Full Transcript for OpenVC - The Platform Behind $1B in Startup Raises with Stephane Nasser

platform and we don't just provide the tools but we also provide the access. That's I think difference number one investors sign up to our platform and they tell us okay I want to receive this kind of deals and I want to be contacted via email or via form or via info. And so founders they don't just get the tools but they have the network plugged into the tools. That's number one. And second difference, so that's the two axis. You say you wanted two axis. So this are the two axis. Uh number two, uh we don't charge any success fee or any equity. Um most people for 95% of our users use OpenV for free and that's completely fine because that's the reality of of this market, right? And then 5% of founders want advanced features and they upgrade for a premium subscription and that's how we make money. So just make money with a monthly or annual subscription and that's it. And so that way we don't um how do you say we don't take a slice of the deal. We don't take a slice of the pie. And because of that we can work with a lot of people. Accelerators actually use OpenVC some sometimes buy premium and give it to their founders. Fundraising advisors, fundraising consultants use OpenV to raise for their for their clients, right? Because we're not we're not taking a slice of the deal. So we can play nice with everybody. We're not a direct competitor and we enable and empower a lot of people rather than competing with them. Um if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It does absolutely. So, uh, may I think of, um, OpenVC as a two-sided marketplace, uh, where you connect investors, uh, investors and, um, uh, founders basically, but you charge only founders from what I understood like I mean on a premium model, right? So, it's like a premium corrected marketplace. Correct. A big difference with the marketplace is that we don't process the transaction. That's a important difference. the deal is not closed on open PC. So a traditional marketplace you have the payment and the transaction on the website. We don't do that. So if you want to to close the deal, you know, on with Carta, with Angelist uh outside of the platform, it's perfect. And we we love all all these people. We don't compete with them. And why don't you uh think of developing this functionality? uh for me as an angel investor and I I use uh like um a bunch of platforms and I think that what uh uh what uh Angelist is doing is like perfect fit for at least my my uh purpose because everything is in one place and they take care of all my uh like uh tax documents and uh payments so I don't uh need to like bother myself with bunch of stuff which is like kind time consuming and boring. Uh so is there are there any plans to jump into this? I mean in in marketplaces it's called 3PL. Uh so um when you deliver and get a payment for what you deliver. So is it something what you're going to uh launch anytime soon? Do do you think we need another angelist another you know sidecar carta any of those guys? I mean it's we're just going to be one more player in the space not going to bring a lot of you know differentiation my in my opinion or or newness right they're already doing a good good enough job so maybe we can do it 1.5 times better and that would be hard but let's let's assume we can right it's not like it's not like it's not the problem that we want to solve the problem we want to solve is access uh initial access. That's the the broken part in my opinion. That's where we add value um if you can use angelist go use angel list um is what I tell founders because they have oh someone else I'm not married to anyone right uh but the part where I really want to bring something is the discovery the discovery phase the top top of funnel that's what I'm interested in. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. So um this requires actually a lot of uh like thinking behind uh go to market strategy right. So you you you have to advertise uh openvc quite broadly and uh now you have a chance although our audience is not very uh large but still it consists of mostly founders and mostly investors. So uh you have a chance to um um advertise yourself uh for like 60 seconds u uh for each group of um um your two-sided marketplace audience. Um let's start with startups first. So why a startup should choose OpenV? So you have 60 seconds uh to advertise as much as you can. Why it is? Well, because it's probably the easiest and most comprehensive platform for fundraising. You're you're going to find like all the tools, all the data, all the access that you need bundle into one package. I care a lot about UX. I'm I'm a nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff. So, we designed it in a very very smooth way where um everything lives in one place. So you're not going to, for example, not going to have to jump from a tab to another to see your deck analytics and then your CRM. Everything lives in one place and it's just I mean when you're founder, you don't have time to waste, right? You just want to cut the chase and that's what OpenVC does for you. Going to have all your arrays in one place, all the data in one place and your operational, you know, within five minutes. Um that's a perfect uh perfect um um advertising pitch. for startupers. Uh and what about investors? Why investors should choose uh uh the platform? Why should they keep investing with Open PC? So, I mean, I'm I'm not going to give you the answer. I'm going to let someone else talk. Um there's this Android investor on OpenV called Francis Santo. He's from uh New Jersey. He's done three deals uh on OpenV, I think. and he said that basically it's either you find deals on OpenVC first or you find them later, you know, an angel list or any SPV and you pay the fees. So, if you if you care about getting access first, right, before the deals, you know, have been seen by uh 100 people and and are marked up, that's going to be on OpenV. And again, I mean, you literally have nothing to lose. We don't take any chat, any equity, any success

fee. So it's a no-brainer. So it's at least something what you need you should be present at, right? I mean you may be present. So would you say that uh like all your investors I mean how would you advise them? Should they only be like open open VC uh platform users or you would advise them also to be like in different platforms? uh and to like broaden this uh panel through uh different uh different uh investment processes. How would you uh uh make it uh like work for your potential investors? Yeah, for an investor there are two benefits to using OpenV. Number one, it's just exposure, presence, building your brand. When you're on OpenVC, you have an OpenVC profile. It's it will be seen by hundreds of founders every week. It will rank on Google. It will provide you with a backlink. It will allow you to to tell your story with clarity and um and you will be kind of an open investor, right? You belong to those modern forward thinking investors who are part of the OpenV community and and believe in that. So that's the first thing. And a lot of investors told me, I joined the platform because it's an hygiene problem. Like if I want to have a clean brand, I need to be there. It's just part of a marketing strategy for them. So a lot of people join us just to have the names because you have tons of other funds. They don't want to be absent from the from the party. That's reason number one. And then after that they ask, okay, I'm actually receiving good deal flow. Because on OpenV, you can say how you want to receive deals. And then if you receive via email, we filter the deals for you. So you're not going to get spammed. You're not going to receive irrelevant out of scope deals. You will receive deals that are created, filtered, and that are a good fit for you. And we protect your email address from from founders. So you're not going to get spammed and you know, all the bad stuff that can happen. So yeah, be on OpenV for the brand first and then for the deal for second and yeah, you'll be a happy investor. Sounds good. So um uh a little bit more uh let's speak a little more about uh marketing and then we can switch to uh add value. Uh I think that uh it is like an important question on how do you add value to founders uh and investors. So I would def definitely uh focus on founders first. But before that you uh launched uh um uh open VC on uh product hunt in March 2021. So you famously became a product of the day and the product of of the month and you were nominated for a product of the year. Uh so in two three weeks you really collected a lot of traction. So maybe you can open a little bit of secrets how you maximize this maximize this uh visibility. So uh also it would be interesting to know what happened uh in like 24 maybe 48 hours after uh uh this event uh how did you become famous? It's like your it was your moment of truth I think but I think it was an exciting moment for you. So maybe you can give a little bit of insights how did it all happened to be. Yeah that was super exciting man. We we didn't sleep. my co-founder um came to my apartment in Paris at the time uh stepped on the couch and we literally spent I think 36 hours awake um we plugged like I had the TV we plugged the laptop on the TV to have the numbers you know in real time and we were just I we're just stoked and all in and I mean this was a lot of fun honestly and I think that's the key I mean I I'll break it down like how we did it bottom line we were obsessed and we're excited and so you just have this energy flowing and you you know whatever happens happens. Yeah. We we're going to have a lot of fun and we're going to to bring everyone on board. Okay. So that's that's the the small story, the big story. Um I published a whole blog post about everything we did that day and all the little tricks and techniques we used. Now a lot of that is not valid anymore. Product Hunt has changed a lot in five years. So uh just for people listening um maybe today you know the game is different brightand doesn't get so much reach or it's harder to to to play with. Um we prepared for that. Uh actually what we did is we did a first product launch a few months before to get familiar with the platform to gain some followers and um and yeah just just to to build up momentum a little bit. I think it was like three months before Number two, on the D-Day, um, we had really planned things very well. We had these spreadsheets with each time zone because you want want to hit people on different time zones. We were in in Paris at the time. So, you have to like nail when Americans wake up, right? There's a huge crowd, but you can already start actually start with Europe. And that was, I think, a strength for us. Um because Product Hunt launches start at midnight I think Pacific time which is like 8 am or 9:00 am I don't know in in central Europe or Western Europe. So it's perfect for us because when you launch you can have a big boost because our network is in in France and Germany and the UK. So we have a big boost. We land on the first page you know the top five products of the day and then after that more people see you. So there is a kind of um self-fulfilling prophecy or positive cycle because if you're in top five, you're more likely to stay top five. If you're not if you're not in top five in the first two, three hours, you're probably never going to be. And after that, we just spend the day telling everyone about it. LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack groups, uh WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, what else? Just everybody. Everybody. Hey, go check it out. Upvote, please support us. blah blah blah newsletter. Yeah, we had built a newsletter too. We use that uh Reddit. Um Reddit was important for us to Yeah, that's that's what we've done for non-stop. And we really at some point some guys passed in front of us. Uh we were really tired 18 18 hours into the day were exhausted. Um we didn't give up. We we thought we had lost but we just went, you know,

all in. And those guys after the fact actually got disqualified by product hunt because they were using some bots or something. That was I cannot tell you how happy I was. Uh yeah, ended up product of the day. And then I think you know it resonated with people because we really put our story out there, right? Two guys um building in the living room. Um it was lot of open source communitydriven stuff at the time as still is. I mean there's still an open um open data part to the project and so a lot of people vibed well with that philosophy right like okay venture capital is closed we're going to open it so people like the brand people like the mission and that's why they supported us um that's an exciting journey indeed um uh how by the way I just wanted to ask you what's who's your co-founder how did you it um I think it's important for founders. I mean they always like looking for someone who can like who can then that whom can they journey with. Uh so yeah absolutely his name is Rupal. He's a French guy like me and uh I met him on a Facebook group. Wow. On a Facebook group of places uh during COVID I was I just started OpenVC. I had the database. I needed to build the front end for it and I didn't know how to do that. So I went to this Facebook group and I said, "Hey guys, here's what I've built. How can I do the front end? Do you know any tool? I can use any no code tool." Mh. And uh someone the first first comment is hey I don't know any tool but if you want I can build that for you and you know for free like because it's a cool project. We worked for maybe a year without ever meeting each other in person. I think the first time we met in person was the day of the launch where he drove from the north of France to Paris to meet me. We never met in person before. Wow. That's that's that's a very unusual uh setup for for for a company. That's that's that's amazing. U so uh how big is the team now? And can you consider yourself a software house? Uh software house we're a software company definitely we're not a consulting firm or anything like that. We're not a venture capital firm. The team is Luca and I and we have six seven people working with us as well. Um some part-time, some full-time in different capacity. something that I really like um how we structured that so everybody's remote, everybody's asynchronous. We had like in five years we only have we only had one all hands meeting. Uh otherwise a lot of people have never met each other or you know uh we extremely decentralized. Uh we have people all around the world. We have one guy in San Francisco, one guy in Miami, one guy in London, uh RA in France, etc., etc. So, um yeah, it's and and it works well for us. We like that. We like working this way. I think Luca is also happy with this this setup. Um I'm I'm travel a lot myself, just like you, Victor. So, it gives it fits my lifestyle and it fits Luca's it it's it fits our identity. I would say it's probably not good for every company and

it has downsides. I'm not denying that but for us it it worked very well. So, and how many of those seven eight people are uh engineers, sales, uh marketing, I mean can you just break a little bit into like the roles? I'm sure you are like a startup. Everybody is doing everything but still um No, no, no. Actually, that's a good question. Um only one guy is truly a coder, developer, engineer. It's my co-founder and the rest of the team this is all um marketing basically all marketing. Okay. Our product is very simple. The the real challenge is you know like you said like making some noise being noticed driving traffic acquisition etc. Um we are hiring now uh one one more person on the technical side. So if there is a if someone's interested are you hiring through the platform by the way? Do you have like the big uh like funnel or like maybe some of starters want to join you? Do you advertise it on the open VC platform? Your your u uh open positions open VC open positions. Yeah. So um we don't have like a job job board right now. Um although sometimes people ask us for that and it might be an interesting stuff by the way because um uh VCs after they I mean uh next thing after they uh raise money it's not like all about going uh product or going sales it's all about hiring right you basically raise money to hire more people and then these people are doing marketing or sales or product or software right yep yeah completely Right. Uh we have some ideas in that in that direction. Um something maybe so we're experimenting with some stuff soon. We're going to start an internal project where basically we match. So we we try a lot of stuff on the side. Something I didn't say there's a lot of stuff behind the curtains that we try and we never ship. Um so right now something we're going to start trying is matching you know top top top talents AAA um builders with startups that that that raised and with very good startups of the platform and having compensation part in cash part in equity and allowing those top builders to build a little portfolio with their skills like a little venture portfolio basically and those startups to uh incentivize uh top talents they could not get otherwise and also better control their their cash, right? Not not spend everything up front. So, it's an experiment. We'll see how it goes, but I think, you know, there's a lot of ways to be creative. Uh we could do a job board, but again, there's a million job boards that already exist. Not sure we would bring a lot to the table. Uh we're better with equity stuff. Well, yeah. Yeah. I I I I totally agree that with like so small uh team you should focus and uh from what you saying uh so far it looks like you are like very laser focused on this top panel uh and uh meeting uh or connecting investors and uh founders and I think that that's uh really what uh most founders are missing and most investors are missing too right I mean so it's it's it's the connection ction point. Um do you measure uh and how do you measure success by the way? So is are there any KPIs uh you measure yourself? What's your like northstar um for KPIs? Uh uh so how how do you measure your say daily, weekly, monthly success? So most of uh uh most of startups do it either by user base uh adoption um screen time uh deal flow right revenue LTV to uh uh uh customer acquisition cost gross margin. So what's your what's your uh dashboard? What does your dashboard look like? Yeah. So modelwise at the end of the day we are a SAS company. So we're going to measure the same stuff as any SAS company. Uh MR retention churn um customer acquisition cost all this kind of stuff that tells us our success as a business. That doesn't tell us our success like the success of our users because for our users what matters is raising funds. So what we do is every uh quarter or so we pull all our user list and we check with third party databases if they raise or not because keep in mind we don't process the transaction. So we don't know actually if people who use our platform we we don't know inside our app if they raise because the race doesn't h doesn't happen in our app. Mhm. So we compare with public information you know um all the database you can imagine like have they had any any rays and that and that tells us okay they raised after using us. So that's that's one way and for a long time this was our only our only measurement our only metric like did they raise and then something else we realized being a founder and fundraising um is is not like one point in time but is more of a curve or journey over a long period of time. You have a lot of people they will start a startup want to race. Uh but the truth is honestly they're not ready. They are um they still lack some things to succeed. Um but they will learn, right? They'll spend six months, burn their cash, make mistakes uh and and fail. Then they'll go back to something else in their lives and maybe two years later they start a new startup. And this time they're successful because they're building on the the previous failures. And so for 90% of our users, it's not about helping them raise. They will not raise. It's not because we're bad platform. It's same with everyone. Venture capital is like that. It's are we helping them growing as professionals, growing as entrepreneurs. And so that's why we put out all this content, the fundraising master class, the webinars, the blog, uh the ebook, and it's uh a big part like of creating value. Like people come and they want to raise. They're not going to raise for a big chunk of them, but they're going to fail faster, understand better why, and then take that with their with them in their journey uh moving forward. So yeah, this is also something that I think about when I think about success. How do we help people grow as professionals and entrepreneurs and not just raise funds because otherwise you're only looking at 5% of users and ignoring the 95 other. Okay. So um I think

that um that's that's fair. So uh it's it's really difficult to put like very firm KPIs in the business you're in. By the way, have you ever raised money yourself? I mean, for OpenV. Are you planning to Are you planning to use OpenV platform to do this? We're not VC. Oh, or you go or you go to Sequoia? No. Uh, I mean, look, I think like the business we're we're in, I love it, but it's not a billion dollar business. With the current model, you cannot get to 100 million plus in ARR. Okay, we we're aware of that. And so, this is not VC backable for that reason. So, we're not going to raise funds. Uh, but also we don't need to. We're profitable. We're growing. Um, so, you know, we have no reason to to to give away control for resource at this point. Mhm. Um, so no, no, we're we're happy where we are. Although I think there will be plenty of interest uh to buy you guys uh like uh probably more established VCs would want to move into the space. Um and I I may imagine that there will be some um inbound interest uh for like some uh uh established players to to acquire a company like OPC. I I would think that uh people might like consider that Will you ever sell? We've had some conversation. Yeah, if you ever sell, what will be the reason to? So, yeah, very very honestly, um, we've had some conversation with a few people at some point. Uh, but we're at the point where for us, the the growth we have and the situation we're at makes us very picky and very very demanding. And on the other hand, the numbers don't make sense, which I understand, right? Because we we see the potential and they see the current state of things. And so we cannot find a common ground, which completely fine. I completely understand. But for us right now, um I still feel we just scratching 1% of the surface. Like all our work, you know, the brand we built, the product we built, this is just starting to pay off. I think we're just, you know, at the at the start of the inflection point. So, it's going to be hard to make this make sense financially for an external buyer. Maybe we'll see. Who knows? Um, so let's uh let's deep dive into a startuper uh journey, right? So um uh can you like walk us through uh so what startuper should do uh on your platform? How best he or she should utilize the platform to make it best outcome for for a startup? So maybe you can just go through the journey. So yeah, so it starts the same way for everybody signup page. We're going to ask you like 20 questions. So, we're going to annoy you, try to understand your company, uh where you headquartered, uh do you have revenue or not, what industry you're building in because this will allow us to customize your experience. Then you're on OpenV to personalize, right? Just to make it very personal and engaging. Exactly. So, we'll generate an investor list that makes sense for you. Uh and we'll, you know, Yeah. like adjust the experience based on what you tell us. Then after that um basically there are two directions. Direction one you want to raise right now you're ready to raise so you're going to upload your pitch deck to open VC. We're going to host it create uh links you can share with investors track open it etc. Will will you will it help to build uh the uh deck if I'm not Yeah. So we have when you upload the deck actually um I think we're the only ones who offer that feature in a deck sharing solution. We give you a score and we give you some feedback. So we say okay this is a deck you want to share with investors. It's a three out of five and here are 10 things you should fix in our opinion. Mhm. And so, you know, that that that's helpful for founders because again, a lot of them just are not aware. And it's simple stuff like 30 I think 35% of decks don't include the email address of the CEO or any contact information. They just they just forget. They just forget. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Which like it's okay, but we we can fix that easily, right? It's like 10 seconds to fix it. So why not? So exactly. So first upload your pitch deck and then um you're going to build your investor list and for each investor we tell you how they want to be contacted. So again some people you can submit directly via OpenVC. We're going to help you build a little cold email customized something short to the point based on the data you provide us at signup. So we you use that to to create your cold email. uh includes a unique link to share the pitch deck and uh and send it in one click. We take care of like like doc send more or less. Right. Correct. Correct. Except we send straight to the VC inbox. Right. So because Doc send host the deck and after that you're on your own. Yeah. We have everything in in one place. That's for the investors who accept cold outrage. For the others, uh, investors who want an intro, we have a little tool that plugs to your LinkedIn and Gmail accounts, searches all your contacts and find mutual connections with investors. So, you'll see, okay, you want to contact, you know, um, Mark Andre. Uh, here are 10 people, you know, who know Mark Andreen ranked by, um, relationship strength. Mhm. And so that way you can say okay so actually you didn't know maybe one of your friends, one of your colleagues, someone an advisor uh can connect you to that investor. So instead of going around and asking everyone, hey, do you know A or X or Y or Z? It's more or less more or less like link like LinkedIn, right? So many people many many founders knock my door in LinkedIn asking picture do you have a connection to this? Not I mean they do see that I have a connection. I mean, can you just introduce us to this person or that person? So, it's like a little bit of a LinkedIn uh uh correct strategy. Yeah. Yeah. But you know the problem with LinkedIn, like everybody's connected to everybody, so it doesn't mean much. Like I'm connected with 30 35,000 people. Uh but if you ask me an intro to those people, I don't know them personally. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So it

it doesn't mean much. So hopefully they do know you. Hopefully they do know you because they follow you, right? Yeah, you hope so. But LinkedIn now is a marketing tool. It's not really a connection tool. So our tool, we also match that with Gmail information. So if you have um exchange emails with people, we rank this person higher. If you have exchanged a lot of emails recently, we rank them even higher. Um Google calendar as well. So if you had meetings with people, if you had calls with people, this is all information we can we can access and assess and use that to rank the connection. So it's much more accurate than just a LinkedIn connection in that sense. Yeah. And then after that you have the little CRM in OpenV and you can just move the cards, you know, from contacted to pitch to due diligence to like classic stuff. Nothing nothing fancy here. just a simple functional CRM tool. Do you use do you use any like crowd wisdom like social uh uh what do you call uh uh uh like uh like social capabilities of the platform to curate pitch decks and founders. Uh for example, if there is a task force uh other founders who want to dive in and uh uh uh basically uh curate uh other founders decks. Do you do you like allow people to do so? So that that is like curated within the platform or you have any plans to do it in future like peer-to-peer uh or peer review kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. A kind of a peer review. Yeah. A second opinion, a peer review. Yeah, it's a good idea. Uh we don't do that uh exactly. We do have webinars, a deck review webinar. So, we have someone in the team who's really good at that and um well, it's a guy in Miami and he will get on a on a private room with founders. So, little groups of five or 10 and for one hour he will review pitch decks and and give feedback and other founders are encouraged to also share their opinion. So, this is what we do. Uh this is part of the premium membership. So that's when you pay the subscription, you can access those kind of of uh sessions. Mhm. Uh that's it. We don't have uh so it's pretty basic but it works. So well we have the next session is in two days actually the day after tomorrow. Mhm. Please uh send me a link. um uh I might uh join in by like paying off your your pre your your your premium uh subscription model and I'm thrilled to become one of your one of your investors for sure. Um, by the way, do you have do you have any uh prominent maybe you could not name them but maybe you can I don't know. I think that the list of of investors is not open right though like I mean could I could not go and scan all your investors. I mean or is it like fully fully transparent? It is transparent. It it is it is so okay. So very what if I want what if I want to to stay uh to stay um uh like not uh not disclosing myself uh can I just uh be hidden behind the wall or something? Can I pay for that? So okay so there are like two or three three levels to your answer. So first the database when investors sign up they agree to join the database and we're called openvc because the database is open it's under creative comm license so actually anybody can download the database except for the email address of course email address that's personal information but it's like we hold the database and we maintain it for the community so you could get the CSV or the Excel sheets right now if you want it's free just one button to download. Mhm. You cannot use it to resell. You cannot use it to but it's it's for the community. That's for the investors who signed up to the platform. We also have a chunk of investors that we source from public sources from uh public sources. And so those guys are not in the database because they didn't agree. They didn't sign up. Yeah. Exactly. But they are still listed for founders so they can be found. Mhm. Now, if you are a user and you don't want to be in there specifically, you can. You're allowed because that's the law actually. So, you send me an email and I can disable your profile if you really want, but it's kind of defeats the purpose. I mean, you want OpenVs to be visible and exposed. Uh, but yeah, it's technically possible if someone requests it. Uh I I can imagine that um if the I'm like a prominent uh venture firm uh and I want to be on the platform, I don't want to create too much noise that I'm uh sourcing from the platform. By the way, do you have any like big established venture capital firms that are uh investors like registered investors in OpenV? Oh yeah, we have a bunch. Um can and anybody on the platform that has verified the verified check mark uh they signed up to the platform. So that's and you have ves like large ves that signed up. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Again because for them like I said it's an hygiene question like if you know um if Seoa is here then A16Z has to be here. But no, I mean that doesn't mean you will erase from them for a founder, you know, like they are here, they're listed because they're also listed on Crunchb, they're also listed on Signal or any other base. Um, the ones that are the most active on the platform are smaller investors, right? Uh, micro VCs, solo GPS, right? The long tail. I mean, there is like 10% or 5% big names that everybody knows, but those guys, they source from the network mostly, right? they source from intros and the the most active ones for us they are the smaller investors who are hunting the ones who still want to build their brand they still want to build their track record so those guys they're hungry they're on the hunt and they use open VC all the time uh do you have founders who raised more than one round um uh through open VC I don't know that uh I think there is one I think I think the guy from Bashcast I would have to check. I don't know right now that's quite specific. Uh I think we have one that I know for sure because he actually messaged me. So sometimes they just message me. They message me and they oh Steve by the way

we just closed the deal on the platform or we just invested in a startup we found on your platform because that's how I learn about it. Like you you're a god you're a godfather of uh the platforms obviously a founding father. the you're the ghost inside the machine. Yeah. Yeah. No, but man, that's really cool. I have this like this GP of it's a GP. So, I told you I live in China right now uh most of the year and there is this GP of American phone but he's Chinese himself. I met him in Shanghai and like he signed up to the platform a year later. He messaged me on WeChat, you know, the Chinese app. Yeah. Yeah. Hey Steph, we just started. Right. So that's that's how we do it. It's working well for us. It's working well for the users. Um I I don't have like the exact number of like repeat founders. We probably should track that. Um but yeah, right now I cannot I I think there's one that I know for sure. The others I don't know. Okay. Okay. Sounds good. So let's um just I will ask the last question and then we go to um the master class, the teach masterass. That's another journey. Um, and we need to uh discuss that for sure in a little bit further details. So, what's your long-term vision for Open VC? So, what would you consider to be a success? Say in 10 years, what Open VC should look like in 10 years. Maybe you can give a little bit of numbers. How would you envision Yeah. your success, your your desperate success? Uh, I saw this ad by Stripe today and it said Stripe power powering 1.3% of global GDP. You know, I thought that's a really nice line and I'd like to be able to say, you know, OpenVC powering 20% of the global deal flow, right? I'd like to be the infrastructure. I mean it's the first word you said and I it really struck a chord because I love it the pipelines or the infrastructure for deals at early stage and I think our model allows that because it's predicated on us not taking a cut on anything. So people are and we're not a VC. We're not like we're neutral, right? We're not That's also why we don't build too deep because if you build deep, you start to step on people's feet, right? We don't want that. We want to be friends with everybody, have a very shallow product, but very broad like cover a large amount of of deals. And yeah, and once you become a major gateway, um things become much easier, right, for everyone, for both sides. and and it becomes a like a good good thing because both sides use the product. Everything's standardized and um it it just makes everything more efficient. At the end of the day, I think again I'm a huge nerd. I love efficient things. I love when it's smooth and uh and clean. And so if I can bring that into the messy process of uh fundraising, that'd be great. you you you envisioned like 20% of all deals uh being uh uh uh being uh financed by uh at least once by open VC. I would I would say probably if I may uh how would I uh probably measure success of open VC is not number of deals and not the size of investments but whether there will be one of 10 largest companies in 30 years from now uh largest in the world uh like new Googles and new Nvidas that raised money uh through open VC I think that that would be that would mean that this is success I mean you might not have like 20% of all funding but if there is one company which is like new Apple or new Google or new Amazon that was financed by all MBC I think that's that what measures the success in venture business not not about numbers but one this one or two this unique unique unique uh u uh projects that made it through to the top right so I I I I hope that there will be Oh, definitely. I I'm done with that, man. I'm You don't need to sell it to me. I'm okay with that. I I think at some point But here's the thing. At some point, it becomes uh a numbers game. If you process enough deal flow, it's just going to be statistically you're going to have some winners because you're indexing the market. So, for me, if I if I cannot predict today, nobody can really predict and some people try. Nobody can really like systematically accurately predict the winners. So, I'm not chasing the winners. I'm chasing the volume. Exactly. And I'm chasing the volume. And if I get enough volume, I'll get some winners in the in the in the pack. Right. So, that's my approach to this. Like not very sophisticated, but the math works. And the truth is that uh if you look into uh uh top 10 uh world best companies that uh like magn magnificent 7 for example uh they were backed by VCs which were not known at that time because established and well-known VCs didn't invest into those seven companies for the reason that it was so much unknown that uh it so much unconventional that they just passed on the deals. There are so many who passed on Nvidia. There are so many who passed on uh Google, there are so many who passed on Apple, name it, right? So uh these VCs became famous just because they invested in those startups in those companies and those who were famous back then didn't invest those seven. So I think that's that exactly shows that um hitting this right target is extremely difficult and challenging. Yeah. Yeah. So and it's very unconventional. That's Yeah. But I think as as long as you have the volume and the brand and the trust this is very important having the trust of people uh then you can build a lot of cool stuff on top of that right if down the road you want to like can become a data player right um can become an equity play um maybe I mean something I'd like to do in 2026 now we're starting to really have enough free cash flow I'd like to reinvest from our own profits into open v startups you know just pick 10 startups put 2,000 in each uh every month and create kind of index or whatever. Uh we'll see where it goes. I don't know. But for me like the the the foundation for all of that is going to be like the brand, the data, the volume, the trust. Then after that and having some cash to play with, right? And

then we'll figure it out. And it's okay. We're a small team. We'll we we're flexible. we we'll find what we can do but uh that's my vision at the moment. Well, it's a very compelling vision I believe. So, let's go to a master class and unfortunately we don't have much time but I want still to deep dive into this little bit. So you reviewed uh you famously known as a person who really dedicate a lot of time and effort into just u helping uh and that's what open is all about helping founders to uh uh to process the fundraising uh part as easy as possible but also to demonstrate to them that it is a very systemic work to be done. So maybe you can start with uh uh the um errors, mistakes u you reviewed obviously thousands of pitch decks and what is the most uh the single most common mistake you see the founders don't realize they're making through fundraising process and pitch deck. So what is that? Yeah, I think this is a very important question because founders bet so much on their startups and their fundraising and yet they keep making the same silly mistakes. So, um well, I mean there's a million of them. It's not like one major one. It's a million there's a million ways to to send a red flag. And for investors it's obvious because you know investors spend their time doing this. For founders it can be surprising right? They don't understand that if they send a deck and the deck is dated of four months ago it's not a good signal right uh if I send a deck and the deck is 30 pages long it's not a great signal. If I send a deck and it's the full story written in font 12 you know with walls of text. not a great signal. Um, if you um, yeah, I mean, there's there's a million things like that. And it's not, again, it's not that those founders are are dumb. I I always say there's no fundraising secrets. There's only poorly informed founders, right? And so, as a founder, your job as a founder, your job, if you want to raise funds and you've never done that before, your job is not to build an investor list and cold email VCs. First job, climb the learning curve. You You're at the bottom of a learning curve and you have to climb to run as fast as you can. Maybe just spend a weekend like watch YC school, read OpenVC, right? The blog, the master class, all that stuff and try to run as fast as pos, okay, you're not going to send an NDA to a VC to before you send your pitch. It doesn't work, right? You you're just sending red flags, bad vibes, etc., etc. So that's kind of the and you're right on the systematic approach like because 80 90% of that is always the same stuff again and again always same mistakes again and again and so by being systematic just going through a checklist like a machine you can go from a bad deck or bad deal to a top 20% or top 25% after that yes the last 10% 20% manual work refinement is a art, right? But the bottom 80% is just science. It's just mechanic stuff, systematic stuff. You apply it, you will you like your deal will look better just because uh market size if you you cannot say your market size is like $50 million. That's not VC backable. Now maybe it is and you shouldn't trace funds but maybe you know you have to re do your market sizing the right way and realize that you know it's actually much bigger. So there's a million things like that. Don't say that you have no competitors. Of course you have competitors. Uh and again this is a lot of times they don't even like for them these people are not even founders right? These are not deals they would even consider like bottom 50% of founders. They don't this is don't look at the bottom 50% of founders. They don't consider them. I work with all sorts of founders from top 0.5% to bottom 0.5. And so I try to serve everyone and for some people it means yes fundraising, intros, outreach. For other people it means empowerment, education, homework. How how big how big the deck should be? Uh what's the uh best uh kind of size? Should it be like a smaller, bigger? Uh I mean what would your recommendation? Well, I'll say anywhere from six to 15 slides, you know. Um and the stronger your deal, the less the the fewer slides you need. Less slides because Yeah. Because if your deal is really strong, you know, you just say, "Okay, team, the team is Elon Musk and uh, you know, I don't know, and Jeff Bezos, right? Traction, we're growing uh 500% per month. And here's our email address." End of the story, right? That's if you're strong. And the best deals, it's not a deck. The best deal is a WhatsApp message. I mean, we're probably in the same WhatsApp groups, you know, where all the best deals are done and you receive a message, hey, I'm, you know, I'm leading around in these guys. Uh, they're just doing amazing. There is 500K left. Who's in, right? And that's how the top top 1 percentages are done. There's no deck, there's no slides, it's overs subscribed, you know, before it hits the market. Uh but to to what to what extent to what extent actually founders should exaggerate uh I mean because what but I'm always saying that um I mean you are selling I mean you're a founder you're selling future right selling a future is easy right because you don't know the f what the future is so you can elaborate upon future so what I advise founders to do like early stage founders is to do a lot of AB testing right because you don't know what exactly your investors will buy right no neither you know what you're going to build. So you will pivot like thousands of times before you really find your product market fit. So your your goal today is to raise uh and not to predict the future, right? So therefore like selling future is easy. So your task is to raise money. It doesn't matter what you say, right? You just need exactly what you mentioned to to impress uh the investor in a way. And that how investor will will give you money. But there is a uh there is a still like I mean a tiny border between where you are telling the future and believing in

it and where you're telling the future and it's like a full uh like an ultimate lie, right? It's not like a deep truth you're talking about. So uh how to build it the right way? how to make it uh really exciting and not to uh not to make it fake because nobody nobody wants to sell a fake story, right? I mean, at least people who uh Yeah. And you should who respect themsel, right? Yeah. So, so where where to stop? How would you define where you need to stop like period? You you should not like uh exaggerate it further. Well, so number one, like you said, don't fly, right? Because it's going to come back and bite you and your name is your most valuable asset, right? You could you can close a startup, start another startup, your name will follow you. So don't don't don't and number two, investors will figure out 99% of the time. Like they have seen everything, right? We've seen, you know, the like the guys tell you, "Yeah, we're growing, you know, 100% month over month." And then, "Okay, so what's your revenue level?" Oh, we went from $1,000 to $2,000 a month, right? Like all this kind of um how do you how do you say in English? Um like playing a little bit with the numbers, but as soon as you scratch the surface, we figure it out. Uh okay, we have a million app downloads. Cool. What's the retention? Oh, the retention is bad. What a surprise. Right? All those vanity metrics. So I I don't think I mean at the end of the day the investor is responsible for their money. So if they if you lie and they invest in you, good for you. They are bad investors. They're doing a bad job. It's not your fault. It's their fault. You shouldn't do it. But you know, everybody's uh is responsible for themselves. But I wouldn't do that. Um, I wouldn't do that because my name is an asset and I build it up over time. That compounds over time. So, I wouldn't do it. Don't lie. Uh, honestly, I don't think there's a lot of room for for exaggeration. Um, I think the hardest thing is a lot of founders actually don't know how to make their story sound sexy. I think that's the actual problem. Um, they don't know how to speak the investor language. Uh they will like they have something that could that could sound cool, that could sound exciting, but they just don't know how to tell the story in a way that is short, condensed, that builds upon market trends that vibes the recipients frameworks. So, you know, investors have I think that's a big one. Investors have frameworks, right? They're checking boxes at all times. And when you express, I'll give you an example. When you express yourself in your deck, you want to say it in a way that will tick a box in the head of the investor. So, one example I give the the ask, you know, the slide where say, "Okay, we're raising uh we're raising $2 million." Usually, they say we're raising $2 million to uh you know, build out the product and uh and uh grow the team. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. That's You know, you have the use of proceeds, the

the the pie with okay, 20% marketing, 30% sales, 50% tech, right? Nobody cares. It's always the same thing anyway. Mhm. What we care about is will you be able to raise again in 18 months? Because if I invest in your seed round, what I care about is will you be, you know, fundable for series A because if not, then my investment is dead. And so as my as my my my my uh uh one of my my partners is like kidding that uh the main uh uh job of investor in a startup is to find the next investor who will who will who will invest at a higher price. Exactly. Yeah. I mean you buy and you sell and you're just holding holding the the shares for I mean it's a bit more than that but we understand each other right that you buy and sell by and sell and so in the title of your slide you say we're raising 2 mill to hit I don't know 5 million ARR in 18 months and we both know the both sides of the table we understand that 5 million AR R makes you very appealing for a series A in 18 months and so indirect correctly. You're telling your investors, I understand the game. I know what game we're playing. We're playing the game where in 18 months I raise again and you can mark up your participation in my in my round. So, you can raise again from your LPS, right? So, you're happy, I'm happy, and uh you have a partner in bed with you who gets it. A lot of founders of course don't understand that. Indeed. Indeed. I totally agree. Um so um my two other questions and then uh I will come to like closing and I have one very important thing to ask uh uh so um obviously fear of missing out is a main driver for m well really it's like the main not one of the few main drivers but the main driver for a venture capitalist u uh to invest. So uh as a venture capital uh manager, I learned early enough that losing $1 on the dollar investing dollar investment is is is painful but still like is uh the name of the game, right? You you will lose as an investor. Uh so I mean it's painful to certain extent but you are prepared to lose $1. What you're not prepared to is when you look into deck for talk to a founder and then you uh decide not to invest this $1 and then all of a sudden you like in 10 years time you open a feed and then you see this founder going public or selling his company and you easily compute that you could have made $10,000 on $1 and that what you are driven by. So how to create this form my friend this fear of missing out in the right way? What what founder needs to do uh to uh to to to to motivate in a positive and negative way whatever it is through former uh an investor to put money. So this is a great great question and one that we really had to ponder when we built uh a feature on the platform called openflow. So you know there is a lot of startups now they have this web page where they advertise their startup right and they share that link with investors so the the startup the round is visible I I I don't think that's a great idea um because then you like meat on the shelf right you're exposed to anyone and it's not exciting for investors they like like said the FOMO they like the hunt they like to feel that they had to fight or they found it and it's not available to anyone. So we have this feature on the investor side. So that's open VC for investors where you can see a flow of all the deals on the platform. Okay. But you don't see the name of the company. You don't see the name of the founders. You just see a short description like the company builds AI for whatever. Not so great. And you see the and second sorry I mean it's a kind of a blind choice right so you you abstracted from like any bias right so that's that's the reason you're doing so and then under the description we add some positive signals for example and you can check that right now openv.applow applow. So the startup is AI for whatever exited founder nine figures uh grow growing 40% per month right and then request deck you have button request deck and so it's the investor who uh reaches out to the founder. So the founder is in a position of strength and in a position also of privacy because they can pick and choose. basically, okay, investor uh investor Johnny uh wants to speak, wants to see your deck. Do you allow and then you reply back and you start a conversation or do you refuse and you remain anonymous? And so, um this works super well. I mean, the metrics are off the roof for this feature. uh we have like over 95% open rate on the pitch decks uh when investors request those decks because you know they're like I want to know I want to see uh what's going on. So this is this is really really cool. Um but again a lot of founders are not happy they say why you I don't have a page on open VC where I can publish my startup and every investor can look at it because they don't understand the psychology of investors and yeah we try to to figure so that's one way um you know like I guess the bigger answer is retaining information like selecting information don't share everything on the first date uh build build up build up interest, right? Yeah. That that's why your deck only six secrets. Mhm. Yeah. Exactly. Um that's why the deck can only be six slides because the goal is just like you usually you have only one or two really good things to say. The rest is standard, right? Market size pretty standard competition. And it could be any startup. You can be any startup. You're going to have the same market slides, competition slides. What's going to be different is the team and the traction. Maybe you have some ideal story. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Maybe you have very unique exactly angle to that. But um yeah. So, but a lot of founders have this belief in their head. If I say everything, if I explain everything, they will understand. They will see it like I see it. and they tend to overshare and overwhelm the investor with tons of details that don't make a difference. You you are you are advocating for datadriven storytelling. Um I'm I'm with you. I'm

also uh uh about like data but uh more and more I feel that your biggest differentiation is not data. Your biggest differentiation is your passion and the way you think about your journey and uh um uh you should like mix uh these two things to create a perfect dish, right? To create a perfect deck. uh your datadriven approach showing like optically how good you are on a uh data scale but also uh giving your personal uh personal storytelling why you are here why you are building what you're building. What's what's your passion? Why you're obsessed with the problem right uh and why you love the problem so much that you will never stop uh uh tackling. Yeah. But it's really hard to convey passion through a deck because you know 20 years ago it was a different time. you know, you could cold call investors. Cold call, not cold call him. Yeah, you could meet them uh you know, uh on the Sun Hill Road. Um 50 50 years ago, uh like Steve Jobs did, you could have called uh uh Hulet uh or Papard, whomever he called, and asked for like spare parts and and this very form gentleman will just deliver you spare parts, right? Exactly. Exactly. Today it's all um intermediated uh by writing, right? So you're gonna have pitch deck and emails between you and the person. And now there's even a third layer, AI. So more and more investors run your deck through AI before they look at it and get it scored just to know if they should even open it or not. And so you're not going to be able to, you know, express a lot of passion through a deck. I mean, you can do some storytelling, of course, but you're going to be limited. Uh, and stuff that used to work 10, 15 years ago, uh, don't work anymore because it's like advertisement. We now we're immune to advertisement. It doesn't work so well on us. So now what I think more and more is that the storytelling part is moving from the deck to social media. So, you're still going to do storytelling, but you're going to do that on X. You're going to do that on LinkedIn, right? And it's going to help you build up your brand, build up awareness. Storytelling storytelling on steroids. Exactly. Exactly. Every time you post something, you're building your story for investors to see. And that's what I tell founders. You want to raise build your short list. Then, first thing you do, you're going to follow every investor of your short list on LinkedIn and Twitter, right? and act activate notifications when they post something, you're going to reply, you're going to engage, you're going to build up your mind share. And then when you when you reach out to them, they already know who you are. They already have a feel for you. So it's inbound fundraising. And some founders are really good at that. That's that's how you you can build an expensive storytelling uh and and raise you know even from you know from your from chair. Um thank you Stefan. Um it was very insightful. My last question uh probably uh the trickiest one and I don't have an answer

to that uh but I hope you do. So uh just coming back to like uh history uh of uh like innovation um people believe that uh uh invent in invention uh of uh credit uh and facilitation of uh uh like depth uh uh economy was the biggest invention of u u uh of u industrial revolution air era. So uh through credit uh everything we know was built like through credit in last 250 years right. Uh venture investment was uh the single innovation that brought uh uh startups into stage and uh venture capital uh uh so far has delivered um uh every second uh company uh in the US that went public in the last I think 20 years was backed by venture and uh we see uh seven out of 10 companies u uh largest companies in the world magnificent 7 were uh uh venture uh backed. Uh do you think there is any disruption to venture capital itself? Not the way venture capital is distributed but is there something what may come uh to uh replace the venture capital overall uh that would uh impact the world even uh further uh through its like innovation journey. Uh indeed uh the most impactful projects now could not get venture capital right because venture capital is all about uh turn around in like 10 12 15 years uh but not not further. How to make it work for for uh those projects which are very impactful but uh may deliver value in say 30 50 years. Is there any anything you envision what will uh make that happen? Uh any any any any any thoughts on that? So the short answer is I I don't know and I I probably just don't know enough to give you like a a full-fledged reply. We can think about a few things. So you describe like you're talking about innovations for the next 20 to 50 years and yes that's outside of the typical VC scope but when we think about the funding of innovation it's like a funnel and you have like fundamental research and research right that is done in universities uh with public funding so it's already funded right uh or also inside large corporations you have very large corporations s that have like fundamental research labs but it looks like that that they they failed to innovate. If uh large companies uh uh would uh make it uh they will never they would never go out of stage right but what we see now is that Google could not do uh chat GPT uh or uh uh social networking like meta. Meta could not do something what others I mean it's like every every every cycle of innovation is happening in startups. I do believe that it will never happen in in in big companies. So big companies big companies are good uh for sustaining and buying startups and then building on top but not innovating. I I I I worked for large companies so I know it's like almost close to impossible to innovate in large companies. Yeah. Too much risk and and I think it's fine. Yeah. And I think it's fine, right? Because then there's an incentive for the small guys. Like you want to build your small startups because you can be acquired by, you know, Salesforce or whoever for a billion plus. So it's exciting for you and you have an incentive to do it. And yes, you're right. Big companies don't innovate so much. Um, but it's not their role, right? Their role, they're managing huge P&L. Uh, all they have to do is, you know, improve by 3% for the next year, right? All they need is an incremental. If they increase revenue by 1% and decrease cost by 1% across the whole organization, that's good. They're here next year. They're here here after they have, you know, 200,000 employees across 50 countries. It's a different game. They're not here to innovate. Um, I'm more interested about fundamental research stuff that happens in universities, in labs, public funded. I think we could do much much better on this front. I mean, I'm French. French research. We have great brains, but like the funding is ridiculous because of course it's like you said, it's very long-term game. And it's hard to spend tax money on this kind of stuff because, you know, you could spend on, you know, if you ask people, okay, we have hundred $100 to spend. Do we spend $80 on, you know, developing new whatever plasma materials or quantum computers or uh, you know, pensions, benefits, um, roads, you know, like it's it's a at the end of the day, it's a society choice, right? Because you're asking society where to allocate that money. Uh so I I was I was thinking maybe like uh uh investing in people rather than projects. So there is an individual say Stefan uh who is like outperformer like 0.001% of uh uh like uh the crowd in say math or physics. So you can't just finance the person without financing his his venture, right? So let him go and do whatever uh is right. So if he does something in his lifetime then you share some of what he has built. So uh uh that that how I would envision uh like more granular venture capital going to individuals rather than just uh uh projects right so you identify a person and then you give money to person and then you hope that this person will do something real great yeah um I I like the idea uh it comes with a lot of philosophical questions right because you're like owning a little percent of a human being after all, you know, and are you entitled to their children, right? Because if they they produce something, they produce kids and the kids, you know, the next next Bill Gates, right? So, but uh I like the idea. It's but I just don't know if it belongs to a venture capital system or maybe to a more like charitable foundation driven missiondriven system or even you know a tax based system like I mean it becomes a much broader question. I think venture capital is Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I just I just feel that venture capital is just, you know, one way to finance things and there are we can be very creative when it comes to to financing. So I I don't know if the venture the venture capital model is actually a super niche. I mean venture capital is a very niche asset class at the end of the day. It's super small. It's like very small. Yeah. Look at private less than less than $3 million. Yeah, compared to like hundreds of trillions of dollars of of the rest of the economy, it's like nothing. And it's very aggressive, right? I mean, it builds great companies. It's extremely aggressive. Uh and it's tiny. Yeah. Yeah. So, it works relative for what it does. No, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I think Stefan uh that the truth is that I mean there are what 100 billion people lived I mean human beings lived in this world uh through the journey I mean the the humanity right so probably there are only million who who made this world look what it is right for good or bad so uh so venture capital is all about finding those uh this tiny percentage of people who can uh change the world and I don't know uh exactly what is it driven by I mean is it like genetics or it's obsession or uh something else you never know right but the truth is that it's a tiny percentage of people who will who has changed the world to what it is I don't want to say to a better place to what it is because we never we don't see what it could have potentially become without those Yeah, but indeed the changes are made by only only tiny individuals. So that's your task. That's my task regardless of the way we source resource for those uh individuals who can uh make it or break it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We're enablers. Like I'm not like I'm not smart enough to build you know the next nuclear technology. I know that like but what I can do is I can try to connect uh the two guys who will build it and and and invest in it or maybe I can at some point invest myself in it and and just help it happen faster. Advise people like unlock potential for other stakeholders, founders, investors, whoever it is. So that's that's what we can do. I mean that's what I can do at my own scale just and me. Yeah, I I totally totally uh agree. So, um that was Stefan Nasser, co-founder and CEO of OpenV and Victor Alovski U co-founder and managing partner of uh R136 Ventures and uh this was a podcast ventures from the valley. Uh listen to us uh subscribe to us and uh join our uh community. Thanks Stefan. It was like really exciting uh discussion and I liked it so much. It is one of our uh longest podcast but I I'm sure it deserves it and it was really very thoughtful uh conversation. Thank you. Thank you Victor.