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KP Unpacked
Join serial entrepreneur KP Reddy for conversations and discussions around innovation, technology trends, and AI for startup founders, innovation catalysts & investors focused on the built environment (and beyond!)
KP Unpacked
Pitch Like a Revolutionary
KP shares his wisdom on the importance of building a strong network of believers who align with your mission, offering a fresh perspective on securing investments and collaborations that resonate with your vision.
Discover the vital role of conviction in a founder’s journey, and understand why it’s imperative to focus on finding believers over skeptics, as KP illuminates the path to lasting success in the startup world.
To read the original post on LinkedIn and connect with KP, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kpreddy_founders-try-this-when-pitching-an-investor-activity-7265211833806897152-n93n/
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Speaker 2:All right, welcome back to KP Ready Unpacked. This is my opportunity to ask KP Ready, the CEO and founder of not only Shadow Ventures, but KP Ready Company, kp. What were you thinking when you posted that on LinkedIn? My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor and also the head of our mastermind and incubator programs here at KP Ready Company and, as always, I am joined by our CEO and founder, kp Ready. Kp. Welcome, glad you're here this morning.
Speaker 3:Hey, jeff, how's it going?
Speaker 2:It's going well. I'm looking through the window in the background. You're in Atlanta. I'm in Indianapolis today and for the first time in about 10 or 12 years, I think, we're actually having winter in Indianapolis right now. I think we're actually having winter in Indianapolis right now 15 degrees snow and ice. But I'm looking through the window behind you and it looks pretty nice there in Atlanta today.
Speaker 3:It's a balmy 32. Perfect which for the locals here, so to speak, it might as well be minus 10.
Speaker 2:It may as well be. It may as well be. Well, good thing we're inside as we record this. But I was scrolling through your LinkedIn and, as always, and for those of you that have never listened to one of these episodes before, as I said earlier, this is my opportunity to ask KP you know what went into, what inspired that post? Because if you're not following KP on LinkedIn, you should be. Just go to KP.
Speaker 2:The two letters ready R-E-D-D-Y, follow him on LinkedIn and and he posts usually a couple of times a day at least, and all of his posts are reflective. They're all about conversations that he's had as he's talked to founders. Some of them stir the pot, but they're all looking at what's going on and what the future is for the AEC world, for the built environment, innovation in the built environment. And so, kp, as I was scrolling through, I found this post and I'm just going to read it to you. You know what it says, but our listeners don't. I'm going to read it really quickly and then we can start to unpack it. So it says founders, try this when pitching an investor start with your problem that you're solving. Then pause and ask are you interested in solving this problem? This will likely tell you whether you need to keep going or not.
Speaker 2:As a founder, you are a rebellion leader. You don't have time to convince people of your mission. You need to use that time to find the believers. I love that. I love that last part of that because I think that's 100% true. The first part of that that obviously is right on. I mean, that's exactly when we think about startups, when we think about business models, et cetera. This is where the focus has to start. But why did this come to mind? Why this now, as you're posting that on LinkedIn?
Speaker 3:So I think there's a few things.
Speaker 3:One, you start getting towards the end of the year, you start to be a little bit more reflective and if you're not, you should be, by the way, but you generally get a little bit more reflective and one of the things with founders is they do this thing where someone says they're, they go pitch a VC or an angel investor, whoever strategic investor, and they get so enamored with their own technology they focus on all the things that they're coached to do. What's your TAM? What's your this? What problem are you solving? Here's your elegance, here's the team.
Speaker 3:But it's a total waste of time. Just because a VC gives you an hour does not mean you should use the hour. You're there to pre-qualify and the idea that you are going to convince someone who has lots of options, I mean, I see you know 10, 15 pitches a week, you know, and I'm rank, stacking the opportunities right, and so when you're pitching me, I already have a list of 50 that I'm working through. So I'm either going to insert you at the top of the pile or at the bottom of the pile. Now, if you think about it, it's a people game, right? So if someone is not interested in your mission and there is not mission alignment, there are not enough words that will get them excited. In fact, a lot of founders think like, oh, because I have early traction. That you know. Early traction does not mean anything to an investor. What it means is you've built early rebellion, rebel forces that have aligned with you because they're you know, oh, yeah, we have 20 000 a month in revenue. It's like who cares? That was my credit card bill last month, like that. It doesn't mean anything. Right, it means nothing. But what traction tells you is you know, if you think about, uh, you know if you're a star, whatever, if you think about the rebellion, right, there wasn't a lot of convincing, it was just like this absolute and blind faith in, yes, this needs to happen.
Speaker 3:And so I think, as a founder, if you focus on that mission alignment, VCs, customers, all the people you're trying to pitch, have lots and lots of latitude and judgment. It's not purely about the numbers. If a customer is super excited and aligned with your mission and they're like, oh, my God, that is such a huge problem, it keeps me up at night. They don't care about price, they don't care about where you are, they might tell you hey, I work for a $100 billion company. I can't work with a two-person startup. But I'll tell you what I want to spend time with you and help you not be a startup. And that's how people get engaged. They want to go on that journey with you. They want to go on that journey with you. They want to go on that mission with you. And too many founders deal with either trying to convince people that are not mission aligned, that don't believe already, or people that are kind of mediocre, like oh, sounds good, sounds good is not a positive indication, right, it's like no, no, no, let's go, let's go do this.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 3:Like let's go do this, like let's go do this, let's go take down the death star kind of thing. And um, founders waste so much time trying to convince and the reality is, if you're doing that, you probably have a problem. I mean, you've heard me give my talks right. I'm like hey, we're all part of the largest and most important industry in the world. What was it the last executive briefing? I said hey, you're part of the largest and most impactful industry in the world and we have to do things differently. Are you with me? And if you're not, there's the door. I was very clear Do not come back if you differently. Are you with me, and if you're not, there's the door. I was very clear Do not come back if you are not on mission with me.
Speaker 2:And I think founders have to have a little bit of that attitude, like I'm not going to come in to you, I don't have enough hours in a day to come in to you, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, as you say that, and so you're talking about hearing pitches. The other side of that coin is we? You know our incubator is is running. You know we've got startup founders in our incubator. Is we provide pitch training? Right, we'll have people that will work with them and, you know, help them work on their deck, help them work on the actual pitch itself, et cetera. I think one of the questions you know you brought it up right, you've got an hour blocked out with a VC. Should you actually spend that hour? Right? That's a really great question. Should it be an hour? Should be five?
Speaker 1:minutes.
Speaker 2:Right, if you ask that question and you don't have that alignment. But one of the things that came to mind as you were saying that was I don't know what he's doing these days I haven't heard from him lately and I'm sure he's doing something similar but Guy Kawasaki, it's that guy's that's been out there for decades now and I think the first time I ran across Guy Kawasaki, um, he called himself an evangelist for whoever it was that he was with at the time. It was Apple, or he's been with Canva. You know there's been a number of people I assume he's investing, but he's the evangelist, right. And so when you say that, how did it go? As a founder, you're a rebellion leader, you don't have time to convince people of your mission I think about Guy Kawasaki and even though he calls himself an event, an evangelist, he's out there and he's sort of a firebrand, right?
Speaker 2:Not not in the sort of negative sense that we think of politically maybe these days and things like that, but he's out there speaking using certain language. That's, that's extreme, it's exciting, it's, it's these types of things. But what he's doing is he's looking for the two people in the room that hear him say that and go yes, I'm with you, I believe in that. I believe in those same things. I want to come along with you, not the whole room, just those two people that say, yes, that's me right, that's the they're. You know the people that join the rebellion as you say, um, you know he's.
Speaker 3:I don't think guy kawasaki has ever been in a star wars episode, but, um, maybe he could be but you know that's the thing is like um, when you're focused and mission, you can't optimize for the masses.
Speaker 2:Right 100%.
Speaker 3:You have to optimize for the few and the worst thing. I mean, think about this as a founder, you're on a shot clock and so if you have a bunch of one-hour calls with VCs that were essentially a waste of time, they're not on mission, they don't get it. And, by the way, it's okay for them not to get it, like, oh, I didn't know that problem existed, but I want to learn. Okay, you got them right. That curiosity is a early indicator of okay, they might be on mission, right, they might be on mission with me. But if you cut down all those one-hour meetings and you have five a week to 15 minutes, you're getting a half a day back. Right, and as a founder, you need every moment of your day to be highly optimized. But what's interesting is, when it comes to customers and investors, founders do a very bad job optimizing their time. It's kind of like oh, the prospect talked to me, so now I'm going to spend an hour with them.
Speaker 3:I've been known. It's kind of funny. Sometimes it comes off as rude, but I'll be at a conference and somebody that I know is not mission aligned with me wants to talk to me and I'm like, hey, I gotta go, like I'll just interrupt them a few minutes in. I don't, I don't have the time. I'm at a conference. I need to optimize. If there there's 100 people there, I need to optimize to the 5 or 10 people that I don't have to explain any of it to. They already kind of get it right, and so I think founders just have to optimize better to that. And so I've never done it as a founder. Actually, that's not true. I just did it a couple weeks ago for a stealth company I'm starting, and I did talk to a larger investor and I'm like hey, this is what I care about. And they're like interesting, tell me more. And when I told them more, they're like yeah.
Speaker 3:I get it, let's go, let's go. I didn't have a pitch deck. I was in his living room just BS and drink a glass of wine. I'm like, hey, here's what I really want to do with my life, and I'm doing things that are pieces and parts of it. But if I had infinite money, here's what I would do.
Speaker 1:And he's like tell me more.
Speaker 3:And he's like yeah, let's go, let's do it Right. And so I think, in many ways, a lot of the industrialization of startups ie, here's what a pitch deck should look like, here's where you should go pitch, here's how long your pitch should be Right We've tried to industrialize something that is really more of a cottage industry. Yeah, you know. So I think it's super interesting and I really, as we, you know, coach the folks in our incubator. I want them to realize like, hey, there's different ways to approach this and there's different ways to stand out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and as you say that, I mean we're. I guess, as we're recording this, we're almost two weeks away. Next virtual demo day, which most most of the year, we present our virtual demo days on the final friday of every month, but because of the, the holidays, we're in december right now. So we've we've moved this month's virtual demo day to december 13th, and I do this with my students as well. Right, I can see this in the founder's eyes, or my students' eyes, if it's in that context, because I do, basically, a demo day for them. But when I tell them that they have five minutes to pitch and five minutes for Q&A, the looks on their faces, right, it's like what do you mean? I only have five minutes.
Speaker 2:I think this is a great example, right, the whole premise behind Demo Day would be to start a rebellion. Show up, you get five minutes to light a fire in. You know, I think last Demo Day we had about 80-some people registered in the audience. You have five minutes to light a fire and find the two or three or whatever people that are in the audience out of that 80 or so, whatever it is that are going to join your rebellion. That's what our virtual demo days are about. That's different than pitching a VC, certainly, but I think it's a good example.
Speaker 2:And then, when I'm advising professional services firms, one of the things I tell them is this is marketing, business development 101, basically, but you are not the right firm for every client and every client's not the right client for you, and that's okay. Right, and it's more than okay. That's good, right. We have to get to the, the few that we. We do have that mission alignment with that, that, um, that rebellious alignment with. I love the. I'm kind of stuck on the rebellion idea, but we can't be everything to everyone but that, but that's the whole thing.
Speaker 3:Right, we forget the startup narratives. Right, we talk about disruption. What is disruption? That is like rebel forces. Right, and I think there's a reason.
Speaker 3:I think when you look at some of the you know most successful entrepreneurs, like an elon musk, think what you think of them, right, but they're head deep into sci-fi. And if you look at, like most of the storylines around sci-fi, there there is always a Star Wars moment. There are a certain people, a certain species, whatever. There's always something like that. And, by the way, I think this concept applies not just to investors, but also customers and also your employees.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Especially in the early days, right, and so when you think about building a culture, it's really hard as a startup founder. What is it we're going to be? What is it we're going to be? Right? And I think you and all the other folks on my team know my culture. It's like fuck off culture. Like, oh, you don't like that. Fuck off. Like you know, I don't have time for it, right? Partly I'm ADHD, partly I'm getting old and grumpy and partly I might be on spectrum TBD. You know, but I just I have zero patience for much of anything and I think you guys figured that out pretty quickly. Our former employees and former colleagues figured it out and they're no longer here, right, right. And if you look at my LPs and my investors, they know they have there's a certain amount of KP that they have to like deal with, but they're in, they're in. You know my delivery may be difficult sometimes, but they get it, they're in on the mission very um, um, very functional sort of conversation.
Speaker 2:You know you look at your salespeople, right, and we know salespeople that are that just thrive on dialing for dollars, right, they're trying to get to the next, the next, no, the next, no, because that's the fastest way to the next.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you know you were talking about optimizing your time right. If and there's, there's someone that I know that's a VP of sales at a large logistics organization. We've talked a lot about how they come up with their metrics and you know all the all the ways that they conduct their business and manage their, their sales force, et cetera, as a salesperson, if you're not optimizing your time right, if you're just, hey, I'm giving the same pitch over and over and over and over and over and over and over to all of these people when you could change up your language, you could change up your approach. You could be out there looking, you know, being that grassroots rebel leader in the salesperson suit or whatever salespeople wear now as they're dialing. You could be that rebel leader and just completely change and completely optimize your approach. And there are, we know, a lot of salespeople that are out there that need that right. They need to. It's a qualification process, essentially. Yeah.
Speaker 3:No, it's interesting, Like I've been, you know, trying to think about a single word, one. I want to start creating merch, you know, because I don't have enough to do um, but I've been thinking about, like the single word that defines what we're doing, right, what I'm doing through investing, what I do with my founders. Just one word right, because one word on a t-shirt, on a hat, that's the deal on a water bottle, on reading glasses, like whatever that word right, because one word on a t-shirt, on a hat, that's the deal On a water bottle, on reading glasses, like whatever that word is right. And about Eight years ago, I launched this thing called Disruptors Only, and it was a bunch of happy hours and stuff like that, and it was wild because I would host it like at AI National, but off campus, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Sure, and I had 50 people show up, right. I'm like, hey, we got to do something. This industry, this planet, this society, we have too big of a role and we're not doing it right. We got to do it differently. And then I had people say like, oh, disruptor, it sounds so harsh, right. And then we kind of shifted that to catalyst. And I think what's interesting about the term catalyst which I think is what I'm going to go with, just so you know, as we're workshopping here in front of out in the open the reason I started thinking about catalyst it's kind of nerdy, right, it's a chemistry word, it's a um, it's a nerdy word. But also this industry is so fragmented, both size and you know, it's just a super fragmented industry and I don't think there's a single point it's it's not a central, like, oh, if I go do this and put down the big hammer, and that it has this rippling effect throughout the industry.
Speaker 3:I think it is literally a lot of different little sparks from different people, different startups that are all creating catalysts to point to the point where we hit a tipping point and the entire industry can change. To point to the point where we hit a tipping point and the entire industry can change. But I don't think there's like this one. There's not one hammer and one nail to hammer, so to speak. It's a bunch of little things that have to happen, and so when I think about a catalyst, I think about these founders. Right, I need a rebel force over here that's focused on disrupting how we do quantity takeoffs using AI. I need another one over here that's using AI to better optimize energy and data centers, like our recent investment in fluid. So it's not a single source, it's more this network effect, and it's like a catalyst. Much like you heat up a pot, right, all the little atoms bounce around, right. It's that kind of collision effect, I think. And so, but no, I think you have to wake up every.
Speaker 3:I just feel like I'll wake up every morning and, dude, I'm like ready to swing and punch somebody. That is how I wake up. I'm just like I'm out to take on the day and take on whatever's in front of me, like let's roll, let's go and I think, as a founder, I think that's that founder edge I've always had. It's just I want to, I get up and I want to like my wife always says she's like you wake up and you like act, like you're here to go, like fight somebody, like, yeah, me and the world, I'm out there swinging punches, right, and so I think that founder edge a lot of founders get stuck in the industrial startup world and they forget about that. They're focused on the font on their deck and they're focused on all these other things. Oh, it can only be seven slides, because Jeffff told me it'll be great, jeff, if one of them showed up with eight slides or six or six and told you to like off yes yeah, they should.
Speaker 2:Those are the founders we want yeah, well, I mean, you know the ones that want to fight with this right the ones that want to fight with this yeah, to that point. Why in the world are you accepting the idea of seven slides? Right, your, your, your, your solution. Your problem is different than the next. I mean, we've given you, I've given you the, that guideline well.
Speaker 3:You know me well enough that everything is a test. Every conversation, every interaction is a test for me, and it's like all psych ops for me. And so there's plenty of founders that I will run down the road saying like, yeah, sounds like a great idea, great idea. They get all excited and then I turn left on them and they don't know what to do. It's because they really didn't have conviction, they didn't really. They weren't on mission Right, and I think I want people to argue with me. I want them to tell me I'm wrong, because then I know they're trying, because then I know they're trying yeah, yeah, exactly, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:There's so much. We see this. There's a message in my inbox right now that I'm still thinking about how to respond to. And you know, we see this all the time, especially through our incubator, of course, and you see it as you hear pitches from different startup founders that may go through our incubator or may not, right, they may be at a different point in their development, but we also know that a very small percentage of those founders are going to be the founder of that organization, so to speak, that startup, a year from now, because it's not going to exist, it's not going to survive.
Speaker 2:But it's. It's the ones that are out there that are beating the drum, that are carrying the flag, that are leading the rebellion right, those are the ones that have the best chance, those are the ones that that, as you know, as you pointed, they're the ones that are going to get the investment when they find the people that are showing up to answer their call, right, In the figurative rebel leader sort of sense. There there's no room, right? If you don't have that conviction, if you're not willing to plant that flag, carry it up the mountain and plant it. I'm trying to string together as many cliches as possible in one sentence, but if you're not leading the rebellion, why? What are you doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's the point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, this is again. I'm going to. I'm going to read the post again. This is from KP's LinkedIn as we record this. This is a week ago, so the end of November, I suppose 2024, maybe you're listening to this episode in 2026 or something like that. But it goes like this Founders, try this when pitching an investor start with your problem that you are solving. Then pause and ask are you interested in solving this problem? This will likely tell you whether you need to keep going or not. As a founder, you are a rebellion leader. You don't have time to convince people of your mission. You need to use that time to find the believers.
Speaker 2:If you're not following KP Ready on LinkedIn, you should be. It's just KP Ready, r-e-d-d-y. Follow him. He posts usually a couple times a day, sometimes more, every once in a while a little bit less, but he talks about conversations that he's having, experiences that he has. You know hearing pitches working in our incubator Today. We're recording this now and we're going to roll straight into several mastermind meetings later today. He's basically relaying the information and processing the information, maybe out loud as he goes, and the posts are always insightful, often pot stirring, but I think they're important in the context of the AEC industry. So follow KP Ready and thanks for listening in as we unpack one of his posts. So, kp, thanks for unpacking this one with me. Absolutely look forward to doing it again next week all right, sounds good all right.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening everybody. We'll be back again next week with another kp unpacked.
Speaker 1:We'll see you next week thanks for listening to another episode of kppacked. You can connect with KP Ready today at kpreadyco, that's K-P-R-E-D-D-Y dot co. And additionally follow him on LinkedIn at wwwlinkedincom. Slash I-N slash, kp Ready Until next time.