Part 3: Life of a Blockchain Entrepreneur (We‘re now part of an accelerator!)
Time flies — It’s hard to believe its been almost a year since I’ve left my job as a Software Engineer at Bloomberg to start my Blockchain startup, Stardust.
The journey hasn’t been easy, but sticking through the ups and downs has been a very rewarding experience; one that is not over and I’m confident has many more years to go.
This is the third part of the Life of a Blockchain Entrepreneur series, if you missed Part 1 or Part 2 — give them a read! The series thus far gives a great overview of my decision process in starting a business and highlighting some of the difficulties I first encountered when pitching my product to investors.
Step Five— Mentors
Every entrepreneur needs a sounding board, someone else they can discuss ideas with and who can challenge the core assumptions of their business. Most entrepreneurs have co-founders that serve as their other half, but I had no support from a fellow founder. Up until this point, I had been bouncing ideas off my parents who are both successful entrepreneurs in their own right, yet I needed someone who could provide unbiased feedback.
My father had been part of the MIT VMS Mentorship service providing qualified industry-specific mentorship for ambitious entrepreneurs. My mother had actually gone through the program several years before! While I did not attend MIT, the program had partnered with CMU alumni to provide a resource for CMU students as well.
I had the opportunity to present to the group of mentors and matched with 5 mentors ranging from ex-tech executives to economic professors. We meet monthly and they provide invaluable feedback of my pitch deck, business strategy, and sales model.
Step Six — Getting Money, it’s a numbers game
My first nightmare when starting my company was that someone would steal my incredible idea. I only shared the idea with people who I trusted, made them promise not to repeat, and made some sign NDAs. People scoffed, laughed, but it is my billion dollar idea and for better or worse that is how I wanted to tell people about it. However, this strategy ended up not being feasible as it limited who I could share my idea with and no VC will ever sign an NDA since they hear too many pitches daily. I was always told that “Ideas are worthless”, but never quite believed it — now that I’ve been working at Stardust for about a year, I can confirm that the idea is an infinitesimal part of a much larger business equation.
I quickly realized when first raising money that sending a pitch deck to 5 VCs isn’t enough, nor is 10 or even 20. Learning from this past mistake I made, I designed a strategy to get my pitch deck in front of at least 200 investors — these could be angels, incubators, accelerators, VC firms of any size and any industry. Investors know other investors, and sending my deck to the wrong investor could lead to an introduction to the right one.
Personal introductions are ideal, but cold sales work in every industry — with investing it’s no different. I went back to basics to find 200 investors of any type that I could send my pitch deck to. The applications vary, from a 300 character cold message when connecting on LinkedIn to an application found on Google for a blockchain accelerator. It took me the space of a week to send messages to 200 potential investors.
So…. Did Stardust get any investors?
The short answer is yes :) However, I want to focus on the results of my outreach to highlight that without this strategy Stardust would have never gotten off the ground.
Not much traction unfortunately via angels. Looking back on the Angel experience they usually take a quicker look at pitch-decks than even VCs since they normally aren’t full-time investors. Having a one-pager would have yielded better traction and making sure they understood the vision.
One accelerator said yes, and that’s enough! I noticed through the process of applying to incubators and accelerators that each has its own focus — some engineering, increased revenue generation or demo days. While this didn’t limit my applications, it directed the conversations I had with them and indeed my ultimate acceptance or denial.
For brevity’s sake, I won’t post the VC numbers, but needless to say I contacted about 30, responses and meetings from 4, and a “We’ll commit $250k” from one — who ended leaving my emails unanswered after 9–10 successive tries to contact them… there goes more of my faith in humanity.
Which accelerator are we part of?
MouseBelt! Based out of San Francisco California, Mousebelt is the only full-service blockchain accelerator in the world. While cash is important in an investment, MouseBelt goes beyond by providing blockchain development resources through their engineering arm No Rest Labs. Business development is also included where we have calls twice a week with 3 different members of the MB team who have years of blockchain and business experience between them.
It’s worth noting that we’ve been part of the MouseBelt program for about 4 months now (these articles are written a few months after the facts), so I can definitely vouch for the quality of this accelerator program. I would encourage anyone to apply and to reach out if they have any questions!
Thank you for reading part 3 of my series Life of a Blockchain Entrepreneur. If you enjoyed please consider following and giving this article 👏 50 claps 👏, both mean a lot to me as I continue this journey.
Feel free to reach out with any questions, suggestions, or if you are interested in becoming an entrepreneur yourself!
Email: clinder@stardust.cards
