Thriving With or Without Funding (Insights from Andrew Gazdecki)
Insights from Andrew Gazdecki
This week we had the pleasure of hosting Andrew Gazdecki on the latest episode of Funded. Between founding 3 successful companies and raising over $11M for his latest (Acquire.com), Andrew shared his unique insights into what it takes to grow and scale a business.
Our conversation was not only enlightening, but also surprising. Andrew and I hit on a lot of misconceptions around being a venture-backed founder.
From his vantage point, 99% of founders shouldn't be raising venture capital. If you want to find out why, I suggest you give the full episode a listen.
In the meantime, here are my 3 biggest takeaways after reflecting on the episode:
1. Focus on Building Value
“I hate the saying, ‘[After you raise funding,] the #1 thing a CEO should be doing is always be fundraising.’
You should really be always trying to grow and improve your business, build a great team, have an awesome culture, make sure everyone is aligned in what you're doing, be a good leader, and create happy customers. When you focus on those things, everything kind of takes care of itself.
When all you read about is big fundraising headlines, it creates an environment where people are more focused on fundraising than actually building a business of value.“
You can have the best process around fundraising. You can have the greatest network. But if your company doesn’t focus on the customer and building value, and your culture lacks excitement for the problem you're solving - you're not gonna get funded. If your company is constantly improving, solving problems and creating happy customers, AND you have a business model that allows you to scale, investors are going to be coming to YOU.
2. Don't underestimate the benefit of having a mentor
"[My first investors] were basically just two entrepreneurs in my college town, and they were great mentors. I learned probably everything I know about business, from them. They were super hands-on. They didn't make a lot of angel investments and so that allowed them to spend a lot of time really helping me shape the business."
I've talked about this a few times on my socials, but having mentors within your space almost always leads to accelerated knowledge and opportunities. You never know what will come out of the relationships you build with them. In Andrew's case, his mentors became his first investors for his first company. Some might say he got lucky, and maybe he did. But clearly there was something they recognized within Andrew that made them confident they were investing in the right entrepreneur. I'm not saying to expect your mentor to become your first investor or open up any magic doors. What I am saying is that those who have been in the industry longer than you can save you time, effort, and stress. Don't think you're above it, go out there and find someone who's going to help you succeed.
3. You have to love the problem you're solving
"You have to love the customer that you're serving and you have to love the problem that you're trying to solve. Otherwise, it's just gonna feel like work, and then you're going to be competing against someone [for whom] it doesn't feel like work and really wants this problem solved… They're going to work twice as hard and twice as fast.”
A crucial key to Andrew’s success was a deep understanding that happy customers create healthy businesses. During our interview he talks about spending hours on end in the customer live chat just to get a better understanding of what his customers were looking for, the problems they were having, and then creating solutions for those problems. Why? Because he genuinely enjoyed it. He was passionate about creating a marketplace to buy and sell startups and create more freedom for entrepreneurs. Understanding your customer allows you as the founder to understand what your business is lacking and how you can improve to support them even more.
Listen to the full episode here:
Andrew Gazdecki
Acquire
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