Ep 03: To Raise Money and Have Good Relationships with Investors – Karan Bavandi
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Karan Bavandi, a lifelong entrepreneur, focused on knowledge management and knowledge curation, shares his journey and learnings. His company Optimal Access makes content curation easier.
- Personal relationships with venture capitalists is key.
- Build connections, because people need to know you.
- Raising funds, sometimes means meeting the right person at the right place at the right time.
- Investors will invest in in you
- Investors invest only if the technology aligns with their interests.
- Choose smart money, i.e. investors that want to be involved.
- Great technology doesn’t mean people just get it.
- Don’t hire people too fast and before getting traction.
- Great ideas by themselves don’t mean you will be successful.
- A big competitor can drive you out of the marketplace.
- Be well capitalized to prepare for technology changes.
- If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying; and try again.
- Right place at the right time is important.
- The technology platform on which you build your product might change and you may need to change everything.
- To be an entrepreneur you need to have a passion. It’s not just about the money
- Count on yourself. Don’t count on venture capital. Get traction. Get users.
About the Guest:
Karan Bavandi has dedicated the last 20 years to building tools that turn information into knowledge! Both individuals and organizations need curation tools to work more efficiently and process to make sense of the information they consume! Conversational chatbots are the new, flexible, and powerful user interface for accessing and distributing content. They are building tools to turn information into machine-readable knowledge for use in chatbots.
Personal Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karanbavandi/
About the Host:
Philip Topham is The Savvy Founder and Armchair sociologist. Philip has an inquisitive mind and passion for ideas. He’s impatient to see tomorrow’s today. He focuses on helping technical founders unlock their pragmatic dreamer and develop their business skills and social capital with The Savvy Founder framework.
With more than 25 years across startups and corporate roles, Philip has been everything from janitor to the Founder and Chief Everything Officer. His earliest career was as a network engineer bringing companies into the Internet age. He’s served as the Head of Information Technology (Divisional CIO) as well as startup Chief Technology Officer, building software and solving problems others said couldn’t be solved.
Philip has experienced what happens when a traditional company gets $20M venture capital infusion to become the next big thing. He has also experienced building a business without venture backing. He built a business from zero to profitability, selling more than $5M to big pharma and changed the way the pharmaceutical industry operates. He knows what it means to raise money for your startup, only to have it stop as a key founder steps out of the picture. He currently is an advisor for a global AI (artificial intelligence) clinical care management system startup.
Among his many accomplishments, Philip, is an armchair sociologist with peer-review publications in social network analysis and machine learning. He holds a BS Biological Sciences from UC Irvine and an MBA from Pepperdine University. When not working, he can be found playing billiards, woodworking, travelling or socializing with friends and family.
Words of Wisdom
- Ideas are worthless; revenues are priceless; surround yourself with smart people.
- Life is a journey – mole hills or mountains? it’s your choice.
Connect with Philip at:
E-mail – philip@thesavvyfounder.com
Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiptopham
Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/thesavvyfounder
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thesavvyfounder
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thesavvyfounder
Website – https://philiptopham.com
Clubhouse – @thesavvyfounder
10 Most Fixable Pitch Deck Mistakes – https://www.thesavvyfounder.com
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