Will Investors Fund Your Startup?

Investors generally do not fund businesses unless they have some level of validation, customers, and traction. You most likely will need to bootstrap your way to a point where investors would be interested. Please take a look at our free course on Bootstrapping to get a taste of how we teach at One Million by One Million (1Mby1M). You may also check out some of our Udemy courses to get a feel.

Interested in getting some help with validating your startup? Apply to win a one-year scholarship to the 1Mby1M Premium program, sponsored by DataStax, valued at $1000.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bradley Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: My question was a bit more like what percentage of these kinds of backgrounds have a combination of a stint at a major university like you did.

Bradley Harrison: I think a very traditional path to transition out of the military is to go to grad school. That is a very common path if you get out early in your career. If you’re getting out after 20 years, you probably already have a Masters or a Doctorate while you were in the military. The national labs population tends to not have the military background. Most of the people in the national labs have spent 10 years at Los Alamos, working under whoever was the pioneer in technology.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bradley Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Coming back to the venture discussion, what do you like to see before writing a check?

Bradley Harrison: We over-index on the founders. Our biggest thing is chemistry with the founding team. We try to make sure that we have that chemistry. In checking that chemistry, we plan on being partners with entrepreneurs for 10 to 15 years. If that goes well, we plan on keeping them in our bullpen forever. It’s a little bit of coachability and compatibility. We want to make sure that there are no issues with integrity or moral code. That’s the people side.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bradley Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What does Unite Us do?

Bradley Harrison: Unite Us uses the social determinants of health to provide optimization in the health system. They do that with two sets of customers. One set of customers is the Department of Health of Human Services at the State and City level. Currently, we have 41 states as customers. We have 26 State-wide engagements. In North Carolina, we have a relationship with the Department of Health and Human Services at the State level and we have presence in 140 counties.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bradley Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures (Part 2)

Bradley Harrison: What people don’t realize is that the largest investor in innovation since World War II is not Silicon Valley; it’s the United States government. There are billions of dollars in each of these programs. The Army’s program for grants last year was $3.3 billion. That’s just the Army.

The government is passing the Endless Frontier Act which is about $110 billion to support innovation all through grants. We take our money, non-dilutive capital, and a bunch of smart people and build companies that we say are making the world a better and safer place.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bradley Harrison, Founder and Managing Partner at Scout Ventures (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Bradley Harrison, Founder, Managing Partner at Scout Ventures, discusses how military professionals are engaging in entrepreneurship with an ecosystem supporting them. Quite fascinating!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s introduce you to our audience. Tell us a bit about your background as well as what you’re doing at Scout. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Apple SDK was one of the most successful developer platforms. 

Geoff Ralston: This expansion of platforms is something on which you can begin your company. We have a company called Shogun that built their business originally on Shopify and then expanded. There’s enormous availability and possibility by these platforms that get to scale. One other aspect of this that I’m super excited about is, I’ve started a sister accelerator of Y Combinator called Imagine K12 focused on educational technology.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Exactly. Our spectrum is broader. Yours is specifically the ones that who will get funding.

Geoff Ralston: Forgive me, but I disagree, Sramana. You’re broader than the batch, but YC is broader than that. When I first wanted to start a company in the ‘80s, none of this content was available. Now, there’s so much freely available content and programs that help you take the first step.

Sramana Mitra: That’s the most important thing. I have another couple of nuances that we are seeing. There’s bootstrapping with services. Very good companies are coming out of this mode of entrepreneurship. Oracle was founded in this mode. Alteryx is one of my favorite case studies. I met Dean Stoecker in 2013. He told me this incredible story. They’ve gone public since.