Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Essential Fundraising Strategies for First-Time Entrepreneurs | Sarah Dusek - Co-Founder of Enygma Ventures

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Lessons - Essential Fundraising Strategies for First-Time Entrepreneurs | Sarah Dusek - Co-Founder of Enygma Ventures · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
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  That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these
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  amazing gummies. In this lessons episode, learn to navigate the challenges of raising capital
• 1:12
  as a young entrepreneur, discover why avoiding bad deals is key, how constraints fuel creativity
• 1:16
  and discipline and the importance of building a solid foundation before scaling gain insights
• 1:21
  on strategic fundraising, maximizing ROI and staying focused on profitability for lasting success.
• 1:38
  What would be the one thing that you would tell a young entrepreneur who's raising money
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  who's in a similar situation to you? 18 months is an incredibly long time, so stressful, so time
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  consuming. So what's the one lesson? What's the thing that you're telling somebody right now
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  who's trying to raise cap? It could be a woman who's struggling to find the right conversations
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  of the right investors gets a or it could just be another young entrepreneur because yes, women
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  probably have a much harder raising money, but I know a lot of just entrepreneurs have predatory
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  term sheets given to them as well. Yeah, it's just hard. Well, there's two or three things I might say.
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  The most important thing just on the back of the story that I just told is just because
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  somebody offers you a term sheet doesn't mean you need to take it. So right, don't do a bad deal.
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  It's always better to do no deal than do a bad deal, right? So do a deal that you feel good about
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  and don't believe the hype that says this is this is the way it's always going to be. This is the
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  only deal you can get. This is the everyone's doing deals like this. This is normal.
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  And yes, there are definite norms in venture capital, but there's always a spectrum of normal.
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  Normal is not one thing. There is no such thing as a normal term sheet. So if something doesn't
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  sit right with you, just don't do it, work with it. And I think the amazing thing I've found
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  about not having access to capital meant I got really creative, right? And I got really,
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  really good at driving ROI on very small amounts of money. So allow the barrier to be an asset,
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  right? So use it to your advantage to get creative, to find ways of making things happen
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  that couldn't have happened otherwise, because when you do get capital and if you press
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  available long enough, ultimately you will find capital. You will find the right capital. You
• 3:43
  will absolutely no doubt in my mind. But what you can do whilst you're waiting to raise capital
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  is make sure that you get really good at generating ROI, because when you do get money, large chunks of
• 3:57
  money hit your business, you can then really put that to work and be really good at making that
• 4:02
  money work for you. And what we see a lot of out in the marketplace is that when money's easy,
• 4:10
  and we're not in an easy money time right now, we're in a difficult money time, but when money
• 4:15
  is easy, we overspend, we over capitalize, we get ahead of ourselves, we waste it, and we're not
• 4:22
  smart. And all that does is it makes it harder for us to raise more money. And so what I would say
• 4:32
  is get smart with what you've got, because if you can get smart with what you've got ultimately,
• 4:38
  you'll get good at generating great returns, you'll get great at making money, you'll get much
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  more focused about having to be profitable much faster than potentially you would otherwise,
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  which is actually really, really important. And you'll build a great business, ultimately your
• 4:56
  business will have great foundations, because you didn't over capitalize too soon or too easily.
• 5:02
  I'm curious if you think there is ever a point when somebody should be raising money before
• 5:11
  they're profitable, or do you think that people should really focus on growth funding?
• 5:16
  Yes. I think a lot of companies, it's quite hard to build something profitable without
• 5:26
  something to start with. Our own business, we injected $40,000 of initial startup capital and
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  managed to turn that into $100 million in value, but that's a really unusual thing to be able to
• 5:39
  do, right? To turn $40,000 into cash that you can make more money from. So it usually takes some
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  money to make money. The question is how much money and what do you need to get you going?
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  So figuring out where that sort of first, usually your friends, your family, your network, people
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  who believe in you are going to be the first people to rally around you to help you get your
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  foot in the door and actually start to make something happen. So I definitely believe in raising
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  capital before a business is profitable, but the faster you were thinking about being on the
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  trajectory towards profitability is definitely to your advantage, for sure.
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  So after under Canvas, now you want to solve for a problem. So you experience this, it's not so great
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  experience with the venture capitalist. So this is something that you're trying to solve for now.
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  So where do you go after under Canvas? What's the first step? Is it a lot of people that were
• 6:50
  operators and businesses that could go into angel investing, or maybe they would bolt on to an
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  existing venture capital firm and maybe try and improve them a little bit, but you didn't do that.
• 7:01
  Or maybe you did try all those things and I don't know about it, but eventually it ended up
• 7:06
  with a nigma. Yeah, so maybe that was stupid. I don't know.
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  No, maybe that's what I should say. No, not at all, not at all. So what is the goal?
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  So was a nigma the thing that you took on almost immediately after? Did you take some time and
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  actually just take a break, relax, were you very headstrong and you jumped out?
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  Oh, I took no time whatsoever, which was also probably really stupid.
• 7:30
  Listen, it's because you're passionate about it. I do think you probably should have taken some time,
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  but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah, growing is what it is. Anytime at all.
• 7:42
  You got a hundred million dollar exit and you just jumped into like the next job.
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• 9:10
  Well, the greasy thing was after that happened. The night we signed the deal for under canvas,
• 9:18
  you know, we're ready to pop the champagne. I was still staying on for CEO for a year post the
• 9:24
  transaction. I came home from work that day. It's signed this amazing deal. Ready with the
• 9:35
  champagne. Ready to be all excited. I have two young boys at home. I'm a mother of two and my oldest
• 9:42
  then was vomiting up a storm and we had norovirus hit our house that night. For the next two weeks,
• 9:51
  like a successively someone else got the stomach flu, we spent the next two weeks throwing
• 9:59
  up in our household. There wasn't even a moment of copying the champagne.
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  But I did go back to work for under canvas for a year of transition post that sale.
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  So things were brewing for me during that year. We're thinking about,
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  what do I do next? What do I care about? How do I make this idea reality in my own head?
• 10:28
  And I was eager to get stuck in and get to work working with other women listening to their stories,
• 10:37
  hearing their pain and their challenges. And ready for a new adventure. So that's what happened.
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  And we started investing in the beginning of 2020, which was also a really good time
• 10:50
  to start a new adventure. Of course. Of course. Yeah, but I was very thankful for it actually,
• 10:58
  because it meant that during that crazy, crazy time, I still had a very strong sense of purpose
• 11:06
  and people to support and people to rally around. Because it's actually very difficult once you,
• 11:11
  and maybe not many people talk about this actually, but when you've been a CEO and you've been a
• 11:16
  founder of a startup for a long time, I mean, 10 years is, you know, a good chunk of one's life.
• 11:21
  It was a quarter of my life. It's very hard to suddenly not have that. You know, I had a lot of
• 11:31
  people I was responsible for, you know, I spent my life traveling from one place to another,
• 11:36
  being all over the place, meeting people, working with different groups of people. And
• 11:40
  suddenly for all to stop is quite strange. And I'm 40 something. So I wasn't ready to retire.
• 11:49
  And, you know, it goes on a beach. I still had a lot of energy and a lot of passion. And so actually,
• 11:54
  I was very thankful that when the pandemic rolled around and there was no beach to go sit on,
• 12:01
  that I wasn't planning on sitting one on one. So, yeah, it was serendipitous.
• 12:08
  And to each their own, I mean, I advocate for rest after having a 10-year run and building a
• 12:13
  business. But I also know that it's, yeah, and I will advocate a little bit from a little bit.
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  I'm a large again. But it's funny, because you're not that abnormal to be quite honest. I don't
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  know too many people. Like I interview a lot of people. I was an operator myself and then still
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  into a degree. And it doesn't matter if you have a successful thing or a successful event or
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  something, and you're just like, what's the next thing? It's always, well, it's just a personality
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  at the end of the day. I really believe that. It is. And the kind of people that are founders and
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  entrepreneurs, you know, that's kind of like the inbuilt thing is you're designing to be going where
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  no one else has gone and doing things. No one else has gone. And you're constantly looking for,
• 12:54
  you know, the path that doesn't exist yet, so that you can go forward. So it's a blessing and
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  a curse for sure. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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• 13:09
  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.