00:00:01 moving the Neto unfound your failure one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ during each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face I think there's no better place in the country to be investing than Los Angeles what is the problem that you're solving and for who like what is that specific pain point sometimes when a company is not

00:00:29 listening to his customers and just thinks it knows better than it customers has a really really hard time finding product market fit I want to see somebody that that isn't you know this person you just feel like they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna make it work today's guest is Brandon Meyer who's the founder of level up ventures brandon has extensive experience building financial and marketing strategies for start-up companies Brandon welcome to the show thanks for having me yeah and we won't

00:01:02 get sorry with is where are you currently at with level up ventures and though this may change the pain when this is released but where are you coming out with level up ventures so level up I've been building and developing over the last nine months were actively raising our first fund right now which is set to be a forty million dollar fund awesome and then with that process how does that process go hasn't been going so far what are you kind of doing day a day to move that along it's going it's actually been

00:01:30 going extremely well which is why we actually ended up kind of changing what we were gonna be raising yeah we built a differentiated model which is super difficult in this space much easier to do with a start-up than VC but you have to get quite creative to do so so yeah I think that we built something that's going to be very strong in a space and that it's very much differentiates from the the typical VCS model or accelerated model where I came from yeah and to that point on to like with the with the

00:02:10 actual fund model versus the accelerator model why did you choose to raise a phone person maybe doing I'm just curious and how you chose that so I think one of the things that from doing an accelerator a lot of the you know hundreds of programs that are out there they differentiate slightly from program to program but it's still the same basis of equipping early-stage founders with you know an education component whether that's workshops or classes you know in a lot of instances if you're doing a physical space you

00:02:46 know moving companies out for three months and then you're you know you also have kind of a set number of teams depending on you know who's running that program that year that's kind of your mandate to take yeah it just it's just what it ends up doing it's a great space to be in but what it ends up doing is a lot of those much more established founders with those really large exits in the past they're not there past that point of acceleration especially since they've built businesses in the past or

00:03:20 not gotta sit through kind of that education component you know probably by this stage they have the right financial connections that they don't you know have to sacrifice paying a program fees so for for me specifically I love the accelerator model it was it's a lot of fun to kind of you know be hands-on with those teams and really be able to make a difference in kind of shaping and molding those companies yeah but it's a lot of work you know there's a lot of again there's a lot of other companies

00:03:53 they're kind of closing off from and that's we wanted to be able to kind of open ourselves up to you know anybody in everybody yeah but what we're doing actually is kind of a hybrid of a direct investment fund and accelerator model so okay we're running a non program date specific virtual program that is geared at allowing those seed companies that tend to be pretty small to really focus on the growth of the business yeah well we're we're raising the rest of their capital so we'll source the majority of our

00:04:30 companies or our deal flow from other seed funds who have made investments in the past six months and if those rounds are not filled will essentially take them on equip them with an investment of 150 K to 500 and through the first few weeks really kind of hone in on different components of their business so between our full-time team and our group of advisors we cover of gamut of different industry expertise from marketing branding building out sales teams operations and evil even acquisitions so we have that team kind

00:05:06 of a quick to Linda dish you know lend additional additional hand to those companies and then again we set KPI is built around growth to really have them focus on the growth so they continue to grow with salad month-over-month numbers while we're focused on using proprietary software that we built internally to help raise the rest of their funding yeah and with that too then what I mean what areas is LevelUp gonna be focused on like what you already have certain areas certain verticals you're gonna

00:05:37 focus on are out we're gonna so we're in it there there are definitely a certain vertical focuses but for the most part we we stay industry agnostic there are certain types of companies with the size of the fund that we're raising that whether it's a lack of industry expertise or it's a very financially intensive business like a consumer tech or hardware you know we're not really touching those companies yeah there's always going to be outliers but for the most part we're staying away from you know about five choice areas yeah and

00:06:15 with the fun to because I don't understand how this works like what how much time did you give yourself in the process to actually raise this fund and you will you hit relatively close to that I'm just curious about that too so we gave ourselves on a year I spent the first like I mentioned earlier in the interview spent the first eight or nine months really kind of building out the business side right so for most funds when they're going out and amazing money you know whoever you raise raise from you're kind of locked into

00:06:48 those being your recruiters that can find the best companies and know how to pick and choose the best companies right they're not really building a brand a lot of times and so they're they're just as hard to find as it is to find a lot of these startups that might you know be early and they're trying to go to events and show off you know getting you know having any opportunity for an investor to see what they're doing and to look at it the same way that they do with you know such joy and excitement yeah so I

00:07:19 really wanted to focus on the brand building out additional educational programs which we do like we do we're extremely active in terms of the LA investment community in terms of fostering community by doing monthly events just staying extremely active for a small team so that people know what the LevelUp name is because I think that's extremely important in the space is to build a compelling brand yes especially with so many funds out there and there's more and more all the time exactly so it's and then we we also have

00:07:50 we to have competition yeah and you know you think about and you think about these amazing deals that people write about or you read about on TechCrunch and it's not every fund would let you know no not every fund pay a lot of funds would like to be in those deals or would have hoped to find those deals and so there's a lot of competition on the fun side in terms of you know standing out and being you know one of those brands that companies want to be with yeah and I know you're raising your fun

00:08:20 right now obviously have experience in this what is your like due diligence process going to look like as you can go through this whole thing once you have the fund raised and you're looking for companies what is your process gonna be looking like so just starting with the quote-unquote application you know with an accelerator there's a lot of like questions and again going back to what are you gonna be able to get from the best companies out there ours is very simple it's like attach attaching a deck

00:08:47 and just filling out a couple financial numbers yeah in terms of the actual like due diligence process it's it's twofold so there's always going to be that you know human component that's what you know people are paying for that level of expertise you know to be investing on their hat on be their behalf but the second is a quantitative scoring a scoring model that covers of various components within the the business to deem whether we want to interview this company or I want to potentially move

00:09:20 forward with them yeah and through that process to obviously with these early-stage lab it's the team and how you evaluate the team what do you do or what's the most questions maybe you you asked or the things you look for in those founders that you're gonna be investing in so going back to you know the the program that we've developed yeah um and going away from the typical acceleration model is probably about fifteen or twenty percent of our investments will be first-time founders um and the reason

00:09:52 being for that it's not so much like a first-time founder can't be wildly successful because they can yeah it's just for most first-time founders there there tends to be a decent amount of hand-holding there's a there's a you know there's a lotta not a bad thing there's just so many moving pieces right in building a successful scalable company yeah and you know once your portfolio continues to grow and get bigger and bigger it gets harder and harder to give that personalized one-on-one attention yeah so we're

00:10:27 looking for founders that have past success that you know have a pretty firm understanding of how you know where they want to go with this business how they're gonna get there and you know that kind of comes back to us as investors doing our diligence and asking the right questions to really try to poke holes for that business and see that they really have a clear roadmap to you know how they're gonna get to an exit yeah and then to you mentioned you know the accelerators might be a little bit earlier but with the venture fund

00:10:57 itself a little bit later Ness essentially but with the actual business model themselves they have a solid team are you set poking holes in the business like what are some of those questions about what do you things are you looking for from that side of the business side but not gonna store the team side that you're like okay this is uh this is a yes or this is a no I'm just curious on your perspective on that too for me personally I'm a marketing person yeah um so I really want to look at like what

00:11:21 their what their sales roadmap is what their kind of what their strategy is around growing their marketing do they actually have a strategy because a lot a lot of times you know people are firing at the hip there this works so we're doing this it's not like we have a clear you know strategy or roadmap and then there's you know there's also times where people can be way too overly prepared yeah where this is is a much harder ecosystem for someone that's overly analytical so it's just kind of seeing where they they fall in line with

00:11:55 again execution plan yeah and then with that sue so you have obviously experience with looking at different different founders different startups what are some of those challenges they typically face and how is LevelUp gonna be positioned to help them through that as their core growing their companies many many many challenge so Brandon choose that one or two or main challenges you think that yes okay okay yeah we can do that um so I definitely think that you know a big again it's going to depend on the founders it's

00:12:25 gonna be depend on the founders like backgrounds where they're you know areas of strength which is why I I covered kind of that full gamut that you know we can cover anything from like the branding to the marketing to the sales right because it's always it's always one of those things it might be that they have an amazing attraction that they've really you know figured out how to get this business off the ground extremely quick but their operations are a complete mess in that it's not going to be sustainable unless that they

00:12:58 actually have a true operations built out and they're a lot of times that's you know one of the areas that ends up needing to be cleaned up because when you're starting a company they're trying to get off to the races right you know you might be missing a lot of different components it might be that some companies are you know still sending out their pitch deck to potential clients even though that's you know they they should have you know something like a one-pager or you know a packet that's designed for those clients

00:13:30 so as those as even those little things kind of fall at the side and they they they're left one attend it they start to become much larger issues so again it can be anything from how they're doing sales how they're doing marketing the operations is you know complete mess it could even be you know something when we've are you know we've made that investment and we're working with them we find out you know three four weeks later the reason why they couldn't close funding was that you know there's

00:14:04 certain things that are struggling with in that conversational pitch yeah yeah what the twos I was there's so many different challenges they face and like you've kind of touched on this already a little bit but with level up then compared to other firms I mean do you plan on being pretty hands-on or is it a case-by-case basis with the investments like how is that typical okay so it's it's it's four or four the program which is you know more so post acceleration so yeah it's kind of post education um

00:14:32 we're not focused too much on the educational components that's why it you know you spend the for like the in terms of touch points yeah we have an one hour virtual call every week yeah and since it's non program date specific like that doesn't mean that we have to select a certain number of companies at a certain like you know time yeah max ability yeah so if we don't have all the right companies in place I can take a company three weeks later another one a month later another one two weeks later after that

00:15:02 yeah and it'll just it follows this kind of standard we have a weekly out recall the first week we're doing an assessment on their on their decks I've probably because I did all the first passes that quake I've looked at close to six thousand companies over the last three and a half years so we'll do an assessment of their deck make sure that get that gets cut down reworked because this is very much so especially when you're doing anything cold a dog-and-pony show so if you don't if your decks a mess you can have the

00:15:38 best conversation and potentially sell them but you might not even get a chance to sell them because right like this is the worst deck I've ever seen yeah and it's I'll say this it's stupid things like that yeah that can you know stop a company from getting that conversation that they need I'm having a chance to state their case so the first thing is doing that assessment starting with the deck going through you know various like pain points things that they have kind of faced while doing this yeah looking you know asking the right

00:16:08 questions making sure is do you feel that there can be improvements on sales do you think there's you know provements can be made by marketing what are you doing to track like your marketing channels are you actually you know tracking the data like if you're you know doing something one way first doing it another way and seeing what works best this is how you end up with you know processes that work it's through kind of this testing and to expedite that process a lot of this testing you're doing while you're live yeah

00:16:39 that's the only way you can actually like get make the company better and optimize the company right it's to your point of testing that's what you have to do you have to be mindful of this is very very fast-moving a go system no matter what you're creating even if you're you're coming out with something that's completely new to try and keep that under lock and key is super hard yeah so you're you start at your business you're off to the races you don't have this is not like making your first record where your first record you

00:17:13 have all the time in the world to figure out what you want to say how you want everything this to sound yeah because after that first record and once you're part of that machine now it's just go go go yeah with a start up it's just go go go yeah so you have to kind of intermediately find ways to you know like test as you're going and you know for a lot of founders to this is you know something where if you're a non-technical founder and you find yourself sitting around and I don't know what to do there's still a lot in which

00:17:47 you know they can do whether it's build Shanno partnerships whether it's having these marketing materials prepared yeah there's a lot of moving pieces yeah and then one things you mentioned that going through 6,000 pitch decks yeah which is which is a lot of pitch decks obviously and going through that many obviously there's ways that you get to the process faster and there's ways that you easily easily say no to certain ones like where are some of those points where you going those pitch decks we're like this is a

00:18:11 no this is no this a note to help founders out and they're making their decks in the first place well I think the one hard thing I've seen I've seen funds or programs that have tried to do this is we want to be the people to give everybody feedback and be able to help them I tried when I first started in venture to be the person that answered every single email and within five minutes and yeah it gets it gets it gets a little much and then you start realizing like oh my god I'm taking too many calls but back to the pit that

00:18:44 pitch that point it's you know part of its looking like you know what have they done are they launched do they have traction you know what does the roadmap look look like and obviously a part of me is looking at some of these decks and being like this is just atrociously design it's not great yeah and for some people it won't it won't matter at all again for others it might not allow you mentally to go to the next page in the next page after that yeah or if they're spilling too much information sometimes

00:19:19 I mean I've been set decks that are 50 pages long they're more design like business plans and not again a standard like 12 to 15 page right now proceed to seed deck that is you dipping your toes in the water you're letting me know enough about your business that's compelling me to and want to have a conversation with you yeah and to that point it's almost a point of laziness because there are so many examples of pitch decks online like this is exactly what a pitch that should be it's like I'm bad I'm baffled by I don't want this

00:19:49 to sound negative that I'm baffled by the lack of googling people even even if it's I think one of the biggest things I turn to in a pitch deck is a competition slide yeah once it like if I've seen you have traction and everything who do you think your competition is yeah because for a lot of them they have they might have thousands of companies that would fall in competition but only ones that they're naming are the companies that we all know that are like corporations now sometimes you get companies that like

00:20:24 all right here's another company in our space and they're worth noting because you know they've raised a decent amount of money yeah not everybody might know them but that to me is their real competition can they get out from under all of these others and does the corporate like competition have they taken it you know too much of the space that it's that you either believe or don't believe that you know no there's room for another company yeah and is this company obviously differentiating themselves enough to

00:20:58 warrant you know being in that mix yeah but yeah it's a lack it's a lack of googling on some of the easiest things like like competition there's a lot of times I'll even mention companies that are direct competition they have no idea yeah yeah there's need to take the time to actually go through and do and that would that's what goes back to even their differentiation yeah that that moat is a lot of times even companies will think like this is our moment like that's not your most of some other companies mode someone else yeah and

00:21:33 going through so many companies and evaluating so many companies in your career so far I mean what are some of the main reasons that these startups ultimately fail because you know that most startups fail like what are some of those reasons you see that stars fail so I think a big one and this is usually the the vast majority is you run out of money and I think one of those ways to kind of counteract that I mean obviously it takes it takes a certain person that this is very compelling that can pitch

00:22:03 and raise money and can you know do that flawlessly it's very special individual but a lot of times when companies raise money like this is gonna take us for the next eight to twelve months and then there you know when it comes to even now they're in a perfect position to basically start conversations with no with no cares in the world and sensually yeah like they know that once they got that money they've got to go to work they you know they have to make that money work they have to be able to get

00:22:37 to that next round right a lot of times they wait too long and they're not having those intermediate conversations in between they're not building those relationships with investors where they have an opportunity to do that as a very non aggressive like coming from like I actually want to build a relationship with you and I'm not looking at you like you're a Czech yeah when you get into that mode where you know it's three months two months out you're gonna run out of runway one that shows a very it's

00:23:04 a negative piece for other investors because your run rate for subsequent months is not there and if there's no one else committed in this round it's hard to protect that investment also when you're raising from any time anyone's desperate for money they're the most out of character things like happen with that individual yeah and when you're doing things against desperation it's it's never a good thing so never it's always be raising like even if it's just like we just raised a million Oh a million and a half and

00:23:40 we're continuing to have conversations yeah people people know us they know what we're doing and I even have some of the companies I work with actually create a this investment chart so that all the conversations that you've had over over time whether if you can dig in for specific information like is there a specific mor that you want to see us at is there a specific um you know place were a company within this industry vertical needs to be as I haven't collect all those notes and I actually haven't build out a chart and every

00:24:11 month they update it based off where their numbers have gone so yeah they basically kind of get an alert we should probably reach out and least start restart conversations I haven't talked to Jeff from such and such fun in six months let's let them know how we're doing you know and this is all you know the you know monthly or quarterly investor updates that people do with investors that are kind of in that channel zorf said yeah let it send me updates let you know let me know what's going on yeah and one thing to to that

00:24:42 point then with with basically founders having to always raise Mon money and not run out of money and then the balance between that and then also growing their business and actually working in their business I mean what do you tell them do they have struggles with that what do you tell these companies then well if you do it again if you do it in the way that you just raised capital yeah and I'm not saying you have to go out next week and start building your new relationships but let's say you see you

00:25:08 know a month later you're still at different events you're still you know kind of working through contacts like even I want to get in this person's inbox I want to at least start a conversation again if you're coming from a non-aggressive place where I'd love to grab coffee I'd love to have a conversation we're not raising right now but you know want to keep for the few people exactly it it comes from a a place where you know even as an investor its non-threatening yeah you're not gonna get into some conversation where

00:25:44 this person is just like did it up we give me money right you can have a legitimate like conversation there's a way to now build that relationship yeah it's a little bit more personalized yeah it's almost like you have to just keep it as a start-up founder top amide that you yeah and so it it makes that whole process when you know you are set to maybe run out in eight months or a year now you have this entire pipeline that you've been building for months yeah well again still focusing on the growth

00:26:15 of your business and you made that process if you decide you know three months when we're gonna run out we're going to really start on this raise yeah you know you have conversations set up you things will be a lot easier than crap we're running out of money we need a raise capital and you know we might be running up against the clock and we're gonna make a lot of mistakes potentially and now we'll take a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big heartfelt thank you to Breck's who is out there support this

00:26:48 show would not be possible we've seen firsthand the difficulties accessing basic corporate credit without providing a security deposit or personal guarantee early on as companies grow managing expenses has become more difficult and time-consuming which is why we've partnered with Breck's to offer a corporate credit card that is not personally guaranteed offers higher credit limits provides Auto reconciliation and integrates with ERPs using receipt capture Breck's is the credit card let's start ecosystem and we

00:27:16 highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show Brandon what are you most excited about in terms of vesting coming up here in the near future I would say in terms of terms of direct spaces I mean we really love SAS companies Enterprise there's definitely a lot that's compelling within the AI space you know anything that can kind of you know improve insetting prove overall economies yeah but in general I think we're just excited about getting ready to invest in the new year and you know

00:27:53 really we've been testing this model for for eight months so we're just really excited to make those initial investments and find some really compelling companies in that process yeah and everyone kind of has their own process for even finding companies or their own process for like looking at different industries but what do you what do you do in terms of how are you looking at new opportunities or where the future of everything tech or everything business is kind of going I think that's kind of a team as a whole

00:28:20 like initiative everybody I think this goes for a lot of investors like you staying tuned every day with you know what's the new articles coming out on the major publications you know keeping your your eyes and ears open to you know what's going on what's continuing to pop up this way just like any startup and then we continue to do our research on new funds because just like any startup you always have to be aware of the competition that's out there there's always going to be new compelling like

00:28:54 funds coming out that are doing something that's interesting whether it's an event series that they're doing whether it's a specific workshop and for me having been on both sides of the table as a founder very much so with kind of a startup mindset and personality I'm always looking to see what's out there and yeah you know see ways that you might be able to take something not to take it and steal it but really build off of it and you know take these various ideas and make a hodgepodge you know model that works so I always

00:29:34 loved you know kind of hearing what other people are coming up with yeah and then with the with the venture world itself obviously been adventure a number of years now how do you see that evolving or how you seen it evolve even recently the last months the last couple years and we think that's going yeah it's it's actually been crazy of how much it's evolved just starting out in in New York City this past year I mean I read a couple articles where New York City VC is deployed more capital than SF

00:30:08 I've just seen crazy amounts of ecosystems grow and even coming out to Los Angeles and it's almost been a couple years since I've been here and you just kind of see this ever-growing ecosystem you see more funds coming out you see more and more startups or more more people like taking a leap to try and build a business and a lot of these people - one of the most interesting things to me in this space is that you have so many people that that you know are ready to leave six-figure you know very cushiony jobs because they want to

00:30:51 create something that you know they see a bigger picture or they want to be that Mark Zuckerberg where they will you know they want to have that huge exit and it very much so it leaves kind of a legacy for each of those individuals that can be successful so it's it's it's a very compelling space in general but you know over the last couple years we've seen venture investing exceed private equity yeah venture investing continues to go up because you know even with the emergence of so many startups

00:31:26 there's a lot of jobs that are created at the same time there are a lot of jobs that to counteract that that are lost because you know specific technologies have you know removed a lot of the the brick and mortar that's out there yeah and that's always going to happen there I mean it's always gonna evolve it's always gonna evolve and you're gonna you know you you end up kind of having like you know through different time periods of like what the general population you know would be doing yeah and so I think

00:31:58 a lot of that has even gone to kind of its share economy yeah and one thing to I mean we're thinking about how the economy has been the last ten years how good it has been there's so much money involved there is a lot mantras are trying it trying to start companies trying to raise funding because of that and there's more venture firms again because of that how has that kind of shaped what you want to do is level up in terms that you see where a ventures going you see these more funds how is that determined like what you do for

00:32:23 your fund what how you view that so I mean we definitely have to keep a we do keep it a close eye on what's going on the economy even you know with everybody having a different mixed opinion especially with this election without getting too political sure what's gonna happen like are we gonna be headed for a crash and that's why we even you know focused and carved out the year of our race to kind of go through next June to have the you know at least half the fund there because if we do face any

00:33:02 type of you know economic crisis yeah yeah there's always a chance that that money is gonna slow down that the investments could slow down so you always want to and then this goes with building out of business is you always want to make sure that you have a war chest and that you're equipped for crisis mode yeah you can handle the downside exact exactly because we you know I think the good thing about you know living in the u.s. is that we've we've always had our downturns but those downturns for the most part

00:33:42 have somewhat quickly corrected themselves over time you know over at least not a super elongated period of time right right they've all it's not it's not like like it's not like it's like the Cold War here yeah they had downturns and then it's come back up to a certain level whatever that may be yeah and one things we'll just say it's much it's been much faster than most economies sure and some are still like exactly and one thing you talked about the diligence process on your and as you see looking at different startups but

00:34:11 kind of flipping that looking at what the entrepreneur should be looking for an investor obviously if you can get the cap we'll get to capital but what are some it's always gonna be there's always gonna be smart money versus you know dumb money sure that anybody can cut a check now I think caveat to that is you can be a little more comfortable with that anyone can cut a check once you have a solid strategic in place yeah you don't need every single investor to you know have a hand and like help it

00:34:42 helping out if anything so at certain times that can be counterproductive so you know finding that strategic asking the right questions of how they support their companies yeah you know it's just an import as important for startups to do their diligence like once you know a lot of companies their founders start a start-up because they don't want to have a have bosses you're doing a scalable business you're raising money you're getting investors that is not like really an actual workable theory theory

00:35:15 so you need to know who you're going into business with like look at the you know investors from that firms backgrounds like this person could potentially be really helpful so I need to ask them this line of questioning and see if they actually you know they will help our company because they have they came out of this space cuz they seem to have really solid connections I've combed through their LinkedIn you know I've done my due diligence I think that a lot of times especially if you know this is your first company or

00:35:47 second company you can get wrapped up that an investor wants to talk to you you might even just look at the check size and be like alright I'm sold okay and you're not again you're not looking at all of these those other areas yes like it's important I think it's important to if like the founders look at their portfolio like reach out to some of those other founders don't just take it from their word don't take it just from my word like see what other people's interactions like have been do yeah these are great guys to work with

00:36:17 you know they've made several introductions for us they've you know helped us build our sales team like do your due diligence yeah and it seems like talking to those those portfolio companies I mean that's probably one of the best ways you can get a feel for those B C's because those are people that they actually work with and interact with another daily weekly whatever basis you can get those insights from them exactly and actually I know this is not a question but a good one of the best sources I think for

00:36:45 connections to yeah VCS if you don't have any and you're still looking for those funds are the service providers so a lot of the service providers around town once you start a company it's like every service provider is its coming coming at you and say like you need our PEO service you wait wait you guys don't have a crm yet this is the CRM you use but the good thing is because they know they have so much competitions a lot of those sales reps um they'll look at what what do you need it's it's a two-way

00:37:18 street of like how can we help you you know how can you help us like etc and that's a way to get additional VC angel intros sometimes like you might be looking for a different service provider that hasn't come knocking knocking at your door yeah they deal with the service providers deal with other service providers as well so they end up being a great source to build you know build a relationship with but I think that anytime you're building a relationship you have to recognize as a founder it's a two-way street especially

00:37:47 if you don't have a lot of validation early on um it's always good to ask like what you know what can we do for you yeah and then one thing too is you have a knowledge on this as well with with founders I mean how long is that process take for raising capital it's gonna be different between both what are you a verse which is again again one of the reasons why we came up with our model yeah is because we're we're able to expedite that in half the time typically and we've tested as non broker dealers we've

00:38:17 tested out with companies to see that we could actually raise that money yeah in that shorter much shorter period of time yeah well the ends up being it ends up being if you select the right companies it's it's really a numbers game yeah you know there's somebody out there that's gonna be willing to take a conversation and obviously the more compelling of a business the more market validation you have there's gonna be a lot more of those people to take those conversations so you know it takes about 8 to 12

00:38:48 months typically when the founders are going out to do that there's obviously always the outliers and exceptions there of course um but typically at that stage too depending on the type of team or how large the team is that's where those month over month growth numbers could be much better because they're not being taken out of the equation like when we work with the companies yeah and there is there anything else that you would tell the founders is it going to that because I mean there's a grow company

00:39:16 they're trying to do fundraising and no at least at least if they have an idea that it's gonna take 8 to 12 months that's great for them to have an inner head but what you what would you tell them is they're going to this process maybe they're not getting still haven't got investments so haven't got investment like what do you tell them I got anything any advice on that going to that process I mean if we we were to you know have a conversation you know say with a company that has struggled and I

00:39:38 could give them it any advice I mean at first I would I typically ask companies and like so how have conversations been going with investors yeah because the typical response is like everybody loves what we're doing there you know we're a little too early but like they love what we're doing and you know we're staying in touch with them but that's the typical conversation to of avoidance of avoiding a conversation in the you know easiest way possible to still be polite and a lot doesn't come come to that so you know the first thing

00:40:12 is kind of seeing what their interactions have been how they've been going about the process in general sometimes when they're doing cold outreach a founder wants to tell you everything that's special about their company and you don't know that person people typically don't read these days so you know there's a lot of missed information and sometimes you just you just see this laundry list email and you don't know who's sending it you could read a couple sentences and move on yeah you know first I would just identify

00:40:41 like what the process has been and seeing if I can offer any key insights into it because it really just like anything and I know the person that's not talking sitting on the other side of the table and I'm not gonna look at him Lucas can attest to this I had to bring up his name but uh Lucas can attest to this it's it's like a sales process like how do you properly like build you know out your sales like there's a process like you know you even from the cold side you have maybe that shorter message

00:41:11 that leads into another you know short message and it's a process of dipping your toes in the water we need to just to get that conversation and then from that conversation stage lights are on it's go time you know present your case yeah and then just kind of shifting gears to you now with obviously once you raise your fund and have your fun your day day is gonna be much different than it is now but what is kind of your day day now is you're in it right now well the day the day to day it'll change slightly but so

00:41:43 from a consulting side we've been running this whole program that were we built out from a consulting side where we'll segment out investor lists we'll build out the proper messaging and really try to save those companies a lot of time and coach them through process so a lot of it will stay the same it'll just get a little lighter on you know from consulting with some of those companies to actually investing in in them and it'll still be at a bunch of calls I think I probably have like you know eight to twelve calls on a daily

00:42:19 basis and you know just managing we have a team in New York and a team out here so it's just kind of managing both of those components and I don't think much will change it will just get busier yeah busier more things going on yes more more juggling of course and then why did you get into VC in the first place so I've been and again I've been on both sides of the table and for me I had it I had different interactions with different VCS when I was doing my startup and I I did run into the occasional like VC where I look at their

00:43:00 background and say our conversation was was short or they were rude like you've never built anything like how are you sitting here making you know this decision right so I'm a very competitive person so I kind of I kind of set myself self sites on that competition and that having that startup background that I could do this much more creatively yeah and build something that again is differentiates from everything else that's unique it's special and that it has a really solid brand behind it yeah

00:43:40 and one of the things we had contest on earlier was just with with tariffs one not being lazy but two googling how to do a pitch deck and everything like that but going back to that kind of point what are any resources or anything that you'd suggest anything specifically for startups to look at to help them either grow their company to do fundraising any of that yeah so um especially if it's like a first time founder yeah um YC startup school was a great resource we do something for early-stage founders

00:44:09 called founder shop um the reason why I mentioned those two things is for a lot of people who graduated college five to ten plus years ago or even they you know say they didn't go on trone entrepreneurial education at the school most schools did not exist so what most people have if this is the first interaction with a startup is a very siloed education and it's you know a friend telling you to watch this TEDx interview or to read this book and as you go across kind of those different pieces and recommendations you're

00:44:49 looking at varying opinions because this is very much an opinion based you know space yeah and there's different methodologies for success some will work for people and some will work for others and you know some won't like yeah so I've definitely you know tell them to find some sort of kind of like entrepreneurial like boot camp that can kind of teach them the basics so it's not as much you know on-the-job training it's still very much that but um but those are some places to start at least yeah and if it's like if you don't know

00:45:24 how to you know do marketing like you know again being very resourceful like can ice or some other people like what's what are the some of the best you know marketing you know videos or things that worked for a start-up if we can't really afford to do heavy marketing what are some good growth hack guides and good growth hack videos so I can watch or a good you know book on that like it's just it's just being resourceful and kind of looking like what you're getting yourself into yeah and that's being resourceful is

00:46:00 everything yeah go figure it out and you have to do them in life in general like if you lose if you lose your job you have to be resourceful and tap your network or go into job sites or find a recruiter you have to be resourceful to make sure that you're able to lock in another job it's anything in life yeah and Brendon where can people go to connect with you or learn more about your fund people can email me Brandon at level up lvl uPVC they can visit level up VC to check us out see what we're doing awesome

00:46:37 thank you so much for coming on the show Brandon thank you for having me thanks for checking out star up 2.0 from spark XYZ you want to learn more about startups and investing and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO