The Founder's Formula Podcast

Episode 9: From Fundraising to Acquisition with Nate Nasralla (Founder & CEO at Fluint)

Episode Summary

Nate is a 3x Sales Leader, 2-time founder, and sales conversation aficionado who is the Founder of Fluint which is designed to help sales reps stop losing deals when they aren’t in their buyer’s room by creating and selling with champions on the buying team.

Episode Notes

Nate is a 3x Sales Leader, 2-time founder, and sales conversation aficionado who is the Founder of Fluint which is designed to help sales reps stop losing deals when they aren’t in their buyer’s room by creating and selling with champions on the buying team.

 

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Hatchet Ventures website: https://www.hatchetventures.com

Hatchet Ventures LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hatchet-ventures/

Chet Lovegren’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chetlovegren/

Nate Nasralla’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natenasralla/

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Episode Transcription

Narrator: 1, 2, 3, 4. Are you a founder, co-founder, aspiring entrepreneur, or just someone who loves to hear about how companies are built? Then join us as we talk with founders and CEOs who have been there and done that welcome to the Founder's Formula Podcast. Sponsored by Hatchet Ventures. And now your host Chet Lovegren. 

 

Chet: Welcome one. Welcome all to the Founder's Formula Podcast. The show that's designed to bring you the latest and greatest stories and insights from founders worldwide, who have been there and done that. My guest today is a three time sales leader, two time founder, and what I like to call a sales conversation aficionado, who is the founder of Fluint. Which is designed to help sales reps stop losing deals when they aren't in their buyer's room by creating and selling with champions on the buying team. 

 

Welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, Nate Nasralla. Nate, nice to have you here. 

 

Nate: Chet. Really good to be here. Thanks for inviting me 

 

Chet: I'm really excited for those of you that don't know. I had the pleasure of having Nate on the Sales RX Podcast as well. And we had an incredible episode that had, uh, really good, uh, really good reviews and reception. 

 

So not setting the bar too high or anything for him, but I know this episode's gonna be equally as great as we talk about his journey as a founder. So, um, Nate, Fluint really interesting tools, something that I know some of, but not as much as I probably should. And I'm interested to learn more and I'm sure a lot of people out there are interested in the story of Fluint. 

 

But let's hear the story of Nate. What has, you know, what has life and your experience been like up to the point of founding Fluint? Tell us a little bit about that story.  

 

Nate: So it was a, it was a little wandering, but it all came together in kind of this perfect way where each move that I've made over my career was the combination of all of the other places that I spent time in. 

 

So, uh, for example, the lead up to my first experience. I co-founding a company where we built, um, software to help small nonprofits raise money. It was a combination of, so first I was working on staff of a nonprofit called LeaderTreks. We taught student groups, leadership curriculum, you know, loved like the missional aspect of that. 

 

But I knew I wasn't gonna stick in, in nonprofit, um, all the time. And I was like, I don't know what I want to do. So let me try out consulting, feel like I'd get a bunch of different projects. I'd kind of see a lot of different things. And then I pretty quickly realized it's like, man, all right. The consulting environment really isn't like my jam. 

 

Um, I took a detour into tea, the world of tea, working for a startup building up the sales program where we would sell loose leaf tea to grocery storage restaurants, all branded package for our younger consumer. And tea wasn't really doing it for me, but I love that startup experience. And then I, you know, it, as it goes in the startup world, talk to one person who said, talk to this person. 

 

I, I ended up meeting, um, who became a co-founder, who I pitched him, my idea. He pitched me his idea. His was way better. Um, so we, we went to build that and it was a startup building technology for nonprofits. And what, uh, kind of the, the focus of my time consulting was all working with um, technology valuing some type of IP for kind of interesting tech. 

 

And so my first founding experience was this like perfect blend of all three things in my background. And so from there, once that that company was. Was bought. I built up an enterprise sales team in my time for the company that acquired us. So it was mostly focused on SMB mid-market at the time. So went real deep on building up an enterprise team. 

 

Uh, my next role, chief growth officers selling into fortune 500 kind of innovation, large complex deals. And that was the point where I started to notice. Problem not notice it. I could articulate it for the first time cuz it was the thing that had killed deals for all the sales teams that I was building in each of those different roles previously. 

 

Um, and that's what got me started on Fluint and Fluint is now the combination of the things that I had been doing in my, in my last three roles tackling that problem in sales space, which I'm happy to go deeper there. But the headline of that kind of arc is each step that I've made has been in some way, weaving together elements and things that I've learned in the last series of roles. 

 

Chet: So that's great. It sounds like you're, you know, you go to, you go somewhere, you do something, you fail a little bit, you learn a lot, you take that experience, you go be a value out of the next place and you just keep building upon that until you're, you're ready to dive into the, the full kit & caboodle. 

 

Which I think is awesome because nowadays with TikTok and how fast social media is. Everybody thinks if you don't own your own business by the age of 25 you're you're, you're failing. Right. And so it's, it just sets this really toxic tone for everybody where it's like, no, there's a lot of value to being able to go through a lot and do a lot of different stuff and see a lot of different things. 

 

I mean, I think. Five years ago. I probably thought the same way. I'm like, I work for somebody. Oh, I'm a failure. But now I look at it. I go, if I would've started a business, I would've failed. And then I would never try to work for myself ever again. Like that would be completely out of the picture. So it's better to wait until the right time instead of rushing the process, just because you're trying to cram somebody else's timeline into your dream. 

 

Nate: That's that's exactly right. It takes time for you to be able to find and articulate patterns that you've experienced. Like my first time building a B2B sales team was in 2013. That's when I first started experiencing the problem that I'm now building around in Fluint - Summer of 2022. Right. So a long time in between there and now, man, when I, when I walk into an investor meeting, for example, they're like, wow, you're able to communicate something that I see all of our portfolio companies struggling in a very non-obvious differentiated way that people, I don't typically find having that amount of clarity. 

 

That's like, well, that clarity cluster, it crystallized over like nine years, right? That's a long time to figure it out. So time is not a bad thing in figuring out how you want to take your career.  

 

Chet: Yeah, I, I agree. Don't, don't rush the process, right? Like everybody's trying to rush the process. So let's, let's talk about Fluint. 

 

Uh, tell the listeners a little bit more in depth. What is Fluint? What does it do? Who's it for? And then also a little bit more about how you've founded the company on top of that, but more importantly, like you've kind of talked about the experience that you've had up to founding the company. Tell us a little bit more about the company. 

 

What, what do we need to know about Fluint to kind of understand the company. 

 

Nate: Yeah. So if you're a founder listening to this, you probably see something that is different about your market than the way others talk about it. And so for me, thinking about B2B sales, my view is that sales reps don't close deals buyers do. Because if you look at all of the make or break moments that happen in a deal, it's not happening in a sales meeting, like on a Zoom call, it's not where our buying decision is typically made. 

 

It's after when the sales rep isn't in the room, they're not controlling the message. The buying team is talking and trying to figure out that decision and that cost sales reps deals. It is a huge pipeline killer, and it's the thing that my teams and myself selling directly, lost deals to time and time again. 

 

So what, um, Fluint does to address that is one, it helps you develop a champion inside of your deal. Somebody who you can work with to sell when you're not in the room. And two, the product thesis kind of more tactically, um, what we were proving out in building around is it comes down to your ability to guide the message through materials that you're equipping your champions with. And so what the product does is it converts how a buyer talks about their problems, their goals in a sales conversation, into the written content that you can use to frame and share your problem. So when you think about a business case that you might give to a champion to help them articulate your value, get others involved in a deal internally. 

 

Typically it's either super marketing driven templates. That Doesn't look or feel, sound like the buyer or on the flip side takes a ton of time to kind of manually write and build. So the kind of insight is, Hey look, all of these conversations with buyers, like they are giving you so many good things that can be. used to drive that content in a very buyer friendly custom way. So that's the, uh, first, first, um, piece to the platform that we've launched at Fluint. And then over time, what we're building is the buyer enablement category for B2B sales. Um, so that's the, that's kinda how it came about the problem space. And then what we're building right now.  

 

Chet: I think that's really awesome. And I remember you saying the last time that we spoke, you know, this kind of concept of like writing the premise with your buyer and then even in discovery asking the right questions, right? Like, is, is this, if, if we talked to three other leaders in the organization, would this be top of mind for them as well? 

 

What are you hearing at all-hands? What are you hearing in those board meetings? And then being able to document that. Your prospect prioritize their problems and then write that premise with them as opposed to what you said, like doing it yourself, where it's really time consuming. It doesn't look typically the way that our buyer would speak. 

 

So really taking that whole process, recapping and returning it back to them to make them more enabled, to go make that buying decision with their additional stakeholders.  

 

Nate: Exactly, and, and so what you're underscoring there is really the customer that we're building around is the complex sale, where you have multiple different people who all have to sign off on a deal. And so any type of, you know, it's not necessarily contract value. So kind of a, a quick aside, like one of the interesting things that you're doing early stages figuring out, okay, like, who are you building for? Who's the customer? And we knew, slam dunk like complex enterprise sale. A lot of people have to weigh in to your point. 

 

You're developing a lot of written collateral and content throughout the sales cycle. And one of my original kind of like hypotheses was that it was gonna be based on contract value. Like if your contract value was less than 50K you wouldn't be going through this type of sales motion. And what we're finding is that people in like HR tech are coming to us and saying, Hey, my, my deal is only like 10K. 

 

But the VP of HR has to go and get all of the other people leaders onboard. And so we're still kind of trying to figure out like where that floor, if you will, of the customer profile is, but, um, we're yeah locked in on the complex sale. That's the key customer for Fluint. And then we'll kind of figure out the, the floor of the ICP. 

 

Chet: Yeah, that's really cool. And you have a lot of room for that experimentation too, cuz cuz of the stage that you're in. Um, now I I'm, I'm curious to hear in your experience as a, as a former sales leader, I could probably make some assumptions, but I'd like to hear from you as we talk about experience over time, what specific experience or something in your background as a sales leader, do you feel gave you the best prep to make Fluint the success that it has been so far? And what specific skills would you say helped you along the way from that sales leader experience?  

 

Nate: So there are, there, there are two different sets, um, of experiences. So one. Um, one kind of time around as a sales leader, I was building up a, a business unit from scratch. 

 

So while I was thinking about selling, I was also thinking about all of the things that needed to be true about the product to make that sale happen. And so in many ways, my role as a, as a sales leader was serving as the cross functional go-to. Everything in the business unit, thinking about how do we support these customers? 

 

How do we develop a, a brand new profile marketing material for go to market? And as a founder, a lot of what you're doing is figuring out what are all of the things that I need to put in place to support revenue? Because sales aren't gonna happen very long if you don't have the supporting structures around selling. 

 

And so that was one call it, I guess, a little non-traditional experience as a sales leader. That I think ties in very directly to enabling what I'm now building at Fluint, because at the end of the day, that's what you're doing as a founder is building everything else around the revenue function so that that can scale and that can scale very effectively. 

 

Um, so, so that's number one. Um, the second thing is man, just doing the job. Not only selling, um, directly or building teams, but the combination of those experiences when you're building a product that serves that function, like when you are your customer, you learn the need so well. And so intimately. And so if I wasn't directly selling, um, alongside my team, getting deep into deal. 

 

I wouldn't have understood the complexities that now we are building the product to address. So it's, um, I think the, uh, I I've heard the, heard, it said scratch your own itch, is the phrase. And so in many ways, I would almost say like, it's like curing my own pain. You know, the migraine that I, that I had as a, as a sales leader, scratching, scratching the itch isn't strong enough, but I think you, you get where the analogy is going. 

 

Chet: Yeah, you weren't happy with the ale or Tylenol. So you went and made on aspirin. you're like, I'm gonna go try this out a little bit. Um, now what's interesting is, is I look at your background and I could be wrong here, but correct me, um, when you're a two time founder. 

 

So after you founded your first company, you then went on and worked in three different roles at three different companies before founding Fluint, correct?  

 

Nate: So there were so Network for Good bought our company. And so that's where I built up the enterprise team. Then I went to a group called GAN global accelerator network where I was the chief growth officer. 

 

So venture fund built startup accelerators around the world, sold into innovation teams. And then I founded Fluint. So two roles, um, right before jumping into Fluint.  

 

Chet: Gotcha. And so what's kind of interesting is you founded this, this company and then you somewhat had an acquisition and then decided to stay on to build and then go from there. But didn't immediately jump into founding another company, which I think is kind of cool. Mm-hmm was that, was that a calculated decision to do a couple different things before jumping into another thing? Or, or was it more that, like at that point you just didn't really have that, that pain yet that you needed to cure, as you say, that Fluint, that Fluint is done. 

 

Nate: Yeah. You know, I, I don't always know exactly what the route is gonna be before I start heading down it. So for example, when Network for Good, um, bought the first startup, the, the dirty little secret about startup acquisitions is most times there's not a very specific role that's mapped out and defined for the founders. 

 

It's kind of like yeah, we'll just figure out a place like you guys are smart people, you know how to create value in some way. So we'll just bring everything in the business and then we'll kind of shake out what the role looks like. So didn't really know what that move was gonna look like. After, in most times you are typically owing or you, you owe some period of time, um, inside of that company that acquires you cuz they wanna keep the talent around. 

 

And so toward the end of my time, I was getting a little antsy, like wanting to get back to the earlier stages of business building. I didn't know what that was gonna be. So I jumped over to GAN and GAN is like a big playground for startups investments, company building, working with the top innovation teams around the world. I was like, I don't know what it is next, but this is like a big playground. I get to do everything and anything revenue related to drive the company. This feels like I'm gonna stumble into something. And so I made the move and then sure enough, a little over two years later, I figured out, okay, it's Fluint. 

 

Chet: That's awesome. And I, I totally know what you mean, cuz I've seen that happen where I worked at a company that acquired a company and the co-founders came on board as like certain C level roles, but their decisions then ended up always being superseded by the CEO and the board at our company. And you could tell, they were kinda like, oh, okay, well, like what am I doing here then? 

 

I thought it was gonna be like an operating partner. And then they went on and ended up just doing something different after that and found the other company. But I totally get that like that. That's like you say, like that's the thing, people don't really talk. A lot when you get acquired is just like, if you stay on, like, what does that transition period and that future state look like if you stay on. 

 

Nate: Yeah, we, uh, we inherited the nickname, the pirates, because people would be like, those guys just float around. They kind of get their hands into some stuff. Some of it works and there's some treasure at the end of it. They create cool things. They break these other things. So it was just kind of like the moniker that, uh, my co-founder and I were, I don't know, given or labeled with, uh, throughout that, that transition season. 

 

Chet: That's a, that's a pretty awesome nickname. I like it. The pirates . Um, so as, as a two time founder, let's talk about your first time founding a company. What was one of the biggest challenges that you had that you learned the most from when you co when you co-founded your first company that helped you get that leg up on founding Fluint. 

 

What was the biggest lesson you took away from your first time founding a company?  

 

Nate: So it's very easy to hit a ceiling on growth and a lot of startup founders like to talk about there's this, um, very famous quote from you. You could fact check me. I believe it's Paul Graham saying, do things that don't scale. 

 

You have to do things that don't scale. That's a good thing. Prove it, validate it, and you take that to heart. But the more you do that, and the more you don't build process in place, you can very quickly get yourself to a point where you've achieved enough growth. That like, you know, things are looking up, but you can't break past that because you don't have the structure that's in place. 

 

And putting structure in place takes a long time that doesn't always match up. to The expectation of a venture backed company. And so we took a lot of, a lot of the company very far on Google Sheets, realizing, oh, crap, this is great for the first like hundred customers, but to get from a 100 to 500 Google Sheets, isn't gonna cut it. 

 

And it's a very heart wrenching experience of trying to unwind a lot of that, um, in the first place. And so from day one, what I would encourage a founder to do is yes, do things that don't scale to prove the concept, but don't scale beyond that anymore that you have to, because you will quickly be boxing yourself in and putting a ceiling on your own growth. 

 

Chet: Yeah. And even to this day, it blows me away. How many growth stage series A, series B, series C companies still leverage the Google Sheets as much as they do. It's it's, it's addictive. It's a bandaid that you never wanna pull off. You just wanna keep, you know, you're a five year old with a boo boo, and you just wanna keep putting a new Spider-Man or Superman bandaid on because they look cool. 

 

Even after the wound heals a little bit. It's it's addictive. I get it. It's, it's tough to finally commit and say, we're gonna solve the problem the right way, the scalable way because it, you get away with it and it works a little bit. It's just obviously not the most efficient.  

 

Nate: Yeah. I mean, um, so I'm, I'm non-technical but I will, I'll give you a more technical example of how I'm applying that this time around on the second journey is when looking at the product foundation inside of Fluint, the architecture that we are building around is all microservices driven, which means it's very modular. 

 

Um, it is very easy to scale up and scale down certain pieces of the product. And in the early days, like there's some DevOps overhead that we're paying for, right. We are making a very explicit choice to incur a little bit of that overhead for just the ability to scale. Once we hit that point where we need to go and go fast, we can, it's taking longer, no doubt than a, just a quick and dirty build. 

 

Right now up front. And so it's one way where I'm, I'm having to very strategically evaluate the trade off. So doing things that aren't as scalable versus building the infrastructure and kind of the, the structure in place upfront.  

 

Chet: Yeah. But it sounds like, at least you're you're, you know, even though you, like you said, I'm, I'm not very technical. 

 

Your your head is still in the right space. And I think that's, what's most important. You recognize the problem and you're trying to avoid it. A lot of people just go, ah, you know, it works, who cares? Let's focus our effort on other things. Exactly. Then three months down the road, the snowball, you, you have a snowball of, of errors and bad data. 

 

Nate: You got it. And it's a, it's, that's just one microcosm of what a founder is gonna come up time and time again is you have to figure out how by analogy, you take principles and apply them to new scenarios. So what we are building now is completely different from my first time around, but I've learned some lessons like this whole manual kind of build the tension that you have to sort through. 

 

And I'm applying that in a new way because I'm driving certain questions. When I am talking with, for example, our chief architect and saying like, what are the trade offs here? I'm thinking about accounting, Google Sheets, how we were running billing, like those types of bandaids in a totally different scenario. And then by analogy, making decisions through that learning my second time around.  

 

Chet: That's really, that's really insightful. I like that. Um, I wanted to move on to kind of the funding part of the conversation. Cause that's something that founders are always interested in. Right. What does your investor pitch look like? 

 

How did you raise funding? Right. Whatever that might be. But specifically the question I have prepared for you is I know that you've, uh, you've raised your friends and family round, which is also, you have kind of a unique friends and family round that we can dig into, which I think is really cool. And plays off that conversational piece about experience. Um, but you're also going through your pre-seed funding round right now. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about that friends and family round, and then what you're currently up to in your, in your pre-seed and what that's looking like, and then share any, any tips, tricks, or challenges that you're noticing as you're going through that. 

 

Nate: Yeah. So I, I mentioned that one of the reasons why I went to GAN was it's this big startup playground. And so I actually started building Fluint inside of GAN, um, and working with pat who's, the CEO at GAN to build it up to a point where there was, we proved the concept and we wanted to make it into a company. 

 

And so we spun it. Um, of GSN and the first capital first 250K into the business was from GAN. And so that's where, um, the very first, first capital to start building, keep going with Fluint came from. And now what I'm working on is more of a formal pre-seed round where we have other outside, um, VCs and investors who I'm talking with some about halfway through that race, um, at the time of this recording and yeah, happy to go into maybe how things that I'm learning, how I'm, how I'm pitching, what would be maybe kind of an interesting piece to that you think to go into?  

 

Chet: Yeah, I think based off of a lot of the knowledge that's been shared, um, we kind of understand a lot of the challenges. So maybe if you could talk a little bit about like, how you're presenting your story and your, your pitch deck, like, what does your pitch look like? I mean, how does it evolve over time? Like give us your two minute rundown of, of how you're pitching Fluint to your pre-seed investors.  

 

Nate: Yeah. So what's interesting about what we're building in is it's a crowded space, right? It's not like sales teams have a shortage of tools to go buy So as, as opposed to, you know, like a web three or a crypto play where it's really hot, people are moving really fast. 

 

We are entering into and beginning to change up a very crowded market. And that is the first thing that I, I bring up because it's what the investor is thinking about. As soon as we start talking, they're like, Hey, you're a little crazy. You're building in a very crowded space. And so I raise that first at the very front of the pitch and what I talk about is not just the product that we're building, but the vision for defining a new category buyer enablement and what makes it different from everything else that's out there. Which is that we are, we have a fundamentally different view is that buyers close deals and buyers are the users of the platform. And that is what drives the outcome and the product success for the seller is the customer, but we have two types of users. 

 

And what that teased me up into then is to one address the objection that otherwise will drown out everything else that I say. And two set up the big vision, because when you are talking to VC different from an angel or anybody else, and the question on their mind is like, is this going to be a 10X like good company? 

 

Or is this a 100X. Like portfolio defining bet? Because they're trying to return far and away over and above everything that they've raised for their own fund with a single bet. That's the premise of VC. And if you can't show very specifically a path to doing that with the company, it's not gonna land. 

 

And that was the, that was the mistake that I made early on and had to figure out is like, oh, just talking about why we're gonna be a healthy thriving company isn't enough. Like that's not, that's not how the economics of a venture portfolio works. So we talk about that. Um, and then from there, a lot of, at this stage, what people are, are trying to figure out is, is this a big enough problem that can define a large enough opportunity to meet my economic goal of a venture fund? 

 

And are you the right person to do it? And so usually from that, it opens up kind of a good series of conversations where, you know, different people invest off of different thesis. So I try within the first minute of the conversation to have all of that set up so that then I can help address some of the questions around like, are you the guy, you know, to do this? Cuz it, it, it really is at this stage of raising capital market opportunity and then the person to take advantage of it.  

 

Chet: I'd love to hear on that piece of conversation. How much of your, how much of you being in a room with investors is more conversational, back and forth. Almost like a podcast, right? Like information, education and insight. 

 

And awareness generating as opposed to really a pitch like a sales pitch. Like what would you say percent is you running it versus just having a conversation and hammering out some interesting perspectives and details? Like how much room do you actually get to shine outside of your deck in your narration? 

 

Nate: Yeah. So I, so I was looking at, at, uh, my pipeline, um, yesterday I've had 42 conversations over the last 60 days with VC funds and not once have I used a deck and not once, has it been a pitch. It's always been conversational and it's better that way. If you are bringing up a deck paging through and monotone or monologue style, um, I would say you are losing a lot of opportunities and you're losing a lot of interest. 

 

Chet: How do you have that conversation structured? Like to what extent do you have it structured? Do you, at this point, just have your outline in your head and your, I mean, we've walked through discovery calls on how you handle those. So I have no doubt in my mind that off the top, you're ready to go, but I'm just interested in like, how do you organize that in your brain as you walk into those conversations without any, any of that collateral? 

 

Nate: Yeah. So early in the conversation I'll ask and I'll say, Hey, um, I imagine you meet with a lot of different founders. Even founders who fit inside of your thesis, you know, there are ones that you do and don't fund. And so I'm, I'm curious to know, like, what are the things you like to dig into a founder up front to figure out if this would be an interesting conversation for you. 

 

And then I'll listen and try to understand where they're coming from. Some people are like, Hey, I wanna start with your origin story. Others, like, let's jump into the problem. Like, why is this the thing? And then I just listen first to try to figure out what is it that they wanna jump to and cut to first. 

 

And if I can address that number one, just upfront in the first minute of conversation, then it's gonna make the rest of the conversation um, more engaging. They'll be more interested in listening because I've already hit that thing that they're walking into the conversation with, you know, top of mind. And in that sense, it's a little, it's a little different from the typical like discovery call in a sales, you know, environment. But it's a discovery question, nonetheless.  

 

Chet: Yeah, it allows for a lot more room for improv too. So you, you might, after that you found this company and you're successful and you exit, you might have a career in improv. If you're interested. SNL just lost a bunch of people, man. You you're good to go. Yep. I, I love that though. 

 

Being able to think that quick though, and really. No BS, get to the point and like, Hey, where are we gonna add value? Right. I could sit here all day and do every water cooler pitch I could reinvent after every conversation, but you know, let's not waste any time. Let's hear it first and foremost, you probably have heard a ton of these conversations. 

 

What's gonna matter most to you? What's gonna be most important? What, what are you gonna wanna address to understand where my value is to you as an investor?  

 

Nate: Exactly. And then I'll, I'll add one more subnote to that point is a lot of the, so I mentioned kind of this group of about 40 calls that I've done. 

 

Um, a lot of those aren't for this round I'm meeting with VCs for future rounds. And the thing about investing is especially early stage. There's not much track record on the company. And so that earlier you can begin putting together a relationship ahead of future rounds the more helpful and effective it is for VC. 

 

So in some of those conversations where I know they focus on seed or series A, I'll start the conversation by saying, Hey, look, we're early for you. So I don't think we fit your portfolio today. But what I am interested in doing is one, getting your take on a couple things and it's like, look, these people are smart. 

 

I get so much free advice from just having conversations to help me out now. And they get the benefit of beginning to watch our trajectory over the long term. So if, if that's the case with a conversation, just state that up front. And that also puts you in a far more conversational perspective or dynamic throughout the call. 

 

Chet: Hey, you're planting those seeds. You're building those relationships for long term. That's smart. Um, in closing Nate, if people want to engage with you or engage with Fluint, obviously we'll put some contact information, uh, for LinkedIn and the website and the show notes below. We'll let people know where you're at and where they can best connect with you or Fluint if they're interested. 

 

Nate: Yeah. So definitely LinkedIn, um, that's place number one. And then on Fluint, especially if you are a founder building where you're selling B2B or selling complex, B2B check out Fluint.io/blog. And I write long form articles on, um, how to land more deals.  

 

Chet: Awesome. We appreciate it, Nate. Thank you so much. And to all the listeners of the founder's formula podcast, if you're interested in engaging with the podcast or our sponsor Hatchet Ventures, any further, um, click the show notes below, engage with us on LinkedIn. 

 

Um, and we'll be sure to receive your feedback and connect with you at a cadence that's relevant to both of us until next time we'll catch you all later. Thanks Nate! 

 

Thanks, Chet.