Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Learnings From Raising Circa $36M with The Nue Co. co-founder Jules Miller
Transcript
- 0:08I want to go back to raising capital. You recently, like circa the last 30 days, you've raised $25 million. I think I read before that you'd raised circa 11 point something. So tons of money that you've raised. You've had a lot of experience. You've said that you've been raising a lot. What are the kind of pieces of advice that you were given that you can share with others and like those kind of key insights and tips for people who are going to go down this path of raising institutional funding?
- 0:37I think the first part is just being really confident in your customer insight and how you've translated that into a product and brand proposition. And those things need to be very linear. I think you also need to be very clear on your exit strategy. I think sometimes founders forget as to who investors are and why they're getting involved. And you need to have a very clear roadmap to when they're going to get their money back and how profitable the investment is actually going to be for them.
- 1:05And that was something that I always had extremely clear in my head. I was looking at the types of acquisitions that were being made by the sort of big beauty conglomerates. I thought, you know, it's only a matter of time really before they're going to want to acquire that wellness consumer. And I thought of the brand that they would want to acquire. And it really would be the type of brand that you could plug in to a beauty shelf and who could survive in sort of a traditional beauty setting. And so...
- 1:33All of those insights have fed into the way that the new co looks and feels today. So yeah, very clear sort of exit strategy. I think being really clear as to what you want, what you're happy to give away, and what is going to keep you very focused and motivated as a founder and as a leader long term. So going into a fundraiser, I was always super clear with myself that I always wanted to have ownership of the products that we make, the brand that we build, and the people that we hire.
- 2:03And I knew that if I could control that, that actually the other things that I might have to give up would be OK. I would still feel very motivated in running the business. What are the kinds of things you have to give up? What does that mean?
- 2:20You know, often if somebody approaches you and they want to buy your business for a certain amount of money and your shareholders don't agree, you have to pass up that opportunity. So, you know, it's things that I think maybe as a founder, you don't really think about too much in the early days. It's obviously you can imagine. Yeah. Has that happened for you?
- 2:40No, no, no, it hasn't happened for us. But these are just the types of things that you have to give up. And in all honesty, you know, I think if you bring on the right investors and you're really aligned anyway, that's the most important thing. But I think that not losing control of those things are really important because the experience that I've had really is that I've met investors who I've clicked with, we've signed a term sheet, and through the due diligence process, it's become clear that
- 3:09you know, maybe we're not aligned on really what is important to me and what I would want to have ownership over. Or maybe I see sort of examples of things that, you know, I don't really want to have in my camp. And you need to always be prepared to step away from it and say, this is actually not right for me. So I think that's, for me, like the most important thing. It's just really like understanding those three elements. And then aside from that, you just have to go out and meet
- 3:39And it was funny because I was literally meeting everybody. So I would have like private equity companies ask me to come in and pitch them. So these are basically funds that are writing checks of like 20 to 40 million. And I would literally have made like a hundred grand in revenue. And they were obviously just like digging and trying to understand, you know, there's a new category, there's a new brand. I want to hear them come in. And I would go in being like, oh yeah, you know, they want to hear my pitch. They obviously want to invest. Good experience.
- 4:07Yeah, I mean, I was going into some of like the biggest funds in the world, like investing in Spotify. And I was there with my supplements. But yeah, I think I think that that was like a really important just not getting this hard and meeting with loads of investors, really understanding the types of questions that they're going to ask and just perfecting your pitch.
- 4:28Hmm. Yeah. That's such a key thing. I think it's like in the beginning when you don't necessarily have the experience and you're also getting like slammed with rejection and you're also trying to figure out what it is you need to change to get people interested. It can be such a, well, it sounds like such a, such a mountain to climb, but once you, once you get it right and you're on that train, it sounds amazing. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you.
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