xx Founders: What do you need most help with?

I could really use a better path to find angel investors. I have worked through my network, but I am changing industries from HealthTech to EdTech and find little crossover. I feel like I'm starting from scratch. I have a social mission that I would love to pursue, but worry that if I can't find funding that supports this vision I will have to pursue a more traditional path for the business.

Hey, if you are questioning the strategies to know how you can help do my homework at that point the stage imparted to you will enable you to dispose of every one of your problems

Meeting the right investor/partner.

Finding a truly committed partner has been very hard for us. It is sometimes hard for a funding partner to really get involved in the project. As an advice, be very cautious, don’t accept the first offer you receive even if you need the money.  

Some investor who wouldn't mind funding a fully mech tech/low tech startup with DoD and almost 100 big corps cold contacting it about product (based on no paid marketing, they search and find us and fill out our contact form.)
I'm at my personal limits with bootstrapping my manufacturing startup and need a seed round to get me to the next level.

I have finished my profile at www.wefunder.com/dawnmusic
and now we are left with launching but that cannot be done until we have certification as a C Corp. I am wanting to ask if you can please assist me in the Certification of the business? this will really be great so we can finally launch. 

Hope to hear from you!

Have you seen Stripe Atlas? They make it super easy to make an LLC or C Corp (I made an LLC) and they have a female founder promo where they waive the $500 initiation fee https://stripe.com/atlas -- check this for the link https://twitter.com/HelloAlice... 

- Positioning (top priority) – how to frame our company, content, and pitch deck. We feel stuck because we’re currently targeting interns but have a much larger vision, but we don’t know when/how to convey that 

- Pitching - presentation skills 

- Content/marketing - help with landing pages for specific audiences (employers vs. students vs. landlords) 

We can talk about this on Thursday! 

For now, some starter advice on a pitch:  the first slide (and 15 or so seconds) should deal with the big vision.  The goal is for the audience to “feel” the problem.  In your case, since most investor-types have moved to a new city at least a few times in their life, and loneliness/lack of belonging is a sad and well known trend in society, it should resonate.  If it resonates, they will hopefully pay attention... instead of their mind wandering on whether they walked the dog this morning.  

The second slide and the rest of the pitch should deal with interns. The goal is to how to make this big vision seem achievable, because you are starting small. You already have this down.  I’d personally position interns as the best starter market to prototype an amazing experience, paid for by employers.  Then, once that experience is fucking awesome and interns are bragging about it to their friends, you have the option of moving into markets Z, Y, and X.

On the final slide, the impression I’d like to be left with:  this is a possibly huge company with just as much potential as AirBNB... with a very smart strategy to start and grow by dominating interns first.  As an investor, I’d think, “well, worse case, this turns into a small b2b business that gets acquired by someone…. Best case, I’m in the next AirBNB”.

- Setting up meetings with and pitching to potential launch partners - how to position the ask, how to position what we're doing

- Pitching / presentation skills

- Advice on pre-sale/Kickstarter product launch - would appreciate any insight into the process, whether my workback plan is realistic in terms of time/money

Kate, I think Jonathan can help a ton with marketing/positioning this Thursday. As for Kickstarter launch, I'll look at the Wefunder founder network to see who's done successful Kickstarter campaigns and get back to you :) 

Here's what PyggyBank would love help on:

- Raise a seed round to accelerate and finalize our partnership with banking API providers and banks. They generally require a level of funding first. Intros to angels and seed investors. 

- Negotiating the best terms with our banking and API partners. Intros to founders in the mobile banking space.

- lead gen for our early access program and help with our content and community outreach strategy