Jeffery: Welcome to the supporters fund ask an investor I’m your host Jeffery Potvin let’s please welcome Daniel Xu General partner at the new billionaires Club as our investor for today welcome Daniel it’s a real pleasure having you join us

Daniel: Thank you Jeffrey thank you for having me

Jeffery: Well I’m pretty excited Daniel because I get excited about everybody I get to interview because I really enjoy the conversation and being able to Deep dive into the backgrounds of the investors especially the investors in this early stage that are really making a big impact in the world and the way we like to start our show is we like to dive right into it learn a bit about yourself and then we have a whole genre questions that we can dive into but because you and I have a bit of a background you guys have been running events I had the opportunity of being part of one of your events a few weeks ago there’s just lots of exciting things that we can talk about so I’m ready to jump off and get into this and uh really deep dive into everything Daniel and what you guys are up to because it’s pretty exciting and being part of that makes it even more exciting so to start if you could share a little bit about your background all the way back to your U of T days you can talk about IBM all the great things that you’ve done and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Daniel: All right Jeffrey yes yes uh so for me I was a engineer by training I studied Computer Engineering at U of T so that was uh I graduated 10 years ago and um my first job was very different compared to my peers so my first job was at Adventure Capital uh doing Hardware we see research analysis and that’s um uh that’s how I got my career started so we see it was my first job and I was the only one in the company who actually knew what’s going on with uh with Hardware uh I guess they were looking at one company right which was uh about to replace the others silicon in chips and that was pretty huge uh promise and they were trying to take off so that’s how I got started by accident but then I fell in love with adventures and with staffs in general so after year I started my own company called Multan International it’s an e-commerce e-commerce platform that sold high-end Asia consumer products to North American customers so that went well um and I exited the next year but we made a decent money and then I then I joined idea as a senior product manager so at that time I spent around four years as a Singapore manager at IBM cloud and and then went to Columbia MBA just to polish my skills in business because I I want to go back to the Venture world and uh after looking at the VC after looking for a start point of view and after looking at uh from a corporate point of view I I kind of got what uh what I was interested in so immediately after my MBA at Columbia I I could not resist uh going back to to the stop world so I started my second company in 2020 called space spai c and you can guess it’s a AI empowered space design software so at that time I was a CTO and we uh we started a company with uh with much better preparedness and we we got two million dollars investment uh eventually from Alibaba and it took off pretty well right now still uh striving uh I I let I left the company and now I’m an advisor to the company uh because after uh after two to three years I find okay maybe it’s time to give back to the start of World uh I had a and that’s why I’m starting a incubator called nuclearness club and also a VC firm new billionaires Capital uh to help other people although I am not a billionaire but I believe we will have billionaires in our incubator and in our intubated firms in the future

Jeffery: Awesome that’s a that’s an amazing background uh thank you for sharing that and diving into it but but before we start to dive into the layers can you share one thing about you that nobody would know

Daniel: One thing about myself uh nobody would know That even my wife

Jeffery: I’m okay with that whatever you think is uh worth sharing by all means yeah it’s it’s more of just ways for people to relate and say uh wow you can hold your breath underwater for six minutes anything’s feasible whatever it is that’s cool that people would want to know

Daniel: Okay um I love I love romantic novels that’s that’s the only thing like I don’t want to admit to other people uh like I love movies like Titanic okay and romantic novels and and people normally don’t believe

Jeffery: Ah that’s pretty cool yeah it’s a it’s a whole different side like you’re you’re in business you’re an engineer you’re a techie but you’ve got a strong emotional connection to uh good literature that has a has a good storyline to it so taking Titanic or any of the other ones like that so like a Daniel steals I think is uh is a famous author in this space so that’s pretty cool that’s pretty cool maybe not Daniel steals is more in a uh mystery but either way I’m sure there’s some side of that to it but that’s pretty exciting

Daniel: Yes yeah and that helps with uh uh picking movies with my wife you know we don’t have a conflict there

Jeffery: That’s a good point yeah yeah there’d be some aligns right there a lighting to it oh that’s pretty cool that’s a great uh great thing very uh very few people probably even know that they align to that but that’s good you’re uh you’re in touch with your inner self so that’s brilliant great share

Daniel: Yeah

Jeffery: So we’ll kind of go back to which I find really amazing is that when you first started your career and you started off at U of T uh working in the software engineer space when you first came out you landed in adventure role can you share a little bit about what you gained from that Venture role because it obviously over the last 10 years gave you a really strong perspective of what it takes to be an entrepreneur what it takes to be in this space you got first line understanding while working as an analyst in the hardware space meeting with Founders understanding the problems they were trying to solve is that what kind of triggered you to start creating your own companies and move forward in that space or was there something else that kind of triggered all that

Jeffery: Yeah great question so a little bit background before I started my first a real job I did my internship at AMD uh as a hardware tester for 16 months and I guess that experience uh was was captured by by one of the Venture Capital called pine tree Capital uh back in 2014. so I I really love coding like I was actually a very good coder and for my final Milestone year I did a nap it’s a mountain people uh again basically it’s online game and you can play with your cell phone but I have way too many ideas and to be friends with you Jeffrey I was not sure which career path I I should pursue at that time so I thought to myself okay maybe my kpi is to look at 100 companies and what’s the best way to do that for free it’s probably uh to join your VC so so I just I only looked at the VC and the PE opportunities and you know the interesting thing about that is that uh you don’t get a lot of competition if you are engineering student because all of your peers they are looking at uh back then was IBM uh Cisco I I think Amazon was not that big Google of course but we see I I don’t think people look for jobs sometimes given the peer pressure right but I don’t have any this kind of peer pressure so I just kind of stumbled into the lazy world uh with the word and after I’m in the Ouija board it’s as you said it’s a battle field so every single day I got to you know meet with um two to three founders sometimes I go to their company sometimes with our office and too much surprise they were very convinced what they were doing although I was not that convinced like my job was to just question there like how is that even possible like you’re talking about replacing Intel and AMD and media at the same time using this new material but most of them had this very uh ambitious idea uh with a hundred times return potentially if everything goes well and they’re so convinced so uh confident and that actually got me into uh this kind of mindset it’s like so for that year um I look at about 500 companies and we end up investing I think five to six in the tech industry uh one of them went Ico so that’s back in 2014 and that company was uh Spiel 3D which was a cloud company it’s like Google Google Cloud but earlier than that so so after one year uh after looking at so many companies I I thought to myself it was not that hard actually to start a company because I saw a lot of great funders and I saw some average Founders but eventually once you know the game uh it’s not that hard to raise money so so at that time I um I had a couple of good ideas and I just caught up my buddies from U of T and say hey uh do you want to start a company in e-commerce space because that’s a place we knew very well and that’s place where space we got in connections as well from supply chain side so we just started the company and I tried to lose money just yeah that’s my first two years after graduation which I really appreciate at this time

Jeffery: So taking that those first two years before you you kind of really dived into making your own your first business what were a couple of learnings that you gained from it and I can point out one that I really liked and I’m gonna the comment you made and I’ll dive into that in a second but is there one or two points that really stood out around the founders or the businesses that they were creating that really insured when you move forward in your next company that you wrote These on a wall or you wrote them on a piece of paper and said make sure you do this was it make sure you have the best financials or was it make sure you have the problem defined what did you learn because you you already investigated 500 companies to only invest in five so what were the details that really stuck to you because you said you weren’t convinced and they were convincing so what were the things that stood out that said make sure you have this when you create your first company

Daniel: Right so if I have to stick with one sin is that you are the most knowledgeable person in the room basically anywhere so say if you want to start a hardware company and you want to do chips you are probably the most knowledgeable person about chips either you’re a PhD in semiconductor from I don’t know ayurvedic school or you can be a senior researcher from a media from Intel and that kind of convinced me but I have to talk to you right and and I can expand that a little bit so see this person uh he was a professor and the PHD at U of T about 50 years old and the study semiconductor for 30 years um and we still did very thought of due diligence on this guy and we visit his lab in Pennsylvania um from a hardware back from myself I was uh I was not that experienced but at least I had some Basics so we would just have conversations and I would ask my friends in the MD in Nvidia just to you know just to check about this idea because I don’t think it’s fair for investors uh as a venture capitalist it’s not fair go to invest in someone in someone because that early stage you imagine people who is not the most knowledgeable person on that topic so that’s a minimal stress code for me

Jeffery: I like that because what you’re doing is you’re saying that if you want to create a business and you want to be good at it be the best make sure you’re the best at that most proficient skill if it’s in chips and semiconductors or if it’s in software whatever it is you’re building make sure that you know the ins and outs and you’re the smartest person in the room because those are the things that are going to help you gain value from other investors yet investors and build a stronger team it’s having that background knowledge is that fair to share

Daniel: Yeah or at least have someone on your team right so I I got this like you need to have a very good salespeople that’s fine very good marketing people but at least for a tech company you should have someone who is the most knowledgeable person about this topic on your team that’s fair

Jeffery: I like that no and I’ve it’s that’s the best that’s great news because I think when people build companies I think sometimes they go into completely new domains and they spend a lot of time trying to convince people they understand it when they probably could just share a little bit of an insert about their background or what they know or what they’ve tried to learn so that they can become that new strong knowledgeable person in that space and they have to convince people and and you one of the lines that you said which was very fascinating you were saying is that they were very convincing yes but you weren’t so much convinced can you share a little bit more about that because I find that fascinating because that’s what we experience every day a lot of Founders are coming to us trying to convince us that they’ve got the best new bells and whistles new product new service whatever that might be and that they need money so that they can take this to the moon and really generate a lot of value and they have to convince you and at the end of the day they’re convinced themselves that they have this so maybe there’s some advice you have on Founders where they can kind of maybe do they need to shift their mindset do they need to be more adopting to their investors do they need to understand that their investors may not believe them right away like what things do you think are missing in this whole Scope when you’ve got a Founder coming to you that is you know they’re drinking their own juice they think this is the best product in the world and you’re on the other end of the table going I don’t see it something’s missing here so what do they need to do better in order to achieve that with you

Daniel: Right a great question Jeffrey so for me I’ve been at both sides of the table right so I’ve been pitching two VCS and I’ve been the dementia capitalist uh the problem okay that’s twofold so the first phone is that is it real like do you really think your product is the best in the world I would say 50 50. so 50 people don’t really think so like as they say they’re gonna be the next Facebook they’re going to be the next uh Google okay uh that’s possible but do you really believe in that right and second uh the other 50 people I met uh was really good at what they’re doing uh they can actually be the best at least in a vertical and I say that it’s it’s very hard to be best in the tech world like what is the best in the tech world is it charge GPT is it Google very hard you have to define a vertical to say I’m the best at you know making uh helping semiconductor manufacturers uh Georgia diagrams Georgia um you know chip diagrams okay that’s very new to Market and you say you’re the best you probably got like 20 other people doing that so that’s possible they’ll say I’m the best that you know making chips I’m gonna replace Intel uh you got to be more specific so so I’ve seen like make your your scope a little bit more specific um and advice to the founders is that it’s like how do you convince other people you are you are doing the best I like fundamentally I believe most Founders they are they sincerely believe what they are doing is the best but sometimes due to the lack of experience sometimes use the lack of knowledge um they don’t see the whole picture so I like I would ask them to challenge themselves and surrounded by opinions uh that are not um not consistent with this so they can they need to talk to to Industry experts talk to their mentors especially for younger Founders talk to your professor to say if it’s legit but a lot of Founders who come with their Professor to convince their Professor to join their team that’s a very good sign right but if everybody’s saying as so if a lot of people are saying since uh against your original idea maybe it’s time to Pivot and nothing wrong about pivoting I can we can go to that uh route for long for for a longer time but what I’m trying to say that most companies I see successful pivot three to five times at least so so always please so if you already believe you are the best uh see the reasons right it can be experienced it can be your education uh it can be a lot of stuff but sincerely believe in that and then uh start from there don’t be afraid

Jeffery: Now this is good and I do like that you said you come from two sides you’re analyzing this as a venture capitalist but you’re also analyzing it on how you sold through the businesses and to raise funds so you’re playing both sides but you’re taking that years of experience to say these are the approaches you should use and if you’re going to be the best you should tie in mentors and advisors but have those people also support you so that they kind of help elevate your game by proving that you’re the best because you’re getting even the better more educated uh longer tender out there and you’re having them kind of prop you up at the same time

Daniel: That’s right that’s right I saw so many stops that they started and it’s a you know final year project and they got their professor as a co-founder that’s a very good sign to be honest because if a professor wants to do this this four-time video with 30 extra years of experience yeah you’re probably doing something right

Jeffery: Yeah that’s well shared I like that you you also mentioned that they all the founders all are very ambitious on their returns and that they have this real strong confidence to them is this a good thing or a bad thing

Daniel: Okay I’m gonna answer this question in my own experience okay so if you are that certainly is uh confidence and overconfidence right so for me it really depends on your personality like for example if someone who is not are confident normally I I would sometimes still have this like if you have no engineering background and you’re kind of shy introvert but when you talk about your project you’re passionate you’re very confident but when watching coffee with you when I talk when we talk about movies and novels yeah come with it oh you’re not day-to-day not confident people that is a good thing because you really know what you’re doing you’re passionate you can talk about it for hours but nothing against sales but if you’re from sales and you’re confident like every day and you’re selling this uh stuff to me and and you sometimes it comes to me as overconfident uh maybe because it’s a way that they sell it uh I cannot tell if it’s authentic or not because they’re doing that for the other companies as well so when when they try to sell this company uh and especially if if it’s not a marketing tech company if it’s other tech company and it just doesn’t play well I think that’s a common uh I won’t say mistake at least to me is a common uh element because sometimes you have to the CMO or the sales the shift sales to to pitch your company right it should really be from the if the tech company it should already be from the CTO or the CEO and if you can play both slows really well then that’s the bonus

Jeffery: I like that because what you’re doing is you’re better under you’re getting a better understanding of the founder so you’re taking time to understand that person so you’re elevating their game by understanding are they this form of introvert or extrovert and is this their typical sales cycle or is this above and beyond and as you mentioned when you’re talking about something that’s generic if they’re shy but then they dive into their main passion how passionate they really get so it’s outside their streams so if you were talking to them and they’re already Plain Jane on movies and then you talk to them about their business and they’re playing Jane you probably will feel that it’s not really that they’re not really into it it doesn’t really have the legs maybe because the Founder’s not as driven for it but then the founder that really steps up above that you can kind of see that uh Drive in their eye and you’re looking at this fifth gear uh Michael Jordan style you know down by 30 and they’re going to be able to pull through and win the game by 10. so there’s a lot of elements that you’re getting just from that personal one-on-one time learning about what they’re trying to achieve and how they’re achieving it

Daniel: Exactly and it’s very easy to uh like but by now I think it’s relatively easy to tell I can give you a story which was um um on Elementary School of mine and and he was studying a robot company basically this kind of uh you know tiny robots you can stick to on the wall and you can it’s like you can use Alexa or your cell phone to control it so you can turn the light on or off very basic idea but he started about eight years ago and he study was he he was a very nerdy guy and very into telecommunication and got into uh this uh Tech University in Singapore and started this company with two of his long Maids so so he’s he’s very shy but whenever he talks about telecommunication about you know Bluetooth and how they’re gonna revolutionize Bluetooth technology and no idea what that is but people just be well patient and explain that to me and I was very proud of uh his capabilities for example he won a competition which hacked the satellite and that said that that’s a legit hack because the government allowed it so so he was very passionate about and I never saw that in in his life and that’s that what stood out about that company to me

Jeffery: That’s a great story and you’re right those are the little extra things that you gain from yourself and the effort you put into something and it’s obviously showing that so now you’re kind of moving through the ecosystem you’ve learned a lot from being in the Venture space first which is phenomenal then you dove into your first company then you went back into IBM and you went in as a product side so now you’ve gone back commercialization you started to learn what it takes to bring a product to Market are there a couple of things that you remember from that time that really stood out on how people should productize their environment or commercialize their sales environment are there a couple of tidbits that you would say hey if you’re going to get into this commercialized side these are some of the things that IBM looks at and this is how we do this anything you can share along those lines

Daniel: Yeah JP so most co-founders especially first-time co-founders underestimate how hard sells is sales is basically everything so don’t get me wrong you can have the best product in the world but you don’t know how to sell it’s zero and the hardest sale page hardest customer is always always your first customer and the second hardest is your second customer Etc because nobody believes in you right you don’t have track record and you you have this like a banana phone not Apple phone and why would I buy a banana phone like nobody bought it the first question I would ask is is there any customer no you’ll be the first one uh then then really takes a leap of phase for me to buy it and a certain customer will say okay you at least got one customer then so to again get easier and I would say prioritize sales that definitely uh something and that’s something we look at the fund as well at least you you need to be relatively good at sales like first you need to sell yourself and then you need to sell your story and then sell the ID of your company and eventually sell to the customer right uh how to set up the pipeline I would say what not to do what not to do is that I I hear many pictures uh they are saying we are releasing this round so we can find a CMO so we can find a a master of sales people and this person will hire more sales and eventually our sales will be up okay that’s a fantasy but you have to sell yourself for the first five products at least uh if you’re Enterprise for IBM is an Enterprise seller so it’s uh basically knocking the door for the of the top 100. uh vendors you go one by one you go you go to uh RBC you say Do you wanna uh get our latest product no okay social Bank how about you and CIBC like it’s just uh but it’s easier for us because we have a list of existing vendors and most of the standards you just need to renew but you you need to have a very clear sales strategy and kpi so what I found very helpful in uh in a bigger Enterprise like IBM also in a smaller staff is that always have your kpi uh one year ahead so for the first quarter second quarter how many customers do you want it on board how many revenues we want to make did you miss it and once you have those numbers then you play it backward right you you want to onboard 100 Enterprise customer by the end of the year then probably 25 per quarter so how many then maybe three per day and how do you go about that and then eventually you have a you know more detailed strategy instead of just the uh hiding a uh experienced salesperson because that person won’t be committed to your idea lightly you you got to do do it yourself wins other people first

Jeffery: This is great and a nice full set of details that really do help you define what enables you as a product company to move to the next stage and you talked about it and to take it and reword it a little bit it is commercialization it’s taking the effects of how do you as an individual sell through get buy-in close that first that second deal and then learn how this process is working dive through the process set it up create a new funnel new structure before you start diving into spending money on CMOS and everybody else where their facet of business is great but it’s such a small element to what the product can do and where the product needs to be positioned in order to open the doors to sell more so I think there’s a lot of learning that Founders need to take is that they’re the number one sales person or their co-founder or whoever is in that early five people of that business they’re the ones selling and they need to be really good at it and they need to really pay attention to it and work through those processes in order to get through the end which is commercialization so that could take three years five years whatever that number is but it’s really as you mentioned earlier it’s pivoting it’s changing it’s learning where the real problem lies and then through that process how you build kpis and understand how your sales funnel is working so that you can continue to build on that before you start bringing lots of people in or heads of groups when you haven’t even figured out what the real clean process is to commercialize this sale

Daniel: Exactly JP and if I can expand a little bit uh it would be once you have a standard pipeline once you have the product but just never ending uh iteration right but once you have a kind of a final product you can afford to hire a team You Gotta Give very good incentive to the sales people right um I don’t know but always commission based that’s my experience sometimes you can do 50 of the sales to them and depending on the the maturity of your company right so earlier the more commission and and depend on the nature of your company but treat them really well because I still firmly believe that a product is good by sales it’s basically the engine of the company

Jeffery: Agreed it is the engine so now you you’ve shifted you’ve gone into you’ve created your second your next company and you’re just getting ready to jump back into Adventure uh you create this new company and you share a great story with me a while back and maybe we can iterate on the story but you can dive into it because I think it’s a great story for Founders on what it takes to really get that first customer or get proof that your product fits the market and I remember you sharing that one of the things that you did was you literally went and stood in front of a Home Depot and started trying to check people into your product and get people to like what they did and you learned a lot from that process you learned that people didn’t like this process you learned what they did like until you eventually got people to start signing up and going through the whole extent of the program but there was learnings on two sides there was how am I going to get people interested in the product and two how do I iterate on my products so that I could keep making it easier and more functional for the people that are going to use it are there a couple of things in that story that you can elaborate on that Founders can think about when they’re really at that early infancy of building their company that they should think about doing

Daniel: Yes JP that was a very interesting period of my life so context right we were doing a company which was a AI power interior design company so basically uh JP you can tell I wanna you know design my bedroom and I have two kids and I have a pet and I want this to be uh to be modern uh with a minimalism and you can slow in keywords like share GPT and then then that’s a 40 renovated bedroom exactly looking like your bedroom except other you know other other Renovations and other materials will be shipped where warehouse and we will match a contractor and then you can book a day and this person will bring all the materials to your home and run away that room or entire basement depending on your scope it’s a software and it’s very hard to sell basically why would people use it uh existing companies use all AutoCAD already and they have really professional drawings um and smaller companies are just going your bedroom and you know tape to measure it and use a user paper a pen and end the story right you can just get a set of new flaws um so we’re already targeting the small median uh contractors we call them subcontractors and they don’t have the ability to use AutoCAD and they also uh they have a lot of projects and yeah it’s very hard to manage offset so for us um to answer your question we first approach our friends but we’re close to us well actually contractors say hey uh Mr John do you want to use this product and then also see the nicest thing about the product yeah of course we will use it it looks amazing can we try it you know okay that’s a good start right but eventually you find out okay people are just saying nice things about it you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings and it’s very hard to tell that sometimes even you tell them like just give one uh bad thing about the software and they’ll just you know kind of soft land that question and say yeah you know takes a little bit longer to load which is another artist uh defense and then we realize it’s probably good to get feedback from strangers and how do we get strangers [Music] um and eventually we I say it’s one of the salesperson uh suggested to her that you know what um most of the contracts that they go to Home Depot every morning at 9am because they open at 9am and uh and as a contractor you gotta go there early otherwise it’s going to be clouded and we just tried it we just tried it I I still remember that I we use the Google Map and which we try to use a Home Depot API to find the you know uh all the Home Depots in within the 50 kilometer uh diameter and then they don’t have this API so we have to like manually search and put it in a Google sheet and we go to uh I still remember the first Home Depot was uh uh at the Markham I went with uh with the head of cells and it’s a I’ve had ourselves with a uh with a female so so she’s very good at looking and recognizing with the contract and who is not let’s say like no stereotyping but but he can always get it right but okay look at that pickup truck let’s go there and we just wait beside the pickup chart and when they when they come out we give them say hey uh I will introduce ourselves and we choose in a one minute videos we’re doing this to help contractors can give us all this feedback and surprisingly most of them were actually nice friendly it’s there for like of course there are few people who are very busy but most of them don’t want to spend a minute look at the scene and say okay this sucks I need to do a b and c or yes it’s not that bad and if it’s not that bad we will ask them imagine to our office for free lesson on how to use it and we can connect them to potential customers and that’s how it got started we spent 100 mornings doing that just that one hour nine to ten a.m and eventually we got into Home Depot we tried to partner with Home Depot but I think uh established Brands like the floor Brands not software companies since they’ve never done it before anyway so we just uh sometimes we but it didn’t mind us going in and ask customers because that’s not uh that’s that’s acceptable so we did that we got our most valuable feedback from that 100 mornings and um given that I was a product person I I was a firm believer that the best uh product priorities and efficients should be directly coming from the customers and we I think we prioritized 10 features out of that uh 100 monies and we eventually Implement that iterate and every uh three weeks uh so not the one year days it’s not that we are shooting them the exact same software like every day is a little bit different and sometimes we do a b testing actually and see which which one you like we spend a little on marketing but mostly you know you need to get this one minute video you don’t want a student Five Minutes video to look at it but that’s uh that’s a that’s a hell of a learning experience to me

Jeffery: It’s a great great story because it does share what it takes the grit that it takes to start a business but I like the fact that you kept using the 100 days you put a benchmark and you did it every single day so you made sure you were there you learned people probably saw you four five six ten thirty times and eventually they probably did talk to you and I think that’s a great Testament to What It Takes as a product founder as a person building a business what you needed to do to get people to believe look and give you feedback but I’m sure a lot of them ended up throwing it and as you said the business has gone on to be successful so those are all great pieces that help you build a company and and great knowledge to share for other Founders so just before we kind of pivot into the next phase of of our podcast the last question I’ll kind of ask is now taking all these learnings you’ve jumped into new billionaires club and you’re an accelerator maybe you can share a little bit more on how the accelerator side works and what you’re looking to do with the new billionaires club by minting out more billionaires

Daniel: Yeah right on so yeah so for us we uh we are eventual Capital first and we’re invest in early stage companies and check size is 50 to 500k normally and we also have an incubator branch which is called a new business Cloud uh we offer mentorship we offer services resources and we see most of our Executives they are still entrepreneurs themselves been there done that and they they knew how past gonna be light and they knew the common mistakes people make and they know the best ways to to go after your project so we you can think of us as um um we’re not a rigid incubator so we don’t have like three months six months program uh we are more like Loosely organized incubator you can come in you can if you have questions you can book a time to talk to one of our members our Specialists and if you uh want to meet investors you can come in as well and tell me like what kind of invest do you want to meet and I can arrange that uh if you’re good enough we can run that in a demo day and we have a lot of social events which has serves no purpose it’s just networking you come in for a cocktail and uh maybe you know you can meet some people amazing like you or a investor who happen to like your idea

Jeffery: That’s great I love it and I I like that it does have that casual side to it but it works with the time period of the founders and of course the community so great to hear so we’re going to kind of pivot now into a couple of questions and you did share a story so I’m gonna have you maybe share maybe another case study of what you see that it takes to be a founder and obviously you shared what it takes to be a Founder from your own perspective if you have anything else you want to share along those lines we just want to really help entrepreneurs better understand what it takes to get into this space

Daniel: Yes um I’ll see the best of course like you got to be the most knowledgeable person in the domain at least like I won’t it is the top one percent right in order to start the business but also that’s another trade and really value which is a persistency so I mentioned that in in our demo day um the best co-founders I met this year and of course yes as well but this year particularly they were so persistent not only to believe in their ideas but they go and XML to just everything they go go well and Beyond like for the for the fundraising part you will go up and Beyond they will follow up more frequently they will you know do all sorts of things to make sure you know then through friends through connections so that’s one thing I I kind of admire and also uh we talk about the sales part so very consistent uh at sales so They Don’t Really rest like to go this they they work on this project uh 24 7 and they have a lot of insights from those uh cells and and for the two companies I invest in earlier part of this year um see what all serial entrepreneur so they’ve been there they sometimes suck one person failed uh price and it’s his certain and the other person actually uh succeeded the first time and it’s the second time but but just persistently like their whole life was doing stuffs so those kind of scenes uh I think they’re manifesting a lot of successful founders uh they I’m not saying like if it’s a bad idea you should always pursue that I’m saying you believe this is the right direction and you’re willing to Pivot but always believe in yourself and persist no

Jeffery: That’s that’s great well shared well shared is there uh anything you can share around the toughest lesson you’ve learned as an investor

Daniel: Okay half is less than I learned as an investor uh it’s not easy to I think that applies both to co-founders and to investors it’s very hard to admit your own mistake as a investor and make more mistakes than as an entrepreneur because as entrepreneur you are focused on one business as investor you’re looking at 501 000 companies a year and you will make mistakes so that’s why I always rely on on not myself but always rely on a team and on a tin of not only my partners but also industry experts and and yeah I I guess the because I I can share this like after I graduate MBA from Columbia I actually uh I was very confident at investing like why not right and I look at the financials and I thought to myself okay I can I can understand this and you’re doing this wrong this right like I’m using this Consulting you know McKenzie uh uh thinking framework and you can do this you can do that but actually it’s not that at all like it gotta be from uh from the experts so say if I’m investing in a property tax companies which I uh I I don’t know a lot about I will always ask at least 10 experts put down that for more than 30 years 30 years to to build candles to both hotels and then they know exactly what they are doing and if I bring this business to them then I make less mistakes so that’s uh I learned it from as an overconfidence after my MBA and slowly I’m picking up and be more realistic with my ability

Jeffery: Again that’s a that’s that’s a great sharing because you you’re you’re leveraging your shortcomings to better improve yourself and admitting that you have shortcomings comings and this is what’s allowing you to move forward so you’re going to the experts in the space because you have an interest to invest so you’re admitting what those shortcomings are at least you’re learning them and you know what they are and they’re going after it so it’s a great way to circumvent any future Investments so that you continue to make great Investments by leveraging the advisors and the mentors which is what you shared even from an invest a co-founder or our startup side was you know you might be the smartest person in the room but bring in the more experience around you because that’s what’s going to help you make better choices and decisions

Daniel: Yeah definitely

Jeffery: Perfect we’re going to jump into the 60-second rant this is my favorite section of the podcast so here’s how it works I’m gonna time it on my phone you’ve got 60 seconds to rant about your favorite subject or something that I guess upsets you bothers you about the environment or anything you want to talk about in the world well time it 60 seconds I will counter it with one counter and then you finish it off with your final thoughts if you’re ready to go I’m going to uh start the clock and uh you’ve got 60 seconds

Daniel: Ready yeah

Jeffery: You’re on

Daniel: Yeah so I want to rant about aigc I want to learn about chat gbt because there’s too much hype around it and like to be honest I’ve seen at least 200 decks about aigc plus whatever but sometimes people forget so whatever part is more important so AI has been here forever like since I don’t know 20 years ago since IBM to beat a chess player uh 30 years ago actually so so why now probably because and a lot of companies come in with a very high evaluation uh for for the idea but it’s actually just chat gbt plus uh something actually uh doesn’t matter or matters so uh my advice is that get rid of the GPT part and validate that if the idea is really worth it and I guess that’s uh that’s my biggest strength uh what the first six months of this year JP

Jeffery: That’s a good rant so I’m going to counter it by saying but don’t you find that chat GPT and the AI platforms have elevated AI to be on the Forefront of the fastest moving technology and prior to that it was kind of all over the place some were doing AI some were just doing matching algorithms like they were talking it was AI but today chat CPT is really kind of honed in on what AI really can do and what it means or do you feel it’s still matching the same issue which is people don’t understand what AI is and now they’re just bucketing everything under AI because it has to have it in order for anything to operate or function today

Daniel: Yeah JP I believe AI plays a hero right in all society and AI basically is just more complex algorithms that is still cold but it’s uh it’s mimicking a human mind it has this uh you know three layers of learning machine learning but that’s it adjust the fundamental problem like I can give you an example um one company was doing web3 2020 and was really popular and then the web series uh you know it is no longer hot this year and there is web3 class aigc and I think sometimes people pivot for the sake of pivoting and doing AIT say for the sake of doing aigc and you can tell that easily but if it’s really something that you can benefit from uh AIG C then great and maybe right now it’s a tan because of the um it’s a chicken and the air product like it actually has so much potential but didn’t get enough money and then when they openly I got enough capital and boom otherwise we would have to wait another five years right so why not use this opportunity to really uh to really make your start around the journey faster if it sounds irrelevant if something if it’s not like if you want use aigc to buy more Bitcoin uh that’s I’m not saying that’s not possible but that’s just uh like for the sake of doing it to do it and uh personally I don’t quite get it but maybe it’s just my lack of knowledge

Jeffery: It’s a great rant and I think it aligns perfectly to the way the world’s looking at things right now is that everybody’s always rushing to to not be part of the fomo and lose out that they want to change and shift and pivot to something that has more bling and value to it so that they can Garner more eyeballs and attract more dollars but the real thing comes down to is are they really solving a problem and is this problem large enough from a market size and is this soluble enough that people are going to jump into it and want to utilize your product for it so make sure you’re solving a problem

Daniel: Right and if 10 years later just company doing web3 plus ergc became unicorn don’t hate me for this

Jeffery: I like it I agree all right we’re going to jump into our segment two which is uh we’re gonna dive into uh rapid fire questions so pick one or the other and we’re just gonna rifle through these so these are investment you’re the investor and these are the questions associated with you choosing one or the other as the investor so here we go founder or co-founder

co-founder

Jeffery: Unicorn or a four-year 10x exit next exit

Daniel: Four year 10x exit

Jeffery: Tech or cpg

Daniel: Tech

Jeffery: NFT or web 3.0

Daniel: Neither

Jeffery: I knew you’re gonna say that AI or blockchain

Daniel: AI

Jeffery: First time founder or second third time founder

Daniel: So uh second third time

Jeffery: Okay first money in or series A

Daniel: First money in

Jeffery: Angel or VC

Daniel: VC

Jeffery: Board seat or Observer

Daniel: Observer

Jeffery: Safe or convertible note

Daniel: Convertible Note

Jeffery: Lead or follow

Daniel: Depends fast photo

Jeffery: Okay number of companies invested per year

Daniel: Five to ten

Jeffery: Favorite part of investing

Daniel: Get to see the person’s life journey and uh what they’re thinking and following their gym

Jeffery: Vertical or focus

Daniel: Iot heart attack

Jeffery: Okay all right now we’re gonna go into uh some more more of these are more questions but again we’ll try to keep them rapid fire what’s one piece of advice you would give Founders nine out of ten times

Daniel: Believe in yourself

Jeffery: What tech will Define the world in the next five years

Daniel: Oh next five years I believe it’s computing power because if I can expand a little bit because I I still believe in the technology of blockchain I’m not a particular fan of uh crypto but I’m a big fan of blockchain and also I’m a big fan of AI and aigc if it’s done right and both of them require a lot of computing power so I believe in uh if somebody can come up with a technology that can uh can gather or can increase the computer power right now by tenfold such as that gotta be a increasing chance

Jeffery: I like it who is your hero mentor and why

Daniel: My hero would be um is it like someone and that or someone I have an ad

Jeffery: Anybody it’s your choice whoever you believe in and supports you and all that good stuff

Daniel: I would say my first manager at WC uh he told me to get an MBA otherwise I won’t go anywhere in the recent world

Jeffery: Perfect no that’s good what is your biggest fear or phobia in the business startup workspace ecosystem

Daniel: Nobody wants to do stuff anymore to just want to go to RBC or IBM after graduation and nobody wants to nobody believes in stop can be very successful I hope Canada won’t be a place like that I hope the spirit of Entrepreneurship will Thrive here

Jeffery: Okay all right last question in this one what is your worst or your toughest investment you’ve made today and you don’t have to name names just learning that you gain from it

Daniel: Expand what uh

Jeffery: Like you’re from an investment standpoint is there something that you could take back you wish you did differently on anything that you’ve done in the past just a kind of like a quick case study

Daniel: Uh many years ago I invest in a company I I didn’t really believe in and but it was a very good friend so I still invested a small amount and I and later I thought that was not good uh it’s okay to be an engineering Master but if you’re doing VC uh don’t don’t ever do that it’s not responsible for other investors

Jeffery: There that’s a good point of view I like that all right personal questions same as the first which is your personal pick one or the other okay most famous person that pops in your mind

Daniel: Elon Mask

Jeffery: First brand that pops in your mind

Daniel: LV

Jeffery: Which one oh nice nice uh Book or movie

Daniel: Movie

Jeffery: Superman or Batman

Daniel: Batman

Jeffery: Fortune cookie or birthday cake

Daniel: Birthday cakes

Jeffery: Five minutes with Basils or Oprah

Daniel: Besos

Jeffery: Mountain or Beach

Daniel: Beach

Jeffery: Bike or run

Daniel: Run

Jeffery: Big Mac or chicken McNuggets

Daniel: Chicken McNuggets

Jeffery: Trophy or money

Daniel: Money

Jeffery: Biker or sorry um beer wine

Daniel: Wine

Jeffery: Ted talke or book reading

Daniel: TED Talk

Jeffery: Tick Tock or Instagram

Daniel: Instagram 100%

Jeffery: Facebook or LinkedIn

Daniel: No neither

Jeffery: Okay favorite movie and what character would you play

Daniel: Uh Titanic and uh play I play Lowe’s actually I’m a guy but I can’t but I love the character of laws

Jeffery: That’s awesome Love it favorite book

Daniel: A Great Gatsby

Jeffery: Oh nice favorite sports team

Daniel: Um yeah I like the blue jays

Jeffery: All right we’re almost there what is the meaning of success to you

Daniel: Such a big question jp meaning of success meaning of success can mean a lot of sins but to me it’s uh uh it’s about community so I hope everybody who can uh who will be successful can kind of contribute back uh to the community I guess Silicon Valley did it really well that’s why they’re subscribing uh stop community and we see systems there and I believe tournaments becoming one and but that actually needs everybody’s uh energy and time like more people like JP more people uh more engine investors and more you know staffs and we can do this together

Jeffery: I love it agree with you last question what’s your superpower

Daniel: My superpower is that uh I uh I don’t ever argue with my wife that’s my superpower

Jeffery: That’s a great superpower you’re logical and you uh have discussions and communicate well said well said I feel the same we’ve had lots of great conversations I’ve been part of your events and I do 100 support the fact that you’re a Visionary and you have a very good understanding of balance and I think that shows in in the product that you deliver so I want to say thank you very much for joining us today and the way that we like to end our show Daniel is that we like to give you the last word so anything you want to share to the investor community and to the startups I turn it over to you but I want to thank you again for all your time and sharing all the valuable insights I’ve taken lots of notes they’re all over my page and I could write a book but uh thank you man it was been uh very much received very appreciated thank you

Daniel: I guess my last remark is that I really appreciate uh you invited me to this uh podcast I think we are doing exactly the right things uh to the Toronto entrepreneurship community so uh for me I I just wish more people uh well uh watching this uh just come forward if you’re doing a start feel free to come uh to new business club and ask for uh opinions and also OPN it’s also a great platform I I believe we are in this together uh be entrepreneurs or investors um and yeah let’s do it and make the community Better Together

Jeffery: I love it thank you very much Daniel and just for the notes if people want to get a hold of you can you share your email or where the best spot is to connect with you

Daniel: Yeah you can find me on LinkedIn uh Daniel last names XU and you can easily find me there and shoot me a message

Jeffery: Perfect we’ll do that Daniel have a fantastic day and thank you very much for all your time today

Daniel: Thank you so much JP

Jeffery: Well that’s a great conversation with Daniel and there was a few things that really stood out of course that we’ve talked about and I’ll reiterate uh all about the whole they were very convincing but I wasn’t so convinced so just keep that in mind that there is a lot of things that you have to do in order to convince people that your product or your business is the right one that people want to invest in buy or use the other side it was you know being confident and really getting behind it and people can see through what is real and what’s not real so that confidence comes with a good value and a bad value and obviously the people are looking through that and that’s what they’re going to learn make sure you have a lot of knowledgeable people in there propping you up as well and you mentioned a couple of things which was really fascinating is that you know if your professor joined your company that shows that they’re willing to risk everything to be part of this business because of it so uh such a strong value what it takes to be inside of a business that hundred mornings every morning they went out and pitched in front of Home Depot brilliant sales isn’t easy but you need to sell sell your first or second your Third customer and then once you’ve built that process build customization build in kpis uh keep it clear keep it a clean strategy do this figure out where you’re going to be in a year and then just keep reiterating and build on it you know admit your mistakes work off your mistakes learn from it go back reanalyze figure out and move forward and build a really strong team but don’t go after the CMOS don’t do the things that aren’t going to bring you the value you need today build the team now that gets you in the market selling and making money so thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel feel free to share with your friends subscribe to our YouTube channel and or please follow us on Spotify apple and or Stitcher podcast platforms I believe Stitcher is actually going to be shutting down so there are lots of other great opportunities to jump into others so feel free to share an audio or video clip around our show and we may include it on one of our future podcasts you can also follow us at marketing open peoplenetwork.com and or at LinkedIn that supportersfun your support and comments are truly appreciated please visit us at supporters1.com or startup events at openpeoplenetwork.com thank you and have a fantastic day.