Latest / Pitch to Product / Raising Money For Your Product Business Idea: What Investors REALLY Want To See
Transcript
- Peter/Bobby: two very, very solid questions. How do I come up with the money? And secondly, is you know, is this gonna be the biggest mistake of my life? First off, you have to be realistic with yourself. Can you do the business? Who do you have to help you with the business? How big is the business? Answer questions about the business. But if you're saying it's the biggest way to take your life, why are we talking? You have to have confidence in your business. I can't sell you your business. Right. And and look at let's let's dissect that further. The the day you wake up with an idea, do you think you're gonna be a business owner the next day with that idea? No. No. So look at it's normal, right? Like like let's understand that no one just jumps into something that they're afraid of. You don't go into cold water without dipping your toe. You exactly you take precautions. Part of the precautions that we want to take is help you understand where you are in the process. And these are normal questions. Now, do you need money to start a business? Of course. We all hear it. It takes money to make money. Trueest no true words could be said. Right. So even if you want to do something in your household, like you want to switch over to like get off the grid, there's an investment that you gotta make to not pay an electric bill. Yes. So everything takes money to make money. So let's focus on, let's eliminate the fear. That's the easy part. How do people get funding? Well, look at the reality is it's kind of what what the circle. It's a circ it's a circle of network, right? Like they they talk about it's a series A round if you wanted to get into technical terms. And that series A is friends and family. You gotta know who knows you and trusts you first. Right. Straight you're not gonna get strangers to just hand you money. You have to go to people around you in your circle. Right. And if you're that person that has gone around and cried wolf and started businesses and everybody's given you money and you've failed and you haven't taken it seriously, I you're probably not going to get funds from anybody in your circle. No. So the first thing I tell you is respect the people around you and the circle that will help you. What does your circle need to help you, Bobby? Well, they gotta know you're serious about it. You gotta know that you know what you're talking about. If you're dealing with your family members are business people, you have to approach them as a business person. Correct. And and so again, let's take this to a personal level. How many years have you been doing this? 30. Okay. And do people come to you because you're new at this or because they trust you know what you're doing at this? Number one, because they know that's what I do for a living. Right. So you've established that repetition or that that reputation, that consistency. And that is what you're trying to look for. If people just want to trust in you. Yes. Then the question is the process, right? And look at when you when you joined us, I I I loved your approach. You know. We're in I I used to say we're in a we're not in a in a show me world anymore. We used to be in a tell me world, right? That's where you and I probably started in the nineties. Tell everybody what we can sell and we we did it. Then it became show me. Okay, we can show you all the products that we've launched. The reality is we're in a prove to me now that you are the company that I can trust. And everybody has options. Everybody has the internet. Everybody looks around. At one point, you need someone that's proven it to you. That's that's That's us. We our website, our story, our podcast, we could prove to you what we've done. Exactly. And and now for you to go raise money with your own product idea. Again, I've said this on other podcasts. If you can't do that, you don't believe in your own idea. So you've got to figure out how to come up with the initial seed fund. We have programs that start as low as seventy five hundred dollars. They are designed to help you do the key things that when you joined us, I learned from you. Sh what are you showing me? Exactly. What is what is this? What do we have? What are we doing? What is the plan? Right. And and so now we've gone from we have clients that or or potential clients that can't even show us anything. They have it in their head. We have to like we throw pictures up on the board all day long. And we that's why we have video calls. So that can is that right? Is that right? Is that right? And well, thank God. Listen, let's be realistic. Let's let's be thankful that you're not coming in with something that isn't part of something we knew already, you know? So we could break down to what's already done. Now let's what is your 10, 15% difference? Let's concentrate on that because that's what the product is. And before you even do that, before you consider doing anything, the the the understanding you have to have is you're starting a business. If you're not starting a business, what are you putting money into something? Like hobbies are for wasting money for enjoyment. Right. Businesses are for investments that will return revenue capital back to you for lifestyle changes. So you just get clear on that. You're only in business for profit. Yeah. Isn't it? And so look at the the conversation on this podcast is how do you raise funds? I think our our venture program is a beautiful program. It works, right? Because what it does is it helps take all those things out of your head, put it into a very visual format with real analytical proof behind it, right? Like when you go off on your own and you show an investor, hey, I got this idea and I created this amazing artwork on AI or chat. Great. Right, that's that is the motivation. Now the real questions are how do you do that? How do you make that? What happens if this doesn't work? What are my costs on that? Who's making it? That is where the parts from. Look at that's the new pitch deck and that's the venture program, but it is a live dynamic web page that you can land somebody to that they can understand. Because the number one part that an investor will look at, what's the number one question on Shark Tank? How many have you sold? Right. And so since you have no sales and since you're at the early stage of this, the visual that you have to s you have to show me, Bobby, and and any investor or the rest of the world is what does it look like? And would I buy that? That's what the investor wants to. If the if that answer is yes, I would buy that. That's when the next questions come in. Well, the next question's on Shark Tank, how do you find your customers? What's your margins? Who who's your manufacturer? Can you scale? Another version is simple as a business plan or a resume of your idea, but in the long run, Well who's gonna make it? Who has who who has the authenticity that's done enough products that he can say, Well, this is who's making my product. Here's what they've done, here's the category of products I've made. Now I'm already in that category. They've done these products, now they can make my product, and they have a track record doing it. Right. And here's what the venture program does. I don't want you explaining what we do to anybody that's willing to help you. Let us do we're gonna answer those questions. That is what our documentation does. It makes sure that when we do this, I know that it can be made and we're not into some sort of hallucinogenic AI model of like you know suspension disbelief. We need to understand the mechanics of things. We need to understand how it assembles. The other day you you actually we had a conversation. You know, it was a simple project that had eight layers of how this all snaps together. there's no I I don't need more than two. It needs to snap together. That's it. You know the rest of the layers are a waste of tooling money, a little waste of time. And when you if you actually went down that path the way AI Showed that person, it would be a fortune to launch. Your investor would be mad at you. So there's bumper guards to this. Let us show you the venture program. It is designed to quickly explain your idea, show the opportunity in the market for your idea. Then you can have the conversation with anybody about hey, I want to get a few people that can help us out. I want to get one person that can help me out. At some point, you are going to need funds, and you might as well start from the beginning. If you can get the funds at the beginning or get some a money partner or a group of Partners together that you can grow the business with. That is our best successful model. That is actually what happens naturally with the clients that come into us that hire us for the accelerator program. Guys, no different than your product. There's an evolution to everything we're doing. There's an evolution from when you filled out your first paper resume back in the day when I was trying to get a job. Back in the day where now you need to get research on your product. But right now, why not do research with high-end, with actual drawings, actual facts and the people. That are gonna make your product for you because they've done it. This is just a national evolution that you could come in already prepared. Here's what I'm working with, here's the plan. You wanna talk to them? You wanna move this product forward? Just just more tech, more, more facts. Yeah. Stephen Covey used to say, highly successful, seven habits of highly successful people. If you're gonna venture into becoming a product business owner, I highly recommend you read that book. It is very hard to get through because it's mind altering, it changes your perception. but The number one thing that is that's always stuck with me is that if you begin with the end in mind, and the beginning with the end in mind means that now with the tools that AI can produce, I can actually see your product in a very clearly defined method. That is what an investor wants to see, the end in mind. They want to see the results, they wanna see the opportunity. But now you have to work backwards and you have to show how you're gonna reach those because the investor's gonna ask the same thing. Great, that's what I see. How does that work? How's this gonna work? What is this gonna do? And that is where you need to be on the right track to get the investor to become part of your journey. And again, this is a journey because we haven't made this thing. We showed everybody what the what the end result's going to look like. And we now have to move backwards and say, okay, this is how we're going to do it. And timelines, pricing, they investors want to know a lot of answers that most people can't answer. Why not go to someone like ourselves that's done it where we can give you statistical facts? And because we've done it before. Yeah. Well, look at I I equate this to the concept car. And back in the day, we always used to go to the auto show. We want to see the next cool thing. And when I got to the auto show and I'm a car guy, I was like, wow, that is going to be a home run product. Can't wait for that new model to come out. It never when it comes out, it is a watered down version because some bean counter got a hold of it. So we can't afford to do this. We're not putting a spoiler on that. We're not putting these rims on that. Exactly. And now they sold me the vision to test the market. They understand that the high visionaries are the fringes. I would pay more to have the concept car look exactly the way it was, but the average person's gonna say, I still want that model that's got the reliability, the safety components, the so somewhere along the way. Somewhere along the way, yeah. They they sold me the sizzle, but they backed up the the the the basics to say this is the core consumer product that will be successful. Exactly. truthfully, that's where you need to start. You gotta start with the consumer product, the one that's gonna start. That you could have all the different versions of it. But you gotta start with the fact of this is what my idea is, here's the difference, here's what we're selling. Yeah, I'll go one step further. You gotta decide that this is what you're going to do. That's true. The the minute the the longer you stay in the wantrepreneur zone, the more you're wasting everybody's time. So don't be a wanted. Step into the entrepreneur zone. Understand that to be an entrepreneur, you either have to have the funding or you have to go get the funding. Just part of life. And it's not hard to get to if you actually have the right tools, the right people around you. And it is a little bit of a time and numbers game. You're going to get a lot of rejections. If if you're not good at getting rejection, then go save your money, go work harder, go get a second job and put it together. I I think again, our a lot of our clients that have been able to do that are successful because they can call their own shots. They can live and die by their own decisions. If you're doing it by committee, You know, keep it limited to two or three because anything more than that, you get too many opinions that don't matter. And if somebody hasn't given you money, their opinion has no value. Listen, rejections are part of life. And start with your circle. And you're right. If they're not giving you money, we don't need their input. If they're not here to help you, you don't need to hinder. Unless, you know, you're talking to someone that knows what you're talking about, they're asking you for more information for them to be able to invest. That's a different thing. But you have to be able to get your core product explained. And explain exactly what you need to move forward with.