Seed to Exit
Welcome to Seed to Exit, the ultimate podcast all about startups, scaling, and venture capital. Your host is Riece Keck: Startup veteran and recruitment entrepreneur.
Join us as we dive into the journeys of startup founders and venture capitalists who share their insights, successes, and lessons learned from seed stage to successful exit.
Each episode, we bring you candid conversations with startup founders, executives, and investors. Whether you're looking for inspiration, actionable advice, or a deeper understanding of the startup ecosystem, Seed to Exit offers invaluable knowledge and real-world experiences to help you on your entrepreneurial journey.
Tune in to Seed to Exit and get ready to be inspired, educated, and connected with the exciting and ever-changing world of startups and venture capital.
Seed to Exit
Luke Buchanan, Co-Founder and CEO of Redi Health | Revolutionizing Patient Management | Building a Tech Company and Navigating Entrepreneurial Challenges
Join us on Seed to Exit as we unravel the inspiring journey of Luke Buchanan, the CEO and co-founder of Redi Health. We explore how Luke and his team of first-time founders are revolutionizing patient management for chronic conditions through state-of-the-art digital solutions. Discover how they identified a critical gap in the healthcare industry and harnessed the power of software to bridge it, with a remarkable focus on grit and empathy.
In this episode, we delve into the strategic intricacies of building a robust tech company from the ground up. Luke shares the critical steps of assembling a strong team and crafting a compelling go-to-market strategy. Learn about the transition from targeting pharmaceutical organizations to fostering independent patient networks and how their outbound sales approach cultivated valuable inbound interest. Insight into innovative pricing strategies reveals how aligning patient needs with customer goals can not only resolve conflicts but also sustain value without resorting to discounts.
The journey goes beyond the boardroom as Luke opens up about the emotional highs and lows of being a first-time entrepreneur. We examine the powerful dynamic between startup founders and investors, emphasizing the importance of transparent communication and mutual support, reminiscent of a marriage. Hear Luke's reflections on maintaining integrity and collaboration in investor relationships, the invaluable insights gained from board members, and the relentless drive that fuels the unpredictable, yet profoundly rewarding, rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.
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But the initial idea for Ready was it didn't have distribution. What it was is just a product, and the idea was if you build it, they will come. If you build a really good product, then people are just gonna somehow figure out about it and they're gonna adopt it.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, thanks for listening to Seed to Exit, and today I'm joined by Luke Buchanan, co-founder and CEO of Ready Health. Ready Health is a platform revolutionizing how patients manage chronic conditions and access life-changing pharmaceutical products. In this episode, we're going to talk a little bit more about Luke's journey from identifying gaps in healthcare to building a startup in one of the most highly regulated industries out there. We'll talk a little bit more about he and his co-founder brought Ready Health to life, some of the lessons that they learned from navigating compliance and venture capital, and why Luke thinks that hiring for grit and empathy is one of the key to their successes. So, whether you're a founder or you're just curious about healthcare and innovation, I think that you will really enjoy this episode, so let's dive in.
Speaker 3:You're listening to the Seed to Exit podcast with your host, rhys Keck. Here you'll learn from startup executives, founders, investors and industry experts. You'll learn from the best about building amazing products, scaling companies, raising capital, hiring the right people and more. Subscribe and listen in for new episodes and enjoy the show.
Speaker 2:Luke, welcome onto the show. Glad to have you. Thanks, rhys, good to be here, cool. So I'm excited to chat with you today. You've had some really cool progress over the last couple of years with Ready Health and want to dive into that, learn a little bit more about how the company came to be, the progress you've had and what things look like for you going forward. So I'm just curious, given the previous experience you'd had prior to founding Ready you're a first-time founder what led you to start the company and what was the inspiration behind it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so origin story is something that I always like to touch on, and Ready has four founders actually, which is also a little bit atypical, but all of us are first-time founders.
Speaker 1:All of us come from prior startups, though, and we were early enough to kind of go on some of the ride of going from early stage into later stage and even into acquisition.
Speaker 1:So I personally came from a company called Cover my Meds, which is a health tech startup in Columbus Ohio that's where Ready is located as well and really cut my teeth in the industry and in high growth venture backed startup, and I mean, it's as simple as you kind of get a taste for it when you see it, and I knew that when I was there, I wanted to leave and do something on my own, but I didn't just want to do that, I wanted to solve a real problem, and luckily, in health care, there's no shortage of problems that you can go out and solve, and so, throughout my time there and just getting a lot of exposure to the industry, being around folks who were in different areas of the industry, it became really clear that patients didn't really have as much stock put in them as they should in relation to taking control of their own health, and I wanted to rethink that and so, putting pen to paper on a couple of different ideas and kind of how we do that, we sort of saw that there was a niche that was not yet layered in with software, it was not yet enabled by technology that's known as patient support programs offered by pharmaceutical manufacturers, and nobody was solving this problem.
Speaker 1:Nobody was just injecting software in the way it had been done in other industries. We saw the opportunity to do that and then, in 2021, we went out to do that.
Speaker 2:So when you say we with your three other co-founders, I'm just curious how did you two meet Friends, Coworkers?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you four rather.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jamin and I Jamin Gandhi, who's our CTO co-founder and CTO we had met just through the ecosystem in Columbus for startups. So it's a thriving ecosystem here in which, particularly in health technology and healthcare in general, there is a lot of interest in companies innovating in that space. So we just met through some of the local events that had taken place. It became very clear that we both had an interest in not only entrepreneurship but also in solving healthcare problems in particular.
Speaker 1:So I can actually remember it specifically when the idea of Ready was very, very young, I had kind of recited it to Jamin while we were just kind of having blanket conversation over a drink and several weeks later he came back, having iterated on it and had just kind of blown it out to be much better. That's atypical in such a niche space like pharma, patient support services right, or patient engagement and I was immediately like this is probably one of the smartest guys that I know, so I need to do this with him. And then Nate Rehm, our chief revenue officer, kyle Grimsland, our chief strategy officer I worked with them at Cover my Meds and after leaving to start Ready, they had a lot of interest as well in coming along to do what we wanted to do, which was serve patients. So it was a no-brainer, and so all of us were the first four at the company. We founded it and have grown it ever since.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about the problem that you're solving, I know you said you know digital patient support, but what does that mean in practice and what specifically is the problem that's being solved?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you are written a high cost prescription today from your healthcare provider hopefully you're not, but you know over 90 million Americans are today. When I say high cost, I mean 500 to $8,000 a month or even more. Those types of products generally there's only one for the disease state or the therapeutic area and they're so high cost. Obviously the hurdles to get on a product like that, regardless of whether you have commercial insurance or whether you're on Medicare or Medicaid, the hurdles are different. They're bigger. There's more that needs to be done in order to get on a product like that and even if your insurance decides they're going to cover it, you are still probably responsible for a very large amount of dollars, just as a percentage of something that costs that much.
Speaker 1:So the manufacturers of those medications they stand up PSP patient support programs. It's very niche, they can't really advertise it broadly. They need several layers of consent to even reach out to you to tell you about it. So patients don't know about it but almost everybody's eligible for it and it's these really robust centers of support that help patients start and stay on the high-cost therapy totally free to them, and our goal is just to get as many patients exposed to that, enrolled in it and taking advantage of it in a convenient way long-term.
Speaker 1:So the problem is this great support exists, but only 20% of eligible patients ever really have an opportunity to get it. So we just want to take that 20 and get it as high as possible. We also want to make the long-term engagement more convenient for patients, and the way that we do that is with the Ready platform. So it's text, email, web app, omni-channel in which a patient can engage with Ready. But essentially you're written a prescription and we then get Ready in your hands and you then have the opportunity to engage with the support because we're bringing it to you proactively, whereas previously the healthcare provider would have to kick off this arduous, antiquated process of getting you enrolled. Ready just allows the patient to do it themselves.
Speaker 2:So who are you selling into then? Are you selling to the provider, who then provides it to the patient? Does it go through employers?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we actually sell to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and we partner with various stakeholders in the healthcare space so pharmacies, ehrs, foundation, groups that support patients in certain therapeutic areas to be able to identify patients that really could use the support and get it into their hands. So our number one goal is that we do not actually create any sort of new process for the healthcare provider. In fact, we want to eliminate them having to do this altogether, or at least make it much easier for them by identifying the patient, going directly to them and allowing the pharmaceutical manufacturer, for the first time ever, compliantly get in touch with the patient in a more direct way.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. So so Jamin came back a few weeks later with some sort of MVP or you know some, some starting point. How did you go from that starting point to where you're at today?
Speaker 1:Man, the, the climb from MVP to established product. You know any founder out there that's listening to this will probably feel my pain here. It always feels like you're an MVP, right, you never really get out of that. Of course you feel like, hey, the product progresses dramatically and when you look back three, four years ago you're like, wow, things have come a long way. But the initial idea for Ready was it didn't have distribution. What it was is just a product and the idea was if you build it, they will come. If you build a really good product, then people are just going to somehow figure out about it and they're going to adopt it. That really doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:I was going to say did that work?
Speaker 1:It did not work.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't happen in practice that way, especially in healthcare, because, again, the same issue we were trying to solve people don't know the support exists.
Speaker 1:It's because the ability to reach out to patients, the ability to reach out to any clinical entity, is just difficult. It's not a streamlined process like other industries that have had a lot of technology already injected into their workflows. So the original MVP, the idea of serving patients in a whole health way and then delivering support through the vehicle of their whole health, that is the same. That has not changed from day one at Ready. But the way in which we identify patients and we get our product into their hands has. So the distribution in which we're able toric really allowing a patient to manage their health as well as engage with the support in a simultaneous and convenient way. But the distribution of when the patient learns about ready has changed and our goal, virtually, is that at any point in the prescription journey, so the provider writes the prescription, every single step in that process ready is there to proactively reach out to the patient when a problem occurs.
Speaker 2:Process ready is there to proactively reach out to the patient when a problem occurs, Got it. So how did you go about hiring your initial team then? It's always something I'm interested to talk to founders about, because it becomes a little bit easier once you've gained some critical mass and people know who you are. You have some employer brand. But what did you do to build that first 10, 15 hires?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think we're lucky in Columbus which, like I said, has a real thriving health tech scene as it relates to younger companies. So in those early days when we, you know, left our organizations, luckily all of us had put a lot of effort into building really broad networks. So the advice I always try to give to people when they're thinking about starting a company is hey, you've already started it today. If it's in your head, you've started it today. Start building the relationships with people that you think might at least want to help you. It's amazing how often people help when you just ask who at least want to help you.
Speaker 1:Later on, because you've built a really robust network so early on, we had a lot of inbound interest from people we'd worked with in the past. Our initial need was primarily engineering. Obviously, you're getting a tech company off the ground. You need a lot of engineers in order to do that if you want them in-house, and that's something that was important to us, and so we had a lot of inbound interest. So our first three, four hires were engineers, and then we started expanding our sales team. Then we started expanding our commercialization team and data teams, and that all just came from establishing a name in the space.
Speaker 1:So probably up through our first 15, I think you asked about that was primarily built off just very robust network of individuals who we had worked with in the past and built very strong relationships with, and I think that's really key for any young organization is that you leverage people that you can trust. There's all sorts of stuff on paper that's very important when you're hiring for a role and you shouldn't overlook that. But already having the established trust that this person has the grit, that they can stomach the type of volatile environment of a young company, that they're creative, knowing all of that is just going to streamline your process to levels that someone who's net new might not be able to integrate as easily.
Speaker 2:Yep Absolutely agreed. So you hired engineering first, which makes sense, and then started building the sales team. How did you get the initial go-to-market motion off the ground?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so go-to-market is really interesting, right? I told you that the first idea was, if you build it, they will come and it's a chicken or the egg when it comes to anything that's B2B or B2B2C. It's do you go out and establish a foundation of users that are applicable to who you're trying to sell to, or do you go sell to some entity that can help you get in front of those users? And we chose to go directly to the pharma organizations first to then really have them and their channels enable our product into the hands of their patient. And that worked and I think it was really impactful. So pharma still has access to about 20% of their patients. The engagement with their support can still be much better.
Speaker 1:So early on, the go-to-market was primarily around just getting a more convenient process into the hands of the patients that pharma was already supporting. So that again shifted when we started building our own networks of patients in which we could identify patients and serve the patients that pharma already had access to. And the go-to-market shifted from let's serve and make a more convenient process for what already exists. Let's actually create a net new environment for patients that have never had access to the support before. So the go-to-market matured from focusing on a process that was ineffective or inconvenient to not only making it convenient but distributing it widely.
Speaker 2:How did you vet and I know hiring is largely from your network but how did you vet and make that initial founding sales hire, Because that's oftentimes one of the most critical hires you can make?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. You know, a good or bad salesperson can make or break your young organization. So Nate Rehm, our co-founder and chief revenue officer, that was his wheelhouse, so he was in sales and very, very successful at it. So I don't know if I'm qualified to really talk about the first sales hire, because I was lucky enough to have a absolutely phenomenal co-founder that was able to take care of that. What I will say is building the structure around your sales process.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we took a lot of care of is right, nate comes in, he can sell, he can do that. But when you're in a technical sale you need data right, and when you're in healthcare you need some clinical support as well too. So luckily, my background was in data. So we made that a very important part of the sales process and we made structure as to when does Luke step in in the sales process to assist? And then Kyle Grims at our chief strategy officer, pharmacist by trade, same thing on the clinical side. So your first hire really important on the sales side, but it's also very important to just chart out your sales process so you can understand when support needs to be insulated around that salesperson. They can't do it alone.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, selling is a team sport. So sales process, what did that look like from and were you doing largely? You know, like you said, you built it and they did not come immediately. So were you doing outbound? Were you doing trade shows, events what did that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, outbound, so almost exclusively outbound.
Speaker 1:And since then, right inbound interest has become more pervasive.
Speaker 1:And that's just as you grow your brand in the space, as you have successful programs, as you are able to showcase successful programs at things like trade shows Early on, though, it's just out of the pavement, it is cold, calls out, it is leveraging your network as much as you possibly can and it's being comfortable with a lot of no's.
Speaker 1:And something that I always kind of talk about is when you're very, very new, you have to target the buyers that not only maybe have bought from you in the past or that you trust, but you have to target the buyers that really want to innovate, and that's maybe 10% of an industry altogether. And then you have another 20% that's never going to buy an innovative product because they just want to play a very conservative status quo. That's okay If you can identify them, throw them to the side and you'll move much quicker. But then you have that middle percent, that middle 70% that really doesn't know whether they want this new product or not. That first 10% is critical for you to get your first programs and that's where you build the case studies and the data to go after that middle percentage to convince them to come along on this ride of the new kind of disrupted status quo that you're creating.
Speaker 2:Love that approach. So, when it comes to pricing, you mentioned in the past that you priced your product at full value from the start, which is, I think, a fairly unusual approach, because so many people, like you said, they want to get to the discount, to get that sale, to then build that case study or that testimonial or what have you. What gave you the confidence to avoid pilot pricing?
Speaker 1:Well, for one, I think it's important to ask your customer what does pilot mean to you? And if it does mean discounted pricing, if it means substantially discounted pricing and that's okay for your stage then I think you should do that. For us in pharma, pilot means a variety of different things, and so it's really weighing what you're willing to do. And so when we say full program like the way in which you create impact, the way in which that you can show that something is working is you have to roll it out broadly, at least to some scale. And that's really the cornerstone of what we took in that argument is, if you roll this out across a very small number of patients, or you don't really build it out in the way that you're supposed to, then we're just telling you right now it's probably not going to show the value that we're saying that it will or that you hope that it will have. You have to give it the scale and the maturity in order to do that.
Speaker 1:So the things that we were willing to do is just create full programs that were a little bit more creative, as it related to the comfortability of this thing being more long-term or short-term. Maybe you want three-year contracts and you're willing to go down to one year or even six months. Those year contracts and you're willing to go down to one year or even six months, those are great levers to pull that aren't really pilots. They allow you to still roll out broadly at scale, get the data that you need, hold the pricing that you need, but it still gives your customers some comfortability that they're not going to be locked into a bad decision and how did customers react to that?
Speaker 1:They reacted very positively to it. Right, and that's why I say we didn't really do pilots. We didn't need to do pilots because we had the confidence and the backing and, frankly, if you're in sort of a B2B2C market, patients are the users of our platform. We had enough data on the usage of our platform outside of, as it related to the strict relationship with our pharma manufacturers, that we could stand our ground and say hey, we're showing that this does actually have an impact. So a pilot, as it relates to a 75% price cut, all that's going to do is make it harder for us to reinvest and serve your patients in the best way that we can.
Speaker 2:How do you balance the needs Because, as you mentioned, it's a B2B2C product? How do you manage the feedback from the users, who aren't necessarily the paying customers, versus the feedback from the pharmaceutical companies, who are your paying users, and what do you do if those two things are at odds?
Speaker 1:It's a great question and I'm of the belief that what is good for the patient should never be distant from what is good for the customer.
Speaker 1:It oftentimes you'll think like, well, okay, if those two things are separate, who do you go with?
Speaker 1:But if they're separate, that means somebody's thinking about this in the wrong way and oftentimes the patient here is not making some sort of business decision, they're just trying to get healthier.
Speaker 1:So when we think about that as the North Star, the patient is the North Star of ready. If a manufacturer partner wants to do something that is counterintuitive or it is friction full for the patient, then it's on us as ready, the experts in patient engagement, to go reframe the mindset of why that is actually not a good idea. So anytime that happens, if there's feedback from a user that says this instance isn't what we want, what you've built with the pharma manufacturer isn't serving me in the way that I need to, that's absolute gold and that allows the manufacturer then to optimize the program, to get even more out of it, to serve patients in a better way, to create a better ROI, which is very important and what we're after at the end of the day. So it's on us to frame that in a way that aligns the stakeholders of the patient and the pharma manufacturer and we take it really seriously.
Speaker 2:I love that. So you know, without naming names or any specifics has that happened in the past and what's what? Anything you want to go into more detail on.
Speaker 1:Luckily never in a big way. So pharma generally knows that they're going to do what's best for the patients on their medications. That's important to them. The whole goal here is that patients have good outcomes. If a patient on their medication doesn't have a good outcome, that's not good for anybody. So they generally are pretty aligned to that.
Speaker 1:Where it starts to play in sort of a counterintuitive way or where those things come head to head is if you start receiving feedback that was really contradictory to what somebody one stakeholder at your partner or at your customer really wanted to be a part of the program. If they had a really good idea that they're really glued to and you're getting feedback that maybe that wasn't the best idea, then you have to deal with sort of the personal attitudes of reframing that. But again, everybody's pretty patient-centric. Pharmaceutical manufacturers get a very bad rap sometimes and I dislike that, especially in patient support services, patient support programs. I mean these are robust programs, free to patients, that are solely focused on getting patients better, that are on the medication. So we're pretty aligned. We don't see that misalignment very often but when we do again we go about taking care on explaining why it's very important that we do serve the patient in the best way, love that To switch gears a little bit.
Speaker 2:So earlier in the company's history you went through a customer validation boot camp and I know that you that had to do also with, you know, raising capital. What was that validation boot camp like? What were the exercises?
Speaker 1:What were the outcomes Economic Development Fund here in Columbus, which I sing the praises of all the time. I think it's important that you have someone on your cap table. If you're raising institutional funding, if you're putting together a venture syndicate, you have someone on your cap table that is somehow related to overall development of entrepreneurship in the space. So Rev One stood up these resources for those that were interested in starting organizations or had just started organizations, where they were there for you, whether whether or not Rev1 invested in you, and we took advantage of that, and the idea was that we're going to help you create a framework and give you resources whether that be vetted service providers, whether that be access to technology or data to actually go validate your idea so you don't have what's a false start, meaning you're kind of going in the wrong direction. Incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1:It was a several-week bootcamp. It was entirely free to us. We didn't know anything about venture capital at the time. It covered everything from validating your product with its user base, identifying the right user base, understanding your ideal customer profile and then essentially a crash course in what it meant to raise institutional funding through venture, which is critical. When you step into the space you don't know anything about how to raise capital, and if you do, that's great, that's a leg up, but most first-time founders don't, and so that bootcamp covered essentially validating your product, creating the next iteration of the vision of it. But then how do you bring that into the market to raise capital, to go make that vision a reality? It's absolutely outstanding.
Speaker 2:What surprised you about the fundraising process or any unique challenges that you ran into. It's a good question.
Speaker 1:Every stage has been different, so we've raised a seed series A and series B. None of those have been similar in any way, shape or form. It's always always very different. The thing that I think surprised me and I know everybody says this is just how many no's you actually get and how quickly you get them. But that's actually a good thing. You should be, I mean, hungry for as many no's as possible, because that allows you to focus in on the right funds.
Speaker 1:It surprised me how many venture funds were out there too. You hear about the large ones, but there are so many countless that are focused, oftentimes specifically on what your niche is focused on, and that's a really good thing. So you know you love hearing about, you know, the big funds, but there's so many out there that are just as much quality, if not more, that are a better fit for you overall and that's not something I realized going into it is that every fundraise, every industry, every capital need that you have, there are likely several funds that are better fit and tailor fit for what you're trying to do, and those are the people you really want to get in front of.
Speaker 2:And so for the no's that you get and I know that you know that's it's not specific to ready Every single founder could say you know you're going to get 99 no's for every hundred. Yes, I'm just curious Is it typically something like you know we're not quite at the right stage, it's something outside of our expertise, or what are some of the reasons that you run into no's during the fundraising process?
Speaker 1:process. Yeah Well, if you don't ask for a lot of detail and follow-up as to why you're going to get some pretty generic well, you're too early for us, or we're too early for you, or it's not really within the thesis that the fund is built around. So always ask for more feedback, because a blanket no is great, a quick line in an email, thanks. Could you please give me some feedback as to maybe what would have changed your mind If they respond and they say yeah, it's just not a fit from what we're looking to invest in. From a thesis standpoint, great, that's no problem, that's nothing on you. If it was something about your pitch, great, you just got a little bit better. Both of those are a win. You're either more efficient or you're optimizing your process. So very good from that perspective.
Speaker 1:But the reasons oftentimes come down to that thesis fit, so it's. Does the fund really want to focus on what you're focusing on? And you have some options when that happens. Sometimes they'll let you know and you can try and tailor your pitch to maybe fit them a little bit more. But I'd recommend against that you want to be as true as possible to your product. If you really feel like and are showing that you have traction and that you have good market fit, then there are funds out there that are going to want to invest in that. But you shouldn't take a no personally if it's just because it doesn't fit what that fund invests in.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, and if it's a yes from someone, then that means you're going to be in business with them for the next eight to 10 years. So there needs to be alignment right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, who led our seed round mutual capital partners out of Cleveland Ohio. They explained to us this is like a marriage, so it is a for better or for worse arrangement. And for better or for worse doesn't mean at each fundraise or at each inflection point of the business. It's all the time. There are ups and downs in any company. They're just a little bit more front and center and everybody feels them in a young organization. So you want just as much as you want capital, which is very important, and you need that to run a business. You want good people around the table that are going to support you in more ways than just cutting a check.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. That's why the platform component of venture has become so important is that it's not just about giving a check, it's also about supporting in all the ways and it's just mutual benefit right, Because you do better and then it helps their investment. Um, for you as the CEO, how do you continue to maintain good relationships with investors through up and down times?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think it's just um, I think it's delivering bad news in short order. You want to do it quick and so I think there's this. There's this stigma, especially outside of venture, where you think of the boardroom and it's these guys on a high rise in suits and ties that are just grilling the CEO on all sorts of stuff, and it's not really like that. When you're talking about venture, everybody knows these are high risk investments and they're backing you as a team more than anything, as well as your product. But they're really asking themselves, especially in early stage, is this the right team to go execute on this good idea? And that means they're there to support you. They want you to win just as much as you want to win.
Speaker 1:So it's important that you deliver your bad news even quicker than your good news, because one, that's going to foster trust and a good relationship. Two, it's going to give opportunities for your venture partners to help you, and relationships become incredibly strong when someone's helping you, or you're helping someone, or you're being transparent. So when you create that transparency, it creates opportunities for your venture partners to step in and give you some measure of assistance. And it's those times where someone's helping you where you're, in this war room, together trying to solve this problem, that relationships get really strong and they can certainly certainly withstand any sort of up and down.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree. It's funny you said that about the idea of the board being the suits and ties up in some building. Personally, I blame the 2004 Spider-Man movie when they pick Norman Osborn out of his company. That's pretty nuts. I think that's where all the ones from our generation come from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I'd be lying if I haven't had nightmares like that, probably from that movie. So that's funny, you bring that up.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I think you're right when it. You know, when it comes to building the relationships with the failure, it's early stage venture. They know that a lot of the companies are not going to work out and it's the nature of the business. But then it just becomes an issue of integrity and working to fix it. And I know another huge thing is communication, giving regular updates to investors. And I'm just curious what sort of updates do you give? What typically are they looking?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, financials are very important. That's how they report out to their investors, their LPs, as to the performance of their funds overall. But I think it's really important to let your venture partners in on strategy as well. So you have to keep in mind right, when you're at your company, you're solely focused on it, and that's important. So your investors they're never going to understand your business as much as you will. There's just no chance of that happening. However, they are going to understand a broader swath of businesses better than you will, because you're focused on your singular lane. You're going a thousand feet deep. They're going 10 feet deep in 10 different companies and a hundred different companies. So that means they have the perspective of problems that are seen broadly across an organization.
Speaker 1:You may think that the problem you're experiencing is exclusive to you and if it is good luck, that's a tough one to solve.
Speaker 1:But if it's not, that means someone else has gone through it and probably solved it. The best person to identify that are those sitting on your board that have invested in you. So letting them in on the strategy is really important. The way that we do that is in our board meetings we cover all of the information that is very important and repeatable. So that's finances, that's updates to products, that's user engagement, and we make sure that we get that out of the way ahead of time. It's very important that we just get it out of the way ahead of time and then reserve the back half of our meetings to go over strategic topics. We're specifically bringing in ideas, thoughts, changes to our strategy so our board can A know about it and B help us out with it. They're all very smart people. They see how different companies approach these very same issues and if there is something that you're experiencing that is exclusive to you, they're the ones who can tell you that, and then you know you need to get creative. Maybe shouldn't be looking elsewhere to have it solved.
Speaker 2:Super helpful. What has surprised you the most about being a first-time founder, whether it be on the fundraising side, the product side, the sales side?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, this is more of an attitude element.
Speaker 1:Maybe this is exclusive to me, but there's no such thing as a purely good day, but there is such thing as a purely bad day.
Speaker 1:That's okay though I'm not saying that's a bad thing and one of the things that I thought would be easier when starting an organization was to be able to celebrate a lot of the wins, but wins have become calls to action for me and they've become calls to action for the founders as well. Again, I'm not saying any of this in a negative light. It's just when you are trying to change an industry, when you are trying to have a positive impact on people, regardless of what you're doing, it becomes a call to action every time that you succeed, and that feels very different than what I thought it would initially. You, of course, want to celebrate those things, but it gives you the grit and the hunger to go further, and that was very surprising to me and I love it. I think it's great, but certainly when good things happen and when bad things happen, you're just going to feel them more. Everybody says that, but in reality it's pretty extreme, but it's also very motivating.
Speaker 2:I think that's a fantastic way to think about things. Well, Luke, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a super good conversation and I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you bet this was a blast.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Thanks for listening to See to Exit. If you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time.
