Latest / Women Disrupting Tech / What Most Founders Learn Too Late About Startup Funding with Philipp Omenitsch | Ep. 138

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What Most Founders Learn Too Late About Startup Funding with Philipp Omenitsch | Ep. 138 · Women Disrupting Tech

0:00
To every every woman and to every girl maybe out there,
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right, who's thinking about starting a startup.
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I think you should really do that.
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We need more female. Let's start-ups out there and
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don't let yourself be disencouraged when you hear that
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female founders get less funding or it's more difficult for them.
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Our files, the founder files show right that actually same
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amount. If startup gets funding, maybe
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you get a bit less, but still I think it's great to start a
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company and has been for me very rich experience and if that's
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something you consider I think you should definitely try it.
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That is Philip Omanich. He's a former founder and CTO
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who now builds tools to democratize access to venture
0:50
capital, and he's my guest on episode 138 of Women Disrupting
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Tech Through Pitch League AI and the founder of Files, Feeder has
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analysed more than 17 thousand pitch stacks, trying to
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understand how fundraising works in practice.
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In this episode, he shares what the data reveals and what
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founders often miss. We talk about why fundraising
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often feels confusing the first time around, how experience
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shapes outcomes, and what the data does and does not say about
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female founders and funding. We also explore Philip's work at
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Sequel, where he helps professional athletes invest in
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startups, and how patterns like pay gaps and access to capital
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show up on the investor side of the table too.
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So this episode is not about quick fixes, it's about
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understanding the system you're stepping into, especially if
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you're raising for the first time.
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So when you're ready to listen, here's my conversation with
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Philip Omanich. Philip Omanich, good morning.
1:55
Good to have you. Let's start with a little bit of
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background on yourself. You are a VC and you started
2:04
building SQL and the founder of files.
2:07
Why did you do that? So I started a couple of
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companies before and one of them was in crypto, one of them was
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in mental health. I was always the technical
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partner. The CTO also had a marketing
2:21
agency, a legal tech. And so you can see my my
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interests are very varied. I would say I can interest
2:29
myself for for multiple different things.
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And when I sold my last company's dress coach, I really
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was thinking deeply what I wanted to do next.
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I was strongly considering We see for that reason, because you
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always learn something new and it's you're at the forefront of
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technology. It also is about investing
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money. But ultimately I found when I,
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when I started doing kind of getting into the interest
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industry, breaking in, what I found is that I really like
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those of building software. And when I met Alex McDonald who
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told me about SQL the first time, I immediately knew that
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this is what I want to do next because it combines all the
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things that interests me. It's about VC investing is about
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building our own software and interacting with athletes.
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So that was a great combination. But for maybe the listeners to
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share what Sequel is, Yeah, find Sequel as a digital family
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office for the the world's greatest athletes to invest in,
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in venture. So what we do is we have a lot
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of around 250 clients right now from all over the sports world,
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almost any every sport. And we go out there and look for
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startups, great startups, and then we facilitate the
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investment of our athletes in those startups.
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Along the way, we also created a lot of educational content for
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for athletes and we do host events to bring them together
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from time to time. And this is what we do at Sequel
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so. That's cool.
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So facilitate the investment, just that mean that you are sort
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of the middleman or have you built a fund that athletes can
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invest in? So the classical way to do it
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would be just to raise a fund. But we we want to educate
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athletes. We want to give them all the
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tools to succeed in the future. That in our opinion means
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letting them make their own decisions.
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So how we work is we're more like we're somewhere in between
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a fund and investment platform in terms of how we operate in
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order to source the startups. We very much operate like a VC
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fund, but for for the investment process itself.
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What we do is we have created our own platform, a mobile app
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where we create a video about a startup and all the efforts on
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this mobile app. And then they can make the
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investment decisions themselves if they want to invest or not.
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So in a sense, we have syndicate and we take some fees, of
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course, in between, yeah. OK.
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And then the fees are then used to to maintain the app to source
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startups, to host events. OK, What I read is that with
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SQL, but also with founder files and there's also pitch leak dot
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AI. You want to democratize access
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to the venture capital. Maybe first, can you highlight
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all the barriers that are currently in place that make it
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difficult for founders to access venture capital?
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Definitely. I think there's there's quite a
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few barriers. 1 is definitely knowledge.
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It's only after you kind of raised or created a company is
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it know most of the things that are useful to know and that is
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also the reason that why you see and we have this in the finals.
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I'll get to that a bit in a bit exited founder or serial
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entrepreneurs have have it much easier to raise money already
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did it once before. Secondly, there is also a bit
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of, I would say network barrier, don't know the right people.
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If you don't know anyone in the network or VC, it's, it's a bit
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tough to, to break into. But also there's, I would say
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like a lot, a lot of capital chasing very specific types of
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businesses. Many, many founders don't know
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that. So a startup, I would say, if
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you ask a VC what is the startup they would invest in, they would
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say, Oh yeah, we invest kind of in anything.
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But it's not true. They are most of the time
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looking for very high margin, ideally software enabled,
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scalable businesses that can produce outsized outcomes.
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In order to understand that, you need to understand how how a
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fund works. Or we see funds work and usually
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they will make up to between 20 and 50 investments.
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And every single investment has to be able to return their fund.
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And in order for the math to work out, that really means to
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need to invest at a low valuation and the company has to
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get really, really big so so they can do that.
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Yeah. So all all the companies that
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they invest in actually have to get the fun to return and that
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usually is like they have to grow 10X minimum.
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Yes, it depends a bit on on when we see invested with stage,
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right. So I would say the 10X is more
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for maybe Series A or series B, series B investors.
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But if you invested seed or pre seed.
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So at the earliest stages. But there's also the mass
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startups, right? Because most people startups are
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very small in the beginning. Then for for this math to work
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out they they have to do like 100 or 1000 acts of.
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Toe how does this play out across gender?
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I was just curious, is it more difficult for it's already
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difficult for founders regardless of gender to to
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really understand what is going on in the in venture capital to
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understand how funds work, if they, if investors are the right
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stage for you even. But do you see that from your
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own experience? Is that more difficult for
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female founders or doesn't? Doesn't it really matter?
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Well, we, we can look at the data in, in the founder files a
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bit maybe first and then we can try to seek for explanations of
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the data. That's, that's how I usually
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like to, to look at problems or questions like that, right?
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Ideally we can we can find some data and then try to make our
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hypothesis. But maybe first in order to do
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that I should tell a bit more about the founder files.
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So let's go there first what the founder files are because I
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found them really useful. Thank you.
9:22
So yeah, the the Founder Files is basically the combination of
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our work over the last three years in terms of providing
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tools to founders. So when we started Sequel, one
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of the first things we did was we asked ourselves, how can we
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provide founders, right? We were like the new investor on
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the block. How can we make a name for
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ourselves, especially with the founders of startups, How can we
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help them? How can we position ourselves
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also as a maybe something a bit different than a typical VC?
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And one of the ways to do this was to build our own product.
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And that is how Pitch League AI came alive website where you
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upload your pitch deck and then we we take this pitch deck,
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analyze it, score it and give you some actionable feedback on
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each slide on how you can improve that pitch deck.
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And as you maybe saw from the founder of our files, right,
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this became quite successful. It's one of the, the top pitch
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deck analysis websites right now.
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And over the last few years, we're able to get a more than 17
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thousand pitch decks from that website.
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And yeah, the founder files is basically the analysis of all
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those pitch decks over the years.
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Use AI and chatability to extract certain features.
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Trying to really compound and look at different statistics
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across all those 17,000, which is a big, really big data.
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It's at least the largest in Europe collection, but maybe
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even in the in the world such analysis that that has been done
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so far. And that is public depth.
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At that depth, yes. So there have been some analysis
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of more pitch decks, but I think our report is, is more than 50
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pages long. You can find it on
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founderfiles.sql.co. And it really contains a lot,
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lot of insights. And we we've worked on it for
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three months. So yeah, this is the founder
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files. Yeah, and as I said, it's really
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helpful also for founders who are listening.
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It's definitely a great way to get started on on getting
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feedback on your pitch before you start talking to to
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investors, because there's a really wealth of information
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that you can get from pitch league dot AI and from the
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founder files on on most common, let's say make mistakes, but
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also what things to emphasize what things to de emphasizing
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your pitch tag, maybe even. Yes, I completely agree.
12:05
Yeah. So back to my original question,
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Do female founders, if you, if you look at the founder files in
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your own research, do female founders have a disadvantage
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when it comes to let's say the network or the knowledge that
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they have compared to male founders or is that similar?
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Well, that's I think a very, very difficult question to
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answer, right, because it's, it's difficult to know what's
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what somebody knows, especially at scale and the market.
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But if you look, I'll, I'll happy to cite some of the
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statistics that we we found in the founder files just by
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looking at the data, right? And so when we look at this
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data, around 18% of startup founders are female compared to
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81% who who are male, right? This is quite a drastic
13:03
difference already. So it's also not surprising that
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the so we also looked at startups that then get funded.
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And in those start-ups, this ratio actually stays quite the
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same. So in the funded startups from
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the text, we looked at the 17,000, 80% had male founders
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and 20% had female founders. So you can see like it's, it's
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roughly the same likelihood of startups with female founders
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getting funded, which was actually quite a bit surprising
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to me because I always thought it's, it's less, right, because
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everybody talks about females or female founders having kinda a
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more difficult time to raise at least what our data says.
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This doesn't have to be the case for everyone individually or
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this assured geographic differences.
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Our data actually says that this is not the case.
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That's good to hear. Yeah, because you, yeah, we
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discussed some data out front also on, on, on how much female
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founders cure in terms of funding.
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We all know the 2% statistic that the female founders were
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female, that female only founded startups get 2% of the funding
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because that's the correct number.
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What I read in your data was that female led startups cured a
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median of 836,000 U.S. Dollars and men comparatively
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did raise more, but only quote UN quote 1,000,000 as a median
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number. Yeah.
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So it's 16% less. That's that is quite interesting
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and it definitely is, is some difference in the data.
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Yeah, you are correct. I also like you asked the
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question, right. What could be the reason for
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that? And what we also found in our
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data talked about this a bit earlier about the unfair
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advantages and what makes it easier to raise in general.
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And in my opinion, that is when you have already had prior
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startup experience or sold a company.
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And so if you look at this data, we see that only 30% of female
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founders in our data set had prior startup experience, 44% of
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male founders had. So you can see a bit of a kind
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of less experience in working in startups before that.
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This could potentially be 1 explanation because when we
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looked at the data also of the median raised funds across all
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startups, the previous found experience was one of the most
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correlated factors for raising larger rounds, right?
16:04
This would be 1, I think quite highly likely attribute to
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explain that. Yeah, that's all.
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That's only 8% of female founders had the prior exit
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experience at 2 to 16% of male founders.
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So this is this is half of the amount, right?
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Again, like this, this could explain this.
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I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but it could be.
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It could be a good explanation. Yes, because especially prior
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exit experiences, let's say it makes start-ups start up very
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attractive and also you already have the network then to start
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talking to investors so it's easier.
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They already know you and you already, as you said before, you
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already know what game is about. So you know what's how VC funds
16:59
work and how their financing goes and what what's in it for
17:03
the investor. So it makes it I guess.
17:07
I'm pretty sure it helps founders if they have prior exit
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experience or even prior experience.
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Yes, there's one more thing actually we found in the data,
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which is quite a big difference between female and male founders
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and that is the the technical background.
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So 59% of female founders had a technical background versus 81%
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of male founders again, at least in our data set, right.
17:36
And this could be also maybe just maybe women not mentioning
17:39
it in the pitch track, right? It doesn't have to necessarily
17:43
be, there's no prevalence. So maybe maybe women just don't
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tell also about the previous experience or the exits.
17:51
Maybe they won't want to brag so much, maybe more modest.
17:56
But this again could be 1-1 different explanation.
17:59
Because what we saw is that a technical background in the
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founding team increase the chances of raising around also
18:08
quite a bit. Yes, so and.
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You can read the exact number in the in the founder files because
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I forgot. No, no, no worries.
18:17
We'll include the link to the founder files in the in the show
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notes Anyway, Yeah, so, so I just want to go back a bit on on
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to the investment decisions that venture capitalists generally
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make because they have, let's say another law to rely on.
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So there's, there's like really minimal heart data on profit
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loss, turnover, that kind of things.
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What what is the impact of that on the investment decisions that
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VCs take? You have to differentiate
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between like very early stage companies and more late stage
18:57
companies right in the in the startup that doesn't have a
19:01
product yet that's pre revenue. Completely agree.
19:04
It's very, very difficult to make a decision based on revenue
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because there is none. You have to almost entirely
19:13
focus on the team and in the market that people are working
19:16
on. And many, many kind of receives
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will tell you the same thing, right?
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It's the founders in the market. But yeah, how do they evaluate
19:24
founders and how do they evaluate the market?
19:27
And this this one notion which I quite like is called founder
19:31
market fit. So why are those founders kind
19:36
of poised to to create a very unique business that's highly
19:41
successful in this market and often that can be relevant
19:45
industry expertise, right. So they've worked maybe in the
19:48
industry for a long time or they're really obsessed just
19:51
with with that market and this one problem because they maybe
19:55
have experienced that early on in their lives.
19:59
They have been struggling with that for a long time.
20:02
Or. They're just weird and they
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really focus on that's one problem.
20:07
There will be possible reasons for good founder market fit.
20:11
But yeah, so if you go later stage, right, let's say Series
20:15
A, the financials and the revenue, especially the margins,
20:20
the conversion rates and all of that, the customer acquisition
20:22
costs, they play a much bigger role in the decision.
20:26
But yeah, the founders are still very, very important.
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So one of my own thesis is that if you start investing a lot
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more, let's say in diverse founding teams or even female
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founding teams in the pre seed stage that pull sort of trickle
20:48
through to seed because of follow on investments and Series
20:54
A. However, from I don't know where
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I read it, but I think it was pitch book, that that isn't the
21:04
case. So that does not happen.
21:07
How do you think you see that in your data set?
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Do you track how companies evolve over time?
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It's a bit difficult because with pitch leak we get a lot of
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early stage pitch tracks, right, like mostly pre seed seed, some
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Series A And also those companies have only been started
21:25
maximum three years ago. So we don't have any data there
21:29
yet on many like successful companies, because usually they
21:35
take, as you know, between 5 and 10 years to to really get
21:38
successful. I think we do have a few, but it
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it wouldn't be statistically significant, you know, so we
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unfortunately don't don't just have any data on this in at
21:49
least in the founder of house. It would be interesting to look
21:52
if the follow on funding rate for female founded precede
21:57
companies as higher or lower than than.
21:59
Similar. Could be, could be for the
22:01
founder of ours next year. Yeah, repeat.
22:04
Yeah, I mean, it's, I always like these these little themes
22:11
because you had a bit of data already on on female founders in
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the in the report. Yes.
22:17
Do you see it from your discussions?
22:20
Do you see it become more, let's say normal to invest in female
22:26
founders or in, in, in founder teams that have women in there?
22:32
Well, look, I think if, if a founder was exceptional,
22:37
obviously would always invest in women before, I think there was
22:40
a bit maybe more hesitance and, and maybe let's say 20 years
22:46
ago, maybe to invest in female founders.
22:50
But I don't honestly, I have not at least in, in my spheres, seen
22:57
any like how to say disadvantage of, of female founders.
23:02
As a matter of fact, we invested in at least three companies
23:07
ourselves of female founders. There is roughly the ratio of 80
23:11
percent, 20%, right? We actually do see it as as a
23:17
good thing if the team is diverse.
23:19
Why? Why?
23:22
Yeah. Well, I mean, women are 50% of
23:25
the population roughly, right? So to kind of have at least one
23:29
woman in the founding team or as the startup founder in my eyes
23:34
can only be beneficial. And when working with women in
23:38
my team's views from from other people, it doesn't have to be
23:43
only women, right? It can be someone from a
23:46
different religion or someone from a different bringing
23:49
background. It it always has been beneficial
23:51
and and not bad for the business.
23:55
Now do you see that, that your your clients?
23:59
So the the athletes paid extra attention to this because for
24:04
instance, one of the Williams sisters I've got, if it was
24:07
Serena or her sister, is very vocal about this, about
24:12
investing, specifically investing in female founders.
24:16
Yeah. I mean, for sure we, we, we've
24:18
had some of our athletes asked specifically for, for also
24:22
female startups. However, the large majority of
24:26
our clients is is still male and that has is 11 reason for this
24:31
is also the big difference in paying sports, right, which
24:35
there is also quite a lot of progress being made right now.
24:40
We might have followed right, the World Cups where the teams
24:43
demanded the same pay as the the man.
24:47
But yeah, as a matter of fact, it's still the case that the pay
24:50
gap in in sports between women and men is still probably 10X or
24:54
something like that. Yeah.
24:57
Yeah, especially in football. In tennis, I think it's pretty
25:01
similar. Yeah, the there was a moves not
25:05
to adjust the prize money. So it's almost the same or it's
25:09
the same for multiple sports. There's definitely been a trend
25:13
in this also the women's basketball league, right if with
25:20
lots of progress being made there.
25:22
But yeah, to come back to start of investing definitely have
25:25
been also initiatives to invest only in female founders, which I
25:32
think is is good, but ultimately right.
25:35
The I think females are already there and they they can do it.
25:40
And there's a lot of role models out there.
25:42
There's billionaire women who kind of started and sold the
25:45
companies and it's for for every woman to to go and find a way.
25:52
So on the founder of Fausta, how can female founders use the data
25:58
in their to their advantage? I think it's it's interesting
26:03
especially also even to look at it before you found a company,
26:06
maybe to see which factors make it more likely to be funded.
26:13
It's always difficult to generalize with startups, right?
26:17
Because what works for the majority might not work for you
26:20
at all, especially if you are in a in a very specific industry.
26:26
Some things might be completely different, but I think the the
26:30
kind of big or obvious trends are that if you have worked in a
26:36
startup before or have worked in the Unicorn before, it's much
26:40
easier to get funding. Yeah, because you kind of have
26:42
seen that environment already and you also have most likely
26:46
the network and connections in that.
26:48
So if you may be thinking about starting your own business or or
26:53
going working for someone, if you can work for a Series A
26:57
company, right, a company that's quickly growing, that could be a
27:01
very, very good first step before maybe starting your
27:03
company because you will learn a lot of things on the way.
27:07
You will make a lot of connections and it will be
27:09
easier for you to start your company later.
27:12
If you don't have anyone, again, depends on the industry, which
27:15
you don't have anyone with a technical background in your
27:17
team. That's another point where that
27:20
you should focus on probably. I see quite some teams that come
27:25
across without the technical Co founder and they usually always
27:30
struggle with hiring the right people for the technical team,
27:33
the tech team. And it's just, it's just a large
27:37
advantage I think you have always in terms of being funded.
27:41
Why is that? Because nowadays with AI there's
27:44
a lot of technical tasks that you can sort of ask AI to do the
27:52
job. Yes, for sure, definitely.
27:54
And I, I think it's, it's not so much about maybe the, the
28:00
technical background itself. I know quite some founders who
28:04
without really like a formal technical education have have
28:09
built their own products. I think it's a bit more about
28:13
the mindset of, oh, I will find someone else to do the technical
28:16
thing for me. If you want good yourself and
28:18
you don't have any technical background, you have the
28:21
ambition, the drive to solve it. I think it's definitely much
28:25
easier to do this nowadays with AI tools than it used to be just
28:28
two or three years ago. But it's mostly about being able
28:33
to really dig into a problem and solve it by yourself.
28:37
And I think this is something that especially the earliest
28:40
stages, it's very difficult to to delegate and it has to be in
28:45
the founding team. It's the same as with sales,
28:48
right? Some founders try to delegate
28:50
sales very early on and this could only technical founding
28:55
teams or I see that where they build a great product and then
28:58
they don't market it and then they don't sell it, right?
29:02
And then they they fail. It would have someone focused on
29:05
sales and then maybe try to hire or work with an agency to sell
29:08
the product and it doesn't work out.
29:11
Again, both of these, it can always work out.
29:14
I'm just saying how to increase the chances, right?
29:17
Yeah and have having a technical Co founder or if you have a lot
29:21
of tech people on board with no sales experience having silsy or
29:28
marketing as someone with marketing background on the team
29:32
will will then help you. Yes.
29:35
So I mean, especially in the earlier stages, right.
29:38
I mean, it's all about building your product and talking to
29:41
users, and talking to users usually means selling.
29:44
Yeah. But I what I also hear you say
29:46
is around the capability to attract other people to your
29:53
idea in terms of finding a Co founder.
29:57
That's basically what finding a Co founder is about making the
30:02
idea. It's sort of even selling
30:05
division, let's let's call it that.
30:08
And being able to do that also then shows the capability to to
30:15
a this is not just one idea or one person who may or may not
30:23
have a good idea, but it's more like, OK, there's more people
30:27
who think this is a great idea. Yeah, I mean, if you if you
30:31
start and you convinced your Co founder to join you, yeah, I'd
30:34
find it was easier to kind of convince an investor to join
30:38
you, right. Yeah, yeah.
30:40
And so you've backed a number of female founded startups.
30:46
What, what has been your experience with that in terms of
30:49
of do they do things differently or are the same?
30:53
Do they generate more traction or?
30:57
Less I, I think the women we've invested in are all extremely,
31:01
extremely ambitious. And this is something we look
31:06
for in every founder we invest in, right.
31:09
So it's not very surprising in terms of what they have done
31:15
differently. I mean every business we invest
31:17
is very different. So I haven't honestly seen it
31:23
clear. Maybe they communicate a bit
31:27
more. I have a feeling, which I think
31:30
is quite good. We do tend to to get maybe more
31:33
communication and best updates from them, but that's more like
31:39
a qualitative feeling here or anecdotal evidence, hard data.
31:46
No, but it is something that I hear more often that women are
31:50
just better in terms of communications.
31:53
They they communicate more often.
31:56
Basically that's what they do. So I'm not surprised to to hear
32:00
that, that it's your experience as well, maybe going back to, to
32:05
what makes a good pitch stack and what actually gets high
32:10
because pitch league dot AI actually, I think scores the
32:13
pitch stacks. What are the components that it
32:18
scores on? So probably traction will be in
32:20
there. But and and founder teams you,
32:23
you told about, you said about having technical people on board
32:27
or having a diverse founding team also in terms of
32:30
capabilities, what else? So we, we really have two main
32:35
scores, 1 score is about the pitch deck itself.
32:39
And just saying, OK, is all the information in there that we
32:42
would expect to be in there? Is it clear the information?
32:46
It's like, is it, yeah, maybe if you have like 1000 words on a
32:50
slide, right, it's not so useful.
32:52
But if you, if you put them, did you put the most important
32:56
metrics on your slide is also designed nicely, right as well,
33:01
Because again, like a pitch deck is, is part of selling.
33:04
And then the second large categories is more on the
33:08
startup itself core. And then we look mostly at the
33:11
team have to have any start previous startup experience.
33:15
For example, do they have a technical Co founder?
33:19
But then also that the traction are they growing very quickly?
33:24
How do they do they put the revenue in there and how much is
33:27
the revenue and how much is it growing ideally?
33:29
And then also the market is like a very, very small market these
33:34
founders are after or is it like a a market that potentially
33:38
could produce a huge company? So the, the, the thing that I
33:43
was mostly wondering about is you've built, you have a
33:48
slightly different version of venture capital than your
33:55
regular fund that most people know.
33:58
What made the choice for that? Why did you focus on on building
34:03
a syndicate for athletes rather than building a fund?
34:10
So our mission really is to give athletes all the tools to be
34:15
successful after careers. That's why it's called sequel
34:19
for like what comes next after their career.
34:22
And in order to be able to do this properly, we think you have
34:28
to educate them right to to make their own decisions.
34:31
And how do you like let athletes make their own decisions?
34:35
Well, I mean through like real investment decisions, right.
34:40
Every, every investment that we put on the app, they have to
34:42
actively make the invest decision how much and in which
34:45
startups to invest. If they would just be investing
34:51
in the fund once and then they hear from it five years later,
34:54
there's a completely different level of engagement in that they
34:58
maybe get updates, but it's much more passive.
35:01
And if you have to actively make a decision and we force you to
35:05
make a decision, right. So this was was one of the key
35:09
considerations. We also think that athletes are
35:11
just much more excited about the startups to invest in because
35:14
they they made this decision I want to invest in and I also may
35:18
be more willing to help them down the line, right?
35:21
Some of the startups invest in they definitely can profit from
35:26
having those athletes involved not only in the fundraising
35:28
announcements, but what we for example, also with scan.com, one
35:32
of our investments, we created a video with one of our athletes
35:38
to do some some advertising for them to tell stories right.
35:42
This is one of our key unique value add and to any startup
35:49
listening out there, we are your investor.
35:52
If if you want to have your story being told with video, we
35:56
really focus on that and I think we really excel at it.
36:00
You can see some of the works definitely in our social media.
36:03
Yeah, so so does it help to mention other the interests of
36:11
other investments festers? Or maybe even do some name
36:17
dropping in your paycheck to set increased chances.
36:22
Yes, actually we that's that's one thing we saw as well.
36:25
So good point. Startups that mentioned already
36:30
current investors in the decks or that they kind of starting to
36:35
get traction with the fundraise, they definitely were much more
36:38
likely to raise. How can because you work with
36:42
former athletes, how can they help other than, let's say,
36:47
having their name linked to the startup?
36:50
How can they help startups? I think one of the, the biggest
36:57
value adds to have is bringing attention to a startup.
37:00
And that is not only like through the name, right?
37:03
They can also talk about it in, in the media.
37:05
They have lots of big social media followings, but also they,
37:10
they can help with coaching, right?
37:13
They have gone through big challenges in in their careers
37:17
sometimes, and some of those situations may be quite similar
37:22
to what founders go through in the journey when building a
37:25
successful company. Yeah, we try also to connect
37:29
them directly with the founders when it makes sense.
37:33
Today, Because from a performance point of view, I
37:37
understand that there's like really it's really helpful there
37:45
format leads bringing performance mindsets that many
37:49
have. I was wondering, yeah, because
37:53
those athletes have a specific experience as a as an athlete,
37:59
does that also make start-ups attractive to them?
38:02
Because the founders maybe not in terms of the of sports, but
38:09
are going to similar, let's say, experiences where they really
38:16
have to show peak performance and do that continuously on a
38:20
day-to-day basis, really practice their skills on a
38:24
day-to-day basis on a much higher level than let's say your
38:29
average employee. So yeah, I mean, for sure, like
38:33
start up founders I think are very much professionals and and
38:37
high performing professionals indeed.
38:40
And yeah, there's some similarities, right?
38:43
It's also about leadership. It's about kinda bringing your
38:48
peak performance at the right moment is about almost running a
38:52
marathon sometimes, giving up, putting in like the work every
38:58
day of the week, every day of the year to make sure you you
39:04
kind of have the highest performance, right.
39:06
Yeah. And do you also hear that back
39:10
from from the athletes leads that this makes it attractive to
39:15
them? Well, in, in some sense,
39:19
athletes want to be successful and I think the efforts we have
39:23
in sequel, they really want to start also maybe something new
39:27
after the end of their careers. And so investing in startups,
39:31
learning about startups, maybe going along with the journey
39:34
with founders helps them learn along the way while they're
39:38
still in their careers to set them up for success after their
39:41
careers, not only financially by investing in successful
39:44
companies, but also just by, you know, like it's always you said
39:49
that which knowledge or which kind of factors are important to
39:53
get funding. It's about the understanding the
39:56
ecosystem. And I think investing in startup
39:59
is one of the best way really to to understand that ecosystem
40:03
itself. Yeah.
40:06
So I want to go back to the beginning of the interview.
40:10
You said that you found it or that you actually had a startup
40:15
called Stress Coach. Yes.
40:17
What are lessons that you take from that experience with Stress
40:23
Coach that help you today? I think one of the biggest
40:28
lessons I learned there was it's not so important, like it's more
40:32
important what you work on. Like there's so many things you
40:36
can do in a startup, right? And you can fill your day with
40:39
all kinds of things. And of course you should work
40:42
hard because therefore increase the chance of success.
40:46
But it's much more important to work hard on the right thing.
40:51
So if to give you an example, if a product is already good,
40:55
right, we don't have marketing is much more important to work
40:58
on marketing. This is just to, to make it, to
41:01
simplify it a lot, you know, and if you don't work on marketing,
41:05
well, we cannot be successful. And if we don't have any users.
41:09
So to to really sometimes take a step back and think, analyse
41:16
what you could be working on and choosing the the highest impact
41:20
area I think is the that is something I really learned.
41:26
And and how does that show in the in the in sequel and the
41:29
founder files? How do you how do you sort of
41:34
take that from the learning in stretch coach to what you're
41:39
doing now? The pitch league and the founder
41:41
files are something that I would say are not are not bringing us
41:47
any revenue today, right. But we understand that we need
41:51
to invest in in certain things long term and I guess it's such
41:56
an investment. And so how do we approach this?
41:59
We don't like work on this every day of the week, right?
42:03
But we, we create, we build pitch league AI and also the
42:07
founder files in very dedicated hackathons, which were like just
42:10
two or three days each. And I think we created a lot, a
42:13
lot of value. We also made the product very
42:17
narrow, right? You can just upload the pitch
42:18
trick it analyze that's it as nothing more.
42:21
There's no monetization, there's no real, I don't know, like
42:26
we're not working on this product to improve it in terms
42:28
of adding more features. We're only working to improve
42:32
the quality of it time to time. But so it's a very, I would say
42:37
time gap, maybe even invested, let's say 15 man days into these
42:42
products like Found House and Pitchley.
42:45
But I think the outcome has been great, right and has helped us.
42:50
But you have to understand that we cannot like invest all of our
42:52
resources into that because there will be diminishing
42:55
returns in a sense much more important to work on stuff
42:59
that's directly correlated to helping our business.
43:03
So that could be maybe one lesson how we directly applied
43:06
that. OK, So really focus on the
43:10
things that matter and Pitchley dot AI, although I do think it's
43:16
really nice idea. Yeah, I think so too.
43:20
And I think we've gotten lots of good feedback from founders who
43:23
said this has to really help them.
43:25
We know it's being used in some university courses even to teach
43:29
startups on how to improve your pitch deck.
43:33
So yeah, it is. It's definitely a product we're
43:36
all proud of building. Yeah, so I'm actually building
43:40
something similar myself, but then focused really on the on
43:45
the, let's say the idea that pitch link dot AI has so that
43:51
you can upload pitch tech and get feedback.
43:56
I was wondering what would be functionality that I should
44:00
include beyond the obvious upload and then getting good
44:05
feedback part. What would be functionality that
44:11
I should include to make that tool successful?
44:14
Well, it's a good question. I mean look if ideally right,
44:18
you have found us uploading the pitch check, their goal is to
44:20
raise funds. So any way you can actually help
44:24
them raise those funds would probably provide the most value
44:27
to those founders. So suggesting concrete investors
44:31
you can connect them with or also sending out the newsletter
44:36
about startups that are raising funds could be something you
44:38
could do. OK.
44:40
Yeah, that's that last that first what had is already in the
44:45
business plan. The second one sort of crossed
44:48
my mind, but how? I'll make a note of of that one.
44:53
Can I say one more thing? Yeah, I want to every every
44:56
woman and to every girl may be out there, right who's thinking
45:00
about starting a startup. I think you should really do
45:04
that. We need more female let's
45:05
startups out there and don't let yourself be disencouraged when
45:10
you hear that female founders get less funding or it's more
45:14
difficult for them. Our files, the founder files
45:18
show right that actually the same amount.
45:21
If startup gets funding, maybe you get a bit less, but still I
45:26
think it's great to start a company and has been for me very
45:30
rich experience. And if that's something you
45:33
consider, I think you should definitely try it, yes.
45:36
And to your point, I think the founder of files, but also Pitch
45:41
League dot AI can give you a lot of knowledge that you should
45:47
get, let's say, before, well, maybe before you started or
45:51
maybe at least early on in your startup career.
45:57
That can help to to build a successful startup, especially
46:02
also for for women and girls. Yeah.
46:04
Cool. So Philip Omanich, thank you
46:08
very much for this conversation. Really enjoyed it.
46:11
If people would like to learn more about Pitch League dot AI,
46:16
if people would like to try out what's in the founder files,
46:20
where would you like to send them?
46:23
Yeah, I mean just just Google for fond of files and SQL or
46:26
just go to Pitch League AI or if you have any questions about the
46:30
product, just connect with me and LinkedIn and I'd be happy to
46:35
to kind of help you through. However, I can say.
46:40
OK. Well, thank you very much once
46:43
again. And we'll include those links in
46:46
the show notes. Of course, this nurse.
46:50
Thank you very much for listening.
46:51
And until the next episode, keep being awesome.
47:08
Well, that's it. Thank you for listening to
47:10
episode 138 of Women Disrupting Tech, titled What Most Founders
47:15
Learn Too Late about Startup Funding with Philip Komenich.
47:19
If you want to connect with Philip or learn more about his
47:22
work at Sequel, Pitch, League dot AI, or The Founder Files,
47:26
please use the links in the show notes.
47:28
As usual, you can find those at Windows, Routing Tech and on My
47:32
Sub stack. Just click the link in the
47:34
caption. If you found this episode
47:37
useful, please take a moment to rate and review the show on
47:40
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
47:44
And if you haven't already, hit the follow or subscribe button
47:47
on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or YouTube so you never miss future
47:52
episodes. Once again, thank you for
47:54
listening. I hope to see you in the next
47:57
episode, and until then, as always, keep being awesome.