Navigating Investors for Funding
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topic Covered: Investing, Financing, Pitching, Investors, Market Research, Proof of Concept, Masters’ Degrees, Community
Well, it turns out that the keyword ‘investors’ is probably beating ‘Ai’ in the Kelly Tutors’ popularity world. Investors are totally trending lately in events, we’ve seen so many!! Reinforcement of the essentials + some new gems to add to our collection. This event had about 30 people in attendance with a panel of three presenters and one moderator. Take a listen to their advice!
Initial Thoughts - Why Attend?: This event was hosted by a group that I see hosts many events in this area. I never had the chance to make it to one, until today. I didn’t pay much attention to the topic of the event ahead of time, I just knew it was hosted by this group which I’d always wanted to check out. I had a feeling they put together a good experience each time, since they had consistent events and solid branding.
Event Overall Ratings: Venue (2.5/5), Food (2/5), Speaker Content (4/5), Networking (2/5), Likeliness to Return (4/5)
Photo Collage and Comments
Notes from the Event:
Arrival:
I arrived a bit late to the event because I went to the wrong location. There are two locations with the same name about 10 minutes to each other by scooter. So, first I was ~5 minutes late to the first location, but then about 15 minutes late to the second location. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if the second location woudl be right, but I just decided to go there.. and if it wasn’t, I’d just eat dinner in that part of town in defeat. It is a beautiful part of town, though.
Also, lately there have been 2-3 events I tried to make and missed, so I decided it’d be just enough to blog about the attempt. Instead, I’ll blog about the success!
So, I was 20 minutes late and went to sit in the back row. There was a girl in front of me on her computer as well. As I wrote last time, I usually get annoyed when people are on their computers during presentations because usually they are fooling around.
I am taking notes (and I try to always disconnect from wifi and resist the urge), but this girl in front of me was cyber stalking everyone who was presenting. I didn’t mind it too much (and it was an admittedly good idea/use of time if you want… and her desktop showed she’d been on her computer for nearly 9 hours that day/today… so I think she was just like “f- it” mode, but still, it distracted me a little. Just seeing her pull up a million websites.)
My seat was not comfortable and about an hour in, I moved to another location. My phone had almost died, which was the big reason, and I was just surprised in general with this location. It was so bright, so huge but tight (like a huge venue but the smallest area to sit) and then nowhere to sorta put your stuff, spread out, charge… so I finally moved myself.
I even said to myself, “your life is what you make it and don’t make yourself sit in discomfort”
Even though it was a little rude, I wanted to make that small move rather than sit there nonstop in discomfort (from knowing my phone would die AND the seat wasn’t comfy). After moving quickly, I was a lot happier. So, with that, let’s jump into the lessons from these experts….
But actually, I’ll add one more thing… I feel like I was a little hangry - and! i’ve heard to much from ‘investors’ lately. I think people get a little cocky and excited about being investors, but, I say this more as an ‘entrepreneur’… who has raised no money from funding… but, from investing myself. BUT. The point is… like, there is a lot of money in the world and sometimes ‘investors’ get cocky about their ability to say ‘no’ often.
As the ‘founder’, just know that’s who you’re talking to. But if the shoes were reversed, their attitude would be so different - and yours!
It just makes me think that each investor has their own style, but hold value to yourself and your worth. Even if they’re willing to invest in you, do you want their money? The commitment to them? Do you even want a favor from these exact people or do you want to keep looking? That’s what you shoudl be asking yourself. Find a few investors perhaps - or if you find one, consider to be considerate towards yourself before instantly saying “yes”. Debate it.
Speakers
The woman speaking worked at the local university and was talking about their Masters in Entrepreneurship. It’s one year, for people who have started businesses and want a bit more education (sounds great! hahah. Except, idk if I want to work with others yet. I like my lone-wolf streak atm.)
All the students are working on a project, want to work on a project, want to meet investors… it’s very organic throughout.
Entrefinance, entremarketing. Some classes are taught by faculty, some is taught by others…
I don’t want my faculty to hear me say this, entrepreneurship is not just ‘smart’, it’s hands on.
Over here, he teaches venture capital investing, he’s an investor. It takes one to know one. You need to be into the marketing to teach marketing.
A lot of these classes are taught by kickass people out there practicing in the community. It’s a great way to start testing and validating with a safety net.
Some students say, “this is what I’m doing”, they start working on it and realize it sucks…
They realize they can do this with others
Applications are almost already done and they’re in the process of interviewing, but usually February is when they are due. You have under one week to apply.
If students want to be a founder and make a real impact, what is one thing they struggle with the most?
With students, we often see a lot of confidence, almost arrogance. They start working on it and forget to talk to customers and see if customers want it. They build a cool thing that customers don’t want.
Just because you can build it doesn’t mean they’ll buy it. You see they forget to do customer discovery.
It’s hard to find a co-finder. If you can’t get someone to align with you on your journey and sell them on your journey, you’re never going to get investors.
Often you find two best friend students who say they’re going to be coworkers and cofounders but by 22 years old they divorce and hate each other. It happens all the time.
Early product fit finding is an early market skill. It’s a sensitive motion between confidence and paranoia.
Normally, in a normal job you’re given a normal job in a straight line
The early days as a founder, you must have this supreme confidence and be rejected. Quickly understand why, and make iterations to find product market fit. Either you’re overconfident or not confident enough. You need both and to jump from one side of the other.
If I have an early stage idea, how can I apply Ai for this?
A separate entity made from Ai reporting, now they’re doing lots to help
500k checks to solo founders or an early team. Help you with customer validation piece.
Majority of teams come together at the incubator.
Provide a lot of technical support
Lots of researchers from Ai
Robotics, Research, Tech, Health - all the teams can help
-Apply for the university and apply for Ai2 and see which offers money first. It’s true… the more you apply for, the more opportunities.
-City of Seattle and State of Washington pay to help launch community event spaces. Co-working and event that can hold up to 300+ people. Anchored by incubators for startups
Bring energy from in-person gatherings.
Seattle has a lot of Ai expertise. Lots of Ai jobs, but we’re only second to San Jose.
But in Seattle, we don’t network like the Bay Area does… but we’re trying to create more of that central hub.
We need places for knowledge to be shared between founders.
What do you do to get yourself excited?
I’ve been a founder for so long, hardly an investor, so all of my personal things are startup hobby things.
That’s why she picked this question.
But currently, she has a 3 year old daughter, and there is a toy where you can tap on books and read aloud, using gen Ai to enhance games like this.
From your perspective, what is making Seattle unique?
How is it fostering Ai?
It’s interesting, to be completely transparent, this is not the formal line, but Seattle is still playing second fiddle to the Bay Area when it comes to Ai, startups, and funding in general.
It’s unfortunate because from a technical perspective and talent perspective, it’s a talented city.
The level of talent in Seattle is outsized. If you can get outside funding, but a team here, you find peopel who are more loyal. You can take more time and it doesn’t need to be an instant success for peel to stay. In the Bay Area, people jump ship if it isn’t an instant success.
Seattle has more of a cultural thing around startups.
Maybe the right community and network can instill a bit more of that startup spirit
The underlying talent is here, so unlocking some of that inspiration and know how will unlock really special companies here.
A lot of big brand company are here so it attracts talent.
The big companies sometimes suck the air out of the room with startups, though. The salaries are so good at the big companies. When you think from an expected value perspective, starting a company probably isn’t the best choice… but most founders don’t think like that and they truly believe in what they’re building.
If you looked at it from that perspective, data isn’t on your side to start a business… but that’s now that they’re focused on. They’re going to do it.
Many times, trailing spouses are founders. Their partners have steady jobs and they traveled somewhere new, so it feels like a safe time and space to try something.
“Yeah, I meet a million bucks a year and I don’t really do a whole lot.”
So you can get yourself a job, give yourself a good title (that’s free)
Seattle doesn’t have a great risk-taking culture but an incredible depth of intelligent founders
People here don’t have the same risk-tolerance as the people in the Bay Area
Seattle has bigger checks written for conviction.
You see deals getting done in coffee shops in San Francisco that just doesn’t happen in Seattle.
Most people that come to Seattle come here with strong jobs. They don’t have a sense of risk when they arrive here. They’re welcomed to a great paying job at a corporate company.
If you made your money at Amazon or Microsoft, you’re part of a once or twice in a generation, tremendous amount of money. You don’t have any pattern recognition for what it will take for hyper growth. You haven’t been trained to recognize this.
There’s no social status in this weird Seattle Scandinavian culture. You don’t see it in the same way as in th Bay Area. You don’t see people showing off their stuff here in the same way with flashy outfits, cars, and show.
We have real advantages and disadvantages here.
What should Seattle do in the next one or two years to get a bit more of a risk-taking mindset?
Undergrads are so scrappy and fearless, they’ll take risks
There’s a certain point they’ll take risks, get networks, go through competitions… but then they get so much feedback from folks while going through all of the processes, that by the competition ends they don’t even feel like the corporate job, they wanna start a company.
You learn to be scrappy and going till something connects. It takes a lot of feedback from mentors and the community.
For the students at UW, this community is really supportive and nurturing. Folks are either “omg, I love DAWGS” or supportive of their experience in education. Tehy love to give feedback, tough love, and mentorship.
That is a huge gift for students who want to be scrappy, take a chance with a few thousand dollars…
25, 30 years old, making great money at the companies. THEy’ve matured, they know what they want to build, and they may have found co-founders to get to a good point.
It’s easy to find students who are well planned, students who see what happens…
Being around other founders that are successful makes you realize this is not an impossible thing.
All of the founders in the same room, you see them succeed over and over again and you realize it’s possible.
Right after college graduation, I started my first company. I didn’t even know what was possible, but I followed my peers, raising money and starting companies.
It’s important to expose people to success, it’s not crazy to dream of this.
You see people pitching all of the time in coffee shops. Your ears perk up with terminology and buzz words.
People come to Seattle and like to stay here. They come here because they want to be here, in this realm. They want to feel like they can make it, do it well alongside here. When you see Seattle, you fall in love with it. Once they start to get that feeling, they’re surrounded by people, and you start to believe, “if they can do it, I can do it”
We need more coffee shops for people to gather and chat.
Finding a cofounder increases your odds of success. You need to find someone who compliments your skills and will share this journey with you.
Unless you ‘ve had some massive prior success, you’re probably not going to be able to found a company by yourself.
Talk to customers so you now what people want to buy. Building something people want to buy is a big problem. Unless you talk to those people, you will never build the right product.
Don’t waste time working on a bad idea. Don’t struggle for a long time on an idea that isn’t venture backable with venture scale problems.
Have a network where people can give you feedback quickly.
Trusted people to tell you truth if something isn’t working so you can hear it and solve it as quickly as possible.
You don’t have more money or any advantage more than anyone else. You have nothing that is an advantage. Only speed.
As a founder, first time founder, you’re going to be slow… but still go as quick as you can. Ultimately the goal of any startup is customer adoption, so speed to find a product that customers are willing to pay for.
Everything else along the way is a step towards that.
It’s a long journey so you must keep good speed to execute your goal.
Don’t spend five years trying to make it work if it isnt’ going to work.
After six months, pivot and iterate. Move onto the next idea.
Don’t love your idea so much that you can’t let it go if no one else loves your idea.
Failing fast is best done at speed.
She took under two months to form a company and develop it. Things can happen way faster than you think they can. It should not take a year unless you’ve built ten companies during that period.
I hope this isn’t scary, this is meant to be motivating.
There are specific things that investors are interested in these days:
Generally think about the framework in 5 dimensions:
Team
Market
Product
Business model
Deal dynamics
Those five things are what I’m looking for convinction on. Is this a team that can win this market? Looking for different things based on the stage of investment. Pre-seed, looking for founder market fit.
Two questions: Is this a founding team that can win this market? They can articulate it and win it? If they do with this market, do I care? Is it an interesting outcome?
Downstream, you’re looking for different things… now you’ve got a product to market, you can talk to customers . You can get a sense of the product market fit.
At this point, it’s clear there is a demand for what you’ve built… the question is “how big is that market going to be? What is the price? Can you go to market experiences in an efficient and effective way?”
Also, with Ai’s help, w tend to look for an opportunity that wasn’t possible before this current wave of tech. It’s difficult to tack Ai onto existing products (many things are aided with Ai, now faster/cheaper, etc) but we look at what used to be impossibel
Leaps significant enough that allow new entrance into the market.
In the early stages it’s hard to build a company. You need tailwinds behind you (maybe where the window of opportunity is narrow, so you can jump into that window).
It helps founders when they get that tailwind.
Our whole portfolio is full of them… examples include chip design and testing, circuitboard design, being able to test a complicated process was impossible until recently. We made those investments because we saw that window of opportunity and we found teams who matched market fit. They were early enough to grab that market. Though now it’s pretty crowded.
First Time Founders Fundraising:
Often it feels like a foreign language
You need to go to a new frame of mind. You truly have to be in this “shoot for the stars” optimistic feeling.
You can’t focus on your worries and the small details, investors don’t want to know those things.
Fundraising and getting founders to raise money is really critical.
How can you position yourself better for investors?
Accelerators are great for first-time founders. You’re learning everything you need quickly.
When you’re a first time founder you dont know what you don’t know. It’s overwhelming.
It’s easy to become frozen.
Surround yourself with people who can help you get where you want to go.
Surround yourself with trusted advisors with experience.
Be open: you don’t know everything.
Are you being coachable?? Are you listening to someone who has already made thousands of deals? If you don’t listen you’re not going to end up with investors believing in what you’re doing. Be coachable.
Have undeniable traction in your business. They’ll pay attention if your revenue keeps ramping.
As opposed to, “I’ve accomplished nothing with customers, but please give me money”
The next is to have obvious experience and ability. Let’s talk about what’s actionable and what you can do. Show the you can do well.
You’re going to get punched in the face and told, “no” hundreds of times. They’ll tell you you’re a bad founder with a bad idea and this is not going to work.
Maybe that’s true, but every time you take the meeting you’re improving your pitch. Taking information out of that, investing time to figure out why it isn’t landing.
Get into the fundraiser mindset and you’ll improve your chances
Network yourself into warm introductions to people who are essentially lending their credibility as investors. You will increase your success by multiples.
A cold email into someone’s inbox may get a response… but you’re starting from a much weaker position than if you get an introduction from someone that already has credibility.
Networking is hard for a lot of people and it doesn’t come naturally to them. It can be a hard part of the journey to people who aren’t good at bullshitting.
He said he loves that and it’s his skill.
Raised over 130M over the years successful, and still has had 300 people say, “no!”
It’s like being punched in the face every day. You either love it or you go find something else. Very few people love it.
Confidence vs. Paranoia:
You need to go into pitches and be 100% confident. They need to see that you’re going to succeed…
However, you ned to listen to th feedback and listen to patterns.
They will take your business and point out all of its flaws, but don’t lose hope. This is why founder/market fit is is important, if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, its easy to lose confidence.
Whenever I start a company ,theres some seed of truth I’m 100% confident with. Maybe other parts of it I think are wrong, but I don’t focus on that.
For example, I believe in negative financial incentives. Having money on the line is a powerful motivator. We created an app for people to put money on the line to complete fitness goals. People didn’t think would work but I knew it was making 90% of my customers meet their goals every week.
That was my seed of truth that I could hold onto even after getting rejected over and over again.
Another fun fact: so many people want to be airbnb hosts but don’t have the space.. so instead they can go in on a place together.
Discover the truth you believe in, ideally something that very few people have seen before. Let that be your armor. You will probably be wrong and criticism may be valid, but the seed of truth will shine through
A lot of passionate people lack grit. Successful founders have to have the right level of grit, determination, and (a phrase we use) “the a-hole factor”. You need to break on the right level of that scale. You don’t need to be a 10, but you can’t be a 0. Sometimes you may be too nice to be a founder.
You have passion but you’ll get run over by customers, employees, or competitors
It’s not about passion, it’s about personality.
There is “kind” power . You can be kind but stubborn with your idea if you truly believe it is worth it.
GRIT is gendered?
Women entrepreneurs tend to be less competitive.
How can women be more assertive? Position themselves more competitively?
There’s a difference between being “nice” and “confident”
Nice is societally imposed: you have to listen, care about other people… it’s’ important to care about your team, include your investors, your customers. It’s powerful as a founder.
“Nice” is more dangerous though. It’s different because, if you’re used to being “nice” you’re used to having the world tell you how to be. It’s difficult to be a founder if you’re used to that behavior. If you’re always told you’re wrong, don’t deserve to be there.. who are you to build this?
If you are used to listening to society and changing yourself, it’s difficult to be stubborn and push something into the world that doesn’t exist.
It’s hard to be a female founder unfortunately, but not impossible.
Probably a lot of very competitive women in this room, extremely competitive.
All founders need to work on finding an area of conviction to push through sociality exceptions. You’re doing something that hasn’t been done before, you’re not having anyone cheering you on. Probably 90% rejection or more. In the early days, you can’t let that mold you into a different shape than what it would be otherwise.
“Start the day with controversial conversations” is how one of my colleagues starts the day.
“Highly recommend we do not do this, it will end up with a lot of legal issues and lawsuits.”
Well, he’s a Stanford teacher and he likes to have philosophical discussions, she replied.
“It’s easy to confused depth and expertise, versus something you just can’t get your mind off of. If you are someone who likes to dig 10 layers deeper than the average person, it can give you insight into something unlike anyone else.”
Kelly’s Question? What’s the point of the wardrobe theme too? (turns out the answer: end-of-event-photo)
If you were to start a Ai company with unlimited funding and dreams, what is the craziest idea you’d build:
2030: Trump is out of the White House, we’ve been talking about face punching… anytime you say his name you get punched in the face by an Ai robot
Kelly Tutors comment: This is surprising for him to say this. My opinion. This guy is the VC investor and saying this joke. He’s the one that said he’s an expert at spreading bullshit. So… idk, he’s so unselfaware.
Kelly Tutors comment: I’m so ready for this TDS to be over. If possible, I want everyone to be proven wrong and things to get awesome.
Ai based solution that has a huge impact on climate change.
Kelly Tutors comment: I am… not sure of climate change! I’m just like WTF are those planes in the sky every single day/night creating a clear obvious haze in the sky! You can see the line in the distance where it stops and the normal sky is exposed. It’s making everyone sick, it’s blocking out the sun, it’s making the sun super painful. I’m not a fan of “climate change” in the sense that we can’t grow crops properly and extreme weather is happening… but we have the tech now to prevent extreme weather, prepare, and thrive… we have the budget coming our way too… so, I think a lot of change will come for “climate change” but more: climate safety, hopefully.
In Seattle, one Ai consumer startup. A ubequitious consumer startup. (Not amazon-esq, but someting everyone uses this tech on a personal level, not paid for by companies). The next social network, the next Uber, Airbnb… something outside of the valley where Uber is disruptive enough.
Be strategic with networking is the advice I leave on. They said to dig into linkedin and connect with people. Find what events are happening at place you want to go.
A girl in teh audience said she wants to work with a guy I the industry, and then one of the panelists said she knows him. So she will give her her card, they can talk, and “maybe she’ll make the introduction later.”
It never hurts to ask, you don’t know who is in the room. That’s networking
How do you evaluate if someone is the right founder or not?
- The key thing is the founder’s “why”… why did they fail? Do tehy understand why they failed? Failusre isn’t an issue but you got to learn from it. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again it’ll be the same.
If you failed on someone else’s money, that’s awesome and great. Now you have the playbook of what not to do.
If you learned on someone else’s dollar, how to make all the mistakes, I love it. (the VC guy says this)
The reason founders are heroes is because you’re taking the risk.
You’re the risk, you have control of the outcome.
The reason you’re heroes is cause you’re wiling to jump off the cliff. It’s remarkable.
Bonus Hype: Dinner, Deez Dawgs.
- There are surprisingly few options for late night dinner. Luckily, I ran into a girl I’d met a month or so ago who sells hotdogs on the street. I had a wild time meeting her originally, wanna hear the story?
- First - here is her instagram (she asked me to follow her, so i’m sure she’s happy if I share it too). She said its how she communicates where she’ll be hosting her stand as she do it (I ran into her by chance… last time I saw her was a totally different location).
Lately I don’t eat hot dogs often… the last time I had one was one of hers, as I said, a month or so ago… and that was my first hot dog in probably a year or more.
The last time I met her, I was alongside a girl I’d met while out enjoying the nightlife of Seattle. I was out at a club that I wanted to try for a while, but when I arrived it was really dull. I met a girl in the bathroom who was a regular and said another place was way more fun. She said if it didn’t liven up within an hour, we’d head to teh next place. Plus- she knew the hot dog girl… I honestly wasn’t sure I wanted to go join her and also meet her “hot dog girl friend” but, the club was so dull and it just seemed worth the adventure, so we head that way.
The funny part is that we went to the club, she danced with a certain guy a lot, and then he disappeared. We left the club later and she wanted to get a hot dog. Who is standing in line? Her guy!!!
She called him out and said, “where did you go? You said you were going to the bathroom and you disappeared.” Then the guy had some excuses… but then two of them ended up talking all night till I left…
But yeah, basically, he ditched her… but then she caught him in line for hot dogs. Then they hit it off again, outside of the club. And she was in a fight with her BF, it’s why she was out at the club… so the guy gave her a pep talk about self-love! Lol.
So, I ran into the hot dog girl again and told her this story… and how I was happy to see her again, too.
Conference “Overall Rating” Further Elaboration:
VENUE -2.5 /5
Room for Improvement: The speeches were hosted in a room that was way too big compared to how small of a place they gave everyone to sit. It was so tight and not comfortable for a late-night event. Also, they have multiple locations (maybe they can mention this in the description) because I went to the wrong location at first.
FOOD - 2/5
Room for Improvement: I was surprised that they had no drinks or snacks. The event was donation based, but because it was a two-hour night time event, you think they’d have at least water. They did have coffee but you had to wait till the end to order, and as much as I love my Seattle heritage, I don’t want coffee at 9pm.
SPEAKER CONTENT - 4/5
Room for Improvement: Overall, this was super valuable information!! I learned a lot and was glad to hear a number of things repeated that I’ve heard before. Even some advice I heard yesterday at the “modern marketing” event. The was, however, one speaker who really was annoying to me from the panel. He was so cocky and arrogant. But even his opinion was interesting to hear, just in the sense it’s nice to hear lots of perspectives, I suppose. I think that the co-working could have had a bit more intention (though it was fun) and the second event just didn’t provide any schedule ahead of time, so you didn’t know what to expect.
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES - 2.5/5
Room for Improvement: There wasn’t intentional networking until the end, so it was easy to be anonymous. That may or may not be something they want to improve. For me, I’m fine with it being that way. I like to be anonymous lately :)
LIKELINESS TO RETURN-5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: Well, I do think I’d like to give this group a few more tries and hear more from their presenters. They work hard to have high quality events, to some level and I think it’s worth the time when things work out. I’d be happy to try again and join another interesting topic with this group. They seem like smart people to be around.
Kelly’s Remaining Questions:
What are the event leader’s KOI’s?
What are my KOI’s (I just learned that word yesterday)?
How can someone get more fluent in funding requests?
What are the pros and cons to funding?
Can these experts advocate at all for self-made businesses? No funding (just stock success hahah) if possible? Self funded and business funded success? Or is that just a dream world?
How much money should people be asking for? What’s a formula?
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
