YouTube Deep Summary

[Music] Dude, I have no idea how it got so messy in here, bro. Yeah, but pretty crazy. We're actually going to be starting to fund raise actually. And the goal is to raise a million and that will allow us to get a couple key hires in and different things like that. But if you watch the last video, you know that our startup Clova recently went viral on Twitter. So it got about like 700,000 views on there. It got 200k on threads and it got like 100k on Instagram. So basically now I think we have found something that we know that we can build out that people will actually like. And now I definitely need to move fast because the space is getting competitive really quickly already. need more engineers, need more people to just really get this going and obviously also riding the momentum right of the viral post. But you know what's really crazy, Ryan, is just that if you told me two weeks ago, remember two weeks ago, we still weren't even sure what we're building. Yeah, we have like a builder check from Fink and we were like, "Okay, this is pretty cool. We're going to start keep building with this and off side projects and two weeks later now we're going to be fundraising." I try to be as authentic as possible and try to share as much as possible, not just a good and a bad. So, I'll take you guys with me on this fundraising journey. Even if it doesn't go well, I'll still share the stuff of why it's not going well. But we'll see, man. We'll see how the fundraising process goes. Just got to lock in now since there's so much stuff going on. And Ryan's going to be focused on coding while I'm focused on fundraising. And hopefully we can get to the next level soon. [Music] been fundraising this week and just been pitching, man. Like a lot of pitches lined up every day. Just calls after calls after calls and I I mean, this is my first time fundraising and I'm I'm really seeing why people say fundraising is a full-time job and really trying to get this round closed soon because it is a massive distraction. like I want to work on YouTube to do, you know, to to make more content. I want to do more growth. I want to be coding, but this fundraising just takes up so much of your time, but also at the same time is something that needs to be done, right? Because we need more hands, man. Like Ryan and I were working all day 24/7, but there's only so much output we can produce. Just having a couple extra team members would just be extremely helpful for us to just move things faster and scale things up, right? But what is really interesting about fundraising, I've been talking to a lot of founders here and myself and be like experiencing about this is to manage your emotions. It's a very very challenging thing because when you're pitching you go up and down a lot, your emotions and I think that is how people get crushed when they fundra because you don't know what's going on. Next thing you know, a deal can fall through. Maybe you thought you had a good conversation but maybe they actually weren't interested at all because in a VC's perspective in their in their eyes, why would they ever be mean to you, right? Why would they ever disagree to you? disagree with you. There's no interest for them on that part. So, as I talk to more founders too, what I realize that is your emotions will always go up and down. That's just how it is. And the key thing I think a lot of times we think about is like, okay, well, just don't go up and down. But instead of think about as in like not going up and down, it's about how to minimize it. So, just lining up these calls and keep going with this. Just trying to get this done as quickly as possible to get back to building product. Go ahead. Sure. Uh, I'm Davis. The Greg event, Greg Iceber event just happened. Unfortunately, I missed most of it just because so slam with fundraising, everything going on. And honestly, I haven't been recording much either. Just been super super busy trying to get this round closed. But basically, uh, it was a good event, man, for Con and him talk a lot about content, the classic stuff, and a lot of big show out. It's pretty crazy, too. Like, Greg had like a whole camera crew with him and basically recording everything. I think they're making a little documentary. So, really cool stuff. On the side note, if you want to work with a cool videographer, I'll be a filmmaker. I hardcore need a new phone, bro. You're hiring. Oh [ __ ] Yo, bro. 100 to $150,000. 5 to 1.5% equity in a VC fund. I don't give a [ __ ] if it's a documentary. If you tell stories, I want to hear them. You understand me? I'm hiring people. I I need another person. It'll be between It'll be between a hundred and $150,000 a year. But that's not why you do this. You do this to tell stories. The best the best photographer in SF, bro. Don't call me dude. Stop saying that. Best film. Thank you. So, we just closed 100K today, right? Hell yeah. Crazy, man. Today was definitely a good day. I think the whole theme about this vlog about fundraising is that emotion just going up and down a lot, right? So today's definitely an update though. So trying to not get too excited too as well since obviously job is far from done and the angel is actually someone who's uh pretty uh pretty badass person, you know. Got 100K in now. So finally got uh the first two main checks. Now hopefully momentum just keeps on rolling because I think a lot of times like people say with fundraising the first check is always the hardest since most of the time all the VCs are kind of just like like that. Yeah. You ever see that Spider-Man meme, Ryan? You know when they go? Yeah. Were they pointing each other? Like, who's going to go first? So, we don't have like a lead investor yet, but at least we have a couple of these checks coming in. So, got to keep it pushing. Keep doing meetings. And dude, I don't think I ever gotten this many calls in a week before. Yo, that's defin tough, man. They're they're not easy calls either. You got to be locked in talking about it. They they take a lot of energy. But I talked to Ryan about this, too, for a couple days. Not going to lie, I was kind of complaining about fundraising just cuz I want to work on products so much that I am done complaining about this now. So, the new me, I'm gifying the game, trying to get as meeting as many meetings as possible and hopefully we have a big fund coming soon. Pre-in right now, Ryan. Yep. Yeah. So, basically, right now, we are at uh the A16Z office outside of it. We're actually going to be pitching to one of the GPS about speedrun today. So that's like the accelerated program they have. Uh basically what happened was our post went viral, right? And we have a lot of inbound and stuff and obviously founders in help us reach out to a couple people and they saw the post. So they were interested actually invited us to go pitch in person with them right now. Been preparing for this a little bit. But also like to be frankly I'm just so focused on like customers right now. Really want to get this done and it is pretty interesting cuz fundraising is a uh something I haven't really done before. I just kind of want to as an entrepreneur really want to just focus on the product and work on it. But this is also something that's needed, right? If I have more cash and we get more people, more things going. So kind of going through this loop right now. So about to go pitch for them right now. Do I feel nervous? I guess that's probably what people are wondering. Yeah, I think you used to be nervous because we didn't have a lot of traction, you know, but now I got to realize that like I actually have traction. We have a post that got 700k views and we have users and we have people uploading videos and people trying out the product. Also, I'm not nervous because you can't have scarcity mindset. And the truth is that there are more VCs out there. There are more money out there in tech. And thinking that way, having scarcity mindset is never the right way to do it. Just got to go in and just have a nice conversation and we'll see what happens. All of a sudden, you're back. Yo, how you been, bro? Been good, man. [Laughter] How many How many months were you gone for? Uh about 5 months. You just flew to Mexico? Yeah. Was in Mexico City for the whole time. Me and this guy, we were literally here all day for the whole month of December or what? All day, every day, holidays, seven days a week and then he just disappeared one day. He was like, I'm going to Mexico. And he just went for 5 months and did nomad there to build a startup and just left me and Ryan at dust, man. No, I wouldn't say that. Clover to the moon. meta engineer, quit his job, went full-time building a startup. What are you working on now, bro? Right now, I'm working on a Head Hunter agent. Uh, we just launched like a prototype on Saturday. So, I'm getting feedback from a handful of recruiters, and they could use it to get better at their job. And founders can also use it to do their own kind of outbound sourcing. When you when you leaving again, dude, you can't you can't leave this time. You're stuck with me now, bro. I'll be I'll be in the Bay for like two weeks and then what? Going back to uh Mexico after uh see some fam, then back to Mexico. Bro, we in love with that place now, bro. This is that indie life right there, bro. empty hacker like you got all that freedom, bro. I'm jealous. What are you working on? Not fundraising. No, I'm actually uh working on making a new website right now. I'm actually not coding up this time just because I realized that my design skills are honestly so garbage, right? And that's something I do want to get better at. So, I'm actually using uh Framer to make this website because a lot of founders here also use Framer and I really like some of the templates and a couple of the founders just gave me a crash course and I just been messing around with it. It looks pretty sick. If you see right now, like right now, not going to lie to you, Ryan, our landing page is trash. Yeah. And I think it's just because of my poor design skills. So, I'm going to remake that right now because I think that's really, really important. Plus, we're actually not going to be really focusing on a desktop anymore. We're going to be focused on making a mobile app for this idea. That's part of a good thing I think of launching without a weight list. We're able to get a lot of data, right, that we have talked about. I also like to kind of get some like website ideas, I guess, or like um advice of what you guys can think be better. So, I'll probably also like record a quick little screen recording. This is kind of the site I have. I basically just took this template and the idea, you know, with our idea. Now, we're kind of be going to be focused on like being like the best vibe editor on your phone. What I do like a lot about Framer is that there's a lot of these like pre-made sections already and a lot of these icons are very like creative. I do already like this minimalistic look. But if you guys have any suggestions, just like let me know too because try to launch this like as soon as possible. But also, Framer is actually also the sponsor for this video. But like always, I would never take a sponsor if it's not a brand that I would use myself, right? And please, please give me some critique on my website so I can make it better. Thanks, guys. How's the code coming, man? Good. It's moving. Trying to get the rough cuts to uh work properly. It's not as good as you expected, you see? for this one. Yeah. But it's fixable. When it comes out and it's not what you expected, it's not a good feeling. I didn't expect it to work to be honest with you. Yeah. So, I just been holding this down, man. It's uh it's pretty tough, man. You've been so busy with the the fundraising talks and everything, but uh we have so many users trying to use the product and we got to push updates for it. But I feel I feel bad, man. You just been in here like 12 hours a day in this room. I mean, we go to FA, actually. Maybe when I think sometimes, but sometimes it's science just to work from home. Kind of peace and quiet, hacking away at it, dude. So, you're working on making the rough cuts better right now cuz it's a little bit off or what? Yeah, it's a little bit off, but no, I I think it's something we can't fix, dude. This is why I like don't like fundraising cuz like I just feel you just been in here like going at it. I want to be there with you, man. I want I want to be there coding with you, dude. Can't happen. That's right. Don't worry about me, man. I'm holding it down. Wait, no. No EMV keys, right? There's nothing. Oh, yeah. There's only logs right there. So, logs coding just takes time, man. But this time we're really trying to do it right because last time we paid the price. We did a lot of like hacky things that didn't really turn out too well. So I'm really trying to make sure we do it right this time because luckily we have some traction on this and hopefully we can stick with this product for a long time. So if we're going to be using this codebase for a while, we want to make sure it's done right. It's funny, huh? This is the first time we finally dealt with this problem. But good problems honestly. We finally at least we're at this spot right now. Good problems to have. Try to actually write it clean. Write it properly so that we don't get you know uh screwed later. [Music] Yeah. So, Ryan and I actually drove back to Southern California yesterday for Mother's Day. It's funny because, you know, this whole week we're fundraising, right? So, we've been like the busiest we ever been. And we actually originally were just going to like burn the ticket and not come back. But on Sunday morning, we had a little bit of time. And so, we just decided to actually just say, you know what? [ __ ] it. Let's actually come down. We drove down just for a quick dinner and today morning about like 8:00 right now we're going to fly back to S7 obviously keep fundraising going and Randy need to get a lot of the code stuff done just to keep the product going as well. But that's the main reason that we came back too because I don't really want to regret like missing Mother's Day and like important moments of hanging out with my family. Like it's been already 5 months since I have been home. My mom visited me once and I just really want to be home for the weekend. But also it really helps with the work side too. A lot of times when me and him, Ryan were working a lot, what ends up happening is that we start turning like delusional because you're just looking at the problem so deeply, right? And you don't get new perspective. So we also thought on the drive back, ironically, Ryan and I both really enjoyed it even though it was 6 hours because we were finally able to do something different and just clear the mind. I really miss my mom and my sister and it was just so good seeing them. So feel really recharged and seeing my mom happy seeing me just really made my day. So it's nice to just get out of the bubble because it reminds you that at the end of the day it is just work and there are like more important things in life than just working all the time. You know hanging out with family, having a good time, enjoying a good meal. Those are my opinion at the end of the day like something to cherish more than just grinding 24/7. Is this only one? This one? What are you doing? He has the wrong control. Oh man. Oh, there we go. Shoot. [ __ ] with this one. Also the viewers the screen. Can you add some like aliens and [ __ ] I can add aliens and [ __ ] bro. I can't even make multiplayer. Oh, can we can we can we get like double like this? Like so I can go like this. I can be like this. I can be like cursor prompt away. You got You got to do the dual wheel, bro. Yeah, I'll let that one prompt the dual wheel right now. One prompt away to be able to use two guns. Everyone just vibe coding right now. What language are you? Beats me the do wheel now. Let's see. Nah, I didn't one shot a voice. Ah, it was it was a worthy try, bro. Just ask some comments. Good run. You're telling me I got to use my brain to actually program now. Honestly, a little embarrassing. No, cursor should be embarrassed right now. Bro, use old tree. That should Someone get the cursor founders here. So, I'm actually editing this video right now and we got Ryan there just locked in coding. Want to say hi, Ryan? What up, guys? And we actually also have a seat open over here. So, we're actually looking to hire an intern for the summer. So, if you want to be in San Francisco and you'll crack that A IML, uh definitely apply in the link in description. But also, if you're remote, we're also looking at that as well. So, feel free to apply as well. But anyway, sorry for disrupting your regular vlog schedule. I'll let you guys get back to it. I don't know. I just want to do I don't do on camera unless like I calls calls calls, man. Just getting on a lot of calls, Ryan. Right. Yeah. I thought we're not even co-founders at this point, you're just working on product all day and I'm just getting on a bazillion calls. But that's a good good thing though. I think when you fund raise, how we think about it, at least from our side, is to try to get it done like two to three weeks because every time you're fundraising, you're not actually really working on the product. Obviously, fundraising is important too, so you can get the resources right. But I figure a lot of you guys are probably asking, I can already see in the Discord when I'm talking to you guys in the community channel is that how do you get on calls and how we've been approaching fundraising and talking to VCs is kind of like sales. It's that we try to um first obviously warm intro is the best part. So I have a lot of good founders friends I met already obvious from Founders Inc. from the whole time being at SF. So I'm just talking asking a lot of these different people to open up like warm intro and I think that's why it's also important to to just have good relationships with people right and I'm very thankful for a lot of my friends like Savannah all these other people right like right there Savannah did somebody say my name for for giving me like a tons of intros so warm is always better than cold and obviously the second method at the top of the funnel will be cold outreach but I would say don't just like spray and pray actually look to see like if the fund is funding like the stage you're in for example we're raising a preced/ seed. It wouldn't make any sense for me to be reaching out to series A firms, right? Or series B firms because they they they they simply can't fund us because that is not in their fund thesis. And obviously write custom emails for each of them and actually make it interesting and keep everything concise. But to also go into a little bit more about the warm intro, what we're doing is that when I message my friends, if they are willing to intro me, then what I'll do, I'll ask them to send me a couple a list of VCs that they think it can be good fit, right? So when they send me the list, I write up a custom email for each one of them and then they forward it to that VC. You want to lower the friction as make it as easy as possible for people to you know do these warm intros for you. And this method I haven't done is I have heard a couple people they will go to like different uh pitching competition type of thing where a lot of VCs do go. So they will go pitch at those things and then after that a lot of times VCs will reach out if they do like your pitch and stuff. So the key thing is just to try to get as much top of funnel as possible. It's already been about a week and a half since we've been fundraising. Every day I'm just getting on calls. For example, tomorrow I'm getting on like about six calls, six to seven calls, just back to back to back to back. Really trying to knock it out because at the end of the day, you really just need one VC to say yes. And if someone leads you around, the rest usually comes a lot easier. Oh, what? No. What? Wait, what? That was a joke. That was a joke. Wait, what? What happened? It was a Yo, that was It was a two. It was a two. I know it was a two, bro. It was a two. It was a two, dude. The New York Knicks are Bro, what was that? And don't forget the game where Reggie Miller did this, the Pacers lost. He did the about to actually head to bed soon. Just wrapping up some work, lining up the meetings and, you know, finishing up some things up, sending out some more emails. But yeah, been about two weeks since we've been fundraising and have obviously, you know, some second and third meetings rolling in and stuff. I just been talking to people, right? And at the end of days, a lot of like people connection stuff, but I'm just exhausted, you know, from my social battery. And it's interesting, too, because I'm not exhausted when I talk to customers, but for some reasons, when I talk to VCs, uh, I I do get really tired. And it's not like because they're bad people or anything like that, but what I what I realized is that as an entrepreneur, you always want to be doing the work that will move the needle forward. And yes, raising funds do move the needle forward. But what I want to do is the game of growing the company. And the other type of work, but a lot of times it's really important to to do what you don't want to do because it is necessary to fund raise, to do these things because having more capital does help the, you know, everything move faster and such. But I'm definitely going to break these vlogs up to two different series just because I already have so much footage from these past two weeks. So after this, back to work. Going to get a good night rest and I'll keep you guys updated on the next video. Peace.