How do you close a seed round when VCs move the goalposts?

Jason Kirby (00:02.432) Welcome to episode 32 of Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Jeremy Vaughan with us, CEO and co-founder of StartLeft Security, a cybersecurity software company for developers. They've raised a $3 million seed round after passing $1 million in ARR. Jeremy walks us through the critical moment he met his mentor to get his first check, why he decided to participate in multiple accelerator programs, how he managed fundraising like the sales process, and how he was on the brink of running out of money multiple times, but still managed to close new clients and successfully raise a seed ramp. As a reminder, be sure to get notified of our weekly podcasts and newsletters every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please subscribe at join .thunder .vc. Again, that's join .thunder .vc. Now onto the show. Welcome to the show, Jeremy. Jeremy (00:10.48) Thank you, good to be here. Jason Kirby (00:13.502) Now I'm excited to hear your story and be able to kind of understand your lessons to share to founders on how you win about raising capital. So let's just jump right into it. Can you just tell founders a little bit about you and what you're doing at Start Left Security? Jeremy (00:26.8) Yeah, so I would say graduated with a finance degree, which gave me a little bit of finance chops to talk the language of investors, right? Business language. And then when smartphones came out, I just knew technology was where I needed to go. And so that happened to also be the recession 2008, 2009. So moved into tech and so been a tech entrepreneur in and around software, software development for the last 16. 16 years. And so built Start Life Security over the last couple of years and brought it to market in 2019. Jason Kirby (01:06.942) So you started in 2019 and you recently raised a seed round of around three million back in the summer of 2023. That's four years. What were you doing in that time? Like what was the business achieving? What were you working on? How'd you stay afloat? How'd that work? Jeremy (01:26.448) Blood, sweat and tears, man. You know, everybody jokes about the ramen noodles and all that kind of stuff. I didn't have it that bad, but it was sheer grit, just to be honest with you. I raised a small angel round from a local investor that I had known for a few years prior. Basically said, hey, I'm gonna build, I'm bringing this technology, it's patented to market and... Here's the opportunity presented to him. He's like, Hey, listen, I've, I've always believed in you. I knew you at your previous business roles and things like that. So, you know, I'm in right. And so that little belief in, in, in that, that gentleman has always been, he, he had somebody do that earlier in his career, right? He's like, somebody came in and just kind of changed the trajectory of his life. And so he wanted to pay it forward. That was the guy that he chose to pay it forward. So I'm incredibly grateful and blessed that I met him. Um, and. at that particular time, he had a little bit of money to throw at a struggling startup, right? So, you know, so we're in Florida, right? So we don't have access to Silicon Valley money. My network's, you know, more geographically located at that time. And so I had to figure out like, hey, how do I create a bigger network and start to grow and meet people in other areas? And so, I decided to join some accelerator programs that extended my network to like New England, Northeast area, more into the Florida area. So like I started covering more of the East coast, right? And try to get more our name and things out there. If you go pack track the timeline, that's when COVID hit, right? And so, I started creating relationships with investors back when that happened and said, Hey, I'm going to keep on building. You know, nobody wanted to put money to work during that time. I actually had some big deals that I had investors lined up with that if these deals came in, they were going to back me and we could go accelerate, right? COVID hit everything fell apart. The snowball just blew up. Right. And so, um, Jeremy (03:44.56) I basically took a step back and said, okay, I'm just going to educate people. I'm going to still create relationships with investors and really just change the position of our, our, um, talk track, which is, Hey, I'm going to go create revenue. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to, um, educate the market form channel partnerships and what metrics do you want to see us achieve? And then that way of make it make our make me come back with a more valuable conversation of, hey, we've done this on the product side. We've done this. We're reaching these revenue metrics and really just. wanted to keep investors close to our story and actually see us execute. And that became a really cool thing because the investors started to stay close with us and they saw us execute and I had to keep on reminding them like, I'm doing this with no money, right? Imagine if we can do, if what we could do, what my team could do if we had a little bit of cash, right? And so that's what we've been doing up until 2023. The channel partner network really paid off. because it did take that good 12 to 18 months to get running. But in 2022, we got a lot of channel partners throwing us deals and we were able to get up and over a million dollars in revenue before we even started the seed round raise. And so that was just us proactively being like, you know what, investors are, economic times right now are really hard. Investors don't really. you know, have the confidence to vest right now, we gotta do something else. So that's what we did. Jason Kirby (05:24.83) There's so many things I want to unpack from here. And let's take a step back, looking kind of early days. I want to go back to that angel investor. Was it only one angel check that you got, or did you get multiple angel checks? Jeremy (05:36.272) So we got one at the beginning, the very beginning. And that helps me get through some legal stuff that we needed to get through, launch the company, start. building more to the product, things like that. It's important to note we already had an existing product before I got that angel investment. So we actually invested in ourselves and put money into our product, into our business, before we asked anybody else. And I would say... A lot of people won't do that and that to a lot of investors is a red flag. They want to see that you're committed. They want to see that you're going to do whatever you can to get this thing up and running. And if you didn't put your own blood, sweat, tears, money into it, a lot of investors will just say no, like really quickly. And so, you know, now that I'm in this position and if I looked at somebody else looking to get money from me, I would be the same way. Hey, what'd you put into it? You know, did you put anything into it? Like are your co -founders invested? You know, there's a lot of questions that you can go with that. But yeah, we got, I would say we had that one and then I got a VC firm early on that provided us a little like a $50 ,000 check above and beyond that kind of provided this bridge to. Revenue right so like I closed our first deal which was a hundred it was Lifetime value 150 thousand dollars over two years, and I was like that's closing in like three months We're literally about to run out of money Can I can and they gave us fifty thousand dollars to keep us up and running? So it like we were in the red. I was starting to spend my own money again, and it was scary right and We got that extra 50 we closed the deal Jeremy (07:28.13) I was able to turn that deal in some more deals and that really kept us afloat, you know, moving into 2022. And then we did get a, I would say a grant, a small grant from one of the accelerator programs that we were in. Very small, but also that helped us, you know, keep afloat, stay above zero and, you know, manage the business. Jason Kirby (07:55.518) What accelerators did you go through? Jeremy (07:58.0) Um, so we did the, which is no longer there. It was a startup bootcamp at a, um, Hartford insure tech hub accelerator. Um, so I actually lived in Hartford for six weeks until COVID hit. And then the program was, was shut down, you know, as soon as COVID hit. Um, and so they gave us a little check. It was, that program was awesome. I would say as one of the best ones that I've been exposed to, um, because. they as a community they realized like, what are they good at? Insurance, right? They have a bunch of insurance companies there. They basically made an economic development play of, hey, why don't we get all the insurance companies to get involved with this program and then software companies can actually have direct access to these. people that could give us feedback, they could do proof of value with you, and you can learn through the program with, a lot of times, real revenue, but access to talent and access to people for that feedback, which was a really cool thing. Tampa Bay Wave also, another accelerator program. We were the first cohort of cybersecurity firms through that. And we were part of the University of North Florida incubator program as well. And so each one provided its own value, provided its own network. And they all added to a little bit of our success here or there. So it was good timing too, because again, COVID, everything was shut down. Jason Kirby (09:37.438) Yeah. No, I find this interesting with a lot of founders. It just, you got to do whatever it takes. And, you know, sometimes those accelerator programs are, can be a lifesaver. Sometimes they can be a burden down the road, depending on how they're structured and whatnot. And I always find that story fascinating because a lot of founders, you know, they try to go at it alone, especially like a first time founder or someone that doesn't have, hasn't had the experience. Those accelerators can open up. new networks, new opportunities, education, stuff like that, despite them, you know, everyone's like, Oh, I want to go to YC. It's like, well, not everyone's going to get into YC. So, uh, there's plenty of other really good programs out there. And especially if you're not in a major tech hub, um, I do see a lot of uses mentioned like Tampa Bay has, uh, uh, a location like that's, you know, not in Silicon Valley, but they have resources towards, you know, supporting, uh, small businesses and startups and stuff like that, which is great. Jeremy (10:30.096) Yep. And Tampa has for us anyway, that this is part of the story and what I think people should pay attention to as well as like the reason why we went insurance is because we're kind of like an insurance platform for software company security, right? So in security, insurance is going to want to see what we are providing and what we're measuring eventually when that, when the insurance market catches up and they realize like what we have and we can, we can show for insurance claims and things like that. or underwriting, it'll become a thing. We were way too early for market back in 2019, 2020 for insurance. But Tampa Bay also cybersecurity hub now, right? So like there's a lot of cyber firms down there. There's a lot of activity around cybersecurity. So that was a strategic move for us is like, we wanted to get introduced to the Tampa Bay community in the cyber security space. Jason Kirby (11:27.326) No, it makes sense. And one thing that you talked about and alluded to is just kind of really maintaining relationships with investors over the course of the business and being smart and asking them, like, what do you want to see? Like when you say, like, come to us down the road and, you know, in your later stage or whatever, but it sounds like you specifically asked what were those metrics? And then you work towards, you know, hitting those metrics and sharing that with them. I guess, what was that experience like? How did you keep track of them? How did you keep track of? not just your, not your metrics, but how you presented it to investors and manage those relationships over an extended period of time. Jeremy (12:03.93) Yeah, Excel spreadsheet. But it was, I could, I would say in this, this intuition, this confidence that I gain doesn't come quickly. Right? So like when, when people say they talk to hundreds of investors or whatnot, I talked to hundreds of investors. And so, um, eventually you kind of get intuition and intuition of like how they answer the question exactly how they interview us of like how we answer specific things and like there we can do the same thing to them and like let's be honest like we're the entrepreneurs we're the ones with the the ideas that's going to make them money so like we we need to really start being more confident of like talking to investors and doing the interviewing and what I really figured out is like how to create FOMO. fear of missing out. And I did that through basically saying, Hey, here's what we're doing over the next quarter. I want to talk to you and can you please like put something on the schedule in April, right? And in April, I'm going to share with you what we did, what I have clear line of sight into, and it's going to be everything you want to know about the business, right? And eventually we're going to meet the metrics that you want. But I also will say I'm doing this with several other venture firms that I'm tracking, I'm keeping, I'm keep interviewing them. And I, you know, it's, it's, you know, I want to work with companies and partners that are actually going to be partners to us. And I think in the early stages, a lot of people just want the cash and there's so much cash out there, but it's, I don't want to say it's easy to get, but I want to say, you probably should be more strategic on who you bring into your business. And so those, those qualification questions, exactly what we do in sales, you know, I don't want to do business with everybody. We're, we're a fit for certain companies and certain characteristics of those companies. And same, I do the same thing with VCs is what are the characteristics I like in these, in these people that I'm talking to, um, their value propositions, um, what they're going to do for us, how they're going to work with us. Jeremy (14:19.056) And so I would create like a qualification system for everybody and, um, you know, also keep them true. Like, Hey, I want to talk in, um, Q2 this day and let's just stay in contact. And of course, a lot of people fell off through, through that process. Um, but then you were able to see like who the ones were going to lot last and be with you anyways. And so, you know, just, just create a kind of like a sales process, um, like you would do with anything else. Jason Kirby (14:48.35) And it's demonstration of a skillset that VCs like to see in a founder in terms of being able to run a sales process, especially early stage founders. You know, most of the revenue growth is going to be founder led sales. So if the founder can run a effective sales process for raising money, they can probably run an effective sales process for acquiring customers. So it's a checkbox VCs look for and they often make founders go through hoops and hurdles to kind of validate that that skill set is there. Especially if the relationship wasn't previously existing, you know, they don't know who you are. They want to see that performance over an extended period of time. And four years is an extended period of time. Jeremy (15:30.676) Four years is a very extended period of time. I would also say like there wasn't through the four years at the very beginning, I probably didn't have enough insight or data points to, I would say more predict the future because like, when the world's stagnant and nobody's adopting things and you expected things to happen, especially after events, let's say like solar winds, regulation and all that kind of stuff happened like years later, right? And then we're sitting here waiting, like that, that solar winds event should literally make people move now, but it didn't regulation had to come out, which took years and now people are moving. Right. And so, um, I didn't have enough like the data and let's just say things that were occurring in the industry to really be confident in telling people like, hey, this is what's going to happen and here's why, right? Once we kind of saw some things unfold, we were able to create a very impressive narrative that could predict like what's going to happen. I could say, Hey, I know that this is going to happen this year. This is going to happen this year. Our high adoption year is going to be 2024. And then the major adoption years are going to be 2025 and 2026. And here's the data that's backing that. Right. And so once you're kind of able to get into those like confidence points and you're able to like guide the, the VCs with that, they're like, Yeah, I agree with you or pay. I see it a little bit different and here's why. And a lot of times towards the end of that, or once I get in like halfway through the capital raise, I had enough data that like the VCs were following my lead. They're like, yep, I totally agree with that. I understand what you're saying and why that matters and why we're going to invest in you now, because that's going to happen in the timeline that, that you're saying it is. And so, um, you know, Jeremy (17:31.344) getting that confidence and getting those data points to be able to kind of like say, predict that future and make them feel confident and comfortable in that investment is really important. Jason Kirby (17:43.09) Being that thought leader and sharing that level of expertise and basically making the VC smarter is an incredible way to, again, build trust, build a relationship. And if they don't believe in you, then it's probably not going to be a fit. So finding those VCs that do buy into your vision, buy into your predictions of where the market's going are key indicators that there could be a relationship there for them investing in you. Jeremy (18:12.598) Absolutely. Jason Kirby (18:12.606) And so, you know, you got to a million dollars in revenue. And imagine it's SaaS. So it says like, you know, that's your MRR, ARRs run a million plus. Is that when you kind of decided like now's the time to start asking for money or did VCs start to see your updates? They're like, Hey, what's up, Jeremy? What are you doing? Jeremy (18:31.592) Both of those things happened. And I don't know how VCs get, maybe it's done in Bradstreet, I don't know. I don't know how they get radio waves of we have money coming in. But I would say I tried to raise seed earlier and I stopped. And I stopped because I got frustrated. I would get 300 ,000 revenue and they'd be like, oh, if you only got to 500, we'd be interested. Then I'd get to 500 and they'd be like, oh, well, if you got to a million, then we'd be interested. And I'm like, come on guys, you're moving the cheese. Like really? Like it gets to a point where, and I think investors need to understand this is like, if we get to a point where, Jason Kirby (19:02.492) I know. Jeremy (19:17.84) We don't need you anymore. Then you start throwing us money. We don't need you anymore. Like you missed your opportunity. Right. And, you know, I had another VC and I, it cracks me up. He, he always made jokes. Um, and they, they were part of the, one of the first VCs in, um, they were like, I thought this was called venture capital. Like, why is everybody being sissies? Like you have a good idea. The market's demonstrating it. Um, you're, you have the ability to form a team and talent. it's venture capital. It's not private equity. Like let's go. Right. So then this is like another VC. Um, I was, I was like, can you talk to some of these VCs for me? Um, right. And, uh, it was just a weird time, but you know, once we got over that million, I was like, you know what? Maybe this is time and maybe the conversation is going to be easy. And if these, if the guys that are telling me or girls, whatever, that they're still out, Jason Kirby (19:56.634) Yeah, I can whip them in the shape for me. Jeremy (20:13.944) and we're over a million, then I gotta move on. Like, I'm not calling you anymore, we're not friends anymore, like, I'm moving on. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. They're just not into you. Right, so moving on, and basically created a whole nother way to, you know, some of them stuck around, not all of them stuck around, you know? But I do like to share this story, because at the very end of the seed round, Jason Kirby (20:20.55) It is not that into whatever it is. Jeremy (20:41.072) I had money trickling or people trickling back in that were like, Oh, you guys got that investor and you got that investor. Can you take a million dollars from us? And I'm like, got like, we're already shutting the rent, the round down. And these are guys that told me no several times, move the cheese on me several times. And I'm like, no guys, like I told you, like if, if people come in first and you keep moving the cheese on me, I'm not going to invite you to the, to the dance anymore. So moving on. It was incredibly awesome to say no to a couple million dollars when they kind of made you squirm for months and months and months, you know. Jason Kirby (21:23.358) That's a very sweet moment when you get to go with the people that you actually want to go with and get to say no to the ones that, you know, it's your job. As a founder, you got to keep putting yourself out there and you learn because you're putting yourself out there. You can't just expect to hit a home run with the first relationship. It does happen sometimes, but in reality, it's, you know, like you said, you talked to a hundred investors, you kept, you know, kept at it. You kept building those relationships. You kept knocking on their door. Jeremy (21:37.486) Yes. Jason Kirby (21:50.654) And when you actually were the, you know, the person to be investable, you know, when you became investable and you were the, the, what are you called? The homecoming king that everyone wanted to be with. Um, then you got your, your pick. And I think the moral of the story at the end of the day is one, yes, run a sales process, you know, build those relationships, but build a great business. Jeremy (22:05.166) Yep. Jeremy (22:13.09) Correct. Jason Kirby (22:13.182) Build a business that has revenue, build a business that has defensibility in the market. And that's ultimately what gives you the most strength. And yeah, sure. Maybe you don't need the money anymore, but the money would be nice. And the money can help you outpace competition, innovate, be faster, and hit that venture scale velocity. So it sounds like you ran a, you know, albeit long, but smart process and you played your cards right. Jeremy (22:30.704) Yep, exactly. Jason Kirby (22:39.72) What kind of growth rate were you at in terms of like month over month when you were at that million dollar mark when you decided to go out and raise? Jeremy (22:46.896) Honestly, I was not tracking that type of stuff back then. It was, I was just trying to keep the training wheels on man. Like, and just, just to kind of give you some data points on that, it was literally me and my CTO and our director of engineering that were doing everything. Um, so, and then a couple of contractors. So like literally four, four to five people getting over a million dollars a year is hard as crap. And so, um, I look at my team now and I'm like, I used to do that. I used to do that. I used to do that. I used to, you know what I mean? I'm like these, all these hats. I'm like, this is, this is crazy. Right. And so, um, you know, uh, we started when we got closer to that million dollars, we started hiring more and more people. Right. So I say we are about four or five people for a good portion of that. And then I would say about when we started hitting four to five, we started bringing on a little bit more part of. contractors to help us out. And so, you know, we had to manage a team and we had a lot of processes that we needed to bake. And like I said, we were just trying to keep the training wheels on and, you know, then not to overlook that raising capital is also a full -time job. So. I honestly didn't really care about our metrics at that time. I'm just like, if I could have some money, I could have some breathing room to start evaluating the metrics and actually like making it repeatable. Jason Kirby (24:19.006) Well, sounds like you played your cards right, built something interesting, got revenue to a point where it was attracting the right players. But I guess you got the three mil, you got some good investors coming in, you're happy with that. What happened after you got that money? What's been the last six, nine months since you got the money? Jeremy (24:38.416) Yeah, it's been, I had to get basically product operations running, getting the vision, the understanding. head of product in there, you know, more people that can help us on a full -time basis on the product and starting up our sales and marketing engine, right? So we've hired a lot of people who are in sales and marketing, whether they're internal or agencies or whatnot. So we have a lot of things in the works that we're managing. And then really getting through, I would say, We had almost product market fit when I first raised. We didn't complete our entire value proposition yet. And so over the last six months has been a full on like sprint to get version two out the door and make sales for Q1. And so we made a couple sales at the end of the year, but a lot of companies wanted to see our next version and buy in the new year. So we got the version two out early. January with no hiccups and we're screaming our product ops are working. Um, everybody's in alignment, um, design our, our new UI is slick. Um, we're getting a ton of people understanding security above and beyond security people. So like, that was a goal of ours is like, make this less technical. So like business people can, can see what's going on. Um, and then our, our sales and marketing engine, right? And so, um, sales is hard to manage, um, simplifying your message from the founder to scaling it to salespeople is hard. Jeremy (26:24.304) Right. And so like, I can talk any language because just to say it, like we service, like DevOps developers, security, cybersecurity people, and business side people. So like, I can flip my language and how do I speak to people and like the value propositions to each like persona on, on a dime, right? Um, I can't expect salespeople to do the same thing immediately. So, simplifying the message, simplifying how we're going to market and simplifying how we're actually explaining the value proposition and then having scripts through the demos, you know, things like that. That's been a learning curve for our entire company because what we're selling is not, it's complex, but we've made it simple and we're trying to make it more and more simpler for people to go ahead and push it out for us. Jason Kirby (27:16.83) And I guess from, uh, you kind of mentioned the buyer persona, but what type of companies are these, uh, companies that you work with that you're going after? Are these like enterprise scale side, uh, you know, sales or are these more like small business type client? Jeremy (27:30.672) Yeah, good question. We can service enterprise. In fact, we have enterprise in our pipeline. We haven't closed any enterprise. We're getting more of those enterprise clients via our channel partners. My go -to -market, what I wanted to focus on is software companies, SaaS companies, post seed, series A, B, C. And here's why. There's a lot of tools in our market, point solutions. One tool can eat up the application security budget. And these are traditional vendors trying to play in our space. We took more of a stance of why can't we build a platform that has all these tools and then offer it to SaaS SMB market for like a fraction of the cost of like traditional vendors in our space. And so I always say like, don't bring your enterprise strategy or Batman belt to the SaaS SMB. Like you're going to eat up all the budget. Why don't you take a different approach, get it all in one place. We can actually be your company, your platform that can meet your needs and help you mature over the entire business life cycle, meaning from raising capital to audits to preparing for exit. So like your technical due diligence, we help companies stay prepared. We call it resilient and ready all day, every day. And so having. to be able to show security and security performance throughout the, all of that is, is really helpful for all these people, both the practitioners doing the work, but also when the CEO is like, Hey guys, we have an audit coming up or we prepared, uh, we have an exit coming up or we have like forensics and investigation coming up. Are we prepared? Are we going to have to scramble? Cause the more scrambling there is. the more developers are not actually delivering product features. So that's the insurance piece of we're helping you keep the speed and velocity and the interruptions to a minimum. Jason Kirby (29:36.766) That's actually a lot of value there just because, you know, when I, when we sold our company to Walmart, the diligence and just the tech, it was just like, and not being able to tell our team why they're having to produce certain like security reports and stuff like that. Like, Hey, like, can you look into this and tell us what's going on? They're like, I'm busy doing this. What do you want me to do? I'm like, uh, prioritize the thing that doesn't sound very important. Trust me, it's, it's worth it. Just, just don't ask questions. Jeremy (29:58.638) Yep, yep. Jeremy (30:03.12) Yeah, man. And like, this is what I was trying to say earlier is like, to predict what was happening in the market and when this stuff was going to happen on the timeline was very important. And so like everything that I predicted is starting to come true on pretty much the timeline that I said to the investors and like, we've done tech due diligence with companies, like we work with a couple of private equity companies that their port codes are all software companies, right? And so I'm like, Guys, like security is just good business now. It's not gonna get easier. It's gonna be more and more of a requirement the more we go into the future, right? So you might as well start dealing with this now. And so that's, I mean, that's really what's happening. That's, you know, we've done tech due diligence. We've persuaded people not to buy. because of certain things and we've given companies more valuation because of the things that we were able to highlight. And by the way, these tech due diligence people, they're gonna try to devalue you as much as they can, right? And so any little thing that they're gonna find, they're gonna be like, hey, they had a security incident and what we found is they didn't actually ever do any mitigation. It's still a wide. open hole and the CTO did nothing about it. And so, okay, like once they discover that we're not buying anymore. So. Jason Kirby (31:33.278) Yeah, it could definitely go up deals like cybersecurity is especially on a bigger company and a larger scale buying a smaller company. Their biggest risk is some kind of security breach that leads to a press release tying the big company name to a very small business where the net negative impact outweighs the purchase price of the company. And with my nascent and significant size startup in comparison to the behemoth of Walmart, Jeremy (31:54.958) Yep. Jason Kirby (32:03.166) They dug deep, real, real, real deep. And so I can definitely relate to the significance of, you know, just cybersecurity as a whole and for any tech company that, you know, if your product involves technology to any degree, or you're storing customer data or anything of that sort, cybersecurity is mission critical. So, yeah, I'm glad you got here. Jeremy (32:04.688) Yep. Jeremy (32:24.848) Oh yeah. Well you saw, I mean you saw when MGM went down, right? Uh, that was all software by the way. And, uh, how many millions of dollars of revenue did they miss every single day? Right? Like a ton, a ton, like hundreds of millions of revenue. And I know they reported less than that, but let's be honest, it didn't actually line up to their, their yearly annual revenue. Um, so. That's what else like everybody's focused on like customer data, customer data. Like that's what compliance is focused on. Yada, yada. Yes. Our customer data is valuable, but I even said this somewhere else. Like the whole industry jokes about the data is already out there. Right. So like, why do we even care about that stuff? But where you, where it's like a product focused company or software focused company, all of your revenue, all of your customer experience is going through that. Um, it back to the MGM uptime availability. Like these are all security. These don't, this isn't really talked about in security in normal cybersecurity or traditional cybersecurity. This is the proactive security that we actually enable that we're trying to say, Hey guys, if your system goes down, you're dependent on your system and so your customers, like that's a lot of money that you're missing. Like that's, that should be important to you. Jason Kirby (33:43.678) I completely agree and I'm really glad you got the opportunity to kind of share more about what you guys do at Star Left Security. For the people watching or listening into this show, where can people learn more about you and what you're doing at Star Left Security? Jeremy (33:55.802) I'm on LinkedIn, Jeremy Vaughn, that's spelled V -A -U -G -H -A -N. You can find me, I think I have a bright pink bio pic. And then startlesssecurity .com is another one. Jason Kirby (34:10.302) And before we part ways here, what would be some advice for founders that are looking to kind of get their seed round closed and something that maybe we didn't cover so far? Jeremy (34:23.312) Yeah, I would say this is something that I learned the hard way. Um, and I think you mentioned it on a, on another video, but like, um, I used to be scared to go to industry focused VCs, like safe cybersecurity. So I did a lot of general, um, VCs or ones that were focused on data or like it infrastructure. Right. And like a lot of them just didn't get it. Right. And the reason why I was scared is. Like these cybersecurity VCs get a lot of the same decks, like presentations. And I'm like, do they share them around? Are they going to steal my idea? Blah, blah. So I was really scared. Um, I took a step back and I got over it. Um, and the second I did it changed its trajectory and I changed my thinking of, I just need one cybersecurity lead, uh, investor that is very well known in the space. And. go get that one and then go create FOMO and Momentum with everybody else. And so what I did is I went and we got Ron Gullo, founder of Tenable, his VC firm invested and a couple of his members there. And then I took that and I got Lidicle and I got a couple of general VC funds. And also when you're talking about the characteristics of these VCs, I asked them, Hey, can you help me? Like if you're really a partner, can you guys help me? So like they would like a couple of them started to protect their investment and in, in, uh, intro to us into other VCs that would invest alongside, right? And so you kind of have to push people to do stuff to help you. But like, once you start to get them and they're already in, like it's a lot easier for them to go and push you through their network. Right. And so that's also a sign that they're going to help you in future, in the future as well. And so that's just a little learning curve that I had. And, you know, I think, I think it's really valuable to kind of change your mindset and your perspective on how you, you actually attack, raising your capital. Jason Kirby (36:19.23) That is some great parting advice for founders to understand. You've kind of poked up one thing that that fear aspect of will they steal my idea? Will they share the deck? And the common response, and I always tell founders that if you're worried about your entire business being stolen and being, you know, you're going to go under because you shared a deck, then your business wasn't that good in the first place. And so that's something I always kind of remind founders out to yes, just put yourself out there. You're gonna, you know, things may happen, but you're not going to have a shot unless you build those relationships and put yourself out there. So I'm glad you shared that with, with our audience. So Jeremy, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Really appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for, for joining us. Jeremy (36:54.928) I agree. Jeremy (37:04.858) Thank you. Thank you for your time. Love the show. Take care.