Fundraising Radio is the largest podcast about fundraising for early stage startups in the US. We focus on helping founders understand how they can raise the first institutional round outside of friends and family. How to appeal to investors and how to make sure that they see in your company what you see there. We interview experienced founders who sold their companies in the past and raised hundreds of millions, we talk with active angels, managers of rolling funds, corporate venture capitalists and more. If you want to raise money for your young company, you came to the right place!
Terry Husayn (Talha), VP of Technical engagement and a member of the founding team at Orum. In this part Terry spoke about the process of building an early stage sales team - from the ground up. Specifically we focused on hiring, training and creating compensation plans for BDRs and SDRs.
Some mentions from the episode:
Terry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talhahusayn/
Link to Orum: https://www.orum.com/
And of course, keep an eye out on our articles through SubStack that you can check out here.
Terry Husayn (Talha), VP of Technical engagement and a member of the founding team at Orum in this episode talks about the following:
- intro to cold-calling, who needs to do it and why
- testing of the outreach strategy
- specifics of outreach
Databases of emails/phone numbers:
Intent based signals tracking can be done here: Sixth Sense
Tool to capture your website visitors: Warmly
Terry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talhahusayn/
Link to Orum: https://www.orum.com/
And of course, keep an eye out on our articles through SubStack that you can check out here.
Amjed Aboukhadijeh - head of sales at Socket. In this part he takes a deeper dive into the specific strategies included in the territory planning, more specifically - creating drip campaigns and running a POC (Proof Of Concept) that has a much greater success rate.
Here is the link to a spreadsheet template that you can use to run your Proof Of Concept: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16RFCe-VnSILzZerdbdPsajKSsfNQHzbKxcVIG48ngYk/edit?usp=sharing
This is the second episode of two that we've had with Amjed, you can listen to part 1 here.
Amjed Aboukhadijeh - head of sales at Socket, talks about the importance of territory planning in the sales process. He explains what steps does territory planning consist of and how you should work on each step.
This is the first episode of two that we'll have with Amjed - part 2 will be focused on very specific strategies that were mentioned in Pt 1 (this episode) so stay tuned!
Lucas Price, Founder and CEO at Yardstick in this episode talks about asking the right questions, using structured interviews and scorecards to identify sales talent.
Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street https://a.co/d/fBJf66l
A VP of Sales Hiring Scorecard For Startups…Get it Right the First Time https://avenuetalentpartners.com/2021/06/27/vp-sales-hiring-scorecard-startups/
What to Know Before You Interview Your Next Sales Candidate https://www.yardstick.team/post/what-to-know-before-you-interview-your-next-sales-candidate
For our long-standing followers asking if we haven't released any new episodes in the past 8 months because we died - no we haven't, still kicking it! This new season of Fundraising Radio will be still catered to our old listeners but this time the focus will be on sales for early stage startups that have nothing to their name. Why? Because with the ongoing recession and great fears for the future of the US economy, more and more investors become conservative and want to see sales before they invest in you.
Let us know how you like the slightly updated format and most importantly - the subject!
Links that I've promised to include in the episode description:
Jonny Price, VP of Fundraising at Community Round Fundraising (WeFunder) in this episode talks about equity crowdfunding, process that founders need to undergo to have a successful crowd-funded round and more. We've also talked about the major pitfalls in said process and how to prepare for those.
Jonny's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnyprice/
Community Round Fundraising's site: https://wefunder.com/
SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles) explained by the CEO of Assure: https://www.fundraisingradio.com/Jeremy-Neilson/
Extra resources that Jonny shared with me:
Blog on how to raise $1M on Wefunder: https://twitter.com/JonnyCPrice/status/1503515916285493255
Podcast episode on fundraising strategy: https://www.spreaker.com/user/wefunder/justin-renfro
Community Round website: communityround.com
Wefunder Raise page: wefunder.com/raise
Wefunder PBC charter: wefunder.com/charter
Twitter: @jonnycprice; @wefunder
Hall Martin, Founder and CEO at TEN Capital Network that raised over $900 million for its clients, in this episode talks about hiring fundraising advisors who can connect you to the right capital. We spoke about different regulations around fundraising and of course, about hiring experts for your fundraising round and whether it's worth it or not.
Hall's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/halltmartin/
TEN Capital Network - connecting investors with startups: https://tencapital.group/
Alyona Mysko, CEO & Founder at Fuelfinance in this episode talks about the story of her company and the effects that the war has on it and its future plans. Hint: no giving up in sight and Fuelfinance is preparing to raise soon while expanding!
Fuelfinance website - https://fuelfinance.me
Support Ukrainian Busines - here
Here - how to open in Delaware a company, but it is in Ukrainian. If you want to read another way of opening a company (with Firstbase of course), you can check out our website: https://www.firstbase.io/
Here is the video Spend with Ukraine.
Sharmin Ali, Founder and CEO of Instoried tells her story of helping others write good stories. In this episode we go in-depth into the reasons why Instoried build all their tech in-house from scratch and how they use it as their competitive advantage to secure funding for the expansion.
Sharmin's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharmin-ali-5b6b4237/
Instoried website: https://www.linkedin.com/company/instoried/
I forgot what else I wanted to include in the description so here is the link to our course about fundraising for early stage startups: https://fundraising-courses.com/
Russ Wilcox, Partner at PillarVC talks about his experience running startups himself. Throughout his career he raised 10 times and 3 times these were down-rounds. In this episode Russ explains what down-rounds are bad, how they happened to him and how he managed to survive and thrive!
Russ' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russ-wilcox-2005/
Pillar VC's website: https://www.pillar.vc/
For people who want to understand how to get in touch with the right investor, a course developed by Fundraising Radio's team and myself: https://fundraising-courses.com/
Some topics we have covered in this episode:
- your fund invests in three fields, which one of those do you specialize in?
- you've raised 10 rounds of funding and 3 of those were down-rounds with an eventual happy ending, can you tell us a bit more about that experience?
- the unique trait of your fund is that most of your managers have experience building their own companies, how transferrable is that experience?
- you're an investor who likes patents, why is that and when o you think it makes sense to patent an idea/technology?
- you've recently closed your own raise for your 3rd fund - how did that go? How does that experience compare to fundraising for your own company?
- are there any deep tech investments that you've recently made that excite you the most?
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