During her time as a media executive, Hauser built a rich network of founders and VCs alike. She also discovered a pain point. There were so many women ready to launch new businesses, but very few women investors to not only fund those companies, but also to mentor and advise. With two young children, Hauser was looking for more flexibility in her career and began investing on the side. Realizing how much she loved it, it soon became a full-time pursuit.

“I want to see that a founder is adaptable, that they're open to different ideas, and that they have a curiosity mindset.” - @fran_hauser
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In the eight years since she began investing, Hauser has built a portfolio of 30 companies, 28 of which are led by female founders. For female founders struggling to land that first check, she emphasizes the importance of network building. While it is critical to have a great pitch deck, she explains that it’s getting the pitch in front of the right people that counts. This means developing an inner circle, and tapping them for who they know. Perhaps you don’t have direct relationships with VCs, but can you build an advisory board of people who can create those intros?  

There are a few common mistakes which Hauser sees founders are making. One is that they sometimes get too stuck in their vision for the product, and don’t process feedback well. “I want to see that a founder is adaptable, that they’re open to different ideas, and that they have a curiosity mindset.” It’s important that founders engage in active listening with investors. Being open to new ideas and capable of adapting is critical. “When you’re starting a new business, a big part of it is being able to adapt, and being able to adjust because stuff happens.”

“When you're starting a new business, a big part of it is being able to adapt, and being able to adjust because stuff happens.” - @fran_hauser
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Another mistake is focusing too much on the product and not talking enough about the other aspects. “At the end of the day, you’re investing in the founder, because the product might change. It’s really about whether this person has what it takes to launch a successful business . . . being really clear and confident about why you’re the right person to be tackling this opportunity is really important.” Too often, Hauser sees a dynamic founder present an entire pitch deck, and not really begin to introduce themselves until the final slide. Additionally, Hauser likes to see context to go along with the product. What is the pain point the product solves or what market trend is it responding to? Painting a broader picture around your company’s purpose can go a long way.

“At the end of the day, you're investing in the founder, because the product might change. It's really about whether this person has what it takes to launch a successful business.” - @fran_hauser
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What Hauser does like to see in a potential investment is market opportunity. Being able to clearly articulate the consumer value proposition is so important, as is knowing one’s own weaknesses. No founder is perfect at everything, so how do they fill in the gaps when it comes to their own shortcomings. If they are the visionary, is there someone on the team that is great with day-to-day operations? Another thing Hauser loves to see in future investments is traction. Knowing there is already a lead investor who has done their due diligence goes a long way in convincing her. But traction comes in many different forms. For a company that has not launched, 10 clients that have given verbal agreements is a big mitigation of risk, as is a few hundred people who have filled out surveys for a direct-to-consumer product.

Michael Masterson, co-founder and managing partner of investment firm Supermoon Capital, is hyperfocused on Pre-Seed to Series A stage startups in sleep. Supermoon Capital is taking part in our Pitch Practice, where a handful of founders will pitch for three minutes and then get direct feedback. He is also participating in the Office Hours where Angel/Series A+ Founders Network members will have 10-minute private sessions.

Takeaways:

• Know everything about the investor you’re pitching to
• Understand the problem you’re trying to solve 
• Determine why your company should be selected and focus on why your idea is the solution to a problem.
• Understand your customer and the competitive landscape
• Hire the best people from the beginning  

To have a successful pitch, you should know the investor inside and out, so the Founders Network talked with Masterson about what makes Supermoon Capital special and how to  successfully pitch to them. 

“Not only are we providing capital, but we have a lot of different ways that our companies can access different resources and relationships, depending on what their particular needs are.” - @memasterson1
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• Know everything about the investor you’re pitching to. 

Masterson said they’ve assembled an arsenal of sleep science resources and relationships. One part of this arsenal is their team of six leading sleep scientists in the world.

“They are not just listed on our website,” he said. They’re advisors and thought leaders who are incentivized based on the performance of the fund.

Supermoon also has SleepScore Labs as an exclusive partner. Masterson said they are the leading sleep-focused R&D services company that has collected about 70 million hours of sleep data over the last decade or so.

“Their range of R&D services are really relevant to our portfolio companies,” Masterson said. So if a prospective founder needs testing to back up the effectiveness of their product’s claims, as an example, Supermoon has access. 

SleepScore Labs has the partnership with Mattress Firm, one of the largest sleep product retailers in the industry and ResMed, the leading sleep apnea clinical therapy R&D firm in the world, is also an investor in Supermoon.  

“Not only are we providing capital, but we have a lot of different ways that our companies can access different resources and relationships, depending on what their particular needs are,” Masterson said. 

“The biggest thing I've learned that I would share with new founders of companies is that it's really difficult to attract and hire really good people.” - @memasterson1
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• Understand the problem you’re trying to solve 

Keeping up with how the science is changing and what pain point you’re trying to solve is key to a successful pitch. 

“Sleep is moving fast right now,” Masterson said. “And even since we started our fund, for example, the diagnostic landscape has changed dramatically.” He estimated an even split in the percentage of sleep studies taking place in a lab versus at home. The pandemic has shifted a lot of sleep testing to the home. 

Masterson said the pandemic will have a “legacy effect” that will impact the development of tests and devices intended for home use.

• Determine why your company should be selected and focus on why your idea is the solution to a problem.

When looking at companies to invest, Masterson said he looks for why that person is the right one to select. He’s looking for someone with a “highly relevant background and a passion for solving this issue.”

“Usually there’s a personal story involved that’s driving that extra gear,” he said. “That’s something that we look for.”

“People are what make or break, in my opinion, a startup at the beginning.” - @memasterson1
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• Understand your customer and the competitive landscape

Since Supermoon specializes in what they call the emerging “Night Market,” founders don’t need to explain to them why sleep is important. Instead, they need to give specific information on who their customer is, what competing products are available and why their product or service is key in helping people sleep.

Masterson said the phrase, “You can sleep when you’re dead” is just not relevant any more. He said “this older, more pervasive attitude is changing.” 

• Hire the best people from the beginning

Masterson said having the experience of being a startup founder himself was one of the best decisions he ever made. Starting a company from the ground up helped him become a better investor.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned that I would share with new founders of companies is that it’s really difficult to attract and hire really good people,” he said. “People are what make or break, in my opinion, a startup at the beginning.”

Founders should develop the ability to attract good talent and develop them early on into leaders of organizations. Planning ahead and surrounding yourself with the right people is how a founder can succeed. 

For more insightful feedback from Supermoon Capital, join Michael Masterson for the next Pitch Practice and Office Hours or request to join to access the many resources that Founders Network offers or find out if you qualify for full membership here.

“We’re in the rocket fuel business,” Arjun Chopra explains of Floodgate, an early-stage venture capital firm where he’s a partner. “If you’re running a car, you don’t need rocket fuel, or you’ll probably blow the thing up. If you’re in the business of building rockets (and not every business should be a rocket), you are the people we should be talking to.”

And that’s basically the Floodgate teams’ job in a nutshell: To determine which startups have the ideas, talent, and the passion necessary to change the lives of their customers with a little rocket fuel to make it happen.

“If you're running a car, you don't need rocket fuel, or you'll probably blow the thing up. If you're in the business of building rockets, you are the people we should be talking to.” - @acvox
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Although Arjun is the first to admit that  they’re wrong more often than they’re right, their firm has had some big wins, as well. Floodgate has been early investors in Twitter, Lyft, Twitch, Okta, and Chegg, to name a few.

Prior to joining Floodgate, as CTO of Cambridge Technology Enterprises (CTE), Arjun helped small to enterprise-level companies modernize their IT stacks to embrace a cloud-first infrastructure. And with Arjun’s help, CTE became known as one of the leading partners of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Throughout his career, he’s been a founder, CTO, software developer, and more. 

Now Arjun leads his firm’s B2B investments. He’s on the hunt for entrepreneurs that have ideas to transform the IT Stack and bring intelligent assistance to every aspect of an organization. “How do we enable every person to have ready access to an ‘Iron Man Suit’?”

At a Founders Network pitch practice, Arjun Chopra will critique the mechanics and content of seed stage founders’ elevator pitches. 

Register at Founders Network for an invite, or find out if you qualify for full membership and get common critiques or advice that include:

• Aligning technological and market insights
• Assessing whether your team/talent is ready to deliver what you’ve promised
• Assessing your market (Are you focused on the right customers?)
• Critiquing your distribution model
• Gauging your ability to scale

“You see so many people with such great ideas and great execution behind them but willing to spend the prime years of their youth pursuing their dream, and for us to be even a small part of that is an incredible honor.” - @acvox
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One of the main things Arjun is looking for in a pitch is founder/market fit. 

“Why is this your life’s work?” Arjun asks every founder, because he has found that the ones who are the most passionate or obsessed with what they do are the most likely to find success.

“If you can express that in the elevator pitch, and you can let that authenticity shine, that does count for a lot. And maybe not every investor respects or will value that, but this is really what we try to look for.”

As early-stage investors, Floodgate invests in people over ideas.

“It’s an exciting spot to be at, because you see so many people with such great ideas and great execution oftentimes behind them but willing to spend the prime years of their youth pursuing their dream, and for us to be even a small part of that is an incredible honor.”

That company, a woman-led, health-focused firm in West Virginia, eventually grew to hundreds of employees and gave Lewis a glimpse into how entrepreneurship could change communities. Today, as a partner at Rogue investing in early-stage companies, that experience still informs her focus. 

“That was an eye-opening experience for me to realize that if you invest in people who then grow companies, and grow jobs, you can fundamentally change the communities in which you live. That is what I hold fast and true,” Lewis said. 

Portland-based Rogue invests in undercapitalized founders spanning SaaS, enterprise tech and consumer health tech, and generally looks at companies with between $500,000 and $1 million in revenue. At a Founders Network session, Lewis — who also runs the Rogue’s women’s fund, called Rogue Women — shares her advice for young companies looking for funding.

Register at Founders Network for a complimentary pass, or find out if you qualify for full membership here and get Caroline’s insights and feedback on: 

• Knowing your numbers and the assumptions behind them
• Understanding your competition and market positioning
• Recognizing Your Investor’s Motives
• Conveying the Right Team Dynamics
• Avoiding too Much Dilution Early On

“We like to pride ourselves on being that first-round or second-round institutional partner that comes in and really helps at the stage when you have maybe five people, and a year later you have 30 people,” she said. 

“Know your numbers: Surprisingly, sometimes CEOs don't. I care less about your exact financial projections than the assumptions going into them.” - @carolinejlewis
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That need is particularly acute for women founders, who are disproportionately undercapitalized. The majority of venture capitalists are men, as are the majority of venture capital recipients. An estimated 97% of all venture capital dollars go to male founders, despite evidence that women-led companies deliver superior returns and operating results over the long term.

Whether a woman-led startup or not, the standard traits that investors look for are passion, resolve and a unique solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist in the marketplace. It’s okay to have competitors, Lewis says: What matters is that you have a pathway to growth in a very large market. Founders should also have a good understanding of how venture capital works; namely, that those investors are accountable to their limited partners and must deliver certain returns. 

“It shouldn't be about how much you raise -- it's how well your company is performing.” - @carolinejlewis
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“Know your numbers: Surprisingly, sometimes CEOs don’t. I care less about your exact financial projections than the assumptions going into them,” she added. “I appreciate when founders say: Here is my competition. Here’s where we’re similar, here’s why we’re different, and here’s how we think we can beat them.”

For founders making a pitch with a co-founder or teammates, consider in advance what dynamics you convey. Investors want to see a team that is well-balanced, and that works well together with complementary skills and strengths. Your pitch should reflect that, and communicate that your partnership can go the distance. 

There are other potential pitfalls when pitching to venture capitalists as well. 

“I don't care if you've raised a billion dollars, or if your company is valued at a billion dollars. I care about whether you have good, fundamental operating principles that warrant the value it has.” - @carolinejlewis
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“For early stage founders, a common early mistake — whether through over-stacking convertible notes or by teaming up with the wrong investors — is giving away too much equity in the interest of getting money in the door quickly. There’s value in having deals be relatively simple and straightforward,” said Lewis. 

Another is getting overly caught up in your valuation, or how much you raise in a particular round. Neither are indicative of your startup’s potential for long-term success. 

“It shouldn’t be about how much you raise — it’s how well your company is performing,” Lewis added. “I don’t care if you’ve raised a billion dollars, or if your company is ‘valued’ at a billion dollars. I care about whether you have good, fundamental operating principles that warrant the value it has.”

Move over, millennials — Gen Z is about to take over, followed by Gen Alpha. And these up-and-coming consumers have an entirely different perspective, and a distinct set of tastes and preferences, that founders should be aware of when designing and marketing products. 

TikTok, the mega-hit social app, encapsulates many of the unique tastes of Gen Z: Those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the 2010s, who grew up acclimated to the digital media from a very young age. 

“Gen Z is what everyone’s talking about, but we’re already starting to think about Gen Alpha already,” says Matt Lee, a partner at Progression Fund. “They’re super interesting in that they’re growing up in a COVID environment; they are hackers, and they’re using technology at a very young age because their millennial parents also adopted technology early.” 

Progression Fund, which invests in consumer and frontier technologies, was founded by Lee alongside alumni of TikTok and Musical.ly. TikTok has an estimated user base of 800 million worldwide, and its U.S. operations are valued as high as $60 billion, according to recent reports.

Register at for Matt Lee’s virtual pitch practice with Founders Network members, and find out if you qualify for full Founders Network membership.  

• What Gen Z/Alpha Need Out of Tech 
• How COVID Could Affect Future Products
• Designing Content for Gen Z/Alpha
• How to Make Tech More Human
• Emerging Trends to Watch

Gen Alpha are exposed to technology when they’re toddlers and even younger, and that carries implications for what they expect from products. And given that Gen Alpha makes up more than 1 in 7 people in the world, and are on track to outnumber Baby Boomers by 2025, founders would be wise to pay attention. 

“They’re growing up talking to Alexa and Google, so technology has to be more human to them.” - @powerbog
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The COVID-19 pandemic will also have a lasting imprint on how Gen Alpha view the world. and could make them more adaptable and less patient when it comes to creating change and accessing information. An estimated 98% of Gen Alpha kids are using some form of technology, according to MarketingProfs.com.

“Gen Alpha are much more tech savvy, and they hack solutions for everything,” Lee says. “They’re growing up talking to Alexa and Google, so technology has to be more human to them.”

Another defining feature of Gen Z and Gen Alpha are shorter attention spans and a preference for short-form and easily digestible content. If the product or content is cumbersome to work with, they’ll be turned off. 

“Your product has to be simple, straightforward, look beautiful, and be easy to share with your friends.” - @powerbog
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“Content has become shorter form, and platforms are catering to that,” Lee adds. “Your product has to be simple, straightforward, look beautiful, and be easy to share with your friends.”

Shareability is a key principle of marketing your products to Gen Z and Gen Alpha: They’re natural-born creators, and the way you package your products should inspire them to create, share and engage.

“Everything has to be Instagrammable. Especially in the consumer product space, your product has to be functional and look beautiful,” Lee explains. And the same idea applies to workplace tech as well, with many in the younger age demographic launching careers remotely, and acclimating to a company’s culture from their homes. 

“Everything has to be Instagrammable: Especially in the consumer product space, your product has to be functional and look beautiful.” - @powerbog
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Despite the tech-savviness of these emerging generations, there’s another side to consider when building products for them. Digital natives, in particular Gen Z, have grown up exposed to the dark side of technology: the isolation, loneliness, and negative human behavior that can come with it. They are the “loneliest generation,” according to Lee. 

Accordingly, a new generation of products — in areas like digital health, education or social products that have a positive slant — could emerge. The rising awareness of the negative effects of technology is also bound to influence new products. 

“A lot of the millennial parents are cognizant of the bad side of technology, so Gen Alpha will be more educated on the negative sides of social media,” Lee adds. 

Nathan Beckord, member of our January ’13 Cohort, is the founder of Foundersuite.com, a collection of software tools and templates that help startup CEOs execute more efficiently and effectively.  Nathan raised seed funding in part from investors he met through Founders Network.

In this video, Nathan covers how to: i) build an investor funnel; ii) run a process; iii) build momentum and iv) efficiently close your round.

About Founders Network ®

Founders Helping Founders ® Founded in 2011, Founders Network (www.foundersnetwork.com) offers lifelong peer mentorship to over 600 tech startup founders globally. Our community includes thought leaders from the high technology startup industry including founders, angel investors, venture capitalists and corporate executives. To interview our staff or members about company news, industry trends or events, please email: press@foundersnetwork.com

Request an Invite

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Q: You were the founding investor in Skype— one of the defining aspects of your career. What was the thought process behind spotting their eventual success?

Howard:

• The Co-founders had worked together before in the telecom industry and deeply understood how it worked.
• They were proposing a completely software based solution to a traditional hardware infrastructure problem. So their cost structure would be so competitive there would be no reaction to the incumbents.
• Market size was in the $100B+ range, big enough to where the revenue implications would be massive.

Q: In 2000, toward the end of the .com bubble, you were hired as the CEO of a company called Public Mind. An enterprise software as a service providing customer relationship management solutions. Based on that experience, do you have any advice for founders?

Howard: You can have a fantastic idea, but timing is really the most important thing. If you get your company timing wrong, if you’re either too early or you’re too late, there may be nothing you can do to survive. In my experience, most founders are too early. Because investors, employees, and cofounders tire. You can have the greatest idea in the world but someone else may realize it a few years after your company does not succeed. Founders need to ask: Why is now the right timing for this company?

You can have a fantastic idea, but timing is really the most important thing. @howardh @AugustCapital

Q: You’ve heard thousands of pitches. What are a couple defining factors that catch your attention as an investor?

Howard:

• If I think to myself, I should quit my job and work for this person.
• If there’s something Brave New World about what they’re proposing, not faster better cheaper. If they’re saying “everybody used by buy software and run it on their servers, we’re going to run it on our servers and here’s what you get out of it” — that’s Salesforce.
• If their proposal is capital efficient. You can prove everything, if not almost everything, on a modest amount of money. Later if you need more money it will just be for growth. Nothing turns me off more than someone saying “I need to start a company and to start Phase One I need $10M bucks”.

If I think to myself, I should quit my job and work for this person, that’s a company I’d invest in @howardh @AugustCapital

Q: What are some “red flags” when it comes to investing in a company for you? Basically, what should founders not be doing?

Howard:

• They shouldn’t be disagreeing with each other during the pitch, that happens. They should be making their decisions based on data and thought, not on gut feeling. A lot of the time I’m asking the team “why did you decide to sell to this market segment first” if the answer is “we talked to 20 ppl and this is what we learned” good answer. A bad answer is “that seems like a good segment” or “my gut told me”.
• People who do not seek out experts or listen to others. Maybe they screwed up their cap table. Or hired friends and family to do finances. Or they did all the legal work themselves based on some web form. These are not people I’m interested in investing in.

I won’t invest in people who do not seek out experts or listen to others @howardh @AugustCapital

Listen to Howard’s Podcast, Venturecast, where he and David Hornik take a random walk down Sand Hill Road with conversations, interviews, and conference reports around the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial scene. Highly recommended.

Pear’s portfolio includes names like DoorDash, Gusto, and Meme Box. The common thread; each founding team had a key insight into their customer and market that lent to their eventual success. Read on to learn why audio fitness is the future and the one word that led to Wedding Party’s success.

What makes Pear not your typical Silicon Valley VC firm?

The magic is the level of effort that we put into working with very early stage companies.  Pear is a firm that was built on 15 years of Angel Investing experience. My Partner, Pejman Nozad, noticed that when he was investing, a founder would come back and say they were ready for investment from larger firms after their first year. But actually, they weren’t. They needed institutional support at the preseed and seed stage.

We don’t just spend a few weeks with our portfolio companies— we work with them actively on their first 5 hires, on their strategy, on their activating plan, etc. We stick with them. That is one of the main reasons I joined the firm.

The magic is the level of effort that we put into working with very early stage companies. @ajaykam @pearvc ‏

There has been a trend of firms moving away from focusing on specific sectors, to becoming sector agnostic. Why is Pear sector agnostic?

At the preseed and seed stage we believe that founders know the future, and it’s on us to identify which founders can take their concept or their core IP and build a successful business around it. They may be aware of an emerging vertical that we are not.

At the preseed and seed stage we believe that founders know the future @ajaykam @pearvc ‏

You Co-founded Micromobs in 2009, then Wedding Party (acquired by Instacart) in 2012. What are your major takeaways from founderhood?

1. Who is on your team alongside you, really makes an enormous difference. I bootstrapped Wedding Party for 2 years. I understand the feeling of really needing someone to get something done. When you are building the team, an A+ person who accelerates the pace is extremely worthwhile.
2. Speed. If you look at truly successful companies, you will notice their speed, how quickly they get stuff done. At Wedding Party, we thought we were working quickly, but we were not. I sat the team down, we made some structural changes, and all of a sudden, we were moving twice as fast.
3. Understand your market. As a founder, if you’re going after a big market, understand the ins and outs. Talk to the old players in the space. In my experience, this is sometimes something that founders don’t do enough of.

If you look at truly successful companies, you will notice their speed, how quickly they get stuff done. @ajaykam @pearvc ‏

What investment and/or startup trends are you excited about right now?

I think it would be cliche for me to say AI, but we’ve invested in some companies coming out of Universities working on some very strong AI technology. It will be some time before we see the benefits of that, but I am excited about what is to come. Now, almost every pitch I hear mentioned AI in some capacity.

But more than anything, we’re just looking for really passionate founders who know their space and are excited to build category defining companies.

we’re just looking for really passionate founders who know their space and are excited to build category defining companies. @ajaykam @pearvc ‏

What portfolio companies are you thrilled about right now, and what made you decide to invest in them?

Aaptiv: An audio based fitness product for $9.99/month; strength training, yoga, treadmill running.

We invested in Aaptiv because we loved the founder’s key insight: When you’re at the gym, you don’t want to have to think too hard about what you have to do. That is why personal trainers exist, but they are expensive. With Aaptiv, you get an audio personal trainer. It’s a simple, key insight, and we had never thought of fitness in that way. But the customers love it.

What is one book, podcast, article, or media that you think is vital for founder to read/listen to?

Founders don’t have time to read, so I recommend Instaread: It takes NY Times best selling books and articles, and summarizes them into 10-15 minute clips. Its an excellent way to get caught up on a bunch of stuff when you don’t have time to read a full book. Founders want to be educated and stay current, but do not necessarily have the time.

• How Cross Culture utilizes cultural investing to determine which startups they will invest in;
• The top consumer trends he sees a future in;
• And the characteristics Cross Culture looks for in a founder.

What makes Cross Culture VC unique?

Marlon: Cultural investing. We look to understand and predict consumer behavior trends by studying global culture. No other venture capital fund is doing that. If you can identify and predict how consumers will behave and you get it right, then you can invest in tomorrow’s next great companies. On another note, unconscious bias does exist when investors evaluate companies. We don’t have any kind of “out of whack” belief systems. For example we don’t believe that Black, male, female, white or purple people are less capable of creating a great company. We strip away that nonsense, and focus on investing in the best founders with the best ideas.

My partner Troy is the founder of a branding agency named  Atom Factory. That partnership allows us to add extra support to our portfolio companies at no additional cost.  The specific services include communications, branding, and marketing strategy as well as business development. You would be hard pressed to find another Seed fund that is capable of providing similar services to its portfolio.   

@CrossCultureVC predicts consumer behavior by studying global culture. No other VC’s are doing that –@MarlonCNichols

What investment and/or startup trends are you excited about right now?

Marlon: 

• Democratization of healthy lifestyles. Making it so families, irrespective of wallet size will have access to healthy life choices. We invested in ThriveMarket based on that. ThriveMarket is the first socially conscious online store offering organic and natural products at wholesale prices. 

• Text and chat are becoming the primary means of communication around world and platforms in and of themselves. MSurvey caught our eye for that reason, and is now in our portfolio. MSurvey produces a mobile survey and communication technology connected to mobile network operators, giving brands access to over 200 million users.

• At Cross Culture we’re excited about the convenience/on demand phenomena. Skurt is a fleet less rental car platform that delivers cars to your door. It fit the bill, and we invested.

Some trends @CrossCultureVC is excited about: Democratization of healthy lifestyles, text/chat platforms, & the convenience/on demand phenomena – @MarlonCNichols

What portfolio companies are you thrilled about right now, and what made you decide to invest in them?

Marlon: When we think about companies we don’t just consider where a company is now, but where we see the global trends moving in the future. There is something unique in each of the founders backgrounds that qualified them. In some cases that was domain expertise. Take Mayvenn for instance; they fit into the shifting demographic in American themes/ trends. In this case, you have a CEO that grew up around hair stylists, is fluent in Mandarin, and learned the import export business in China. He brought it all together to create an app for hair stylists to sell extensions direct to their clients without taking on the inventory risk— which by the way is a $9B market.

Same thing with the founders of Hingeto, a platform that leverages crowdfunding to allow fashion brands to both showcase/ preview new designs and sell those designs directly to consumers without inventory risk. The founders came from KarmaLoop where they ran Plndr so they came to us with unique and relevant experience.

In @CrossCultureVC‘s portfolio companies, There is something unique in each of the founders backgrounds that qualified them – @MarlonCNichols

What is one book you recommend entrepreneurs/founders read?

Marlon: The alchemist is my favorite book of all time. If anyone is looking to start something, this book speaks about the importance of the journey of striving for, and eventually reaching your goal. A lot of great words for entrepreneurs, even though it’s not necessarily for entrepreneurs.

Can you briefly walk through your investment process and your sell philosophy?

Marlon: Be yourself. Be succinct. Get the message across quickly. Make the value proposition to consumers dead simple. If it’s not simple, it’s hard to sell. We really look to understand the value prop as quickly as possible. Know your audience. My partnership is made up of 3 very different guys, and a venture partner. All with very different career and professional experiences. When reaching out, reach out to the one whose experience is most relevant to what you’re doing.

Just be down to earth. Tell the truth. Make sure you understand your business. That might seem obvious, but that’s a big one for us…that you’re uniquely qualified to do this thing and that you have that intangible hustle we look for. The final thing I’ll mention is to understand what we’re after. That you’re coming with something that makes sense for us. We have a strong focus on consumer behavior. Sometimes we get approached by startups that are doing serious enterprise solutions that don’t have the consumer anywhere in sight. That doesn’t work for us. We need to be able to draw a line from your product to the consumer.

At Founders Network, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth in our community that now numbers over 500+ full-time tech founders. Our core values focus on a spirit of peer mentorship  and shared sense of creation that cultivates a truly tight-knit, and supportive environment unlike any other. We are always working to foster new ways to make Founders Network the best community that it can be for our members.

Thanks to all of your great feedback on the ways in which we can continue to improve the “signal-to-noise ratio” of founder meeting requests, we are extremely excited to officially launch the [fn] Investor Program. The [fn] Investor Program builds on our VC and Angel mentoring program with the addition of a valuable new tool for our members that uses our matching algorithm to ensure that the right founders are paired with the right investors, based on sector, stage, location, and other factors.

We’re very proud that many of our founders have successfully raised funding as a direct result of our investor mentoring sessions, with relationships at firms such as August Capital, CRV, Intel Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and more. Last year alone, Founders Network members raised over $100 million in funding for startups including IFTTT, Docker, Distil Networks, Pley, Brightbytes and many others.

We believe that the [fn] Investor Program will make the fundraising process a little less painful and a lot more efficient for both investors and founders.  If you are an accredited or institutional investor and would like to learn how to support our founders with mentorship, please let us know. Even with Founders Network members spanning the globe —  from San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and throughout Europe and Asia — the startup world is a smaller place than it seems. What makes Founders Network truly special is the quality not just of ideas and products; but of the people — the people we meet and learn from are a large part of all of our successes and failures.

If you have any questions or input about the new [fn] Investor Program, we’d love to hear from you. Contact me at: kevin(at)foundersnetwork.com