The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:13:33 · Harry Stebbings, George Sivulka
[00:13:33] S1: So we're sitting in that lab. We're like, hey. There's a great company to be had here. Let's give it a shot. What now? Because I heard... I mean, and I saw pictures of this wonderful bedroom. Unable to make... Right. You made me feel like such a diva when I saw that bedroom. Unable to make $300 rent sneaking into Stanford dining halls for meals when you weren't studying there. Yep. George. [00:13:57] S0: I had no comment. Off the off the record. [00:13:59] S1: Raised two rounds of financing with clothes hanging behind him on Zoom. Take me to the next step post that I'm gonna do this in the lab.
00:14:09 · George Sivulka
[00:14:09] S0: So I was on a PhD salary. You know, you're you're making, what, $38,000 a year. I think 42 if... At the at time if you if you had the Stanford graduate fellowship, which I had. And I said I was gonna go on leave. And I actually originally went on leave and said... Told my adviser, I'll be back in a year. You know, this coronavirus, just, like, give me some time. And I didn't have anywhere to go. Like, there was, like, a logical next step, and I wanted to work on this company. So I asked my friends who were renting out a house in East Palo Alto to let me rent a room, the cheapest room they could possibly find. And they were all fully booked, and it was, like, I think, over $1,000 of rent. And they said... I I think it was actually, you know, 500 or $600, not $300 to give my my broke self some credit here for not being able to afford the rent. But they said you could rent out the master bedroom closet. And so I bought, I brought in, like, a mattress from the dorms, and I had a folding table from Home Depot nearby. And I would basically rotate whether the mattress on... Was on the floor or the folding table was on the floor, and that was... I just sat there and worked all day. Sixteen, eighteen hours a day. Go to sleep, wake up, do it again. No weekends. Know, it's just kind of like I turned into almost a monk where I was just obsessively building heavy. I was training models at the time. So I'd wake up in the middle the night, check on them, you know, continue to use my GPU because I didn't wanna spend any money.
00:15:21 · Harry Stebbings
[00:15:21] S1: Is there a period where more work is not effective? Like, when I think about sixteen to eighteen hour days in that environment, dude, I'm masochistic to the extreme where it's unhealthy and alcoholic, bulimic, tortured child. I mean, fuck. I'm like Lindsay Lohan Adventure. But when I think of even, like, me in that, I would not function well there. I need fresh air, exercise. I just have to.
00:15:46 · George Sivulka, Harry Stebbings
[00:15:46] S0: Yeah. Ultimately, I probably went too hard. My hindsight's twenty twenty. I think I think I definitely left nothing on the table to a point where it was detrimental to my health. But at the same time, I think that that was, like, a crucible where it it helped form me. It's very hard to be a founder, and those are the moments where you're just, like, you're eating microwave meals every single day and, like, you're just losing weight and you're trying to will something into existence. I actually was trying to pitch one of my former bosses at a professional services firm, and he looked at me on the Zoom call and he almost cried. And he was like, just come work here. Like, what are you doing to yourself? Like, just don't... Like, come back. We'll give you, like, a proper salary. Like, you don't have to do this. There's so many low points like that, and and I think, you know, I just kept on on chewing through it and and, yeah, raising money in the closet. I I actually got on with for... We raised a pre seed from from Peter Thiel and and and Floodgate and then our seed from Mike Volpe at index. And Mike was like, hey. We're gonna do a partner call just to... As a formality with a few partners just to close out. [00:16:44] S1: Is Volpe. [00:16:45] S0: This is Volpe. Yeah. So Volpe is like, there'll be a few partners on this call. [00:16:49] S1: What round is this for?
00:16:49 · Harry Stebbings, George Sivulka
[00:16:49] S1: What round is this for? [00:16:50] S0: This is a seed. So it's a follow on to the pre seed in, like, November of, I think, 2020. And I get on the Zoom call, and I've I've literally got, like, clothes hanging behind me. And they're, like, all of a sudden, Mike shows up and then four other partners and then 80 partners and, like, the the Zoom screen tessellates with, you know, hundreds of faces, and I'm, like, horrified at the fact... And Mike's like, look. He's living in a closet. And everyone's like, ah, great founder. And I was so embarrassed, and then and then I pitched my company. Honestly, hilarious. [00:17:19] S1: Yeah. I'd say I I just wanna unpack that element there because I said... I I can't remember who it was who told me I had to ask, but they said I had to ask about driving to Peter Thiel's house.
00:17:28 · George Sivulka
[00:17:28] S0: Well, so so I was saying two months prior, again, I think I was at Stanford or or just about to leave Stanford, and one of my friends had interned at Founders Fund. And he's like, hey. I hear you're raising financing. You should talk to Peter. And I was like, well, I'm not gonna say no to that. And so he introduces me on an email thread with me and Peter. And I'm like, hey, Peter. Would love to do a lunch or dinner. I'm not a morning person. So I was like, Peter would love to do a a lunch or dinner anytime soon. And Peter was like, I can do a breakfast. I was like, I really wanna do a lunch or dinner. You know? Like, can we do a brunch? You know? He's like, I'm gonna do a breakfast. And so I said, well, that's that's fine. And he gave me a slot on a Saturday. And so got in my car. That was an old, like, beat up 2006 Audi convertible that I had, like, fixed up from Craigslist and bought for $4,000 at three in the morning and drank a bunch of coffee, like 18 cups of coffee, like a five hour energy, like, all the disgusting stuff, and drove from three to eight to his house to go and pitch this guy. And he... I think he showed up forty five minutes to an hour late. He's, like, just waking up, and I'm I'm wired. I'm, like, sitting in my chair, you know, like, ready to go. And it was supposed to be a thirty or forty five minute breakfast. I was like, it's kind of already shot. But we ended up talking for, I think, like, four or five hours about not only the company and all of the the the flaws that I had in my business model, but then also math and and and deep esoteric philosophy and, like, just the world. And he said, you know, I'm not investing at the time because it was coronavirus and a variety of other factors, but I'd love to put in a check. I got out of this conversation thinking I had just made a friend or was seen from someone who's incredibly, incredibly, incredibly bright. And, I'm I'm leaving his house, yeah, I felt like I was inducted into the Illuminati. I was like, whole... Know, drop top, the sun's shining. I was playing Kanye West. I drove out as as as, like, my first offer from a venture investor.