“Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”
— Don Lucchesi
Do I have knack for storytelling? I think I do. But the storytelling in fundraising requires embellishment of facts, which in common tongue is called, ‘lying.’
In fact I have been told that VCs like founders who lie, they encourage it even. But that is all hearsay at this point, but I have been learning to fundraise for a while and indeed there is a lot of garnishing. But I did notice was that those companies that raised and performed well were less adventurous with the truth.
So yeah, I guess, Honesty is indeed the best policy.
After I had resumed Machine Dalal, I had a clear vision about it, and clarity on what it was not. It seems counterintuitive at first but as we grow, it seems to be working out.
Startups for most part are about possibilities, but with Machine Dalal we narrowed our focus down. Chipped away at everything that was unnecessary, and worked on our core offering i.e., choice, search and connectivity.
We never thought of scalability but maintained the momentum. Remember folks, a start-up is a vector so you have to maintain direction as well as magnitude, and for the business to truly succeed – everything has to work.
While we were adding features, we were also recruiting users manually and had started working on selling the subscriptions as well. I would say we achieved all of the three, sub-optimally, of course.
If it weren’t so, I would not be learning to fundraise to fundraise sooner than later.
Finance, is going to be a big part of Machine Dalal. We have already partnered with some financial institutions but that is not the right way of doing it. That process adds cost to consumer and I for one, is always sceptical of any endeavour that penalizes consumer choice by levying penalty in form of fees or commission.
So, the solution is better underwriting. This is where our(Hashbrown) experience with fintech comes into play.
In our journey so far, there are lots of positives. We built a product, we made it live, we have thousands of users, high engagement, some revenue, and most importantly a team that delivers.
In our fundraising journey, as we have begun scratching the surface, I have more confidence each day. No one surely knows the future but even in these perilous times, I have a strong feeling that I will not face much rejection from investors.
And the rejections would come not on account of the business, but perhaps I am not well versed with the business of projections, prophecies and the psychology that goes into it.
‘ To be continued
– Lt. Daniels, the Wire.