Thoughts & Lessons Learned from Rihards Piks Raising $100K in a 30 Minute Call

More insights than meets the eye

Photo by Malvestida Magazine on Unsplash

I’m always reading books or articles on all sorts of topics. The newsfeed can take me down an unproductive rabbit hole sometimes, but I digress.

Recently I came across a short article by Rihards Piks on TheNextWeb regarding how he got an impressive pre-seed investment sum of $100K in a 30 minute call. It certainly sounded impressive! In addition to the content of the article that told his story, here are some insights I got from reading it.

Timing is Important: You can argue whether timing is truly everything or what else goes into the mix when a decision is made or something goes your way. I think it’s understandable that time is an important factor.

Empathy through Experience: At first glance, you may read that title and think the author was an ordinary entrepreneur with such a banger idea that it sold itself in 30 minutes. Or that Rihards was a master salesperson who persuaded someone very quickly.

Whether those assumptions are true, I can’t say. What he does reveal is that he worked as an investment analyst at a VC fund before pursuing his own idea and understood “what investors needed to hear to make a decision”.

In other words, he was able to empathize with investors and put himself in their shoes because he was in their shoes at one point and can communicate effectively with them. Also note the phrase “needed to hear” rather than “wanted to hear”. The former ties into the empathy components and implies that he knew what was important whereas the latter would make it sound like he was appealing to their ears without truly understanding what would help them.

Things take Time: The author goes on to discuss how he built his business network and connections over a period of time between his prior startup with 2 co-founders and his regular attendance at networking events and tech conferences.

One of those connections led to an introduction to investors. Seems like his consistency paid off, and consistency is linked to time. You don’t always see a benefit and you don’t know who may help you down the road. All you can know is that it’ll take some time until you see it.

There’s Always More to a Title: If you glanced at the title, you could have made any number of assumptions about the author and situation like those I referred to a couple of points ago.

After digging just a little deeper, you find that here was someone with experience both in building a business as well as investing. They had developed a network in the general business world and the tech world by constantly showing up and making connections with others over time. They had competent and knowledgeable friends by their side from prior experiences and came prepared to pitch when it counted.

You might not get all that from just the title. There’s always more under the surface, and you don’t always have to dig much deeper to find the true story.

Build habits that count. Keep on doing what you’re doing, keep your eyes peeled, and someday you might find yourself on the end of a 30 minute call with a great opportunity.