Overcoming Funding Hurdles For Entrepreneurs

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I really liked being an outsider in the sense it was similar to when I just started to start the business from NASA.

At first, people were.

Telling me, Hey, you've got to go with a pitch deck, go to the valley, go to vcs.

But the vcs weren't trying to rock with me.

They didn't think that there was a market for what I was looking to do.

Business has been around for ten years.

You're wrong, right, So one of the things that I'd like to say is stop taking advice from people who haven't done what you're trying to do with LINGO. I'm like, eh, I don't think I want to raise venture capital.

I know what the stats are. They're terrible.

How do I look at the model and how do I flip the model on its head?

Because that's what I do.

And when I looked at it, I said, vcs get their money from family offices.

Why don't I try to hit up a couple of family offices.

Now I know why people don't typically hit up family offices, but I was determined once again to try, and I had the time, and oh, by the way, I had the patience because I'm already running a business that's successful that I've had for ten years.

So let's try to figure this out. So I made a list of.

Family offices who were in businesses that I thought that could be strategic investors. And the gamble that I made was, well, if I can get a multi billion dollar family who has the right investment mindset and is willing to support me and understands the long term of what I'm.

Looking to do. Can I also bring in traditional capital? And the answer was yes.

So I did a founder led seed round where I brought in a million and a half from a family office, and then I went to the other vseas and said, do you want to play?

How did that work out?

It worked out well because if I've already brought in a million and a half and you're going to sip in one hundred thousand dollars, that million and a half is going to help your hundred thousand dollars.

So I basically de risked the round for you. And that's one of the.

Areas that I've been big on telling other minorities to pursue was what I call friendly patient capital. I call my investors like they're my dad. I'm like, hey, what do you guys doing. Here's what I'm working on. And part of the things that were not, you know, non negotiable for this family was that you were going to do good and you were going to do well right.

It's not just the dollar, It's about the legacy.

And so when I tell them that kids in Ghana are doing our kids have the video, love it They're like, that's what you're supposed to do, right, go out and make that impact, whereas some people who have you know, domestic vcs are not necessarily as lucky to have people who think in that way.

So, okay, so you raise the money that helps you with infrastructure and employees. I'm assuming, So are you raising more money? What's the goal?

Yes, you can definitely hit me up if.

You want to send a check. Check.

How much are you trying to raise?

I would like to raise about a million more and pot path to our Series A.

And I'll tell you why.

Some of our clients are big firms.

Talking Siemens General Dynamics.

General Dynamics has been a customer's ours for the last three years.

Microsoft buys from us. Right, we have big companies who have engineers who buy from US.

What do they buy the software?

They buy the kids so they can teach employees, They have.

Their employees go into the schools, or they provide it as capacity building for the schools that they sponsor. And as I started to do this, we started talking to school districts. Shout out to Syracuse School District. And I'm realizing that this mission and this need is even bigger than I knew.

Like when I thought about it, I was like, oh, we're just going to ship out.

Some kids, But it's really become about how can we help make a district better?

And that is a problem of a much larger.

Magnitude and it takes more time. And we're also now building custom kits, like we're about to drop three holes space lessons. We got a climate satellite, we got a buggy coming out. That buggy's a moon rubber, and we also have a rocket launch. And in building all all this content, I'm like, you know what, bo, we take a little bit more capital, take our time, and really do something that is going to move the needle.

How many lessons are inside these kids? Because I'm thinking, and this was an elementary middle school and obviously high school probably different, but it felt like they were just for semesters, and so there was a semester with the lessons and there was a new set of kids. So forth semesters of kids in the grade every year. How many lessons are inside of your kids right now?

So it depends on what you want.

And this is the beauty of it, because we designed this to be flexible. You can have two to three semesters worth in your kid if you want.

It's all about what you ask us for.

So we developed content for every lesson for the classroom, and you could teach that over semester.

You could teach it over too.

So school districts aren't really buying it for you. For the most part. Is corporations as buying it.

It's mostly been corporations.

If you're out in the district, yeah, I mean, I think the challenge right is there's a lot going on in the district environment, and we've got some good connections and we're making progress. But this is where I'm not ashamed to say I need help. The people who purchase from us, they love us. But I started to realize what we were really up against when it comes to

And read some of these people.

Is it a price point issue? Because I feel like schools wet so much money on some of the most ridiculous things, and they do it repetibly every single year, And so when you're approaching schools or school districts. Are they saying, well, it's the price point, we don't have it in the budget this year. What is the resistance you feel? Because every school has them, so I'm just trying to fig what would be the resistance.

So we actually do not see resistance once we get in front of the right person. What I see is the amount of money that I have to invest to have somebody reach out, form the relationship, do the presentation, put the proposal in front of whoever has to make the decision, close the deal, and then get paid. Can be roughly six to eight months, and that's really where we have to support the operation until they can close

So what's the ultimate vision for the company.

My vision for Lingo would be to not only be a global provider of immersive STEM experiences like I would like to get to the point where some of our boxes interact with Oculus, but to combine that with the entrepreneurship thing. Because when I teach the Lingo Box in the Bahamas, and I've had this camp for nearly ten years, I couple it with entrepreneurship, and then I give kids money to go out and try to run their business because I believe that you don't have to have a

And it's like a muscle.

The more that you exercise it, the stronger that you're gonna get. So I want students trying to build their first startup when they're twelve or their thirteen, because by the time they're twenty, they're going to be beasts.

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