Why Some Startups Get Taken Seriously and Others Don't

0:02So that's another thing I'd like to add to this. You can have that confidence, you can have the clarity, but you have the humility to check yourself. Where's the data? How do you have any indications that this would work? Have you talked to anybody that's your use case? Have you talked to anything? That's where people go to die in their startup world, I find so often, or just in the space. Yes, you run out of money, you run out of a bunch of things that can happen in a startup, but you were so enthralled with your idea that it actually wasn't something anyone wanted solved and yet you just wasted all that money to try and solve something that was actually not a problem to begin with so you've got no customers every startup founder

0:40Beck Bamberger: needs people to believe in something that hasn't been proven yet but confidence and a compelling story can only take you so far so how do you build credibility when you don't have much traction and why does what convinces an investor sometimes mean nothing to a customer or journalist I talked with Beck Bamberger, founder and CEO of communications agency BAM, about what makes an early-stage startup believable and how founders can give people real reasons to take them seriously. I'm Walter Thompson. This is Fund, Build, Scale. Are you building something that's hard to explain? It can be a sign you're working on something interesting, but it also raises the risk that you're missing out on fundraising, sales, hiring, and media opportunities.

1:25Beck Bamberger: I help early stage founders sharpen the narrative. What matters? Why now? Who needs to care? And why they're the right team to make it happen. If you're preparing for a raise, a product launch, an important customer meeting, a panel discussion, or even a hiring push, I can help you pressure test your story before the stakes get higher. Visit the Fund Build Scale website to learn more or email fundbuildscale at gmail.com. Beck, thank you so much for taking the time today. I am so looking forward to this conversation, have been for a while. Walter, I'm so happy to be here. We have such a great time when we get together usually, so happy to be here and to pontificate on anything on the PR front, the comms part, the wild world of tech that we live in, good God, and so forth.

2:10Beck Bamberger: Here we are. It is pretty wild. It is wild. All right. I want people to know exactly who you are and why we're talking. Who is Beck Bamberger, PhD? LinkedIn says you're an investor. And I know you also do tech PR and marketing as CEO of BAM, a San Diego-based communications agency. But who are you exactly and what brought you? How did we come together? Who are we? Wow, Walter, we could be sitting here for ages on that. Sometimes I go with the question of or the answer of, well, I'm the daughter of my parents, the sister of my sister, this human on this wild planet floating in space, all these things.

2:49But to narrow it down for the scope of this probably conversation less on a spiritual quest or anything like that, I run an agency named BAM that works with all venture-backed startups and venture funds. We work on their narrative capital, which is building their footprint in such a momentous way that they become inevitable in terms of their size of revenue, reputation, and the returns that they eventually get to for their investors. And I'm, I'd say to boil it down, I'm an adventurer. I'm just happy to be alive, Walter, in a sense. I love the practice of being uncomfortable. I did it, I studied that a lot with my PhD and did that in the vertical of transformational learning.

3:37So consistently in practicing that. There's probably another book that I can write on that at an eventual point. It's not going to be right now, given I'm running bam and got a lot of other things going on, but that will be coming down the pipeline because I think just the practice of that consciously, and it is also a stoic philosophy to purposely be uncomfortable, is remarkably valuable for all of us on this one ticket that we got called life.

4:00Beck Bamberger: I think that's where discovery comes from, I guess. It does. It does. And I would say if you are in the venture-backed space and you're doing a fandangled company as a startup, you are having likely an uncomfortable experience. It is uncomfortable running a startup that has never seen the light of day before in the world. It has not existed. You birthed it from your brain or your AI brain. And you're trying to hustle out there for customers' validation, VC dollars, and so forth. That is often uncomfortable. So many props to the people in the arena, myself being in the arena as a founder as well.

4:33It takes a lot.

4:36Beck Bamberger: You've looked at this from all sides. And I want to talk to you mainly about how founders, how they earn belief before they really earned proof. So like starting your example, you know, you've got two founders with similar companies. And they're at, you know, a conference. And they're working on kind of the same problem. And they have similar level of expertise. And the TAM could be like even, you know, overlapping almost perfectly, right? But one of them gets an investor meeting and one of them goes back and tries to keep the team spirits up because they didn't get what they thought they'd get out of that conference.

5:13Beck Bamberger: What happened there? What happened there? Why? It's down to the person and, frankly, the individual. It is an unfair world we exist in. And there are some people who are so psycho, as I like to say in a positive way, like so bullish on something coming to fruition that's coming out of their mind, so confident, so outlandish in something being created that it compels the checks to be signed. It compels that from VCs, customers, potential employees, and so forth. So the very first step, the very first thing anyone, at least myself included, is looking for in terms of that initial founder who is thinking they're going to raise capital is, do you have the chops and the gall, frankly, to believe in something that doesn't even exist?

6:07Even more so that you are going to create that has not existed, you yourself. So it saddens me, Walter, sometimes it's like I can smot from a mile away in seven seconds of interacting with someone if they're going to raise any money or not from early founders. And why is that? It's because of that internal confidence that spews out, whether consciously or unconsciously, from them. It is audacious, as I'm sure you've seen being a TechCrunch before, of when you were talking with the founder and they're talking about the sky the moon how they're going to buy mars and everything else they've never even stepped on grass you know ever before they just came out of school two months ago whatever if they even went to school whatever but damn do they believe that existence and it's contagious and we love as humans to go along with those believers there is little discernment in my opinion from a startup founder to cult leader the line is thin yeah i

7:10Beck Bamberger: mean yeah you're basically to get someone to join your startup you basically have to get them to share your unreasonable belief in its success which is kind of what cult that's what co-leaders do completely completely it's the same analogy i give with drug dealers and top sales performers in SaaS software. Both are salespeople. Just selling different stuff. Yeah, they work in their territory, you know, making relationships. They have territories, they have relationships. I watch The Wire. They have favors. It's just different sides of the world, people existing in. So anyway. Well, let me ask you, so confidence is, yes, you can't get anywhere without having like, you know, the idea of the outsized crazy belief.

7:49Beck Bamberger: But the clarity, the idea, like you have to have a clear story, right, that travels from room to room. Yes, and that is directly tied to confidence. Because if you're sitting here and you go, Walter, I think I'd like to be a startup founder one day. And, you know, I kind of, I like space. But I also think supply chain's interesting. And I don't know, maybe I'll do something in the health tech arena. And, you know, I don't think, maybe I could, no. You want to, Walter, I'm a huge fan of everything that goes on in the supply chain industry. I am outrageously convinced that it changes and shapes the entire world of what we exist in.

8:28I'm going to be building a startup that's going to have 3 ,000 employees in the next 24 months. Do you want to join my startup? You don't even know what a startup is. But it's just the conviction and the confidence and the clarity that compels checks, that compels the signing of people coming to come along with your cult slash startup. it's in the same arena as we just discussed.

8:53Beck Bamberger: Okay. All right. Well, if you're still in that pre-proof stage, like pre-customers, pre-revenue, pre-investors, you're still kind of, you know, pre-seed. Like, how do you, you don't have enough data at that point to prove anything. No, you don't. You're just off beliefs. Right. And so can you really just fill the tank with just vibes? Like how far can you get with that? I know, belief vibes. In a way, yes, to some extent, but then check yourself. So that's another thing I'd like to add to this. You can have that confidence. You can have the clarity, but you have the humility to check yourself.

9:26Where's the data? How do you have any indications that this would work? Have you talked to anybody? That's your use case. Have you talked to anything? That's where people go to die in their startup world. I find so often or just in the space. Yes, you run out of money. You run out of a bunch of things that can happen to a startup, but you were so enthralled with your idea that it actually wasn't something anyone wanted solved. and yet you just wasted all that money to try and solve something that was actually not a problem to begin with. So you've got no customers. That's the ultimate thing that I love with just customers and media too.

9:59And we'll talk about narrative capital in a second. No one in media owes you anything. They don't care to write about you. There's no inherent reason to. Same thing with any customer you're trying to get after. They owe you nothing. There's nothing to compel them. versus I'd argue with the venture capitalists, you are sitting on capital. If you have a venture, if you're a venture capitalist, you have raised money, you need to deploy that money. It needs to be working for you. It needs to be returning itself back pretty soon, hopefully in the not too distant future. So your LPs are happy and you can recycle and recycle and recycle.

10:33In other words, venture capitalists are looking around out in the field, trying to find where they're going to park that money and accelerate it and take it to the moon and so forth. So those kind of naturally draw each other to it founder vcs versus a journalist or a customer i don't need you

10:49Beck Bamberger: like what are some signals that create confidence but like authenticity without like over confidence and bombast like how do you walk that line money money is the ultimate confidence walter show me the dollar show me that you've actually had someone initially signed up and more so pay and actually signed up again and keep coming back which is why in this air that we're in in this ai MySpace, oh, oh wow, they've gotten millions of dollars in MRR, annual revenue, but wait a second, have they actually stuck around for 18 months or is it two months into a 12 month contract or 18 month contract? The rubber meets the road when you're actually keeping the clients and you're keeping the customers for the long term.

11:28So money showing me where the traction actually is. Now you might argue, but it's still an idea phase or something. I don't care. Can you sell it? Can come and stick around and do they want more of it? And then more so again with the consumer, do they tell people about it? So you get more customers or you get more clients who want to come along and expand that because ultimately right now we are all selling to a human. Now in five years, that could be different. An AI bot selling to another AI bot. We're not in that realm right now. Right now, a human is selling to a human. So I need to have and be on a website or at your conference or whatever and go, okay, do I want this?

12:08Does this make sense? Do I psychologically believe this will benefit me? And so forth. So it's still, you're still convincing ultimately at the end of the day, a consumer or the decision maker, which whether they're in a giant enterprise or that end consumer sitting in Tallahassee in their house, they need to be the one. So it's really the money and showing you where that is. Now, if you're like, ah, we're just not at that phase yet or something, then okay, what's the traction you can show that indicates there's interest and need for it. So a lot of people will start, well, look how big the market is.

12:41Yes, that tan, the total addressable market and everything. But that's kind of a silly metric in a bit in the VC space. But you can say like, oh, the whole world's my metric. It's billions of people. I mean, we all see those like, it's a$37 billion industry. It's like, yeah, okay. But where exactly does your niche thing fit into it is that truly the market size in a way you can argue the market size could be something i create with this product who knew a couple years ago that there would be such a frenzy to build a data center in the middle of nowhere in america now you can't even buy the land fast enough to even do that there was no there was what was the total addressable market for a data center 10

13:22Beck Bamberger: years ago walter right and now they're talking about using modular fuse like nuclear reactors to power them. That wasn't a market either. We weren't using that 10 years ago either suddenly. So in other words, the market is a fluctuating, flexible thing that TAM can change within months, within years for sure, but within months. So back to, well, what are these metrics or what's a legitimacy? If it's not money, then where are you showing of any decency of any size that there's an actual market for that? What I want to see is qualitative information. Have you spoken with people who have said, oh, absolutely, I would buy that if you made it.

14:00Oh, completely. When can I sign up for it? There was one startup I spoke to on my podcast that I was doing. I said, how'd you guys figure out this very like niche weird thing that they were doing? They said, oh, well, we went to a trade show and we walked all around that trade show for a day and a half. And we asked every single person, hey, if we built this thing, would you be interested? And they said 97 % of people said, yeah, I would buy that. When can I get it? And they went, oh, okay, I guess there's some value in building that and now they're off to the races and it's a billion-dollar company now but they went floor you know booth by booth talking to what could be the potential customer and they got that information qualitatively not by using by the way some qualitative metric in marketing agency blah blah blah blah blah thing there's all these website there's all these sites and everything that say like this is your audience they they want to buy this no are you actually talking to real people who will tell you to their your face directly that they would do that.

14:56And then that's not even the end of it because ultimately the checkbook is the money is the indicator.

15:03Beck Bamberger: Okay. All this, I agree with everything you just said. Great. Although I am wondering though, because if someone comes to you and they're like, we've got, you know, millions of dollars in the bank and a seed round, we're in stealth, investors love us. We're ready to hire a PR for it because we think we're, you know, we're all this, we're about to come out of stealth, want to tell a great story. If you don't, If you don't see them pulling the market, do you want to take them on as a client? Are you waiting for actual traction before? It depends. It depends on usually their history. Are they former founders who have already exited for a lot?

15:37Do they have that credibility? So that's one of the biggest hallmarks. I was just doing another interview with a now third-time founder. He's already sold a bunch of companies to the entities that are worth. In other words, his legitimacy himself is worth it, even when it's still three guys in a garage, frankly. So is the credibility of the person or the team there? Secondly, are there any indications of looming customers, anything in motion? For some places, especially in defense tech, you have a pending government deal, but the government doesn't pay you on day one or something. So what are their indications of intended customers?

16:15Are there? And then thirdly, it goes down to the team. I look at the team of like, have you assembled advisors, VCs, other people on the team as co-founders perhaps that like show some proof of like, okay, this is, this has some links to it. Even though you technically don't have zero, you know, you have not a dollar to your name yet in revenue. So those can be things that we look to. What has changed in the last couple of years though from an article perspective or a media perspective is as you know Walter years ago the headline included all so-and-so company raised seven million dollars seventy million dollars seventeen million dollars to do Quaint no, that's not even mentioned the dollar is not even mentioned in it anymore because that's not novel That's not More so you will see it buried in paragraph four.

17:03Oh, how much did they happen to raise because really the piece is about something they're solving that's so gigantic, a big ticket name customer that's already working with this product and so on and so forth. Or what I like to emphasize for founders so often, what are you doing? Why are you doing? But why now? Why now does it matter?

17:21Beck Bamberger: Right. Why you? And why you? But then also why now? If you're in the climate space, for example, we're very clearly understand the why now, but it's a little bit harder to say, well, why now for that agent that helps you do this on an ai stack platform in a supply chain thing that talking about making porn grow faster unless you can explain like how big how huge a problem it is and how painful it is for how many people and then maybe i don't know yeah maybe but the the forcing mechanism of the why now is trying and as you know walter we do 40 something media dinners and media events a year in sf in new york and we'll have verticalized dinners the climate tech ones are always easier for every journalist in there.

18:02Because it's like, yeah, oh, you're making wildfires not happen? Yeah, we understand that. Buildings are not burning. Houses are not burning. Got it. A little bit more difficult when it's an AI enterprise one. You're reducing revenue churn by X amount for your e-commerce platform. Yes.

18:19Beck Bamberger: Yeah. I mean, no one's... Not exactly world-changing. It's not a lifesaver. It's probably, you know... It's a lifesaver. I mean, it's kind of funny. I do wonder... It's a pain saver. Well, because investors love to talk about is it a paid killer or is it a vitamin? And I feel as though in a world of agentic AI, like, aren't they all kind of vitamins at this point? Seems like it. Yeah. And can you die from too many vitamins? Yes, you can. You definitely, I've seen like the guy who took all the copper and he turned blue like a smurf. Yeah, yeah. Makes me think about that. You can die drinking too much water.

18:46Beck Bamberger: Founders who struggle to explain what they're offering, what they're selling, and why it's cool. Like, in your experience, is it the product that's the problem? Or is it the messenger who's kind of... It's the messenger, most likely. it is mind-boggling to me Walter how some founders will get millions of dollars and yet could not tell me within 17 minutes what they actually do it is mind-boggling but aha the magnetic force the VCs are looking and founder finds each other they go okay you know and somehow they figure that out or whatnot again though to the media side or to that customer you don't get it in seven seconds i'm gone so for us we define narrative capital it's measurable value of your company's story that share that shapes the shapes not shares shapes perception it scales markets this is on our website converts attention two three essential r's revenue reputation returns returns for your investors so it's kind of this rolling ball that you want to get kicking and going, such to the point where you're inevitable.

19:56You're the biggest thing that's in the space. So even if you're three guys in a garage, three gals in a garage, whatever, if your narrative capital is so substantial compared to your competitor set, it doesn't matter how big you are in terms of your people count or whatnot, because the perception is you're the market leader and you are the biggest. And that is, in my definition, much harder to get than venture capital itself. Okay.

20:22Beck Bamberger: It seems like part of that narrative capital you're going to earn by having a strong founder brand. Is that a fair thing to say? You can, you can, but more so narrative capital is in the customers, the media, the owned media that you can also have your long form content, your YouTube channel, your podcast outlets, being on podcasts like this, other people saying, Hey, this is really great. This solved my problem. Check out this product. So on and so forth and this could be down into the trenches of reddit as we know so so there's lots of different ways to have people talking about you and elevating your product that is all part of narrative capital it's basically you not necessarily saying it and touting it because then that's just you you know with your little megaphone out there which is still good but not as legitimizing as third parties so okay what's what's the biggest narrative mistake you see first timers making over and over again the one i see is usually they get so they get really wrapped up in the technology and not in like the value in the customer but like that's that's probably like what's what's another one they can't what we bottom line it bottom line you're at a media dinner like the ones we host and you cannot shut up walter i'm sure you've been to these you've been to some of our things where you're just like oh my gosh this this person doesn't even have the awareness to be able to put bottom line it.

21:46Beck Bamberger: Can I just jump in for a second? So I've got this podcast. I've done well over 110 episodes at this point. And the number of people, and I'm not trying to shame anyone, but the number of people I say, so tell me about your company. What does it do? And why is it cool? And like, they can't, they can't give me. 27 minutes later, Walter? Yeah. And I'm editing and I'm looking at this. It's like, this is two and a half minutes. And like, I feel terrible because I feel like there's something I should have done as the interviewer to kind of rescue them. But I don't know what to do when someone just, they don't think they're crushing it.

22:18Yes. Yes, I know. Well, that is a clear sign of not being media trained, Walter. So that's your Hallmark sign number one. This person has not been media trained before. Slash, and this is maybe audacious, but they haven't had some social conditioning, some social conditioning, meaning have you not been at a dinner table before with other professionals to realize, read the room and go, oh, I am speaking too much. I am speaking too much. Bottom line it, bottom line it. There's a missing skill sets sometimes. So yes, that's a hallmark of not being media trained and also, man, just missing some social chops.

22:54But to your question, you're saying like, what are some other hallmarks of it? It's just getting too in the weeds and geeking out too much on it such that you can't bottom line it and now you can't shut up. If you can't shut up, I've already lost you. as a customer, as an investor, although they'll still sign the checks though. As a journalist, you just can't. So if you, you know, it's weird, right? If you cannot shut up, that's a red flag to me of you don't have the clarity. You don't have this down. You don't know what you're doing. Not to be confused with enthusiasm. You could still have enthusiasm, but you can still have succinctness, bottom lining, pausing, and so forth say less say less say less i mean i i mean i think honestly so i i so i like the idea

23:48Beck Bamberger: of i having post-its for myself just like someplace where i'm working where i can see it just a message for me and so mine when i first launched the podcast was act as if act as if the podcast was already a smash a smash hit and that's just kind of that's been my my north star um but i would say if you are a first-time founder thinking about talking to people about your thing put it up there on the wall. Say less on the whiteboard because you can't go wrong by like, no one ever got in trouble by talking not too much. Yes, it's so true. It's so true. I was going to look up that quote that is a Mark Twain quote.

24:24What is it here? I didn't have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead. That's good.

24:32Beck Bamberger: That's good. I like, yes. Quintessential comms 101. One of my favorite startup metaphors is if you're a startup founder, you're basically in a rowboat looking at an island and you're asking people to get off the island and get in your rowboat and just row away with you. And you don't actually know where you're going or when you're going to get there and neither do they. But you've got to talk to them to get into the rowboat with you so you can actually go on this journey. And so my whole take is… My first thought on that, by the way, was like, man, the Polynesians and the Vikings were like the most audacious startup people ever in the world.

25:05In the back, they just rowing in a boat.

25:07Beck Bamberger: They had conviction. They had conviction. Conviction. Yes. They knew what they were getting into. They knew the value that they could uncover at the end of the journey. And so, okay. So here's my top five list of people who you have to get to believe you. Early employees, obviously. Investors. A design partner. And or a customer. And then finally, a journalist who can, once you've actually got a repeatable story that works, you can actually use a journalist. But what's your top five? Yeah. So you said, ooh, employees. Hmm, that's kind of changed because the flex used to be only five years ago, Walter.

25:38Oh, how many? Oh, I have 200 employees. Oh, versus you have 300 employees. Like it was about, oh, how many employees do you have? Now the flex is how many employees do you not have? Can you run a billion dollar company with five people, 50 people? This is the new flex. How few people do you actually need to run a company? So I wouldn't say it's necessarily employees. However, the partnership of co-founders or a founding team is important. you don't see as often single founders as much people want to see especially investors you got you got another person to bounce around this idea and this is co-founder so co-founders and multi you know two three even four of them and more um become increasingly important as like the founding team so i'd say it's founding team okay then it's customers then yes vcs and eventually down there on the path somewhere is the person who's least enthused of all, which is a journalist.

26:33I was like, I don't know.

26:34Beck Bamberger: Yeah. There's 200 of you otherwise bugging me, and it's only been one hour since I was looking at my email. Definitely the last list. The hardest of all. Well, I would say we are a tough room. It's true. I would say, I mean, but I would say like, even though like you're not trying to, I mean, you're not trying to hire 50 employees at once, but even getting someone good to quit their job at stripe and work at your no-name startup that's yeah that's an ask that is and that's what but that goes to me the founding team so there are two or three of you that are so compelling that you can you can have that happen or just as i've listened to so many you know founding stories in general like can you can you find can you find that person you're married to because it is a bit of a marriage maybe for 10 years maybe for 20 years hopefully not two years and you implode that is going to go on that boat ride with you into the abyss and there's two of you in a boat at least or three of you right what makes journalists like give you a second look or take you seriously or whatever it might be but like let's let's just start with you've got a company and you've got some you've got some traction but that's that's a lot of startups and so that's not a reason for journalists to write about you here's my favorite oh we have 119 customers so far i'm like it's just your cohort from y combinator let's be frank right yes yeah or your or your or your vc network or you know and and and it's it's you know and so you know Getting, I mean, it's, I like this too.

27:54People who don't know paying you money. How about that? That's what I want to hear.

27:56Beck Bamberger: A musician once told me a story about how he was mowing his front lawn one day and some kid drove past playing his song on the radio. And that's when he knew he was going someplace. That's right. Because you don't know that kid. Right. So what kind of belief can you actually get from a journalist when you don't have the other things? Yes. The other things. Great question. A journalist has a job. they are employed or making money somehow by writing about highlighting showcasing the news whatever that news be maybe they're a writer adventure be talking on the ai stuff maybe they're a writer at cnn or a producer who has to fill five hours of live content every day i used to be a news walter and it was like good god okay you got four hours four hours of new you You got to fill those slots as much as you can.

28:50So I do have a need, as let's say a journalist, I have a need. I have to pump out a certain amount of content, stories, booking time, airspace, a week, a month, whatever. That's my job. That's what I'm getting paid for. So there's that. Now, the best thing for a founder to look at or consider, and we talk about this at our dinners and for other things, is how may I be of service if I can help you find your sources better, provide you data that no one else has seen the light of day of, connect you with people that you don't have that ability to pick up a call with and quickly dial to get a scoop or something of that source, then we're talking because it's no one's interest as a journalist to highlight and showcase a startup just because, oh, they're so great.

29:33It's not their interest, but it is my interest to get great content that gets viewed, that gets looked at, and gets talked about further so that I can keep my job and I can keep doing good work as a journalist if you can solve that by providing help contacts resources data and so forth that will go a long way so often what we talk about at our dinners when we have the founders meeting and sitting with a bunch of journalists it's it's never hey you want to write about my story write about me write about me no it's never that it's hey journalists thank you so much for being here what is helpful for you here's three things that I think could be helpful I have this data report that no one else has sits on this data this is exclusive this is proprietary I could show you this hey we have these people that are on our board who are very fancy people who you don't know you're not gonna cold outreach on LinkedIn for to get access to and thirdly oh we have these three customers that never speak to anybody but you know we're really close to them and they could talk to you okay now we're talking now the journals like oh you are helpful to me.

30:36That might go somewhere. That might go somewhere. So biggest thing for founders, how can you be of service? How can you help that journalist do their job? And if you can help them do their job in getting good, great stories out there from a data perspective, from access and so forth, that will go a long way. And down the road, perhaps they might then be covering your news.

31:00Beck Bamberger: That is Beck Bamberger. What's one thing every founder could improve this week that will increase their credibility? Understanding and articulating in two sentences or less why now your startup matters. Okay. What's something founders spend too much time chasing?

31:26I'm giving a pause to this because I must be careful in thinking about this.

31:34Beck Bamberger: There's no time limit at all. No. I want to say competitor BS. What button did the competitor update? Did they send a blog post that looked like ours? They just did a post that looks exactly like mine on LinkedIn and stuff. It's like, who cares? Are you building something better? Then get to work on that. Because there's always going to be ankle biters and people trying to copy all the things that you're doing, even in another country or whatever. It doesn't matter. So I would not get consumed by that. But there are a lot of founders who get in the swirl and you hear this, right? Well, that competitor always does this.

32:10It's like, how about you focus on you? Outrun that.

32:15Beck Bamberger: Excellent advice. If you met a founder six months before raising a seed round, where would you tell them to invest their energy? Building something people want, who people actually pay for. That's the biggest thing. Not just what they want by theory or, oh, my cousin told me they would help me buy it. No, no, no, no. Did they actually pay you for it? Did they? Did you get the government contract? Did you get the 300 consumer users, et cetera? Are people using it and ultimately paying for it? And my last question for you. Yes. What is the one signal that instantly makes you think this team gets it?

32:57Bottom line, bottom lining, bottom lining, Walter, when we can get on a call and in less than a minute, we understand what the company is doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it.

33:11Beck Bamberger: My last question for real. Yeah. So what percentage of your clients arrive in that first meeting with a bottom line statement? Very few. Okay. But did they just raise$27 million? Yes, they did. God bless them. So lack of clarity, it's not necessarily the blocker I thought it was. But I also think it's like if you have previous experience, if you've got some connections, you can cover for a lot as well, possibly. It's connections. It's cred. Have you already done it before? Did you come from an institution that supports this? and also considering the format. In a media interview, let's say, I maybe have 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or if I'm on a news clip on TV, my sound bites are 30 seconds, 60 seconds, maybe tight.

34:00In a VC meeting, I could be in there for an hour. In a way, I have all the time in the world to let's look at this slide, let's look at that chart, and let's look at this thing, and da, da, da, da. It's a different messaging arena, which is why it sometimes works, and you'll see people go, oh my god you you got millions of dollars how how you can't even shut up in three minutes but that's because i'm in a room and i have an hour i have an hour to tell you about all the things that i could do walter with the team and the technical detail and so forth and also that audience is into it they want to be there they're like yes yes i tell me more let's learn it out more so never judge your VC audience to your customer audience or your media audience.

34:45Those are totally different parties with very different incentives.

34:49Beck Bamberger: Bec, thanks so much for the great time. I appreciate it. This has been fantastic. Thank you for the perspective. Always enjoy, Walter. Thank you. The fun build scale theme was written by Michael Tritter and performed by Michael and Carlos Chárez. Michael also composed Ocean, the track he heard at the top. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and leave a rating. It helps more people find the show. You can get the Fund Build Scale newsletter on Beehive, follow along on Instagram, and if you have a guest suggestion or a question, reach me at fundbuildscale at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.

35:24Beck Bamberger: Fund Build Scale is a production of Truth and Soul Media, LLC.