Playing With Unicorns

Lorien Gabel is the Co-Founder of Figment Network. He holds an LLB from Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law School and is a member in good standing with the Ontario Bar. In 1994, at the age of 24, 6 months into practicing law, Lorien quit to help his brother Matt run a bourgeoning internet company, Interlog. Over the next four years, they managed the growth of Interlog to over 150 employees, 65,000 customers and profitability. It was later acquired by a large multinational telecommunications company.

These days every meeting seems to start with a conversation on market conditions. In the next episode, I am sharing my perspective on what has been happening in the public, crypto, and private markets, and what it means for investors and founders.

9 out of 10 startups fail. This is a gloomy number. However, it has never stopped entrepreneurs from hedging their bets to create successful companies. And I want to help entrepreneurs, whether they’re first, second, or third-time founders, increase their odds of success. So this week, I talked to Tom Eisenmann about his new book, Tom is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and holds the Peter O. Crisp Faculty Chair at Harvard Innovation Labs.

This is one of the most requested questions I’ve received since starting Playing with Unicorn podcast. People want to know “How do I build the perfect pitch deck to raise funds?”   So joining me is Kelly Anne Tully, Head of Platform and Investor at FJ Labs. Kelly has helped many of our portfolio companies raise funds. Today, Kelly and I discuss how to create the perfect a pitch deck.

Brian Requarth is the Co-Founder of Latitud and former CEO of Viva Real. Through Latitud, he now dedicates his time to providing mentorship and advice for entrepreneurs in Latin America (LATAM). Brian’s new book, Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling, and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America shares the hard lessons he learned while building and scaling his company. It covers best practices for communicating with your co-founder, finding great investors, and building a good board.

Christian is the rare breed of polymath Renaissance Man operating in a world that rewards specialization. We had an extremely broad and far-ranging conversation covering: • Whether you should always pursue your passion • The relative importance of focus • How to make the most of the opportunities presented to you • Spirituality • Happiness • Much More!

SPACs have been one of the hot topics of 2020. Jeff Weinstein, who co-heads investing at FJ Labs, and our resident venture capital nerd, joins to talk about all things SPAC. He covers: • What are SPACs? • How do they operate? • Why are they hot in 2020? • What’s in it for sponsors, institutional investors, the companies merging into them and retail investors?

Given the omnipresent doom and gloom of 2020, I took the time to reflect objectively on where things stand and where the world is heading. My deep dive across so many industries and technologies left me inspired and awe struck by the opportunities open to us. We will address the two fundamental issues of our time: climate change and social injustice / inequality of opportunity.

In general, I do not read “business books” as I find them simplistic. Loonshots is the exception to that rule. It blew me away. It mixes compelling personal narratives of entrepreneurs like Edwin Land (Polaroid) and Juan Trippe (Pan Am) with observations from physics and history to weave a very compelling narrative.

Last week we covered how to come up with great startup ideas. This week I present how to evaluate if the idea is worth pursuing. I detail which hypothesis you need to validate and how to go about providing or disproving them. Vivian Graves (https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-graves/), an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) at FJ Labs, joins to share how she evaluated whether to pursue a temporary veterinarian labor marketplace idea.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs struggle to come with compelling startup ideas. I discuss how to quickly determine whether the idea is worth pursuing further. I also share tips and tricks on ideation and early validation. Arne Halleraker , who co-heads investing at FJ Labs, joins to share the startup ideas he came up with for our most recent FJ Labs ideation session this past August.

Most entrepreneurs merely see venture capitalists as a source of capital without understanding how venture capitalists operate. Jeff Weinstein who co-heads investing at FJ Labs, and our resident venture capital nerd, joins to explain the history of venture capital. He details how VC firms operate, how they are funded, and shares his take on the future of the industry. The episode is a must watch for aspiring venture capitalists, prospective investors in venture funds, and entrepreneurs raising from VCs.

Last week we covered whether first time founders should build a company on their own or join an accelerator or a venture studio. As a follow-up, I wanted to present the specifics of the FJ Labs startup studio model. Anthony Valente, Andrea Xu, and Charles Gorra join to describe their experiences at the various stages of our program.

This week we cover whether first time founders should build a company on their own or join an accelerator or a venture studio. Nancy Dong (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancydong/), our first ever guest on Playing With Unicorns, joins to share the framework she used to decide whether she should join FJ Labs (www.fjlabs.com) as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) after stints at Uber and Harvard Business School (HBS).

Given that I was in Lake Placid looking at the foliage change without my multi-screen setup, I tried a “Ask Me Anything” session for the week. It was a resounding success with very varied questions. We covered: • The impact of antitrust laws on the venture ecosystem • The differences between being an angel and running an early stage fund • How we acquired the first customers at OLX • Whether marketplaces should start by building supply or demand • How to build your brand in VC • Much more!

In the third episode, I described how VCs evaluate startups by using a combination of the team, business, deal terms and whether the idea fits with their thesis to decide whether to invest or not. In this episode, I present FJ Labs’ Investment thesis. I start by covering why we focus on marketplaces, then detail:   Our current marketplace theses: Verticalization of horizontals Transition to supply pick marketplaces B2B marketplaces The Future of Food The Future of Work The Future of Real Estate The Future of Lending

In the first episode I covered how and when to fundraise. In this episode, I cover how venture capitalists (VCs) evaluate you once you are in front of them the help you refine your approach and pitch.

I start by covering the theoretical do’s and don’ts of building a minimum viable product (MVP) before giving an in depth and specific example of how I would go about building a mobile golf application allowing golfers to find partners to play with at their handicap, in their region and/or club, with the same availability. I cover how to use various tools and services such as Balsamiq, Awesome Screenshot and Upwork.

Given that it's episode 1, I start by explaining why I am creating this podcast before covering everything there is to know in terms of fundraising for venture backed startups • Common mistakes when fundraising • The unwritten rules of venture capital • How and when to approach venture capitalists • Much more!