The AFT podcast: At the Forefront of Transactions | Payments | Fintech | Pay-tech | Banking

Val Gui, VP of Automotive Lending at Upstart and Brittany Yoon, Principal at NFX talk about investor outreach, company valuation and early fundraising from two different perspectives - Val from the founder perspective, Brittany from the investor perspective. See how much overlap there is!

Val's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentingui/

Brittany's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanyyoon/

NFX: https://www.nfx.com/

Alyson DeNardo, partner at Mac Venture Capital, founder and CEO of Alden and partner at M Ventures talks about first time chats with investors, what kind of mistakes does she see founders making the most and what you, as a founder should pay attention to prior to the meeting.

Alyson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alysondenardo/

Mac Venture Capital: http://macventurecapital.com/

Alden: https://www.alden.work/

M Ventures: https://m.ventures/

Alyson's Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlysonDenardo

Nick Cobb, Senior Software Engineering manager at Aurora, active angel investor and an advisor to multiple startups talks about operators as angel investors and why most operators join syndicates/funds rather than investing by themselves. 

Nick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loyaltyarm/

Nick's book recommendation: Angel, by Jason Calacanis.

Aurora: https://aurora.tech/

Nick's Twitter: https://twitter.com/loyaltyarm?lang=en

Nick's blog: http://cobbservations.com/

Ashish Bhatia, software engineer, active angel investor and an advisory board member of 5 different startups talks about the journey of the first time founders. In this episode we've discussed what are the major mistakes that founders tend to make, what kind of advice they can expect from mentors like Ashish and how to get in front of investors.

Ashish's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashish-b/

More about Ashish: https://ashishb.net/about/

Tool that can really simplify cap table management and fundraising in general: https://capbase.com/

Tool to help you set up your legal structure: https://www.jumpdocs.com/

Joel Ifill, Founder and CEO at DASH Systems talks about their unique technology, how they manage to protect it without shoving NDAs in everyone's face and how they managed to prove such a complicated concept. For everyone in deep tech - this is an episode for you.

Joel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-ifill-3149a06b/

DASH Systems: http://www.dash.aero/

DASH Twitter: https://twitter.com/DASHSystems

Jonathan Wasserstrum, CEO and Co-Founder at SquareFoot and lead of a syndicate and a rolling fund talks about running a rolling fund, how it is different from a regular VC or a syndicate and also what difference does it make for the founder which entity invests in them. We also discussed Jonathan's own fundraising experience and where he believes the PropTech industry is headed.

Jonathan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-wasserstrum-8a77533/

SquareFoot: https://www.squarefoot.com/

Link to Jonathan's rolling fund: https://angel.co/v/back/jonathan-wasserstrum

Jonathan's syndicate: https://angel.co/jonathan-wasserstrum/syndicate

Zach Aarons, Co-Founder and Partner at MetaProp.vc talks about PropTech on Fundraising Radio: https://www.fundraisingradio.com/Zach-Aarons/

Alessandro Gnoli, Engineering Manager at Google talks about getting talent from top firms to get in your startups. In this episode we spoke about raising money from top tier employees of large corporations, what are the pros and cons and how a startup founder can catch their attention.

Alessandro's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandrognoli/

Another episode from this series: https://www.fundraisingradio.com/Nick-Miceli/

Simon Gong, Senior Manager, Capacity Engineering & Analysis at Facebook talks about startup founders being the first time team managers. We spoke about the major problems that they face as team managers, how they can prepare themselves for what's coming up and how to solve some of the issues that appear on your manager's path.

Simon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simongong/

Book on being the first time manager. 

Nick Miceli, Senior Tech Lead/Engineering Manager at Google talks about assembling the right team, choosing to go remote or hiring within your city, going through a dev-shop or contractors and other choices that the startup founder has to make while building the product. We also spoke about the major problems team managers face and how to deal with them.

Nick's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-miceli-59078a85/

Interesting book on team management: Leaders Eat Last

Shruti Gandhi, General Partner and Founding Engineer at Array Ventures talks about how she managed to get into the VC space and what are the most valuable skills needed to do so. We also discussed investing in Deep tech and the big problems that it's solving and how Shruti approaches it.

Shruti's SubStack: ShrutiGandhi.substack.com

Shruti's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shrutigandhi/

Array Ventures: https://www.array.vc/#/

How Shruti broke into the VC field: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6739646432044711936/

Extremely detailed book on becoming a VC from the ground up: https://docsend.com/view/dvufhb27r5bzrpym