CEO Advice Proactive Strategies for Investors & Board

What this video covers

This video features a career entrepreneur discussing his journey from trivia apps to gift card empires, touching on his experiences as a Wall Street trader and how competitive spirit fuels success. The conversation delves into his entrepreneurial path and lessons learned, including those from doing business with family.

Transcript

I always say it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Right? And you may think everyone when they ask me about how much money should I raise, I said I don't know what you're raising, but double it. Right? It's better to have it in the bank and not need it than put yourself in a situation where you need it. Then you're going to unfortunately um lose leverage and then that's going to be reflected in the terms and everything else and you're going to be at a huge disadvantage, right? So raise as much money as you can, but the only true way to kind of um never put yourself in that situation is just to get profitable as quickly as possible. >> And then when it comes to, for example, investors, I mean, you were talking about the fact that you like to raise from from people that have been there before behind the trenches that really understand perhaps the

journey that you're going through. When we're thinking about value, what what does value look like when you're extracting that from investors? >> Two things. One is intros, right? Um once somebody writes a check, they now have an inherent motivation to help, right? Um and usually if someone's writing big checks, they have a significant network, right? So leveraging that network, you have to be proactive on it. Nobody knows what problems you have or you know, it's so funny a lot of times when I talk to them, you just have a conversation like, "Oh, I know the CEO CEO there. I'll make an intro." Right? But you have to be proactive. And the other is advice, right? Because as a CEO, I really have two jobs. One is internally with employees, but one is externally with the board and investors and all of that, right? That's a sometimes you feel like an on an island but when you sit down if

your investors are also fellow entrepreneurs they can tell you stories

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