#DreamitLive

Urbantech Managing Director Andrew Ackerman speaks with CREtech CEO Michael Beckerman about the latest trends in innovation in the commercial real estate industry. Michael Beckerman runs CREtech, the largest event, data and content platform in the commercial real estate tech sector. This position gives him an unparalleled vantage point on emerging tech trends, which technologies are having the biggest impact, and how leading organizations are adapting their companies to integrate technology.

In this episode: 7:50 How are corporates finding startups and how should founders get in touch with corporates to pitch their products14:50 How to find the right person in the organization to pitch to19:20 What are some of the biggest marketing mistakes that startups make? 25:30 The first thing you should do when pitching a new customer31:00 Should you pay to speak at events and conferences?31:00 Michael's thoughts on content marketing35:00 Understanding an organization's pain points and inefficiencies 46:30 How to convince VCs to invest in your startup? 50:00 What are some tactics for making the most of conferences?

Ron Gula, president of Gula Tech Ventures, joins Steve Barsh to talk about the 5 most common mistakes cyber entrepreneurs make and how to avoid them. Ron was co-founder and CEO of Tenable where he grew revenue to $100m, customers to 20k, and raised $300m in venture capital. He has invested in dozens of cyber start-ups and supported multiple cyber funds. In this podcast, they discuss the top mistakes Ron and many other prominent cyber investors see cyber startups making and what these startups need to focus on to not only get investment but to build a market-dominating company.

Here's what they cover in this episode:

What are some investments you’ve made or exits you’ve had?

About how many cyber startups reach out to you each week or month?

What does you Gula Five Slide Pitch Deck look like?

Does the best tech always win?

How do you want to hear a cyber startup talk about competition (or lack thereof)?

How important do you feel it is that a startup addressed a “top 10” CISO/CSO problem?

Let’s talk about honesty and credibility of a startup or founder.

What are some examples that have caused you to back away from a deal?

How important is exceptional sales and marketing talent in a cyber startup? What do you look for?

Are most of the companies that are pitching to you B2B?

Final 2 things cyber entrepreneurs must not do wrong

Learn more about Dreamit Securetech, a growth-focused program for cybersecurity, physical security, compliance, and anti-fraud startups: www.dreamit.com/securetech

Dreamit’s Steve Barsh speaks with Gil Beyda, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures and Founder and Managing Partner at Genacast Ventures. Steve and Gil dive into why pre-IPO unicorn startups are failing and post IPO valuations are dropping. In addition, based on new market realities, they explore important advice for earlier-stage startup founders on fundraising strategy, valuation, and the key metrics they should pay close attention to.

Dreamit Healthtech Managing Director Adam Dakin speaks with Graftworx founder and CEO David Kuraguntla about his startup’s path to commercialization. Graftworx is a healthtech startup innovating the way remote patient monitoring is done, particularly for those with chronic conditions. By giving clinicians more data on patients, doctors can spot problems earlier and improve patient care.

This episode covers…

How to build your product with the patient journey in mind

Innovative ways to speed up the clinical trial process

How to monetize data

Fundraising tips for medical device and health tech startups

Learn more about Dreamit Healthtech, a growth-focused program for post-revenue healthcare startups: https://www.dreamit.com/ (https://www.dreamit.com/)

Powerful brands don't happen by accident. They are the result of deliberate company action most startups are not aware of. Startups often have the vision of being the next Uber, Airbnb, Nike, Apple, Harley Davidson, or the NFL -- powerful brands that have strong customer loyalty. Further, using or being part of the brand becomes part of a customer's social status. In this episode of #DreamitLive, we speak with Dr. Americus Reed II, a leading marketing professor and practitioner at The Wharton School. Americus focuses on studying, building, and nurturing some of the most powerful brands in the world.

Table of Contents: 6:15 What is brand identity?

7:00 What are some examples of brand identity?

9:00 Defending a brand you identify with

11:20 Branding is not by chance. Branding is a strategy.

13:00 How do you build a strong brand?

16:00 How you can get consumers to pay a higher price for two identical products with a strong brand

17:30 Branding is not rational

19:00 What are the deliberate actions your company can take to build a brand?

23:00 How to understand your customers

27:00 Using social listening to understand customers in their natural environment

29:00 Elon Musk and the power of vision in brand building

30:45 Peloton’s Experience Building Brand

46:00 How to build a brand for a B2B startup?

51:00 Can you fake it till you make it when you build a brand?

52:30 Can you pivot or iterate on your brand?

52:30 Will Peloton’s controversial ad help or hurt it in the long run?

55:00 How to allocate your marketing resources for building a brand?

More info:

https://www.dreamit.com/eventscalendar/2020/1/23/how-to-build-a-brand-that-drives-loyalty-in-2020 (https://www.dreamit.com/eventscalendar/2020/1/23/how-to-build-a-brand-that-drives-loyalty-in-2020)

In the last 3 years, Brex has raised nearly $600 million in venture funding. In this #DreamitLive episode, Michael B. Tannenbaum, CFO and CBO of Brex, and Steve Barsh discuss Michael’s experiences at Brex in raising successive large venture rounds while executing and growing a company quickly. Michael also speaks about his experiences growing SoFi, another fintech unicorn where he was an early executive. We discuss Michael’s top 3 lessons learned and his biggest "Wow, I wish someone had told me that beforehand!" thoughts.

In this episode (approximate time stamps):

2:00—What is Brex and how did it get started?

15:00:00— What are the KPIs that Brex looks at to measure success?

16:30:00—How much has Brex raised in debt and equity funding?

17:00:00—What does it mean to raise debt capital (versus equity capital)?

19:00:00—How does the team come together to raise funding rounds?

24:00:00—How does the collapse of WeWork affect the valuations of other unicorns?

26:30:00—When does it make sense to raise debt capital?

35:00:00—Setting valuation with potential investors

38:50:00—How do you think about stock options? How to talk to investors about granting stock options?

41:00:00—What are the top 3 lessons learned from raising capital for SoFi or Brex

44:00:00—The importance of making decisions and sticking to them

47:00:00—What do you look for in a lead investor?

50:00:00—Why it's difficult to bootstrap a fintech company

51:20:00—Do you detail your 3 to 5 year financials? How much do VCs analyze these numbers?

55:00:00—Good sources of venture debt

Learn more about Dreamit Ventures here: https://www.dreamit.com/

Urbantech Managing Director Andrew Ackerman (@andrewackerman) speaks with Camber Creek General Partner Jeffrey Berman (@Camber_Creek) about all things real estate tech.

Berman is a bona fide member of the proptech old guard, investing actively in real estate startups well before it became (even remotely) hot with some of the most well-known startups that are reshaping the real estate industry in his portfolio. Berman has a bird’s eye view into what forces are changing the industry and what technology is having the biggest impact for brokerages, developers, CRE firms, contractors, and other members of the built world ecosystem.

This episode covers the following topics:

What does a company need to prove to gain an investment in real estate tech?

Why founders should not necessarily celebrate after successfully raising capital

What differentiates a traditional business from a venture-backable business?

Does Camber Creek invest in founders without real estate experience?

How to think about corporate venture funds

How does the overall real estate market affect real estate tech venture market?

Do certain startups scale in a non-linear way? What does this mean for fundraising?

Where does Camber Creek set the bar on proof points for traction/revenue when considering an investment?

Laura Huang (@LauraHuangLA) is a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage. Laura teaches that success is about gaining an edge: that elusive quality that gives you an upper hand and attracts attention and support. For some, this comes naturally. For everyone else, Huang provides a framework for creating it. In startups, that edge becomes critical in the fundraising process. For all the talk about due diligence, digging into the financials, and “de-risking” investments, investors often make investment decisions based on “gut feel” and certain biases. For founders, the question is how can you gain an edge by knowing these biases and using them to your advantage.

During this #DreamitLive discussion, Huang draws from her award-winning research on entrepreneurial intuition, persuasion, and implicit decision-making to impart lessons that founders can use.Topics covered in this episode (in order in which they appear in the episode): Differences between implicit versus explicit bias in fundraising

Why investors make “gut decisions” when investing in startups

Why is it that both male AND female investors tend to discriminate against female founders?

Investors claim to care about founders’ “passion”? What does that even mean?

How to position your professional failures to your advantage and guide to Specific biases versus universal biases

How to read the room to gauge the biases in the room?

Does it help to have founder diversity on the team when pitching?

How do introverts present their startup to VCs?

Finding congruence with your potential investors

Traction and seed funding seems like a chicken or egg problem. How should founders think about this?

Laura Huang is an associate professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit. Prior to joining HBS, she was an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Huang’s research examines early-stage entrepreneurship, and the role of interpersonal relationships and implicit factors in the investment decisions of financiers such as angel investors and VCs. Her work studies the subtle signals and cues that often impact the behavioral perceptions of investors, which can lead to implicit bias in the investing process. Her research has been published in several academic journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has also been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature. She has won a number of awards for her research and was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets and Quants. Learn more: https://laurahuang.net/ (https://laurahuang.net/)