#175 Mastering The Start-Up Game With Michael Doyle: Pitching, Branding, and Selling

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmed. Today I'm very pleased to bring with me CEO of Branded Iron and Brand Champion Michael, who is an expert in consulting and marketing for big brands. He has also experienced in actually fundraising helping startups. Michael, thank you very much for being with me on the show today. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself? If I missed anything, you can correct me, also as well, absolutely so. 

0:00:33 - Michael
Thank you so much. First, let me start by saying thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I run a company called Brand Iron and we're a traditional in what we call branding and marketing agency, with a little bit of different twist and, I think, one on. I start with a little bit of my background. So I've been in the business now for 30 years or so and what I did originally was I had an advertising marketing agency and built that up and before you know kind of when the dot com days were getting started, heated up, you know, we decided we wanted position ourselves to potentially get acquired and so we started working with a lot of technology companies. And we had a bunch of technology companies that was the majority of our portfolio and one of our clients got acquired as a part of an IPO rollup and they said, hey, you've been running our brand and all these different components for us. We'd like you to consider selling a firm and coming to work for us. So I did. I sold my firm. I was part of this dot com. I ran our national brand. 

One of the things I didn't understand at the time that that was going to become one of my main goals or main task was to be able to put together what we call analyst presentations, reporting on our monthly and quarterly results and selling that message. And we really put together, you know, the very beginning of what a pitch deck truly looks like, or a cap raise deck. At that time it wasn't for raising money. We already had money and so it was. You know, we're putting our message, or analyst presentation, to analysts are recovering our stock and the investment banking houses that are already invested in us or interested in investing in us and putting more money with us. And so I had to really understand the brand story, understand what we call the financial story, and be able to help package that and be able to put it in a manner where it's easy for everybody to understand everything about our company. So I served a couple of years doing that job and I went back out on my own again and started up Brand Iron now 22 years ago, 23 years ago now and I said you know there's a, there's a market here to be able to bring in and package those pitch decks, and so now we've got a website called cap raise deckcom. It's a great entry point. 

We help our clients to only put together a pitch deck or a capital raise deck, or what we call management presentation or an analyst presentation, depending on what stage they are, whether they're raising capital as a total startup or they're what we call a small and emerging business and they want to raise capital to get to the next plateau or their large business. They're just trying to raise capital or get support to be able to get to the next plateau or get acquired or go public or anything like that. And so part of our part of what we do is we help work with our clients on how do they package that message. What are I say? It's like a story. So how do we say what are the main exciting points that we want to communicate and convey within this story? And then how do we put these different value points and a value proposition into different chapters of the book or the story or the deck? And then how do we put together what we call really compelling and strong financial story, and what does that look like? And so how do we put together all that component as well, too, and weave this all into a nice tight presentation? 

You know, most of the time in these decks, in these pitches you've got about, you know, half an hour to an hour. So if you've got an hour long meeting, we'd like to say let's put together like 25 to 30, you know, like about 25 slides, so that about a minute minute and a half per slide. So you'll have about 25 to 35 minutes worth of content and you can use the rest of the time. Hopefully you've. You know you've piqued their interest, you've got them engaged and they're excited. Then they want to ask you more questions. 

So it's our job. How do we package that story? How do we really highlight the advantages that we have, our value points and our value proposition? Do a really good job of communicating that financial story and putting together a nice tight, crisp and clear presentation that that you can really present to, you know, potential investors or potential partners, whether it be the picture concept or raise capital. So we've been doing this now for dozens of years I should say more than a dozen years. We've worked on hundreds of decks and we've helped our clients raise more than $5 billion in capital on putting together a nice and compelling deck. 

0:05:23 - Mehmet
Wow, that's really, you know, very big achievement. I would say, Michael. Now, when we talk about, like pitching to investors, like you know, like the old pitching and the pitch elevator, we know where the story comes from, but for investors it's a different story, right? So, yeah, like, because these people usually they are busy people, they are like you know, they don't have the time. So what makes, you know, a successful pitch to an investor? 

0:05:53 - Michael
Sure, I think there's multiple factors, right. So the first one is understanding are you solving a particular problem? And if you're solving a particular problem, you know what is that problem and why isn't it getting addressed. And how is your technology or your company or your service or your product solving that particular problem? Or how is it enhancing something or making something better? And really understanding that so you could clearly articulate what that wants to look like as well too. So you've got to be able to have a hook at the very beginning of the deck that grabs their attention and say there's this problem, we're solving this problem, or there's an opportunity and we're, by based on what we've done and what we put together, we're creating this huge opportunity. And really I don't think. 

I think a lot of times people just pitch to pitch and they don't understand a true story structure and how do you put together? It's like you know, it's a. It's like in storytelling and when you read a good book, they have a setup at the very beginning of the book. They kind of lay out who the characters are, they lay out the high level story and then start to lay out and tell this story and they kind of tie all the loose ends together and then they kind of have a strong close. Well, I don't think very many entrepreneurs or companies or CEOs understand that this isn't about just telling people what you do, but telling people what you do, how you do it better. How do you craft and package this story? How do you make it compelling? How do you make it engaging? How do you capture their attention? How do you put together all the different supporting points in the story To be able to help support that claim or that problem solving or that opportunity? And then how do you show the growth and what the potential is and how do you lay that in an effective way so they could look at and say, wow, you guys really don't. You've really thought this through. You understand the marketplace, you understand the competitors, you understand that the niche, or you understand the problem or the challenge, or you understand the opportunity and you've laid out a nice tight, compelling story and you understand the finances involved, you understand the investment involved and you've done a really good job of laying out what the potential returns could be to, or how big, or how, how, how grow, how you can grow, and then you've communicated that and you can put together as well to, and that you understand, you know how you're going to be able to perform and what you're going to do with their capital, how you're going to deploy that capital and the results you're going to produce on that capital. And how do you put all that together? 

And it's hard when you've got all these objectives within 25 slides, right. And so you've got to lay it out into an overarching story, define what the different chapters of that story are and let's say you've got six chapters of the story, so you've probably only got like three, three to four slides for each chapter. And you've got to have a strong start or a strong introduction. You've got to have a compelling. You know why, you know what, what the challenges or what the opportunity is or what problem you're solving. And you've got to kind of lay out you know how you're going to be able to solve that or create this opportunity, how you're going to roll it out, how you're going to take it to the marketplace, how you're going to get people to buy it, how you're going to people to you know, continue to use it or buy more of it, and then how you're going to be able to what your team looks like to be able to effectively do this. What experience do they have? And you've really got to lay this out in a nice compelling story. And that's what we do. 

We say about 95% of the decks we see and we see lots of decks people asking for help all the time and I'd say about 95% of them don't have a story, they just have content. And they a lot of times like I just got one the other day it was 56 slides. Okay, there's absolutely no story in it, but there's all this content and I'm like, oh my God, it would take me hours to figure out what, what they're trying to communicate here. But you've got to make it. There's a saying I have, or when I went to school you know they call it keep it simple, stupid, like in speaking class. 

You know you got to keep it simple. You got to make sure you can clearly articulate what the story is. You got to make sure you high level communicate what that is. You got to get them sucked in and engaged. You've got to get them excited to find out more. And then you got to be able to be prepared to be able to answer what those questions are and backup and supplement. You know how do you solve their problems or how do you answer their questions and how do you all put that together in a nice tight, compelling fashion within about this amount of time. So, because that's all you get, you get one shot and you got to make really good use of your time and you got to make sure the people are excited about what you're presenting, or your idea, or your concept, or your business model, or the returns that you're producing and that you've suck them in and they get excited about it and they want to find out more. They want to find out how they can get involved. 

0:11:08 - Mehmet
Yeah. So, michael, out of curiosity, you know what usually we see people doing. They know that pitch decks now are standardized, so they know like it should be in certain, let's say, they start by the problem. You know, maybe they have done some market research to just you know, if they are still in the pre seed stage, I would say and then, and then they would come up with their solution, competition and so on. 

Like, for me personally, I sometimes you know, I don't like to be very rigid to the format like don't you think that they need to have first kind of a hook, right? So, yes, right. So you know what, when I see the first slide, I need to be excited and then they need to mention so what are, the majority of the time, the mistakes, I would say, or let's call them the challenges that you see founders, especially in the technology, because we are on the CTO show. So what are, the majority of the time, the challenges that you see? Founders? Or like this, you know, maybe they are a couple of founders comes together to do the pitch, when they are tried to do capital raising, and what have you seen work actually in an effective way, you know, when you work with them. 

0:12:27 - Michael
Yeah. Well, here's what I would say is, I'd say the majority of people over complicate the story, right, and they've got they bit so much in there but they don't understand. It's really simple. You've got to be able to have, let's call it like your 30 second. We call elevator pitch, right, right, right. And you've got to be able to put that same concept into attack. 

You know what? Who are you, what do you do? Why is this important? Why does I, why do I care and why should I, you know, find out more about this opportunity? But you've got to have that why? It's just like the whole Simon Sinek. 

It starts with why, right, right, and so you've got to have that why, right up front of and here's what happens, especially on technology companies, they get into the weeds so much. They love their technology, they love their code, they love, you know, all the different cool components of this and really, at the end of the day, do they get? Yeah, those things are nice to know, but if you can't officially communicate in a nice tight, quick fashion of what your why is right out of the gate, you lose them. And the people look at your deck that you start to talk them, you start to present it and that you've lost them because you're in the weeds. You don't have that clear and concise aha moment at the very beginning of what it is you're doing. And why does this make sense? What's the value proposition? And you know how big is the opportunity and and be able to put that in that story, I would say, the majority of the life, especially in technology companies. It's there that why and what that value proposition is. 

It's there, but they're they're too sucked into their own company or their own technology. They have to step back. They have to look at how do we simplify this? Can we put it into what I call four to five or six value points that are super compelling? 

That that the everyday Joe, because the vast majority of these investors, yeah, they care about the code, they care about your intellectual property, they care about your. You know all these different components, but you've got to be able to, you know, answer the questions of why this makes sense, why is it different, why is it better? What is the opportunity, how big is the opportunity? And you've got to suck them in the very beginning and so you can't lose sight of how do you, how do you, take a step back. How do you look at what you've got and how do you determine what's valuable and what it? What will the investors care about, what will the market care about, and how do you identify that and put that into those value points that that really has a really compelling value proposition that you can really sell to you potential investors? 

0:15:15 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's really, you know, very informative as well, michael. Now, out of curiosity, is there any difference If I'm a founder today? Is there any difference if I'm going to do my pitch in front of an angel investor versus a, you know, a full-fledged VC or maybe a private equity? Is there any difference? You know, in the format would be a difference in in the way I should articulate my, my value proposition, and I'm asking this because you have this experience for a long time. Yeah, yeah. 

0:15:53 - Michael
So here's how I view that is not really okay. What the differences are is when you first develop a pitch deck, right, you're selling your concept and you're you're pitching your concept to whether it be strategic partners or to a potential you know, vc, let's call it, or friends and family around. You're pitching the pitch deck that's got that value point, those value points and the value proposition in there, and it may not have necessarily the what we call the financial components or what we call the full financial story, it just being have a one slide to talk about high, high level overview, about how this could you know what type of results, what you could achieve and what you could spin off or produce. The differences between a pitch deck with that one slide in the high level overview and a true capital raise deck is you drill down and you and you kind of expand that until, let's say, it's four to six slides and have a true financial story. And so that's the difference between a pitch deck where you're selling the concept and you're just seeing or gauging their interest if there's a potential interest in finding out more about the financial components of what you're doing. And that's the difference. And so I think, most of the time I try to tell people you have a pitch deck and then you would have quote unquote a cap raise deck and you have, and the difference is putting in not the one slide but four to six slides that really spell out that full financial story. And what I mean by that is you're talking about okay, if you're, let's call it, let's say it's a NAP or a SAS product and you're putting together these subscriptions and they pay monthly or they pay yearly or whatever. But you put together and you say we're going to be able to get so many subscribers or so many downloads and so much usage and that's going to spin off a monthly recurring revenue or annual recurring revenue of X. So the subscribers or seats turn into X revenue and that revenue is the gross revenue. And then we have like potentially, like a cost of goods sold or a margin number, and then we have an EBITDA number in there, and then what that looks like we probably have a cash flow chart that says here's the cash flow we're spinning out, and then we probably want to have in there as well too, is what is the enterprise value that we think we're going to want to be able to build within this company and why it's interactive and why you want to start with this now and why you want to be a part of this growth that really takes it to the next level. And so the big difference is on. That is just you know. 

And what and probably most of these people want to see, is a pitch deck and then the full Capraise deck and the financial story. But I want to bring up one other thing. I hate to send out a pitch deck. I hate to send out a Capraise deck. The first thing we recommend do is put together a teaser piece and it's going to be like a two pager or like a two pager or two three slides super high level, 50,000 foot view who you are, what you do, what you do and how you're going to disrupt or how you're going to solve this problem or create this huge opportunity. And so you send that out, and the only purpose of that is twofold or I shouldn't say only, but there's a couple is number one gauge their interest level, right. But the other thing you don't want to do is send the whole deck out, because I've seen it, I see it all the time. You send the whole deck and say, hey, we get it, we're not interested. And you've never get the opportunity to meet with them face to face or be on a zoom call or whatever, and really sell your concept or really sell your idea. And that's one of the huge mistakes we see is they go Yep, I send them and they never got back to me. Well, because they don't have any questions. You answered all the questions and they. It's a great way for them to say no, right. 

And so if you sit on a teaser piece, you know and, and then you get, you get them excited. You almost force them to meet with you Because you know they want to hear the pitch that you, and then it's your opportunity to really sell the concept, sell yourself, sell the team, sell the idea, sell how you're going to be able to create this and how you're passionate about it. Yeah, and there's a, there's other components. You not only you have to have a great product or a great company or great service. You've got to have a great team. You've got to have passion. You have that. You've got to be excited about it. You got to be able to show that and and be able to put together a teaser piece that kind of peaks their interest and just just gives them enough to want to be able to meet with you Is everything, because you've got to be able to meet with people in order for them to be able to see and hear and Understand what you've got. 

But also, here's the other big piece of it, too is I always tell people you've got to be able to anticipate the questions. Well, if you send the deck out, you don't know what their questions are, you don't get the opportunity to Listen to it, hear it and and to be able to solve those objections right. Well, if you send out a teaser piece and you get the opportunity to present it, you get the opportunity to handle any objections they're throwing out you. And so that's why I love not only the teaser piece, a pitch deck, a capital raise deck, and kind of have all these different components or tools of your toolshed, if you will, well, and have them ready, ready to be able to help you accomplish this job. 

The other thing of it, too, is you've got to have and it's amazing to me, I see all these decks all the time and I try to find them online and they don't even have a website and then I go how are you going to raise money? They don't even look, you don't even look like a real company yet. Maybe you can get away with that with your friends and family around, because they're meeting a one-on-one and they know you and they trust you. But if you're going to go outside of that sphere, you've got to have not only a tight deck. You've got to have not only a pitch deck, a tight teaser piece, but you also have to have your website that shows that you're credible, that you've updated your linkedin thing and you're doing all these different components that they say, yep, these are, these guys are real, they're credible. I can find them online, they're doing something right, they're, they're invested in this, and so we feel a lot better about this, about them and their opportunity. 

0:22:17 - Mehmet
Yeah, great. So I think it comes again to something we you mentioned earlier. It's about you have to tell this in a story way, because sending a pitch deck over email, you know, like if I'm an investor and I receive, maybe they have good product, but I cannot see the energy. I cannot see, you know, the right, yeah okay, it's nice to have. 

and the second thing I you know, the second take away I took, it depends on the stage they are in the business. So you know, pre-seed phase is something when they start to become, the seed phase is something else and probably maybe when they are pitching for and this is the question I want to ask you, like I think you know, like this it's a continuous effort until either you know the company is sold or maybe they go IPO, right. 

0:23:02 - Michael
Right, you know you're, you're 100% right, and so so what we see in that regard is we see all the time that people are, they put together their framework of what their pitch presentation wants to look like, or their capital raise deck and then, once they, once they start to present that, they get feedback right and they start to modify and adjust it and and they start to evolve and develop this thing and and really address what their the feed, you know, address the questions or modify it based on the feedback they're getting. And so I highly recommend that you don't have one deck and you stick to it the whole time. You've got to be able to learn, evolve and grow and make this thing more dynamic. So, as you refining this thing you're understanding I'm only at the chapters and the and the value points and the value proposition within the story, but you're really helping refine one that really sells, right, mm-hmm. 

0:24:01 - Mehmet
Right so yeah. 

0:24:03 - Michael
And so the other thing I think you've got to do is you've got to practice it. I you know you've got to. You've got to put together your deck and you've got to work on it with yourself. Or look in the Mirror and work on your presentation and I tell people all the time you got to know it, you've. It can't be something you read, you know. You've got to know it in your heart. You've got to be able to say here's what we're doing, here's our story, here's the four, five, six value points, here's the landscape of who we're competing against, here's the opportunity or the challenge, here's and you've got to know that story in your head so it becomes conversational. 

0:24:40 - Mehmet
Right, it's like this conversation right 100%. 

And one thing I don't remember where. I read it in one of the books, where also they mentioned you need, of course, to be passionate about it and you need to be able to explain it. You know, they sometimes even put a framework like think if you want to write a tweet about it, right, or you want to write a short post about it. So where you can really catch that tension, what you are doing, what you are trying to achieve. You know and you need to show this passion. Now my question, michael, is okay how important is you know because you are marketing as well how important in all this to also put effort in building the brand and when I say build the brand, I'm not talking only about, like B2C products, I'm not talking about something but even in B2B businesses, how important to establish yourself as a brand once you know you are into the business phase. 

0:25:37 - Michael
Well, I don't even think it's down in the business phase. I think having that brand and conveying what you do is huge, even in the capillary side right, so that you are effectively communicating and providing information about the marketplace and potential opportunity or the challenges. You are providing. You know whether it be blogs or videos or social media posts and you are really educating the marketplace about. You know how big this challenge is or how big the opportunity is, and what if you had this, or what if you could do this, or what if you could solve this problem? Right, and that's how you really build up demand, even on the capital raising, in the capital raising phase, right. So, having that brand and having those value proposition that you know that value points in the value proposition, and putting together content that really position you with credibility and authority and really say this is where we're at, this is where we want to go. Here's a really good example. 

I know, you know Meta just rolled out threads this week, right. Well, you've been hearing for a while that there's this thing coming, right, and it was a. This is going to come and it's the you know application killer. It's going to kill Twitter off. Well, they've teased this for a while and we've known this is coming. And then, all of a sudden, they, you know, they make this big announcement this last week and you better get, you better get ready, because this is going to, this is going to totally change everything. Well, they rolled out and they and they announced it and they and this is just what yesterday, when they rolled out, and then, within the first 24 hours, you know, zuckerberg comes out and says oh, we already have 30 million users. Well, they just didn't happen without teasing it and building that brand and community, putting together content and kind of laying the groundwork for a successful launch or you need to do the same thing or laying out the groundwork, building that brand, putting together your communications, blogs, your videos, working on your niche market or your industry, and kind of laying out the groundwork to be able to roll that product or your source Service or your or whatever, out into the marketplace. 

And it's so important, it doesn't. It's not even consumer. I just use that a consumer example. Probably BNB. B2b is even more important because you've got the sole small niche, potentially. 

And how do you go out there and get people to understand what you're doing or what you're developing and what you put together and how do you communicate what you know effectively and build up that excitement? 

So when you go to talk to them about raising money or pitching it or becoming a partner of theirs, they're like oh, I heard about this, I really want to find out more. And so building that brand not only from a look and feel, but developing your messaging platform, your value points, your value proposition, is critical across the board, not just in your deck, but on your website, in your videos, in your blogs, you know, in specific announcements, potentially. It's critical to be able to build that brand, be able to effectively communicate. You know what is your value points and how's this really going to help. And be able to put all that together and effectively build that brand, build that messaging platform and position yourself appropriately in the marketplace is critical. And here's one thing I want to say about that, because if you don't take charge of your brand, if you don't take charge of your messaging, guess who will do it for you? Your competitors, right. 

0:29:21 - Mehmet
Exactly, exactly, exactly. I love this, michael. The reason I love that? Because it's not only good for the brand awareness itself. I think it's especially for people who are in the startup phase. It's kind of also a market validation for them, because when they start to put these efforts and maybe they start to see all these requests coming in because they are doing, as you said, social media pause, they are doing videos, I don't know, like they are on blogs. So this might be a very good way actually an excellent way also to see if what they have put in their pitch deck as a market demand, they have validated it. So this is really a cool methodology that they can use it as well Now. 

0:30:11 - Michael
So one of the only I want to say on that. We're talking about the brand and we're talking about marketing. Here's the other thing. I don't think people really understand too is you've got to have a marketing plan that's going to be targeting towards investors. You've got to be able to do your research and know who would potentially invest in this type of product or this type of technology, and how do you build relationships with them. Do you go after investment banking firms? Do you have to go people within the industry? Do you have to go after you know what a competitor if you've got a relationship would they be interested in partnering with you on this type of thing? You've got to have a plan of who you're going to target, how you're going to approach them, how you're going to educate them, how you're going to engage with them to be able to set up that opportunity, set up an appointment to be able to send them a teaser. Set that appointment so you could pitch your presentation. 

And you've got to have a marketing plan. It's like any other marketing plan and people don't understand. Oh well, you got a debt together and I go well, okay, great, what do you do now? Right, you've got to have a plan, you've got to know who you're going to meet with. You've got to understand who plays in this space, who likes these type of opportunities or this type of technology. Right, let's even say within the app world, well, there's B2B apps, there's B2C apps, there's things in transportation or food. I mean, who likes what? 

And if you understand that who are the major players within these spaces and that were within the particular industry, helps you significantly to understand how you're going to be able to approach these people and what are the mediums that you need to utilize. What's the content you need, whether it be an email or a blog or a video or what is it. And you've got to kind of lay out here's our targets, here's the mediums we're going to utilize, here's the emails or the phone calls or the teaser pieces, and kind of lay this out. It's just like any other thing. It may take seven touches, 10 touches to be able to say, oh, yeah, you know, I'm at, looked at my stuff and now I'm going to gauge his interest. Well, it may take me pinging you seven, eight, 10 times before you say, yeah, you keep peppering me and I really totally appreciate it and yeah, now I'm ready to meet with you and see what you've really got. 

0:32:38 - Mehmet
Yes, yes, 100%. Now the question is Bakil, how to continue on this from marketing perspective, to scale the business, what they should do. 

0:32:53 - Michael
I tell people you've got to have first stuff. You know I love technology, so I love marketing automation platforms or like a CRM marketing automation combination, whether it be like a Sharp Spring or a HubSpot or an active campaign, any of these types of things. You've got to have a database platform that you can house all your prospects, your clients, your targets, put it all in there that you can track and measure the effectiveness of and see your interaction, engage, the effectiveness of every single thing you're doing. And this is like I talked about the plan towards investors. 

Well, now what you've got to do is say we've got targets, here's our targets up here. We've got a technology, crm marketing automation platform. We're going to use or lay out all these different what we call touchpoints or what all those look like, whether it be an email, whether it be a blog or a video, or we posted on LinkedIn or we posted on this industry or trade site, and so we could be able to track and measure the effectiveness of all the different activities, as well as the effectiveness of our efforts or our spend, and look like and say here's what we're doing, how do these? You know, whether it be email campaigns, whether these Google AdWords campaigns or these LinkedIn campaigns or what are these, you know, e-cold email campaigns, what do they look like and what are the results on that? So you could tweak and modify and just and find out what really works and what doesn't work. 

And I'd like laying out a plan of here's the targets and here's the technology, here's the different touchpoints of the mediums we're going to utilize to get to these people and then being able to have the insights to be able to track and measure the effectiveness along the way and based on who you, those targets are. You've got to be able to realize and understand is what's the best or most efficient way to be able to reach them and how many times are you going to have to touch them and over what period of time is it going to happen within to be able to build that relationship and get them to engage and start to have a conversation with them about potentially buying your product or service. 

0:35:09 - Mehmet
Now, as we, you know, close to the end, the question I want to ask you, michael, and coming back to you, know the stages? Now the final stage of any startup or any company is, you know, maybe they want to sell the company, so they want, the founders would want to sell the company and do an exit. So what are, like you know from your experience, the way to position a company to get acquired? 

0:35:41 - Michael
That's a great question. So, same thing again. You understand what that outcome is. You're trying to get accomplished, right? So, and it's like another marketing effort, right? 

So in a situation like this, you say, okay, well, is it going to be a strategic buyer, somebody in your industry that may wants to buy you because they want like your technology, or they like your customer base, like your customer base, or you know they like how you do business, so it could be a strategic buyer. It could be a financial buyer, like would it be a private equity firm or something like that. So you've got to understand who are your potential buyers, right? And then how do you going to build relationships with them and build out your network? You may want to consider do I need to hire an investment banking firm to be able to represent me, to be able to go after that as well too? Or are you trying to build these relationships and do it yourself as well too? 

And then you've got to say, is all right, well, how am I going to build these relationships with these strategic buyers or these financial buyers, and can I do it myself? Are you going to hire a firm to work with us and help us do that, and instead of, you know, putting together a pitch deck or a capital raise deck, you're going to have what we call like a management presentation or a pitch deck as well that talks about why this is a great opportunity and why this makes sense and why you want to buy us, and so it's just a different type of pitch, but you know it could be is here's how these synergies going to work together, or here's how our technology is going to plug in with yours, and here's how our customer base is really going to expand your customer base. And so you're kind of it's just a different type of message and story that you're telling to a different target audience. 

0:37:28 - Mehmet
Right, right, yeah, that's really also like I think it's. Each part of this journey would be exciting by itself. So you know, the fundraising in the early stages, then maybe raising additional funds down the road, and then the end would be by an exit probably. So this is really an exciting journey. I would say, if someone and yeah, yeah, guys, you should dream big, right, so yeah, go out and do it, and you've got to understand that story, whether it be at the beginning of the pitch deck or capri sick something on when you're exiting. 

0:38:02 - Michael
You've got to understand that story and why this makes sense and where's the value. And we get hired all the time by these private equity firms to help them put together their presentation, work with their teams so they can, you know, increase their multiples right, increase the returns of what they've invested and be able to maximize that return. And so you've got to be able to understand that story, got to understand why it makes sense and where's the value here so you could leverage them and maximize the returns that you're going to be able to get you know, from getting acquired. 

0:38:36 - Mehmet
Yeah, michael, just for the sake of someone. Might the question come to their mind? 

0:38:41 - Michael
when we say exit, it might be also an acquisition right 100% yeah, yeah, and in fact the majority of exits are going to be or going to be from getting acquired. You know one percent through going public. The other, all the other ones, is you're selling or getting acquired by a competitor, or getting bought, depending on how big you are, or you could get acquired by a financial buyer, but I would say the vast majority of them are going to get going to exit through getting acquired. 

0:39:11 - Mehmet
Yeah, because I mean I work for tech companies as well myself. I mean US based companies and you know like following on other part of the world. So usually one of three things happens either they go IPO, they get acquired by a bigger player, or sometimes we see some mergers very few times, not too much or we see them bought by a private equity firm or something similar. 

0:39:36 - Michael
Michael, before we close, anything you wish I asked you actually or anything you want to say, you know I always say is understanding what you're trying to get what, understanding what you're trying to get accomplished with your deck, with your marketing, with your brand. 

Start with the end of mind. 

Okay, marketing and branding isn't just about creative and logos and cool websites. 

It's about branding in your position, your company, to help you achieve your desired outcomes. 

So, if you understand what you're trying to get accomplished and what you're trying to do with your company, with your, with your capital raise deck, or with what you're trying to get accomplished, if you want to sell your company, understand not only where you want to be but what you have to do to bring it and position it so you can help you achieve these goals and objectives. So that's why I try to tell people, if you understand what you're trying to get accomplished, how do you put together a brand, how do you put together messaging whether it be in a deck or your logo or your website or in your marketing that's going to resonate. So how do you package that story In the different mediums and how do you effectively track and measure so you can ensure that you're getting towards your desired outcomes? And if you put together that plan and you put together the brand and all the different steps along the way that'll help you significantly and getting you to where you want to be. 

0:41:01 - Mehmet
That's really great advice, I would say Michael, Michael. Finally, where people can find more about you and your company. 

0:41:07 - Michael
Yeah, it's Michael Doyle, or, yeah, Michael Doyle on LinkedIn, or you can look at brand iron net and that's where you can find me, either on LinkedIn or a brand iron net with that's my company. Okay, great. 

0:41:20 - Mehmet
I will make sure that I will add, you know, all the links to the episode description. Well, Michael, thank you very much for really I enjoyed this discussion today with you very informative and a lot, tons of information. I would say so if anyone who's listening or watching this episode looking for fundraising and you know all the journey that we talked about, Michael, today so this episode is indeed for you and, as usual, the way I end each episode, I again ask you for your feedback or maybe you have a question. So you can find me again on LinkedIn, twitter. My email is also available in the podcast description as well. You can write me directly. 

If you're interested to be a guest same, like Michael, was a guest today Don't hesitate to reach out to me. We can do that management for this and, as you can see, I went global. You know you can be in any part in the world, so Majority of my guests are in the US. I have some guests from UK. I have guests even from New Zealand, from Australia, everywhere in the world. So doesn't matter, if you have something interesting, we can discuss it on the show. Please don't hesitate to reach out and, at the end, thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet up again in a new episode. Thank you, bye, bye. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet