Key start-up lessons from a Silicon Valley Investor, Kal Deutsch: Silicon Valley In Your Pocket

This is our learning series on 'Perfect Pitch Show' where Brandon Burns, Head of Community - Runway HQ, interviews small business founders / entrepreneurs and people making a difference about the secret sauce of their successful start-up journey.

In this article, we break down the simple and timeless lessons from our interview with Kal Deutsch , Co-founder at Silicon Valley In Your Pocket (SVIYP) Accelerator; Partner at Batchery Incubator. Kal is an international startup lecturer and coach. He has worked with entrepreneurs at global incubators and accelerators across Europe, Asia & Latin America. He also serves on the screening, diligence and pitch event committees for the Berkeley Angel Network, an angel investment group for UC Berkeley alumni. With a background in finance, strategy and product management, Kal has held a number of executive positions at companies ranging from Fortune 100 companies to early stage startup companies, including Visa, Wells Fargo, and Price Waterhouse. Startups include real estate tech companies Homegain, EscapeHomes, and TotalMove. Kal holds an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a bachelor's degree in Management Science from UC San Diego

During our interview, Kal shares a few intriguing personal stories from his start-up experiences

We believe these discussion topics will help start-ups in regional Victoria with tips & tricks in setting up small businesses. Our breakdown of Kal's insights begins with the introduction of his business.

Vision of Silicon valley in your pocket (SVIYP)

More than 50% of Silicon Valley founders who generate the best & brightest ideas are outside of US, says Kal. He continues, the start-up SVIYP is an infinitely scalable accelerator platform available to any entrepreneur anywhere in the world. The SVIYP offering includes weekly group coaching calls with experienced investors and founders, on-demand classes that includes videos, templates, tools, documents, calculators, go-to-market strategies and more that successful start-ups have used to become viable. All these nicely sets up the start-up founder to impress the investors.

High demand for coaching

Kal opines that there is a surge in demand for start-ups to opt for coaching. The health of the start-up, Kal uses the word 'Investability' is a strong factor which SVIYP tries to improve for all early stage start-ups through an iterative process and methodology. In the first year, Kal says, SVIYP reached out to individual start-up founders (circa 80 of them signed-up) who went through a rigorous programme. With high demand through the successful first year, SVIYP now focuses on B2B working with the seed stage firms, incubators and accelerators who have accepted more than 1500 applicants. Kal suggests there are two distinct advantages of the program viz.seed stage investors de-risk their portfolio and a solution to ever increasing demand which the Brick & Mortar based training programmes cannot keep up with.

What's in it for investors Vs What's in it for the start-up founders

One stand-out achievement when it comes to transforming the start-ups, Kal talks about the 'Investor's Mindset' and Return on Investment (ROI). He says many start-ups fail to articulate the ROI and hence Kal & his team spent a lot of time with these companies to build a sales pipeline and proving to investors that the start-ups have the velocity and traction to move the business ahead. The secret sauce for shifting the dial from an 'investor choosing a start-up' to 'start-up cherry picking an investor' Kal says is to have the investor's mindset to think about ho...