TBC: Focus on What Matters

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Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the Back Channel. You know, one of my favorite things about talking about fundraising and encouragement that makes. Founders better at fundraising is that for the most part, things that will make you better at fundraising make you more influential. When it comes to talking to investors are generally things that will make you a better operator, make you run a better startup for the most part, because investors like to see great companies, they like to see great founders, so the things that they want to invest in generally signal a better company and a better founder.

Uh, a generic piece of advice that I'll focus today's episode on is this idea of focusing on the right things. Far too often, I think founders will run down different paths, get distracted by different things, and sometimes not be sure of what they should be working on in general, but [00:01:00] also things that investors would be excited about.

So if you can focus on the right things. This can generally push your company into a better place and also get investors more excited to talk to you. I'll give you a backstory on this. The reason I was thinking about this is because of a founder that I met while running one of my morning events.

Dawn Patrol. I'll bring founders and investors together from 8:00 AM to about 11:00 AM on a weekday morning to grab coffee, to interact, to meet each other in a guided fashion. And in these sessions, I'm able to meet a bunch of founders, talk to them quickly and get a read on what they're doing. I happened to talk to a founder who was running a very interesting business, had something unique about what he was working on, something at least that I hadn't heard a ton about.

He was also able to demonstrate a lot of knowledge, a lot of insights. He was able to make me believe that he had an edge, you know, he worked in a space [00:02:00] beforehand, And started getting signal from customers that they would be interested in spending more time with him and buying a product that he built.

It was in the robotics space. It was overall really interesting. Halfway through the conversation, I realized that he hadn't said what the company's name was and I wanted to look it up. I wanted to maybe see if there was anything online about it. So I asked him, oh, you haven't said yet. What? What's the company's name?

And he kinda smiled and he was like, you know. We've been building product, uh, we've been talking to customers. We actually don't have a name yet. And that was maybe a throwaway comment and he was a little bit sheepish when, when saying that, but man, I thought that was one of the coolest things he had told me.

He had told me all this work, uh, in engineering that he had done. He had told me about the previous companies where he had spent time in robotics. And maybe more interesting to me was the fact that he said, you know, we don't really have a name. It's not something that we're concerned about right now. The reason I have such a strong [00:03:00] reaction to this is because I think so many founders focus on the superficial things too early.

The things that don't really move the needle but feel like they're playing startup.

There are a ton of easy to make mistakes when growing a startup. I feel like I've either made them all myself or seen them all as an advisor and investor. One super common one is waiting too long to bring in expert help around managing company finances. I get why that happens though. You're not a tiny company anymore, but you feel like you're not big enough to have an in-house finance team and don't wanna waste money.

My advice to you is to avoid the mistake of just winging it. This is not a time to fake it till you make it. At least talk to someone early so that you can hear about how the additional help could actually save you money and improve your operations. If you're looking for recommendations on who to talk to, check out Propeller Industries.

They've worked with hundreds of venture to growth stage startups, so have a ton of deep knowledge to help you [00:04:00] avoid major bumps and set your company up for success. Whether it's talking to investors or planning for future growth. Set up a free call by going to funded pod.com/propeller. That's P-R-O-P-E-L-L-E-R.

And tell them we sent you, they're giving funded listeners a one-time $2,500 new client credit if you work with them for three months.

They think about, oh, what would be the coolest name and the name that would make a cool logo and have a cool website and have a play on words, and have a tagline. All these different things that make it fun to like. Say that you're a startup founder, but don't actually move the needle.

Of course, if you're running a consumer startup, if you're running a consumer brand, then all that stuff is important. But when we're talking about software, when we're talking about robotics, when we're talking about serving enterprises, the name, especially in the beginning, doesn't make a big difference.

And the [00:05:00] reason I'm able to say this is because I've fallen into that trap. I have fallen into that trap before. I've worked on a name with my co-founders. I've gotten excited about the name and the reason, like there's probably some value in having a strong connection to that, but so often, especially in the early days, you might come up with a name for the first idea that you have, incorporate, find the website, et cetera.

And then later on find that you are pivoting away from the thing that the name actually referenced in the first place. So focusing on the right things, focusing on making sure you are building the right product, talking to the right customers. That's one of the takeaways that I had from the story that I hope you take away as well.

And secondly, as we were going through that same conversation. It sounded like he had done so much that he had validated quite a bit and that he was onto something. And so I asked him, oh, have you raised money yet? Are you going to raise money? And his response, there was no, we haven't [00:06:00] raised money, and it's not on our mind yet until we get more data and more signal that we're on the right path.

I really like that because it shows both confidence and humility around how far they've gotten and how much more they need to go before. He's like, this is the right time to be raising capital. I think there are different stages of the journey and different amounts of progress that different types of founders need to have when it comes to going to raise capital.

But for some founders, the ones that understand that they need to build more, that they need to validate more, I really just enjoy the fact that fundraising is something that he will consider in the future. But right now, that's not the right thing to focus on. The right thing to focus on for him was he wanted to talk to more customers.

He wanted to build a little bit more product and show customers so that he could get the right feedback, so he could understand what he needed to raise money for, what the story would actually be, and then actually do the things that would make him successful in raising capital. [00:07:00] So these are two elements of focusing on the right thing that I think are important for you all to hear about.

There are, of course, dozens of other focus on the right thing. Pieces of encouragement that I could share with you, but these are two that I wanna make sure you sort of tuck it in the back of your head and remind you, hey, let's not do the things that feel like playing startup. Let's not put the cart before the horse and try to do the thing that might sound sexy first.

Let's do the hard work. Let's do the right things first and we'll get to the next things when they come. Alright. Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Back Channel and I'll see you next time.

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