VC Demystified: You Are Your Own Best PR Manager: Elena Levine on Communicating Credibility to US Investors

The best advice that I received is that you are your own best PR manager because if you're not bragging about yourself, who will? And I think also one of the reason why people don't brag about themselves is the, if you want to call it the imposter syndrome, right? So people think, oh, you know, I need to be reached a certain level before my opinion matters or what I do matters or if I can go and brag about myself, Right? So we put those limitations on our mind and skill set. Welcome to the Digital Irish Podcast where innovation meets heritage and global impact is the name of the game. I'm Dave Byrne, your host on this journey through the stories of Irish innovators, entrepreneurs and creators who are having an incredible mark on the world stage. We're here to showcase the incredible talent that Irish visionaries bring to the world. Welcome back to the Digital Irish Podcast. So we're continuing our series on demystifying capital in vc and today we are going to bring in somebody who doesn't have a huge connection to Ireland, but who I was introduced to recently enough and I just thought they had a really valuable perspective and somebody that could really speak to the challenges that venture funds have, but also the opportunities that founders have to approach them and to really showcase what they have to offer and really land a second meeting and a follow on conversation. This is also a conversation that really gets into the weeds of why you need to think about the right investor, not just the investor with the largest check. So today's guest is Elena Levine. She is a founder at 4Coda, a full lifecycle AI and software development company with offices in Buffalo and Miami. Over the years for cota, built production grade software and AI systems for everybody from regulated enterprises to venture backed founders. Through this work, Elena also set up a venture arm of Forkota. So she has a perspective of both a founder and an investor herself. What also makes this particularly valuable is that she came to the US from Russia and had to learn the American way of selling herself and her company and now works closely with founders navigating that same shift of trying to figure out how to speak in a language and in a way that resonates with US based investors. So we're really trying to pull back the curtain on how investors actually think, what makes them read your email, what kills a deal that's going well, and why international founders sometimes can undersell themselves in rooms where that's the one thing they can't afford to do. Do so with that. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'M going to drop you straight in it. Firstly, Elena, thank you so much for joining on the podcast today. Thank you Dame. Great to be here to give the audience context. I reached out to you because I'm doing this, this venture Capital Raising Capital demystifying podcast series for Irish businesses that are looking to grow and to expand in the US and into other markets as well, but primarily in the US So I wanted to make sure that folks got a little bit of an idea of your background to begin with and why you've had this little bit of experience of working at not just only a US level, but truly a global when it comes to this space. So my background is in technology. I've been in tech space for over 20 years. Wow. It's scary to say with over 20 years now. My background is Master's in computer science. Out of college I was working for Yahoo, quickly realized that corporate life was not for me and shifted my focus into web development consulting. And this is how I started my software development agency for CODA back in 2014. So we it's going to be 12 years this year and during that period of time we had an opportunity to work with both Fortune 500 companies like Shake Shack, Oral B, MIT bank, various universities, but also different funded technology startups. So I've been on the side of the startup founders, working closely with them, seeing all the challenges that they have to go through. They building and starting with just an idea, whether they already built a product and now they scaling it and raising funds. And we assisted many of our clients during the fundraise process to help them leverage the products and research we did for them during the fundraise to close the deals. And in total our agency clients we work with they raised over a hundred million dollars. And so last year we established our venture arm called Prokota Ventures and we're currently in the process of raising our own funds so we can continue supporting and investing in those amazing startups that we work with or come across. And also what we've been doing with startup founders is helping them to put together investor luncheons. So that way instead of trying to email hundreds of investors and get no response, with investor luncheons you can get in front of 1520 hand picked vetoed investors and present your product in the intimate professional environment, build those relationships one on one. We all know how it's important to have those face to face time with investors. So that's another part of our suite of the services and the companies that we have. And that would be the high level Overview of what we've been doing. That's fantastic. I love the idea of a luncheon where you can get some face to face time and really speak to a group and I love that. We'll definitely want to come back to the importance of a face to face relationship, especially in the global fundraising environment. But I'd love to get your thoughts on how you think about the businesses that you work with. As you said there, you're very clearly passionate about the businesses that you're working with, you're investing in and there's obviously people that you're working with that you truly believe are going to grow. When you think of when a startup first reaches out to you or when you first come across a startup, is there anything in particular that makes you stuck and go, oh, this is interesting, I need to learn more about this. Is there anything that the startup says or the founder says that really makes you gravitate towards them in that initial phase? So a couple of things I look at when startups reach out to us and it can happen in email. LinkedIn obviously I talk to many companies in person. I would say the number one differentiator that I see in founders that have the higher chance of being successful in building something meaningful versus the startups that are a little bit lost or maybe don't have the stuff together yet. So that one thing is the clarity of thought and communicating your idea to investors. So when I talk to someone and if they can be very precise, very factual when they talk about their product, the problem that they're solving, industry effects, competitors, right. Even talking about the direction where they're going to and being able to answer questions about challenges or any tricky questions that investors may ask. So those usually the indicators that I'm looking at when I'm talking to the early stage founders and to give me a signal that this is someone who spent time and thinking about the company, they really looked at it from different perspective, different angles. It's not just a pie in the sky, hey, I have this billion dollar idea, give me money, I'm gonna build it. And no, so that doesn't work like that. And that clarity of thought then also translates into any written communication. So if we're getting requests through email or LinkedIn, the people that have more tailored, more precise messages when they're talking about the company, right, they understand what investor wants to hear. So they usually lead with their background, their traction. They if their message is short, they don't do the info dump on the reader because investors only have few seconds to Make a decision whether it's a feed or not. Right. So those founders, when they reach out in the email, they keep it short, they keep it to the point they already research the investor in advance. So you don't want to email something to investor that invest in a clean tech, but you are in fashion. Right. So that just instant signal that the founder had zero research any legwork. It's just a mass email blast. Right. Which is terrible thing to do. You can burn so many bridges before you even start those relationships. So having that position in the sending messages that pique the investor curiosity just enough is another signal for me when I read through the mails to tell if that someone a little bit more mature have done a little, have done that outreach a few times to know what works and doesn't work well. You've made such a great point there about researching the investor because I feel like that a lot of folks have a spray and pray approach to like if I reach out to a thousand investors, one of them will come back to me and it feels like that's almost like a legacy way of thinking about things where actually a more targeted approach is often yielding better returns in regards to like actually getting a first meeting and getting constructive feedback from potential investors. So in that research phase, what advice would you give to somebody to say here's how to go about researching? This is these are the things to look out for. You mentioned obviously industry, but is there anything else that they should be looking for? Yeah, so you can, as a founder, you can go to the investor website, take a look at their thesis, take a look at the company's name, portfolio, look at the news, see what recent announcements company made about investments, where it's going. Right. So that would be your great starting point. Also with AI, you can put the company name in ChatGPT or Claude and it will give you pretty good summary on the investor background and what have they invested in or maybe how they approach the investments. If it's a more public, more visible company. Right. If you're dealing with angels and smaller firms, you might not have the depth of knowledge available. But yeah, I would start with the website. If you have connections to the investor, you can always try to talk to them or another way. What I would do is look at the startups in the investor portfolio and reach out to them on LinkedIn, to the founders and say we are researching, looking at your investor, we'd love to get your feedback what it was working being under the umbrella. Have they helped you, have they supported you, have they opened any doors for you. Right. And that would also give you great insight what that person or fund is. And you can ask about the fundraising process. Right. What priorities they looking for? So just any, as they say in love and war, all the means are fair. So I love that. And actually I never thought about reaching out to other companies that the VC has invested in because you touched on something at the very beginning, like you host the luncheons and that kind of thing. But one of the key things that often startup founders get told is that finding the right investor isn't just about the size of the check that they give. It's also all of the additional value beyond the capital that they provide. And clearly you're doing that for your startups. But how then should founders be thinking about the value of things beyond the monetary aspect? How should they be thinking about the value that a potential investor could bring to their business? So every startup founder of course wants to find an investor that what they call smart money that can help them support not just from the writing check perspective, but all the other resources. So it's not always possible, but we can strive to find those investors. And to answer your question, ideally what you want to see in the past investor experience is do they have the experience in this industry? Right. So if they spend many years in the industry, obviously they have extensive network, they can get you in front of the right people, decision makers, potential partners, customers, you name it. And then yeah, looking at the companies in their portfolio and see what have they done for them, were they able to deliver on their promise? Are they the type of the investor that picks up the phone at 10pm on Saturday night if there is a fire that founder is dealing with and they need the urgent opinion or help, Simply put, are they asshole or not? So you definitely don't want to be tied with someone who's gonna give you sleepless nights and gonna be pain in the neck to deal with. Because yeah, I mean with when it comes to money and business, it's even more tough than marriage. So you really in the boat with those people until you exit. So I would say those are the core things I would look at as I'm researching those investors. I have a lawyer friend who says that the biggest money earner that they have from startups is founder divorce. It is as tumultuous as a divorce when founders investors start splitting up. Yeah, and that's why when founders, let's say when you sign in the co founder agreements, you have to decide your exit strategy before you sign any papers. To avoid those expensive divorce quote unquote processes while you start. It's always rosy. Everybody have the best intentions in mind. And then if egos or feelings get hurt along the way, then people can turn very nasty to each other even though if they started the best friend. Yeah, I would say decide in the beginning before you sign anything how you're going to exit. And it's not about hurting anyone's feelings, it's just being mindful and it protects both parties. So that way again you can protect both of the parties if things go south and keep more money in the pocket versus giving them to lawyers that I'm sure happy to take them. Oh, 100%. It's interesting then because everything that we're talking about here really signals that a lot of the work that founders should be doing at this moment is not necessarily chasing just simply the largest check. It is truly thinking about what really matters to them. How much does a network matter to you? How much does the alignment on the industry, the doors that this investor can open and are you aligned on what the future looks like? What does this look like 5, 10, 20 years down the road? And that does seem to be then an indication where it's hey, you may get a smaller check, but what you get is long term stability and long term growth with a partner rather than somebody that just trusts literate ownership of everything. So thinking about this like we've talked about what founders should be doing, but are there any mistakes that you see in this early phases of these conversations that you see founders making that you're like, like this keeps on coming up time and time again. Why does this keep coming up? One of them is approaching investors too early. If your idea is not well thought out, maybe you're not there yet, then that first impression will remain in the investor mind and will the next time even if you grow in scale when you return to them, that just the opinion that they will have about you. Right. And it can be challenging to reverse it. So I would say it's a fine balance when you start approaching investors to make sure that you have enough traction and you ready enough to start having the meaningful conversation. But obviously you don't want to wait too long, right? They say when you feel confident about launching something, you waited too long. So it's a fine balance of finding the right timing. Also one thing that investors are looking at is they also want to make sure that the founder is easy to work with. And for early stage startups, the one thing that I see quite a lot is big Egos. So I would say we obviously all should be proud of what we're building and be confident in our skills and that we can take products to successful exits. But when it crosses the line and the founder ego just gets in the way of investor conversations, then it becomes a red flag. And investors see it. They can read people very quickly, very well. So I would say keeping those egos in check, because another thing that I noticed, the progression that the further founders go along in their process of fundraising, building companies, those egos get more and more humbled. So when you see someone very big ego in the beginning of the process, they're like, hey, I know the best. I don't need anyone advice. I just do this. Then as the company grows, they become more and more open and understanding that, hey, you know what? I actually need to bring people that are smarter than me, that know more than me, so that way I can build a successful company. So they either learn to humble the ego, or a lot of times they don't go far. What's what I love about this is I was speaking to one investor recently who says that the key thing that they look for is whether they can mentor the vendor. And similar to what you were saying there, they're like, egos are hard to mentor. The ones that are more humble and are open to insights, feedback, they're the ones that they're like, we're investing in them, not just the business. Absolutely. So, but I do want to pivot to one side thing, because obviously there's the ego side of things, but there's a fine line between ego and confidence. And when we spoke a while ago, we were going back and forth on the fact that moving to America, one of the things that you have to learn is to brag about yourself a little bit more. Because that is more of an American attitude of being able to speak about how great you are and like. But it's a confidence thing rather than an ego thing, I imagine. But like, yeah, for you, what was that shift like for you? How long did it take you to get into that mold of feeling confident enough to almost brag about yourself? Yeah, it's definitely been a process. So being raised and grow up and raised in Russia, so that's the same mentality that we have growing up, that you have to be humble, don't stick out, don't brag about yourself. And when I came to the US that's the mentality that I brought here. And as I start progressing in a professional environment and meeting people, I start learning from Them. And the best advice that I received is that you are your own best PR manager. Because if you're not bragging about yourself, who will? And the way would help me to change the perspective on things. And I think also one of the reason why people don't brag about themselves is if you want to call it the imposter syndrome, right? So people think, oh, I need to reach the certain level before my opinion matters or what I do matters or if I can go and brag about myself, right? So we ourselves put those limitations on our mind and skill set. So the way I see it is if you, so when you approach a person, let's say you're talking to investor, somebody in professional environment, you come to them blank canvas, they don't know who you are. So it is your responsibility to communicate to them in those first 10 to 15 seconds who you are and what you do because they have zero knowledge about you. So you need to tell them who you are because people in their mind, they will take that information and they will put you in one of the boxes on their mind, right? So you need to tell them who you are and like where to place you and position yourself in the best light possible. So because if you talking to, let's say to investor and you're like, oh, we just, people also use those like diminishing words, oh, we just doing this or we just only simply where you make things not as maybe impressive or make them seem not significant. So then that's what the person at the end reads and they think, oh, okay, this person is not confident. They don't know what they're doing. They just start in, right? But maybe your background is you raised funds before, maybe you have access. Maybe you worked at impressive companies, right? You reached results in your previous role. Maybe you helped company to. With the work that you did, you helped to reduce overhead or help to grow sales, right? So those things, you need to put the front and center of your, how you present yourself because then that will elevate your profile in the eyes of other people. And that's how they're going to see you from now on, right? Then as you talk to them and they're going to evaluate you based on your personality, how knowledgeable you are when you asking or answering questions. But that first impression, it creates that baseline. So they know, okay, are you, are you more experienced, less experienced person? Do our, do we have a shared background? Do our experiences align? So it's, yeah, it's extremely important to paint the picture that. And it's not about bragging, it's not about egos. It's just again, it's your responsibility to communicate to people who you are. Right. And so they can learn who you are and go from there. It feels like this ties to what you were saying earlier about clear communication where, and forgive me if I'm wrong here, but if it sounds like that what you're saying, bar, is it's not about coming in going, I have the best thing ever that's ever been created. It's more aligned with coming in going, I've been through this, I know the pain points. I have a solution that fixes this and this is how I know it works where it's direct, it's clear and it exudes confidence. If you're making a claim, you need to be able to back up that claim. So if you're just gonna say, oh this is the best thing since sliced bread, then it sounds like you're bragging. But if you're saying, you know what we think this product or we're confident that this product is best on the market because XYZ, right, we spent 20 years doing research on this matter and now we just have this breakthrough technology that we came up with that no one in a space can come close to. Right. We have patterns, we have big companies, big clients waiting to use it. All those you have to back it up with facts. And then it's again, you being communicating clearly, you being honest, you talking about what you've built and earned without just making those empty claims. So that's the difference between bragging and actually being confident confidently speaking about your achievements. I imagine then that is where to your point like that folks that are investing can spot the bullshit where it's hey, we can see that there's no traction here. We can see that you don't have research to back this up, that you're very much making a claim based off what's top and mind for you. So is that the kind of the thing in that when a founder communicates clearly, that's the difference between getting a first meeting and not hearing back to getting a first meeting and then having follow on conversations earning that second meeting. So what does that look like from your side? What do after that first meeting? Let's just say if things are communicated clearly, they've answered questions clearly. What's the next step for you? What does meeting two look like? Like when we start seeing you deep dive more into the people, the solution that you're offering itself. So if the startup founder has the first conversation. The next step would be to do a deeper dive into the business model. The attraction, the team. Make sure they have the ducks in the row, right. Do they have a data room? Is everything organized? So the more organized they are, the more information they can provide quickly in a clear format, also the better it is. Right. So it signals being prepared. Doing the research for technology companies is going through the due diligence process. So we have our CTO on our side who's doing a technical due diligence. So being able to answer technical questions, back up technical decisions. Right. So that's also important. Make sure that the team that you're working with is dedicated experience, they bring their best to the table. So all those things are important as a part of that more in depth due diligence process. So it's pretty much looking at the company under the microscope. Right. And if it's an early stage startup and they don't have revenue or much traction yet, the investors will be more focused on founders and a team conviction and their background and experience. Because the business model, they change once they hit the market. Right. So companies go through so many changes and pivots. So no one expects that the idea that you bring to the table, that will remain the same throughout the years. So that's expected. And if the company is further along, they have traction and then they grow scale mode. So then looking at financial, looking at traction and the numbers would be another component that would be very important to look at in the midst of this. Are there any standards like deal killers? Are there things that are like, if you don't have this, it's an absolute no go versus hey, if you don't have this is something that we can work with you on creation. Let me see. I don't think that I can't name the deal killer in terms of the documentation. Right. Everything can be prepared. It's just like how quickly can you get it done? Right. So yeah, I would say yeah, just like a speed of responses, speed of moving forward. Right. If even something is missing, which, which is normal, I imagine that's a little bit of the. How much can we trust you as the founder to actually get things done if you can't respond to us quick enough, if you do get things together. That's interesting because going back to what we've been saying, a lot of this, surely just aside from do you have a good product and do you have the paperwork and there looks in a row, a lot of this does seem to be very much like how can we work with you and can we work well with you as a sector? Yeah, yeah. So on Matic, one of the other things that I often hear though is that I hear sometimes spenders can get a little bit overenthusiastic as well after conversations with potential investors. How persistent or aggressive should vendors be in following up? Because there's a fine line between persistent and dedicated and being just annoying and a nuisance. Yeah. So you definitely. Yeah, it's a, you're right, it's a fine balance and you don't want to chase investors and annoy them, but you have to stay on their radar. So typically if when you present to the investor, you don't want to hear it maybe because then maybe means no or it can mean not now. But don't get your hopes up if people say oh, it's interesting. Yeah, sounds good, right? You either want definitive no or definitive okay, yeah, let's take a look at it. So if for whatever reason investor got off the radar, they're not responding or maybe they just dragging you along, I would say send them a couple follow up emails maybe once a week. Just kind of phase them out because people travel, there are conferences, people get busy. Right. It can happen that emails get buried but honestly the best investors that I've seen, they very fast response. So if you're not getting response, usually it's because person is not interested. So if you seen this signal and the investor just disappeared into the sunset, add them to your email list of company stakeholder updates that you send out, whether it's monthly, quarterly, every startup should have those so that investors can stay on your radar, they still can receive the updates. Many investors, before they give money to the company, they follow them for several years and keep an eye on the progress. So to build the credibility, build that familiarity. Right. So it's even if someone does not write your check right away, they can come back a few years later for your next round. So I would say don't burn those bridges. Also don't write them any angry emails saying how dare you missed on the best opportunity of your life. I'll show you. Right. Don't do that. Be respectful, it's not personal. Put them on your email list, keep them warm, share the information, indicate that you build in there is forward momentum. Right. And you never know they can come back in the next round. And yeah, thinking of what happens post investment, prefer refer coda like for you because obviously you have the venture arm but like you also have market research, you do UX design, you've got app Development, web development. So like how involved do you get in like some of these areas as like a follow on to your investment? It seems like that you offer a full sweet of potential services beyond the investment itself. Yeah, so we tend to get involved pretty closely because we have that background, we have the industry knowledge, we have people on our team that been in technology industries for 30 years, 20 years. Right. And it's at the end of the day, we are invested in founder success as much as they are. And that's how we've been always approaching any client projects we've been working on. Same with the startups that we work with. If we can connect them with people in the industry, open the doors, help them to introduce their product to the right people, we will do it because it's our interest to see them succeed. So that way we will grow together. So if we can help with the connections, but potential client relationship, any support from technology marketing, we'll do everything in our power to help them to get to the next level. And thinking of the fact that you've got like the Forkota venturer, you've got all of these services, there's a lot going on, but it seems like you're constantly growing and constantly expanding. What's the success for you and for Coda look like in the next 12 to 18 months? So would like to invest in 10 startups in the fintech and AI space. So that would be our next big step that we working towards too. Then if anybody is working in the fintech space that's listening, you know who to reach out to. Elena, firstly, thank you so much for taking your time. If there is anybody that's interested in reaching out or understanding more about Forekota, like where can they find out more, how can they reach out? You can find us through our website for quota.com or send me an email at helloorkota. Com. You can check out our social. Yeah, we'd love to hear from anyone if you have questions, if we can support you in any way from technical or fundraising perspective. So we'd love to chat. Excellent stuff. Finally, Elena, thank you so much again for joining us on the podcast. Great insights, just great advice for founders. We just really appreciate you taking in the time. Thank you, Dave. And that is it for today's episode. A massive thank you to Elena for joining us. The conversation was just really practical. Great insights. The gap that I think Irish and international founders have when coming to the US market is sometimes just the way that they show up and present themselves. There's an expectation from many folks in the US of what they expect to see, and I'm glad that we were able to talk through that today in this episode. If you want to find out more about 4 COTA or connect with Lena, links are in the show notes below. If this episode was useful, please share it with a founder who may find it interesting. Also, please subscribe to US wherever you listen to your friends podcast. Until next time. Slangafall.