Many of you thought we were crazy to leave the mecca of startups. Making it to Silicon Valley is the dream. “Why the f*ck would you leave?” Actually, we didn’t even know we could stay. We just assumed we had to move to Hong Kong for Zeroth.AI’s 3-month accelerator — lol, but that’s a different story.
I get emails, Facebook messages, and LinkedIn messages constantly about my experience with Zeroth.
How do we get an investment from Zeroth?
Do they really connect you with AI/ML experts?
Do they help you get funding?
How did your business accelerate through the program?
To be upfront, it’s not the right program for every startup. I’m writing this at 7:49pm on a Sunday night. You should be working on solving tomorrow’s problems using artificial intelligence. Meaning these are huge freaking problems and if your startup is successful, you will make a big impact in the world. Thus, Zeroth is a community of interesting personalities. I suspect this has something to do with the deep technical expertise of all the founders.
It’s not uncommon to chat deep into the night about bio-sensing algorithms, bot analytics, customer service for banks, ad-tech automation, deep learning on connected devices, interview screening, machine learning APIs, computer vision, central storage for marketing intelligence data, and rice crop health issues.
If you’re only comfortable around Silicon Valley brogrammers.. you won’t find them here. In fact, 30% of all the CEOs aren’t even bros and 70% of all teams include women.
The Application Process
If you’re still reading and you think Zeroth is the right fit for you, go fill out the application. Reach out to Tak Lo and Mike Ortolano and tell them you just applied. They’re not your typical skeptical investors. They love meeting entrepreneurs and are hugely optimistic about ideas working. If you have a strong team, strong product, and some traction, you’ll have a good shot at getting an interview.
Pro tip: Rocco applied with no product, no code, and just a tiny idea. We had a super strong team, however. 5-years machine learning, previously founded a social media company that worked with 3,000 brands, licensing deal with Urban Outfitters, early employee in product design & UI/UX at a startup that was later acquired. Leverage what your strengths are and hustle. We were certainly weak in the product and traction front during the application process.
The Interview Process
Know your business, industry, customers, market, and customer acquisition plans inside out. There should be no reason Zeroth knows your business better than you do. You will go through several rounds of interviews with multiple people. This will be a typical investor pitch and you will get rapid-fire questions:
What problem are you working on?
How do you solve it?
How do you know customers will actually use this?
How big is the market? How big can it be?
Are there other companies working on this?
How do you know you and your co-founder will stay together?
How does the technology work?
What makes you the right team for this and why now?
What’s your traction? How will you get customers?
What’s the long-term vision for the company and how do you plan to get there?
What will you do with the investment?
Pro tip: My co-founder and I wrote down answers for every question we could think of. We rehearsed it over and over. Don’t leave things to chance. When you are under pressure, you may forget a few things. Be confident and move the conversation into where you can show you’re the expert. If you don’t know the answer, be honest about it. Share how you’ll figure it out and even turn around to ask them questions. You should be interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.
The 3-Month Accelerator Program
Yes, they really do connect you with AI/ML experts. Super busy people like Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype), Antoine Blondeau (CEO of Sentient.AI), and Dennis Mortensen (co-founder of x.ai) have rolled up their sleeves to help. During the program and after the program. Group settings and 1–1. Do they answer your emails? Yes. Do they answer you Facebook Messages? Yes. Do they meet you for coffee? Yes.
As a result, the connections with experts and the weekly office hours accelerate your business like crazy. We went from an idea, to MVP, to beta, to paying customers who can’t imagine a world without Rocco, in a matter of 3-months leading to investor day.
Tak is More Than Just an Investor
There is something special about the managing director, Tak Lo. Everybody loves him. Everybody wants to work with him. He helps you not just because he’s an investor. He’s a genuinely nice guy that backs you 1000%. He cares about the well being of your business, your family, and most importantly you. He takes care of you like you are part of the family.
I’ll leave you with one story about Tak. The picture above is 10 minutes before we go live with the pitches on Investor Day. It looks like he’s giving us last minute advice, words of encouragement, and trying to get us in the mental state to crush the presentations. We were pretty nervous about speaking to a couple hundred investors.
What did he say to make every single one of the teams execute flawlessly?
Tak: Alright, we have 10-minutes before showtime. Do any of you need to go to the bathroom?
Me: No, I’m good.
Tak: Go try anyway!
Me: What are we? Children?
3-seconds later every single person heads to the restroom to empty the tank one last time. Thanks Tak for always thinking about what’s best for us ❤️.
