TBC: Fundraising in the Age of AI

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Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the Back Channel. In today's episode, I want to talk about a question that I've been asked quite a bit recently, which is this idea of, as a non-AI startup, what should I do when it comes to fundraising? Should I be saying that I'm an AI startup? Should I be incorporating more AI into my company?

What should I do considering that everyone that's raising capital seems to be an AI startup, and what I wanna lay the baseline around first is what it actually means to be an AI startup versus a non-AI startup. I often like to compare different waves in startup history with where we're at now with AI technology.

In the past, there was this newfangled idea of cloud computing and being hosted in the cloud. There was another wave of being a mobile startup, having a great mobile experience. And in both cases [00:01:00] there was this push to be like, oh, I'm a cloud-based startup. I'm a mobile startup. And eventually what those all became was just the idea that they were core technologies that every startup should have, every startup.

For the most part, needed to have some kind of cloud infrastructure eventually, and every startup eventually needed to have a great mobile experience. So there was no real distinction between being a cloud startup or a mobile startup. I. I think the same thing is happening with ai. AI is a foundational technology that all of us need to be incorporating.

Whether you're a deep technology software company or even a commerce company, there are ways that you need to be thinking about AI for your company. If you are not working on a foundational model or maybe. AI tooling and infrastructure for the AI technology companies. Then you are just another company in my [00:02:00] belief that is trying to solve a problem, trying to serve a customer and using all the tools that you have access to in order to do that in the best possible way.

So instead of saying, well, as a non-AI startup, what should I do? I think everyone needs to have their own AI story.

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 [00:03:00] hundreds of venture to growth stage startups, so have a ton of deep knowledge to help you 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.

Everyone needs to be developing their own perspective on. How does my company exist, grow, find customers, serve customers. In an AI first world, and this is even more than just what is my fundraising story, but what is the way that you want to build your company?

Knowing that AI is changing the way we do business and live our lives for founders or people in general who are not thinking about this, they are going to be left [00:04:00] behind. So if thinking about fundraising in this environment is the thing that pushes you to reevaluate how you structure your business, the types of technologies that you need to build for the types of humans and team members that you need to be recruiting.

Well, then that's a great thing. So what you should be thinking about is what are the technologies that we use that have an AI element to it in our business? You need to be thinking that from a core level because investors are gonna be evaluating you and saying, well, I. Are you running as efficiently as you could be knowing that there is so much AI technology that you could access?

That's one. Second, what are the moats and what are the differentiators that help defend you against ai com competition, AI driven competition? What makes you different? What makes you unique? What is, what is defensible against ai? What is something that AI can't do that only you guys can do? Okay. And once you have those elements to your story, you [00:05:00] can go out there and talk about how you grow in this world, how you become a large company and a large, large opportunity well into the future in a world that's going to have a lot of AI in it.

So the answer is that I think everyone essentially is an AI startup, or at least a startup living in an AI world. And so figure out what that means for your company and then tell that story to the best of your ability. All right. I hope this is helpful. We'll talk a lot more about AI in the coming episodes of the Back channel, so I'll see you next time.

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