Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where
we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five
Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders
and experts who will share not just their expertise,
but the milestone moments that have reshaped
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So if you're looking for motivation, you're in
the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome
to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick, your host.
And today, my very special guest is venture capitalist
and educator Brandon Nong. With over 25 years
of experience of a career spanning in education,
marketing, and startups, Brandon has helped companies
achieve remarkable exits and then growing another
company 1 ,400 % in under three years. Brandon
has also helped hundreds of young adults reach
their initial educational milestones. at Stanford
Online HS, Yale, Andover, and more. Welcome to
the show, Brandon. Well, thank you, Sheila, for
having me. I'd love to first hear your origin
story. What led you to become a VC? Walk me through
that journey. Sure, sure. To be honest, it's
a long story, but I'll... Try to encapsulate
it as short as possible, because obviously we
don't have a ton of time here to listen to my
entire life story here. But briefly, in 2020,
when I was doing my own startup called When I
Leave .com, I encountered VCs in the industry.
And at the time, I didn't know where VCs were
as far as. the time you should actually contact
VCs because what people don't realize is you
don't go straight to a VC if you have an idea
or you have a business that is even doing well.
You wait for venture capitalists to be a part
of the equation when you're ready to basically
scale because the difference between obviously
a startup and a small business is that startups
can scale, whereas small businesses... They're
kind of limited to their markets or their different
niches. But personally for me, I got into the
industry because I saw how, frankly, it's more,
I don't know if the right term is parasitic or
it's more like vulture -like. I mean, the V in
my mind is like a vulture because what ends up
unfortunately happening is these venture capitalists
that are out there are all about... They won't
say it to your face, by the way, that they're
all about trying to extract as much value from
your organization. And in the end, it doesn't
feel like what I hope that we will be doing.
And that is to do it kind of like in a family
manner where we're helping one another rise together.
And so I got into it that way. To be honest,
it was a long road up through that time to really
understand if this made sense. But yeah, in short,
that was how I got into venture capital. So you
had your own project. Did you find a venture
capitalist or no? You decided to start your own
venture capital firm, Good People's Ventures.
No, GPV, Good People's Ventures, didn't start
until, frankly, early this year. In 2020, when
I was actually approaching venture capitalists
or VCs, I was almost immediately sickened by
their behavior. I had heard from our accelerators
stories about what would happen. So we were in
three accelerators in that year or year, proceeding
year. And I started to schedule appointments
with venture capitalists. And in my first meeting,
I was truly, truly disappointed in the whole
process. I knew I could continue down the path,
which everybody has the ability to basically
knock on the doors and pitch all the VCs. Almost
immediately, I realized this was not the way
I wanted to fund the organization. We did a crowdfunding
campaign, which was more for marketing. And we
also bootstrapped for the most part because I
just used $100 ,000 of my own money to build
the startup. Unfortunately, the startup had to
be put on pause a couple years ago because it's
unfortunately a little too early to have when
I leave. The whole end -of -life industry is
still... not ready to change. People are not
ready to change. People don't want to think about
death, which is what unfortunately, you know,
becomes a problem as you get to that stage in
life. But yeah. Timing is everything sometimes,
especially with startups, right? The market needs
to be ready. And sometimes it's not the idea
that fails. It's just the timing. Right, right.
So for listeners who might not be familiar or
perhaps want a little bit more in -depth about
what a venture capitalist is and what their day
-to -day looks like, can you share a bit of insights?
Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great question. To be
honest, I think the term... gets easily confused
with money. Like that's the way we grow a company.
But there's four stages, or rather VC is the
fourth stage, I would argue you should approach
when you're building a company. First, like I
just mentioned, bootstrapping. Everybody should
use their own money, right? You get full control
if you actually use your own money, right? You
don't have to give any part of your company to
anyone if you use your own money. Well, if you
get... extended or rather you don't want to use
anymore and you're starting to open your you
know company to different ownership then the
next stage which jeff bezos made very famous
is friends and family so you approach your friends
and family and you basically want to maybe ask
for a certain amount to help you get to the next
stage and you can decide at that point like whatever
percentages seem to make sense. I think Jeff
Bezos' brother probably benefited really well
from Amazon because he got in on early and I
think a lot of his family. And then the third
stage is angel investing. So at that point where
let's say your friends and family either say
no or they've only funded you to a certain degree.
People can or rather startup founders can approach
these people who have high net worths and are
willing to put anywhere from, what, 10 ,000 or
25 ,000 on up and sometimes even in the millions.
They are not as. vulture -like, in my opinion,
as the VCs. But at the same time, you know, it
really depends. Everybody wants a return on their
money. And so the term angel might not be so
angelic with some angel investors, but it is
what it is. And they're easier to deal with because
you're talking about individuals, right? But
then if you want to scale, which is what the
famous story of Uber or Microsoft or Google is,
or even Facebook. you will approach VCs, venture
capitalists, who have larger check sizes because
these VCs have typically large funds. And so
like our initial fund is going to be $50 million.
That's what our goal is. These other companies
might have funds as little as $10 million on
up to, let's say, $310 million. So, for example,
there is a fund out there or the first one for
a VC I know. And you can find out by Minnie Ingersoll's
podcast. It's called LA Venture. And she interviews
Mel Tang, I think is his name, the co -founder
of Ring. Everybody knows Ring, right? And the
front door thing. His first fund was... 310 million
from what I recall. And so he has literally 310
million to distribute to all these different
startups. And what they will do is, you know,
strike an agreement, a safe or whatever version
of the agreement is, and they'll give you, let's
say, on average, like $2 million for a percentage
of your company. So VCs are there to help you
with what they call the hockey stick of growth.
So you better be ready for the ride of your life
once you... contact a VC because once they give
you that check, they're going to be writing you
to the end. Because, I mean, the goal for the
VC is to probably get you to IPO or some form
of liquidity event. Right. So they want to exit
from their two million. They want to turn that
into 10 million or 100 million. In the case of
Google, Facebook and all these other companies
who got in early. It probably was like a hundred
times their initial investment, which is what
they're trying to do. Right. But, you know, there's
other ones that fail and don't don't succeed.
And that's why they're able to basically give
out all those checks is because one or two become
a quote unquote unicorn, which is what their
goal is. That helps. It does. And it also helps
to clarify, like I had mentioned before, being
a business consultant or even as a score mentor,
a lot of people are under the impression that
the process is immediate. I'm going to form a
company or I have an idea and they're immediately
in their minds thinking I'm going to fund it
either with grants or look for venture capitalists
to fund it. And it requires a couple of steps
before it gets to that point. Exactly. And I
might have mentioned it maybe before our interview
here, but there's crowdfunding options now. There
are syndicates that are kind of versions of angel
investors. There's so many different types of,
you know, like funding. If you read Brad Feld's,
I can't remember what the name of his book is.
He's a very famous person who kind of outlines
a lot of the finance, financial aspects of funding.
He can give you an idea. One of my recent interviews
with Kimberly. She's the CEO of Renew. She has
this rich history in VC funding and the cap table,
which we haven't talked about yet. And she outlines
a lot of the most amazing kind of ways of actually
getting funding, including from what I remember,
she said something about in -depth notes or some
kind of like bond or something you convert from
an agreement where, you know, you automatically
give them equity. you could do something where
they have the right to equity, which I don't
know if your listeners understand what equity
is, but basically a share of the company. And
so sometimes you can do things very creatively
to get what you need. Is that the same as vested
equity? I've heard the term vested. No, the concept
of vesting is basically when you... obtain the
equity, right? It's like when you actually buy
the equity or the equity is finally in your rights.
Like for example, when I joined Amazon years
ago, so I joined in 2001, if I recall correctly,
I got a thousand shares as options, right? And
it vested over a period of four years. So I got
25 % every single year. And so I had the right
to buy it at $12 a share. And so if I would have
known that it would have been two, three thousand
dollars a share in 20 years, obviously I would
have probably invested and purchased the stock.
But I didn't know at that time we were actually
under the impression that eBay would take over
the world at that time. And we were actually
worried more of our collapse than we were of
our success, or at least the employees were.
Jeff, on the other hand, was probably a little
bit different in terms of mindset. If you were
advising a bootstrapped. SAAS or software as
a service founder in their first year, what two
or three metrics would you tell them to obsess
over in order to succeed and then start looking
for an investor? So, Sheila, I would say maybe
not obsess over the metrics as much as obsess
over a couple of different things that I think
most startups who succeed potentially. obsess
over those would be the team because to be honest
if your team is not effective at you know executing
on the different aspects of growth or finance
or maybe even legal Unfortunately, you won't
be able to grow the startup in the way that most
startups want to succeed. Right. As the CEO or
maybe even the co -founder, you can't do everything
on your own. So your team is actually very, very
important. So, I mean, if you had to delineate
to a certain metric is maybe. growing a team
to a certain number and then tying it to perhaps
revenue. I mean, maybe that's maybe the other
metric if you want to keep track of metrics is
making sure you are profitable. Because one thing
that I think a lot of companies in the early
stages fail to do is they don't operate like
a traditional business, which is you got to make
money, right? They have this perception that
you can just borrow the heck out of the world
and then write it to the end. And And that your
check will be basically what takes care of you
till the end. It's not true. You have to have
a sound business that will operate all across
the entire path until the end. So those are a
couple of things that I would say. Again, I wouldn't
focus on the metrics as much because here in
the beginning, you need to have a solid foundation.
And I think that's what, unfortunately, a lot
of these companies fail to have. And part of
it is because they have one missing piece, which
is grit. And that's something that a lot of companies
or rather startups don't talk about. But I will
tell you, every single VC that I know will be
focused on the founder. And what they won't tell
you is possibly the secret is which founders
actually have grit. and are able to basically
get back from any potential setback. Because,
you know, I just did another podcast interview
recently. And what she specifically said is the
most successful startup founders. And by the
way, she's invested in so many of them. And she
was on Wall Street for many, many years. But
her thoughts were the most successful startup
founders are the ones that bounce back. The ones
that... don't get stressed out about losses.
They don't get stressed out about product market
fit not happening right at the beginning, right?
Or they don't get stressed out about the fact
that they have to pitch 2000 VCs. So the ones
that have the grit or the ability to persist
through this stuff are the ones who succeed.
Interesting. So data shows that women -led startups
receive a lot less funding. than their male counterparts.
So from your perspective, why does this gap exist?
Well, unfortunately, The industry or rather business
in general has always been male dominated, right?
And primarily it's because women were doing things
like raising kids or they were in the traditional
sense, they were pursuing different things that
were considered female responsibilities. I'll
be honest, my favorite business people are women.
And the reason is because they're so caring.
They're very caring to the degree that they care
beyond even the business. And, you know, their
children, the... Startup founder I was just talking
about, Ellie, was telling me about her daughters,
for example, when we were having the interview.
Like that's one of her most proud accomplishments
is her daughters, right? Male founders. are funny
to a certain degree because they don't worry
necessarily because they know that their wife
is taken care of. So so women have an extra burden,
I would say. So I think that's part of it, part
of the challenge. And the boardrooms are male,
male dominated. You know, the industry's male
dominated as far as funding. So if you look at
the VCs that are in the top, they're all male
dominated and they don't take the same perspective
of business. And they're very much like sharks
when it comes to, you know. investing, right?
It's going to take some time. What can we do
to help more women be successful with their startups
or raising their capital? Well, first off, I
did see this in my Clubhouse days. So I don't
know if you know Clubhouse, but there was this
social media, I guess, startup called Clubhouse
in 2020. I was, funny enough, the reason why
I got into Clubhouse is I was helping two women
who were trying to empower other women. to do
e -commerce and other kind of businesses from
a women's perspective because they told me at
that time, that was the first time I had heard
about this, is that 98 % of the VC funding goes
to men. And only two percent go to women. And
so I was shocked so much so that I was actually
disappointed. And I was kind of on this, you
know, warpath of I'm going to change this, you
know. And so I would run into these rooms and
I would support the women. And then all of a
sudden they would turn to me and they go, why
are you here? You're a guy. Why would you want
to help us? And so I got questioned a lot. And
it wasn't just towards me. I had a lot of female
founder friends who said they were attacked for
supporting me. Or they were also not working
together. They were attacking one another. So
some of the women were bringing each other down.
And it's really sad. Now, I won't say that's
the case across the board because I've been fortunate
to meet amazing female founders. So I mentioned
Kimberly Kovacs, for example, or Ellie as far
as she runs Thrabos. Another one, Kate Bradley,
she runs a company called Lately, which is a
social media AI company. And all of these women
are... They were trying to help each other. But
I did see this kind of infighting, which is unfortunate
because you guys have to work. As a team. And
I believe that's the best way. And focus on the
younger women coming up. Right. And so like our
first intern and my co -founder are both female.
And, you know, we made sure in our VC that the
women quotient or the women in the organization
will always have a certain percentage because
we believe in women's equity as far as business
is concerned. Well, thank you for sharing that.
And that's pretty interesting how. You started
getting questioned why you wanted to help women.
So I wasn't expecting that answer. A little bit
about good people's ventures and how people can
either connect with you or learn more about what
you do. Sure. Thank you for even asking. So what
Good People's Ventures basically is, it's an
accelerator backed by VC funds. And we're currently
actually positioning ourselves to think about
maybe incubating. So incubating starting companies,
accelerating making. them grow faster. And then
the VC component is the funding, right? And so
we're kind of a hybrid of sorts with the hopes
of actually helping the education industry. So
we've definitely leaned into that and have decided
that will be the vertical we focus on. A lot
of VCs like to... Work in several verticals to
kind of offset to make sure that they don't lose
across the board. For example, let's say education
is not the best place to invest in. They might
invest in, let's say, food services or something
like that, or maybe entertainment. And so they
have three different areas to invest in. We've
decided education is. the primary area that really
needs the help, despite the fact that it doesn't
have the most sexy results, you know, at least
in the United States. We intend to invest in
that area regardless, because Vicky and I, the
co -founder, and now we have a new partner on
our team, have decided that we will do what...
we possibly can to change that part of at least
the world, because we do feel like that's very
lacking right now. And so GPV is focused on education
using basically three different types of, I guess,
startup support. We have not raised our fund
yet. We're still in the process. So one thing
that people don't understand is VCs actually
have to go out and beg for the money. So we're
in that stage right now and approaching a lot
of people. But we'd love to have anybody, you
know, be a support. whether it be just someone
on social media to actually investors. So we
are currently actually talking to several potential
LPs. And then the list just continues to grow
and grow as people learn more about us. So what
is your next milestone? My next milestone would
probably be making sure we have, I would say,
around eight or so LP candidates by 2026. The
interesting thing is, it's not just one milestone.
We have several. We are also considering And
I can't tell the whole secret yet, but this is
going to be possibly the most revolutionary accelerator
in history because we have an idea that's combining
some of my Korean background and which a lot
of people don't realize Korea is one of the most
tech savvy, innovative countries in the world.
They were rated number one, I believe, by AP
News two or three years ago. I've always known
how Korea kind of advances along the technological
path. And frankly, they're very innovative. And
so we're going to leverage some of that. idea
ideation kind of stuff with this accelerator
and so that is also something that would be one
of the milestones that we're trying to attain
by spring of 2026 and lastly you know obviously
it's always good to to have the team formed so
we're currently looking for a fourth and fifth
partner and so we're hoping to to have those
folks on board by the end of this year and what
are you looking for in regards to the partners
so Typically, VCs or folks in this industry come
with two types of really, really useful experiences.
One is the founder or operator type of individual
who has figured out how to build and exited a
lot of times, or at least has learned how to
operate these companies. The other person is
the person who's actually been in the VC world.
So they know how to fund. They know how to raise
funds. They know how the legalities of raising
funds are. We would like a mix, somebody who
has both. And so we're looking for somebody who
does walk the walk and somebody who is financially,
frankly, stable enough that they don't need a
salary. Because in the VC world, VCs sometimes
come to the table paying for their job. They
come with a million dollars or two million dollars.
The good news with our firm is you don't have
to bring the huge check. We won't be paying you
a salary. We'll be paying you basically the carry
is what they call it. So we'll be investing in
these companies on the money that we raise. And
then the benefit to our partners is that they'll
get a portion of the wins in the VC firm. And
to learn more, they can visit good peoples ventures
dot com. Correct. And if anybody wants to contact
me directly, just put Brandon in front of that
domain and you can get a hold of me. Well, thank
you so much, Brandon, for joining me today and
sharing all of these insights into the VC world.
Well, it was wonderful spending this time with
you here today, Sheila. And thank you for your
understanding and thank you for your time. And
thank you all for tuning in to another episode
of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.
Until next time.