? Anyone got Tim Draper's money yet? How many people will? Raise your hand. Should be everyone's hand go up, right? So here's a couple of things I've done. A first investor in RealtyShares, one of the leaders in real estate crowdfunding, as well as an investor in a company called Investore, one of the leaders in Europe. Now, how do I fund a company in Europe? What's funny is they came and pitched at Startup Showcase and the relationship started and then later I made an investment. So, Tim, you mentioned that you're a big believer in the power of community.