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title: Startup World Cup - Mentorship with Bill

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# Startup World Cup - Mentorship with Bill

## Top mistake:
1. Don’t focus on product, focus on customers. Customers don’t buy product, they buy benefits.
    - iterate with customers -> know your customers very well.
    - do you have compelling value proposition to your customers

2. Delusional (妄想的) numbers
    - Market size - VCs are secretly laughing at your delusional TAM. 
    - Revenue forecast - benchmark with your competitors to have a realistic forecast.
    - Capital requirement - Be realistic
    - Sales cycle - most of entrepreneurs underestimate your sales cycle (maybe more to B2B companies, for b2c maybe take a look at conversion rate) - what's your math for your sales cycle?
    - Valuation expectations - average valuations is much lower than headlines numbers.
        - hear from investors number first then negotiate. (I'd love to hear your number first then reveal our model)
    - **Be realistic, benchmark with *comparable* companies**

3. Messed up critical fundamentals
    - Founders stock allocations and restrictions (by leaving company...etc situation.)
    - Investors will evaluate the value between co-founders. Make it reasonable.
    - IP protections (employees restrictions...etc)
    - Incorporation and legal compliance (tax, laobr, information security...etc.)
    - Contractors and advisors
    - **Make sure you have a good venture lawyer and experienced advisors**

4. Bad hiring practices
    - Hiring your buddies
    - Hiring based on resume
    - Hiring based on skills
    - Hiring based on desperation -> most common and fatal
    - Hiring "followers"
    - VCs are escaping away from control freaks (but Elon?)
    - **Hire leaders, not followers; recruit for talent, character, and fit; cultivate diverse thinking.**

5. Talking about Company Culture
    - You should **Activate your Company Culture** -> quite hard, should keep doing this by real movement every day.
    - Ask your team members "whats your company culture" and see what they answer immediately?
    - do the culture actively and make it as a model - tight to company value

6. Perfecting your product
    - Ship, then test
    - **If you are not embrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.**
    - **Don't worry, Be crappy**

7. Lack of operational discipline
    - **Intrument your business, monitor key metrics**
    - Develop KPIs for every key activity of your company (don't be control freak/micro management)
        - Cash
        - Customers
        - Team -> hiring/leaving/incentivsing?
        - Product
        - Marketing
        - Sales
        - Support

8. Lack of financial discipline
    - **Know your economics**
    - CAC
    - LTV
    - Sales Efficiency
    - Capital Efficiency
    - Contribution Margin
    - ...(find benchmarks)

9. Failure to WOW
    - Be clear, credible
    - Investors don't invest using their brain, they invest with heart.


10. Running out of money
    - Learn to love ramen noodles (?)


Notes:
- Continously projecting WOW


# Getting to WOW
1. What is your pitch? -> Your pitch is the impression you create and leave behind.
2. 20 sec to be compelling
3. should let VCs fall in love with you
4. WOW is not an intellectual response , it's an emotional response.
5. Head/Heart/Gut
6. Ignore the pitch coach wisdom
    - "Start from the problems"
        - Investors have already heard many times the same problems from different companies. 
        - tell brilliant solutions & benefit first then investors know the problems naturally.
    - "Tell a story"
        - we can remember stories better than random facts - that's true
        - **Pitches are not presentations**
        - if VCs don't understand, they gonna interupt you, not just listening for 15 mins
        - VCs are happy to hear the story afterward - maybe during the beer
    - "Show a big market"
        - VCs are more interested in bottom-up estimation
    - "Here is the perfect template"
        - each companies have each unique milestones, challenges, timing. different order
7. How to get to WOW
    - [Head] Be Clear - What do you do?
    - [Heart beating] Be compelling - How much better are you? How are you unique.
    - [Guts] Be Credible - Can I believe you?
8. When do you need to WOW? -> All the time!
9. Model for crafting your WOW
    - Description
        - Description
            - An anonymous social platform to help GenZ build intimate relationships.
            - We help 1.2M GenZ build 400K+ intimate conversations every month, growing 10% MoM
        - What do you do better than anyone else?
            - Anonymous / Blockchain to make it safe / Community-based feature
        - Simple Techcrunch language
    - Benefit
        - What compelling benefit do you offer to whom?
            - 79% Of GenZ Are Reported Feeling Lonely but can’t find any intimate relationships (like confessions, social awkward even sexting) using current dating apps
        - "The big idea behind..."
    - Validation
        - How are you different and what is your proof?
            - We have almost 2X ARPPU than listing dating company Bumble, 6X than our competitor.
        - "Unlike other companies..."
    - Tell a STORY Paint a PICTURE
        - "Imagine if..."
    - Drop a really big name
        - "One of our founders is a Nobel Prize winner..."
    - TIps:
        - Keep it simple
            - Keep the simple, nature & verbal words, not in written
        - Be customer focused
        - Use one or two numbers
        - Don't lie
10. different pitches
    - handshake pitch (1 sentence)
    - wow pitch (20 sec)
    - elevator pitch (30 sec)
    - competition pitch
    - demo pitch
    - partner pitch (20mins)
    - pitch deck pitch
    - pitch deck before/after meeting
    - 
