How do you pitch yourself to an investor? The essentials of talking to investors by Alyson DeNardo

And today's a guest speaker who have Allison DiNardo partner at Mac Ventures, capital, founder, and CEO of Eldon and partner at M, Ventures and base episode.

We'll talk about a bunch of different topics 1 of which is, how does Allison manage to keep so many positions? And still be gaining this, how did she get into the world and what's her advice? Too early stage founders, in terms of teaching specifically.

So, Alison, let's kick it off by you giving us some background on yourself and on Mac venture capital.

Yeah, absolutely. Alec can give high level bio and I'm going to take a deep breath now because this was kind of a lot. So I'm from a small town in New York.

I graduated early from high school, was the 1st person to ever do so and had to protest the school board and to be able to do. So, so, it was very much like a foot loose Pittsburgh situation going on, did a year of traditional school college.

That was not for me. I was not someone who could sit in a lecture for 3 out, get talked at when it was material. I could learn.

And 15 minutes, so I decided to make a switch after my 1st year to an online program through Columbia, I moved to New York, which is where Cornell and ethical colleges, if you're familiar and worked for jobs while I was doing my college.

So, worked with bartender, worked out a couple hotels.
We'll get restaurants and honestly,
that experience has been invaluable,
and given me invaluable skills for the rest of my life,
which has been amazing just some of the people from from there, I got an internship at a company called sentrylink,

which is in the traditional telecom stage Fortune 100 I worked for the SEP.

And as if your product is split between the 2 and build out and implemented and internal communication tool in 6 weeks, and launch it to the organization of 50 50000 people.

And so, that was a lot of amazing opportunity to do that really early in my career. And through that, I became 1 of the very few women in the top 100 people at a Fortune 500 when I was 19 subtexts.

There is that the companies based in Monroe, Louisiana, which is a very traditional corporate environment.

From there,
I moved to San Francisco to work for Justin con,
if you're familiar with him,
the adjusted adjusting TB,
which turned into Twitch,
which sold to Amazon casually for a 1B dollars a few years ago,

hired me to be his chief of staff postage acquisition,
which I think you have another question about how I got that job, which we'll talk about later.

So, in which it's probably the most fun job I could ever have. I did everything from buying art to doing a big deal to working with his angel portfolio to. He was also a partner at the time. So, that's where I really cut my teeth on venture.

And the startup ecosystem,

and building out new ideas with him,

which led me to be the 1st employee at his most recent company atrium,

just half off from tech company,

basically trying to democratize the legal corporate legal experience for a lot of probably your listeners that pay 1000 dollars an hour for your corporate legal firm.

And so I was the 1st employee built out internal operations hired literally the 1st, 100 people in the 1st year, which was absolutely insane and wonderful.

And then, I, in 2018, I met 2 of who were my partners now, Mike and Adrian from and ventures they had come to the atrium office to meet with Justin doing diligence on some deal.

And Justin referred them to me because I messed with product new founder. Yadda, yadda, and just to set the scene for you, Adrian continues to be the mirror. See during the 1st, Obama term.

Mike was an agent, William Morris and never workplace way up familiar.

We'll have had amazing established careers. I've never seen Adrian where James and he's also about 6 foot 2. I believe. Just set the scene for you. I'm 5 foot.

Nothing was wearing speakers in the startup office, and so they were at the elevator waiting for the outside and they said quick quick talks about this thing and I said, okay, great. It's really stupid. It's never going to be a business.

You're going to set your money on fire and I think they stared at me for about 30 seconds to say. They were confused about who this tiny person was yelling at them,

or the fact that I was right about it because a company that they were looking at and so had chatted with them and started working part time for adventures in the beginning of 2018 for the majority of 2018 came on full time as a partner in September with the close of our 2nd fund and

Ventures focused on early stage preceed companies.
We have about 90 companies under those 2 funds and then.

In 2019, we were thinking about what was next for us and the cross culture team. Marlin Nichols, Trey Carter and Daniel Brown out of L. A. we're doing the same thing. We'd Co, invested with them quite a bit.

We've known the team for a long time, and we decided to combine and conquer and so that's what

Mac venture capital is. Now, the convergence of a new. Excuse me?

The convergence of the 2 teams new fund 100M dollar fund focused on early stage preceed seed companies. In our average check is anywhere from 500M a half. We have about 2020 ish companies under that umbrella.

So far ranging from resale to, for interactive media. There's quite some range on that side.

And our thesis primarily is companies that change culture, change behavior, and ultimately change the world.

And then, in addition to Mac adventures, etc, I started a company called all then last year, which if you take the Y, out of my name is my namesake, and I focus on change management for startup.

So, basically, if you've ever seen scandal Olivia pope startups.
Um, basically going into organizations trying not fixing problems hiring firing.

I've had investors hire me before for their portfolio companies to evaluate replacements and some of the really painful stuff that startups go through.

I've seen just through my, my own life and working with our companies through hard times, and even just challenging things of CO, founder conflicts and things that are easy for me that might not be easy for other people.

So that's all then.

And then,

within the last few months,

they've started a new new company project called tubing suits,

which is a advisory firm for women companies,

primarily focusing on what we call better world sustainability,

climate,

quality of life products and companies that are ops heavy.

So really putting our weight behind.

And with the lead founders within those spaces, and now I want to wrap that, hopefully That'll make sense as you should be. This was a very long introduction. And.

Huge background there, but, you know, from all this stuff that you mentioned, my major question is what's the most valuable skill you learn as a bartender?

Sure, that's a great question.

And I think how to understand people at a very deep level and meet people where they are because you think about it, you're working on value of all different types of people coming in every night. Some people are heavy.

People are sad and it's your job to be consistent and be there for them. Whatever they might need. And that whether it'd be a shot of tequila or whether be life advice.

You kind of see the whole rainbow there and that extends to my job now of when I was at atrium people organization people come to you with problems. People come to you and painful for their day. People come to challenges.

And my job now is the VC as an advisor, it's the same of actively cultivating relationships with people in order to be a resource for them.

And I said this is awesome and this is a definition of an awesome VC. So great work there. So, 1st question your networking apparently, he work. Absolutely great.

And when our preinterview call, you mentioned that 1 of your 1st, employers, you met through snapshots. Can you tell us more than that? Sure. So what you're referring to is what? I at with Justin. It's been about 2015, 2015. I was working at sentrylink.

Like I mentioned, and it was right about the time with Snapchat stories came out in the export page. Excuse me explore feature wasn't very good yet.

So, I had just been looking up the top 10 people to follow on Chad and Justin was on some list and I followed him.

And I thought the content that he was creating was really interesting, especially from someone who's working on a corporate environment didn't really have any exposure into the ecosystem. I didn't even know what venture capital was existed until pretty much. Then.

Or you could be a software engineer for a job. They're pretty crazy. I'd follow Justin that it was really interesting. Follow them probably for about 6 months. And then, um.

When 1 day they posted that he was looking for a chief of staff so when you to support him. And I jump to this day, I don't really remember applying, but I guess I did and we face time.

Wrote twice, I think, for about 10 minutes apiece, and then he called me and he said I want to hire you can we move to California?

And I'd never been to San Francisco. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have any. I never met Justin in person before, and I said, yes, and so I moved to California. I received it. I had another job offer the time.

I responded the other job offer said yes to Justin packed up and moved to California within about a week's time.

Impressive extremely, extremely impressive. I'm pretty sure you're happy with that. Move at least for the California among other things for sure. Yeah.

So let's move on and talk about how you managed to juggle all those things. So you are a partner at ABC.

You're also Co, founder of 2 companies and a CEO of 1 of those who how do you manage to run all those things at once and still have time for these podcast?

Sure, so, I mean, thank you for having me the real answer here is I'm very picky about how I use my time I have, I think I have 7 different calendars actively going. Everything's color coded.

Everything's optimized for the time of day that I'm most productive to do certain things. Like, for example, I take calls mostly in the morning because I know my brain is sharp and I can do.

Which is in the afternoon, et cetera and I'm very strict about how other people use my time.

So, a lot of it is having to say, no, a lot of it is having to say, does this have to be a meeting and pushing for that? Because, ultimately, like, my time is my life, and I'm not going to let other people waste my life.

And I think that's something that I care of all the time because you can't get that back. So I think that primarily that's how I'm able to do.

So much is, because I'm very strict about I use my time I actually use the time tracker for everything that I do, whether it's Mac work, whether it's answering emails, whether it's.

Called and use and Co, which is, I think, primarily targeted towards freelancers, but they have a great time tracking tool. So then at the end of every week, I can see how my set my time where.

And then the subtext of how I get so much done is I've been living in San Francisco for about the last 5 years,

and a year ago had made the decision with my partner to put all of our stuff in storage and wander around mountain towns of the US or both big rock climbers and so I live in mountain towns and I don't have children or

responsibility is wonderful.

Advantage of having time to do things. So that's how I keep all my things floating. He myself a float to. This is awesome. Sounds like a dream life.

Honestly I'm getting jealous here, but 1st of all very flared by the fact that you decided to not see and no to fund reason. We do. And you're fine to participate. Really appreciate 2nd.

What is that time tracking tool? How exactly doesn't work because I know that a lot of founders are actually struggling with time management. They're all over the place and, you know, by the end of the month, when they're checking their metrics, they're like, okay, I worked on these metrics to improve those metrics.

I know like 10% of my time, the rest 90% was just some random crap that I had to do. So, how, how exactly does this time tracking work for you?

Sure, so I can go through how I do it and then I can kind of give advice to other people. So, for me, I mostly keep things in buckets of for myself, for Mac.

For example, I have emails, I have, I manage our social channels and stuff too, so socials deal work. Portfolio work are generally the 4 buckets and then if something comes up, that's not 1 of those 4 things. That's pretty rare.

So, I, every time I open my email, I start my timer and then I close it when I'm done. So I know exactly how long I spent certain things.

And that helps me to stay more focused on what's in front of me, rather than opening Instagram and getting distracted because I'm like, quote, unquote billing, like, think about it as I'm billing for my time. So I want to know what I'm doing.

So, I think the buckets works really well for me for pretty granular time tracking tool. And then, when i1st started doing this, it was just an experiment to see what I was doing. And how I was spending my time.

And then the layer beyond that was analyzing a, what can I automate.

See, how do I want to actually spend my time proactively? And I'm.

There was a see, but I forgot where I was going with that. So, honestly, I think, oh, and see what can delegate to other people. I got there. I got thanks for your patience.

And so, and all of those things are super important, especially if you're a CEO of a company, you have 30 employees, you have even 3 employees there. It's just yourself.

You can outsource a lot of things to other people, whether it be or 2 technologies like bookings you spend so much if you go back and forth scheduling meetings, like regular back and forth on emails that take so much time.

It's so stupid. It's like your time. Is way more than sending out, just use outlay bucket setup certain times for, for me, I have occasionally for different things.

So I like to take networking calls in the morning with other investors and then I like to pitch calls in the afternoon. So, I have 2 separate calendars, so I have time segments. So I'm always on the same page.

I'm not going from taking the call taking a call with founder and then I have 2 contacts switch and there's opportunity cost there.

Um, so I think just the evaluation of how you're using your time is so important and I think like, letting go.

Of tasks that you don't need to do.
Is so important too, especially like I mentioned, especially as the your time is valuable and I got it.

This company is your child, and you want to do everything and you want to have control everything, but you can get and yeah, you can get a virtual assistant that can do a lot of things for you and make your life.

1000% better no joke. Um.

And then you can get more done and actually have a larger impact. And then like, scheduling meetings manually.

100% schedule amaze mainly would. Absolutely. Kill me. Literally would take like, 50% of my take Kelly is easier. If you're still doing it by hand Jesus Christ. What's wrong with you to it? With councly. Okay. Yeah. So.

Let's talk about the founders now, let's talk a little bit more about how they choose the investor, how they evaluate the investors. So, 1st is.

1st, let's see, founder is talking to investor investor is interested. So now the founder is trying to figure out if it's even worth his or her time, or.

Is it worth giving percentage of the company to that investor is it can be enough value proposition from that investor. So, how would you recommend those founders evaluate the investors back?

Yeah, absolutely, I think that a lot more time should be spent on this than what is currently done in the market.

The 1st thing I would do, as a founder is in your 1st, couple of conversations is, you're flushing it out is there flushing you out as well? I would ask how do you like to work with your portfolio companies?

How involved are you and 99% of the time you're going to get the same blank and answer. Oh, we like to be there for founders will help make intros.

Like,

bullshit from everyone and so what you want to really dive into is more specific examples of then you say,

can you give an example of a time recently that you made a difference in 1 of your companies and that will show you what they like asking them to give a specific example,

you are not going to lie to you.

They have to tell you something. So they might tell you made an example to the potential partner or whatever. And so.

Depending on how people like to work with companies, it can range from.

Take Here's my money, come back to me in 10 years when you sell the company or it can be like, what I like to do from my operations. Background specifically is get really in the weeds with companies.

So, for example, I'm basically the external head of people for 4 or 5 of our companies that are pretty early on, are building out people organizations, recruiting prophecies, internal operations culture, etc.

And they can come to me 30 minutes a week and ask questions and we can make a much higher impact that way.

Like, even as much as, like, helping companies, great job descriptions like, that are into the way. Your investors can some investors will be able to do that for you and we'll be willing to do that for you.

And that will actually make a difference in your organization, or take time once a month to go through your sales pipeline and see where they can help and just support wherever they can. And so, I think.

Early in the processes and evaluating investors, you really need to.

Ask what might be a hard question, just to understand what they do and what they're willing to do. And if on, like, I think there's a couple of different questions you can ask as well as, like.

Is this person going to be there for you?

Is are you willing,

like,

are you comfortable with this person enough for when you shifting the 10,

or there's a global pandemic and you lay off have a few people and you're going through a really hard time are they going to step up and be there for you and be rooting for you,

are they going to go silent and.

Disappear and that happens. This happens so much and I think evaluating a like 80 like this person be do you think this person's going to be there for you and see are you comfortable going to this person with good news and with bad news?

I think those are really important questions to ask, because, I mean, ultimately, I think I said this to you

and our Pre call as well. My favorite part of my job is that I get to be everyone's number, once in a good days.

And so it's my job to be there and I want to know what's going on with my companies in order to help whether it be great news or whether it be something that I can help with.

So, I think thinking about what you actually want from your investors. Is really important when you're when you're actively fundraising.

If we're even proactively, and then flushing out what that might look like, and the scope of your investor pool. So, 1 person might be an awesome sales leader that you can go to as sales questions. Another person might be a great ops person.

They can help you with internal Ops. Another person might be really great at recruiting engineers and so building out that complimentary skills profile in your investor pool is really important as well.

Perfect advice. Absolutely. Loved it. So now let's go a little bit back in that process and let's pretend that it's just the 1st meeting. The investor doesn't like it yet, because they don't really know yet. Yeah. So, what's your advice to founders who are preparing for the pitch? What should they do?

What should they focus on right now? Should they do tongue twister? Should they go over their numbers again? Should they go over their competitors? Just to make sure all bases on top of their head, or what would you recommend them there?

Sure, I, um, I think at 1st.
I really want to know that. Let me just think through this for a 2nd, edit that out.

Um, I really want the person that I'm talking to, and the person that I want to invest in to know who they are, and I want to know why they have ground to stand on to build this company. So I want like, a really tight.

Regardless of like, my bio was, I want a really tight backstory. Like, what did you do previously? Why are you doing this now? Why are you?

1st, and that's going to be successful at this versus Joe Schmo who's building a similar company and why should I invest in you? And why are you going to provide 10 X returns for me or 100 extra time? Because those are all the questions that I think around my head and.

The basically and I can, this is a little tidbit of something that Justin taught me of. I want my founders to have the attitude of.

Like, I'm gonna do this with, or without you like, you're on a more path you're building this company and Nothing's going to stop you like, some investors are going to say, no, some investors are going to say, yes. The ones that are yes.

Or fit, but you're not going to let anyone get in your way of building this company. And that's the attitude that I want. I want people to be confident in what they're doing, regardless of how hard it is and it's really, really f*** hard.

I don't know if you edit that out or whatever, but it's brutal. And it's like, it's so hard.

And I want founders to be able to know that they themselves have the strength to keep going and they can rely on other people, like your investors or your Co founders or whatever to keep going as well.

So, I think type backstory with self confidence behind it.

And the I'm going to do this with, or without you mindset is really important and then, of course know your numbers if I ask you what your CAC is, I want you to have that ready.

And if you, if you're tripped up, or if you're locked into competition, or you don't have in front of, you just say, I can let me send you over those numbers afterwards. And our, our.

Cack is almost this number or whatever just give a vague example, and then follow up with exact numbers. That's totally fine.

And I'm trying to think about what else. Um, yeah, I think just, um.

The presentation of yourself is more important than anything, because at the end of the day, this is the people business and it's my job to spot. Talent is my job to invest in Helen. And I want to see people that are confident in themselves and confident in what they're doing.

Right. Perfect advice will load it and yes, I will have to mark this episode explicit, but most of our listeners are for you for years. So I'm pretty sure it's not a big deal for them.

So next question is about know common mistakes that founders or that you see founders making while doing those features. So.

What's something that's basically easily fixable, but founders may be or just not aware of it or? I know just something that you see them doing frequently that you don't like that's easily fixable.

Being concise, I think so much time is wasted on mentioning things in a pitch that don't matter. And this is something I do with Alvin as well as auditing pitches of, like, cutting the fat basically.

Yeah, I think being concise is the number 1 thing that people don't do and, I mean, honestly, like, of course, I'm guilty of this as well, but if you're pitching, I don't take initial calls that are more than 30 minutes.

30 minutes we have a lot to get through.
I need you to be as concise as possible. I need you to sell it to me. I need you to.

Understand what you're doing and, like, understand what's going to be the most compelling for the people that you want to bring into this company, whether it be recruiter, or whether it be employees, whether be investors, et cetera.

And so long, I can't, I'll interrupt I like I, it's a waste time.

And, like, you can always go back and here, like, if I went in an elaboration on something I'll ask, but just go super high level, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. This is why we started this company. And this is how we're gonna make.

A 1B dollars, and then the investor will ask questions on the way there of like, great. Who's your target? Sales target? Yada yada.

And just focus high level. Like, I don't need to hear your whole back story of the whole thing. I'll ask you about that. And that's important as you evaluate fit both ways. But I think focusing on being concise.

Is the most, like, vital.

Saying I see all the time. Absolutely. That's 100% on board here and absolutely. Hate when, you know, both founders and investors are going into direction to I really don't care about, like, come on as a business goal. We're not friends yet.

So let's let's dig into that. Yeah, so.

And honestly, like, it's okay to interrupt and say, okay, cool. Can we talk more about that later? Let's focus on what's in front of us we have 5 minutes left. I think, within that range 2 of not respecting other people's time of.

On investors are guilty of this, too of, like, if I set a call from 2 to 30 or 2 to 225, that's that's the limit. We're not going over that. If you go over that time and don't ask me. Hey, do you have another couple minutes? I'm going to say, no, I have to leave right now and that's.

It's rude because people have other calls and, um.

Not respecting people's time is a reflection of not respecting your own time too, which is.

This is a separate conversation, but also a huge, huge error.

Absolutely most definitely. Very true. Higher percent. Agreed that was our oldest of agreeing to. I can.

Think of let's move on to next question and then we'll wrap it up with the call to action. So, 1st question is a follow up on the pages. So you've had.

A lot of interactions with people you've done a lot of this. So, do you have a really cool story about weird or funny or, you know, very special piece that you've seen, or heard.

I do, I'll go special 1st, and then we can go weird.

My, there's a company called living carbon, which I invested in was founded by a good friend of mine, Mattie hall, who previously worked for as his chief of staff.

And that's how we got to know each other where she was working for Sam at the same time. I was working for Justin, being the chief of staff, or somebody like that a few and far between and had become friends. Right?

When I moved to San Francisco, and so she had work for Sam during both for WI, fi when he wasn't as well as for open a, and some of his personal projects.

And so she had bike ride exposure into old that world, and she grew up as somebody in,

basically someone in the forest and Washington of very much for saving very in touch with the earth and loves being outside,

that sort of thing.

And that was the theme in her whole life and so.

After she'd worked for Sam for a while, she had kind of work. I don't know how exactly it came out.

She could tell you that story, but they came up with a concept of live in carbon, which is basically engineering more.

Productive trees,

so literally genetically modifying trees to be to take in more carbon to output more oxygen literally making a new type of tree changing the world that way,

which is absolutely insane.

And I think the fountain this isn't exactly about the pitch. But I think the founding story for her was every her entire life had culminated.

To starting this company, and her, her core is in this business of making the world a better place through, by literally, like, being the mother of trees is what I call her.

And so I, I had to and angel invested. I had to invest in her company. Not only because she was a friend and I would let her I.

Believe in anything that she does, but I think this is 1 of the most aligned.

The founder fits that I've ever seen of, she embodies this in every way shape environment, every cell in her body and.

I think that's the type of thing I really appreciate. And I think when you said special, that's what I thought about was was her being the mother of trees and.

Fulfilling that mission in her life and so she was actually the, if you look up for 30 under 30 science, she was the face of it this year when the founding story that, um.

So, you want to learn more about that that's great. Yeah. So I think for that's just the most special founding story. Not really pitch that I've ever seen. But what's most compelling? And something that I always look for is like, why is this founder starting this company and.

Is it a part of who they are? Because those are the people that are going to be more successful because it's their mission rather than starting a company that's going to make engineers like 1% more productive.

I don't care around the world and filling yourself anything that she's that person more than anybody. Perfect now, after this positive 1, let's move on to the weird part that you promised us.
So, I'm not.
I'm not going to name any names, but something that makes my blood boil. Huh?

Is founders who start companies and don't do research on the market? Of I had someone pitch me a product.

For a company that was they were like, this is going to be a 1B dollar business. This is gonna be a huge thing and it was.

A, something that already existed within.

Plat like, it was in the food deliveries. It's like 5 other major companies have this within their platform and.

They were pitching it as a standalone business, and they were telling you that they never wanted to sell to any other.

Company and I'm like, what, why and I felt like it was kind of I had to see them. I'm like, they came to me and asked me for honest advice and I'm like, I can't invest in this because it's already exists.

And I don't think that this is going to be a business. I think it's product.

And it hurts, and I'm like Vegas having out my forehead now because it just stresses me out so much that there are people that are just.

Starting companies and not doing any research on the market and, like.

I can't, I'm like, on a scale of 1 to even I can't it's so stressful for me. And then you have to be the 1 to, like.

Because, I mean, for me, I am higher, I see hundreds of companies in a month, and I see what's in the market and maybe they don't see that. But I think if you do basic Google searches, what does this company do and you see 5 main competitors, you're a 1B dollar companies.

That's problematic. Yeah, that's very true. And that's and that's actually a very common mistake that founders tend to make. They just Andreas make their competitors, or they just seem like they're not doing this. They're horrible.

This is it's not really good. It's not on this slightly said, but previously optimistic note we are moving on to the last question of today's call to action.

So, Allison, what do you want to do as soon as the episode is over?

So, for themselves, I want them to.

Say, no to something and manage your time better.

Your time is your life? I want companies who you've mentioned this to myself promotion minute. So thank you. Companies who are raising a Pre seed seed looking for a lead.

Reach out to me about Mack, that's our primary focus. And then women companies looking for either support investment, et cetera to.

We, our organization is to pink suits and that pain and either, whether it be looking for additional investors, democratizing capital. Excuse me, diversifying cap tables I'm happy to help people or anybody.

Actually, if you're looking to diversify or capital, come to me. I like my mission at some point is to only do business with women and I'm happy to send you 10 names of women. Vc is doing business with. So.

Happy to support on that front and help there and then on all the front too if you're going through organizational complications, whether it be, you're looking to scale quickly. I don't know how to do that or could be more efficient or you're experiencing Co, founder conflict.

It's stuff that I've seen before it's something you don't need to go through alone and I can probably solve in 5 minutes make.

Spending 2 years going in the wrong direction. Um.

Yeah, so I mean, if I like, I mentioned, my favorite part of my job is they get to be everyone's number 1 band. So, I mean, same whatever I can do to support people too. I'm happy to be resource.

Nice that this is awesome and I'll make sure to follow up with Allison to make sure that I include all

the links that were mentioned in the episodes in the description of this episode. So, if anyone's curious definitely check it out. But before we.

Say goodbye last question to Alison you mentioned Co founder, or you forgot the 2nd more you mentioned Co founder syndrome.

Was it oh, conflict? Like, if you're having this.

Yeah, Andrew, my like, there's some Co, founder syndrome. What is that? I was very curious about it. Apparently it's a different thing, but still sounds like Alison can provide a ton of helpful information.

So, all the info is going to be a description of the episode. At least there's going to be linked into Allison's.

Linkedin also Ventures, and also a few other links that will be definitely helpful to you. So, check it out and as usually have a good day.