Capital Raising Strategies: Expert Insights from Top Investor Club Leaders

In this episode, a group of leading investor club experts dive deep into the best strategies for capital raisers. With years of experience in the world of investments, they share practical advice on how to successfully navigate the capital-raising process.

Key insights covered include:

- Building Relationships: How persistence and relationship-building lead to successful capital raising. Experts emphasize the importance of staying in touch and providing value over time.

- Effective Pitching: The importance of having a clear, compelling one-liner, pitch deck, and video content to make your investment opportunity stand out.

- Investment Criteria: What investors look for in opportunities, including the team, market size, and growth potential. The panel shares the key factors they consider before making investments, such as strong leadership and high-growth markets.

- Startup and Growth Company Focus: How to approach emerging companies and early-stage startups, including tips on what investors are looking for in a team and business model.

- Tax Strategies: How to align investment opportunities with tax-efficient strategies, particularly for high-income individuals such as physicians.

- Leveraging AI for Capital Raising: The use of AI tools to create polished pitch decks and improve the overall presentation of investment opportunities.

Whether you're an experienced capital raiser or just starting out, this episode offers invaluable advice from those who are actively shaping the future of investments. Tune in for expert advice, strategies, and the tools needed to elevate your investment opportunities and secure capital.

Transcript

Most of you don't know this individual that's going to introduce himself, but Richard
Wilson. - Thank you, John. Yeah, so I started this in 2007 and we're really heavy
digital asset focused. About 17 million social media followers get a lot of our deal
flow through there. We help investors source deals from the deal flow via social
media, via emails, or via rooms like this. And some of those investors come to our
events once a year, so many times a year. We have 745 domain names.
We're invested in 125 cryptocurrency tokens and coins. And we're the number one
domain name holder in the single word, like medical domain names. So we like
investing in medical practices. And so we own like dermatologists .com, obstetricians
.com, parasiteologists .com. And over time, looking for of medical practices that want
5th Avenue real estate to scale their medical practice with capital plus good
positioning. And we like risk revenue royalty deals more than any other structure
type. Excellent. I'll give a quick accolade. I've been for nearly 20 years networking
within many different communities from real estate investor associations, private equity
and venture capital type communities in the business that I'm in, which is within
self -directed retirement accounts to invest in real estate and other types of
alternative assets. And what I'll say about Richard and the family office community,
A, I'll echo what Joe Williams mentioned, which is creating a culture, but number
two, evolving. So I've seen this community evolve over the last, call it,
15 years. And I think that's really important. I can't tell you how many communities
I've seen that unfortunately have died, especially in COVID. And Richard and his team
continue to evolve the organization, and we all get to benefit from it. So, big
thank you to you, Richard. Yeah, I appreciate that, John. I just want to add
something about John. I mean, John's shining the light on all of us, but he's
moderating because he has over 100 ,000 investors on his platform at Equity Trust.
And I was vetting him, and I asked a gold, like, manager I know like hey how well
do you know equity trust they the real deal they said we've opened 2000 investor
accounts with equity trust since they first connected with them so I just want to
make sure and shine a light back on you I'm just thank you for moderating and and
you're a platform as well and people should know that thank you appreciate that
Richard okay let's jump into our first question and we'll just I'll start with Manny
and then we'll work our way all the way down So probably, you know, maybe two to
three minutes, want a little bit of meat on the bone for this one. So what
strategies should capital raisers consider? There's a lot of folks that are raising
capital for various number of types of projects, but maybe share what would you be
looking for? What are your community members looking for in just any tips that you
can provide capital raisers?
A strategic approach would be looking at some of the investments we've done and
having the founder reach out. If you can do that, create a relationship, try to get
an introduction. Maybe there's a lawyer we work with to get an introduction. Maybe
there's someone on our LinkedIn that you can get an introduction. That way you are
in front of many people that are just sending emails and trying to get in. Second,
make sure it fits to what we're doing. I've seen a lot of great opportunities here.
We don't do solar, healthcare, biotech. We focus on high -tech early -stage startups,
primarily seed stage, but we co -invest all the way up to seed round. And,
you know, make sure that, you know, we look at the team. If you're an individual
and you say you're a leader, I agree with you, but maybe have a co -founder, so do
more of a team building versus applying as a person that is a jack of all trade.
We primarily look for three things where we make investments. Number one, a large
market, early in that market and the team. Now those two things can be mixed
around, it can be the team first and a large market, but those are the three
primary things and for those newer investors that reached out to be interested in
early angel investing, look for those as well. You can screen out a lot of
opportunities, quote, unquote, opportunities by doing that way. Thank you.
Okay. I'd like to add on to what you said. Well, you can keep going. It's hard to
duplicate that, so I won't need to. But we're looking for strong emerging growth
companies, companies that have someone on their team who has the experience of
raising capital and exiting well for the investors. We're also looking for
entrepreneurs who have already begun their investment opportunity and already have
investors that we can communicate with. Ones that have been through due diligence of
some sort that have a strong runway that can make it at least six months to a
year without funding. But then we're looking for start -up companies as well, so if
you have a strong opportunity, if you have somebody on your team, maybe you don't
have the funds to have those individuals on your team, but at least you have them
in your back pocket and they're ready to go when you do raise funds and can bring
them on. And then also, we're looking for individuals that have long -term goals that
know what those goals are. They're looking at the end, they start with the end in
mind and know when they plan on exiting, when they possibly can. And we're not
looking for dreamers. We're looking for people who really know what the market is,
what they have, and the possibility of success. - Dr. Kerwin? - Yes,
I would say the majority of the investments from our club are usually through
qualified funds. So I would say investments that work well with qualified funds,
investments that work well for Roth conversions within qualified funds.
But we take a look at all the investments. We haven't done that much in venture
capital. Most of the members usually want a little bit safer investment, but I'm
trying to learn. That's why it's so great to build the relationships here 'cause
there really can be outsized returns if you get into the venture market. - And I
would assume Dr. Kerwin that because a lot of your members are physicians, probably
higher W2 earning individuals that they're also looking for opportunities that maybe
have some tax strategies within those opportunities. Am I correct in saying that? Can
you maybe elaborate on that? Sure, I can. Yes, I'm looking for tax strategies. My
deep dive into investing really came when I blew a capital event back in 2021.
But I think there were two or three physicians in the group, there's not many
physicians. A lot of the people are people who made their money through small
business, through real estate, and it's just some interest in being able to have tax
strategies for W2 income, but I wouldn't say it's quite that prominent within the
Why man, there's just some really good answers so far and I love the theme this
weekend or it's this week the days they just keep going right is about relationship
building and
It's it's easy to have that first glance right and they go Oh, here's the thing
and we'd love to work with you and can you help us get to the next level? But I
want the persistence in you. I want you to keep going because I can see the value
in the person that comes back to me in six months and goes, hey look, I've learned
this, are you ready now? Hey look, we've done this, are you ready now? That person?
Man, that is some place that I, the ability for them to gain extra capital is
insane. We know very well the business, especially in the multifamily space,
and in the short -term rental space, but the ones with staying power are the ones
that get the job done, and that's what we need, because we know it's never exactly
what's on that pro forma, right? So if you can come with some experience or at
least less than just a dream, right? That's helpful. Great.
I think one of the best comments to the whole event that a lot of people raising
capital need to hear that Terry yesterday is saying, if you have an amazing deal
that's truly one out of a thousand and investors are going to lean forward and
they're going to chase you, maybe your deal is pretty good. You can have an average
deal and work really, really hard. You can find someone to invest in it. You'll get
the capital raised many times. But if your deal is truly amazing, people will refer
other people to it before they've even put their own money in many times. And they
recognize that's a one out of a thousand opportunity. So first offer something 100 %
unique, have it be compelling in two or three different ways, like the structure,
the deal, the team, and the deal itself. And then what I see everybody missing is
they don't have a one liner, they don't have a one pager, their pitch deck is 44
pages long instead of 15 pages long, and they have no video of the founder just
talking for one to three minutes saying, Hey, you know, I'm Sarah, here's my
manufacturing floor, here's my device, here's what we do, here's my team working on
the manufacturing devices and just make it real with a short video. I think that's
more valuable than any of the other materials, honestly. - And one quick one back at
you, Richard. What's, do you have any recommendations or resources? You mentioned, you
know, pitch deck, one pager, video, creating content, especially with the theme of
this conference being AI. There's so many tools out there where you can create this
type of material. Now you gotta make sure it's compliant. But can you speak,
Richard, to, you know, what resources folks can maybe tap into to just you know
create that extra polish on their pitch deck or their video content. Sure we tried
a couple tools that claim to create your pitch deck by just giving it some content
and they are just so horrible. I just unsubscribed on the trial immediately. We do
have a GPT tool we can give you free access to called pitch deck success score. It
lists rank and analyze your pitch deck in 25 ways and give you feedback on how to
improve it and then we have a tool called a capital raising one liner AI tool and
you upload your pitch deck and in 30 seconds It'll give you seven one liners that
meet the 20 criteria that we recommend for a one liner And then you can say I
like number two and four show me seven more like that And it'll iterate and show
you another seven options. They're more dialed into exactly what you want