How do you raise $7M pre-revenue using the YC playbook?

Jason Kirby (00:04.818) Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Fundraising Demystified. Today we have Nicholas Lejeune with us from courtyard.io. Welcome to the show, Nicholas. Nicolas le Jeune (00:13.922) Hi Jason, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Jason Kirby (00:16.838) Now it's exciting to have you on the show. For our audience today, it'd be great if you could just kind of jump in, tell us a little bit about your background and working from Google to YouTube and ultimately leaving all that behind to start courtyard.io. Nicolas le Jeune (00:32.202) Yeah, so I'm from Belgium. Grew up in Belgium, had my first role. I was lucky to get a job at Google. Moved to Ireland, most of the people started in Ireland at Google. So I was primarily doing sales at Google for the cloud sales. Things went well. Ended up managing France, Africa for SMBs. Moved to the US to do the same thing. And then I'm a big music fan, so I always wanted to work in around the music and entertainment piece, and so I found this role about like managing music labels for YouTube, which is, was kind of my dream role at the time. Moved there in San Bruno in California to do that for all indie labels. So I did that for about two years. It's great. Got to meet a lot of great artists, a lot of cool labels, great connection. But then after seven years, I figured that I wanted more to that, and I could see my path at Google like staying kind of like a line trajectory, and I wanted something different and really build something for myself. So I experimented with different ideas, and then I ended up launching Courtyard, which was... A lot of challenges. The co-founder I started with like two days before I left Google actually told me he could not do that anymore so I had to go through like engineering profile at Google that were talking about crypto, as you will see core chart is linked to crypto and started emailing them on LinkedIn. I found two engineers that were interested but kind of hesitating. I told them, why don't you guys talk together without me? And they got on well. We were lucky. three of us and that's how we kicked it off. Jason Kirby (02:12.218) Wow. And, you know, so having the opportunity to work at Google, build those relationships, and even recruiting from Google, which, you know, I'm sure, you know, helped kind of the narrative for raising venture capital down the road. I guess kind of walk us through what happened after you made the leap of faith and you started this company, you know, what was kind of the focus and why did you start it and kind of what does it do? Nicolas le Jeune (02:33.494) So I can maybe start with the second piece. How did it start it and what does it do? So when it was at the time where NFT really boomed and we saw NFT not as just this digital image, but more as a way of like proving ownership of something wherever you bring it. So you can go to any website and prove that you own something, this NFT. And we were like, why don't we tie that to something physical and have a trusted entity that just stored those physical assets like a vault or insure them. And we looked at who is the most trusted companies to do so and we ended up with Brinks, which is the armor truck company you see on the street. And we called them up. We called up, asked to talk to somebody bigger, ask somebody bigger, convinced them that we're building something really new for them and something brand new where we would vault the assets at Brinks and create NFTs of all of those assets that could be traded on any platform. And it was at the time where like, that was the hottest industry at the time and like the future, now it's a bit less so. And this is how we kicked it off. I convinced them we started working on the prototype, reaching out to people. And the very beginning was more about forming the right team. A lot of people had pretty good job, as you can imagine, people working at Google, maybe have kids. And so some of them, like, or a person who manages our community was still working at Google. And I was just like, Hey, if you work on Discord, can you just, like you do a lot of stuff on Discord, can you just help us on the side? And that's what he did. He kept his job and started working a bit on the side. to help us out and he moved full-time once we had money. And so I would say it took about six months of like no salary, no pay, and just like working through that, me and my co-founder, with all the rest working kind of like on the side. I essentially... Nicolas le Jeune (04:29.846) gave myself one year and I was like, I'm gonna lose that money. How much did I spend the last two years? And I was like, that money from my bank account is gone. I'm investing myself. And so I don't have to worry about like, I need to make money tomorrow. And so that really gave me the freedom to feel comfortable like really building something. So this is how it all started. We wanted to do a proof of concept where NFT drops were a big thing. We... we thought of like, why don't we do Pokemon cards? It's something that's nostalgic to most people. It has high value. And so we went ahead and bought a lot of Pokemon cards. So I didn't have the money at the time to buy that much. So a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, lent me $500,000. to it was a Tesla engineer who, Tesla, you saw the stock quite increase. So he was, I believe pretty well off, but it was really nice to lend us $500,000, which we borrowed and we said like all the cars we buy, anyway, it keeps their value. If we don't sell out, you keep the card and you can sell it. And we bought. 800 cards, average value of $500. And all the cards range from like $100 to like $50,000 a card. And we did this NFT drop where you didn't know what card you were going to buy. It was just a closed pack. And it could be proven on the blockchain that the card is inside the pack. And everything is randomly assigned to people. and we sold out in two hours. So that's really how it started, but this new proof of concept of like those 3D cards and so on. Nicolas le Jeune (06:10.046) Sorry, I think you muted. Jason Kirby (06:13.043) Oops. So a lot to unpack here. The very interesting kind of narrative of one, capitalizing on market trends. You know, NFTs were all the rage I was looking at, everyone was looking at them, if not buying them. And you kind of found a unique model, a unique way to kind of capture attention. I do want to kind of unpack it a little bit more, but there's something that you said that I think I don't hear often from founders in terms of how you envisioned your commitment to this, in terms of making this gamble or making this bet on yourself and kind of reserving this certain amount of cash that you know is basically gone forever unless you make something work but also putting like a deadline on it to kind of give you that freedom and flexibility to be solely focused on the organization. So I want that to be a takeaway for a lot of founders that are maybe considering jumping into starting a company or... I've already done some, and this might be a way to reflect on how they should approach it. So I think that was a really valuable insight. Nicolas le Jeune (07:14.038) Definitely, that's the thing that helped me the most in terms of feeling comfortable that I have that time and I don't stress every single day to try to find something that works or raise money today or tomorrow and stuff like that. So that gave us a lot more flexibility there. Jason Kirby (07:28.746) I think that's a very valuable lesson. Now, going into this NFT drop, I have so many questions about the logistics, but we don't have to spend too much time on that. But these were digital Pokemon packs that people were essentially unboxing. And they didn't know what they're going to get, but they knew that a card was valued between $100,000 to $50,000, essentially. And so you get this to, how did you guys get this to market? How did you tell the world about this, you know, NFT Pokemon card drop and kind of what happened after? Nicolas le Jeune (08:02.974) It was very organic, all on socials, all on the crypto Twitter at the time, where we started with the concept. It was a novel idea, like Pokemon card on the blockchain. It's something new. It's something different. We were very lucky to find our now 3D modeling person. So all the cards look like an exact replica of the card that we have in the vault, but they look much better. It's like a 3D model that's like turning and so on. It looks more than an image. of like if it's a digital representation it needs to look better than a photo. So we had a lot of like really interesting content that could potentially go viral and it organically grew. We did a few growth hacks and we ended up with a discord with like 10 000 people at some point so that that's really how like it was at the right time as well. So I like to say that if we did the exact same thing today it would probably not have worked because there is a time, like not everything's about AI. There is a time and a place, and I believe like timing is very important, and timing especially for, like you need to find the right industry, but something different within that industry because same when live shopping was happening, what not blew it up. So many companies try to do the same as what not, but it works already. So it's very hard to do something different and something that innovates there. Jason Kirby (09:29.562) Yeah. And I think that's something that a lot of founders need to look at. And you kind of make it sound like it was so easy to do a couple of growth hacks, but you know, it's, there's a lot of execution and strategy that kind of goes into making sure you're getting to the right audiences and so on. So I don't want to necessarily want to like make it sound like it was super casual. Yeah. Nicolas le Jeune (09:45.467) It was not easy at all. It was a lot of grinding, a lot of like, we took some time before having users, right? Like I remember it. We were grinding days and days and days. And so like suddenly one day our discord went from like 600 users to like 5,000 in one day, uh, because one thing happened and it really like, like it's all about, I believe making the setting their conditions so that you can potentially have that, like you cannot force that like lightning that you need to happen, but you can set all the condition in order to make it happen basically. And, and then it needs to, it needs to happen. Jason Kirby (10:22.234) and then be ideally ready for when it does happen so you can capitalize on it. So let's fast forward from this point. You guys go viral. You sell out in two days. I guess talk us through if you can, what was the revenue growth at that point and then what did you guys do for capitalizing the business from there on out? And did you pay back your friend, the 500? Yeah. Nicolas le Jeune (10:43.278) Thanks for watching! Nicolas le Jeune (10:46.895) I did pay him back. So funny enough, we, before we sold out, so it took actually quite a bit of time to set up all the processes with Branks, like signing the deal, we got an exclusive deal, they ended up investing in us. So this took quite a bit of time. We entered before that, I believe like four months before actually selling out and having like the exact concept done. We ended up going to an incubator, a Y Combinator, which helped a lot and we ended up raising quite a bit of money. We didn't close the round before that, but before the actual sale of it. So we had a lot of hype, we didn't actually have revenue until, I believe, three weeks before the end of YC, where we did the drop and sold out there. So, yeah. Jason Kirby (11:34.054) Okay, so you guys did, you got into YC first, then you guys did the drop. And so it was probably a lot of momentum and just from the YC network in it itself probably helped in terms of more exposure strategy and growth hacks, things of that sort of that. Would you say that's accurate? Nicolas le Jeune (11:51.774) I think what YC did, it brought us on the map for investors. We had a lot of investors reaching out to us. I think we have something different because it was a new area and everybody thinks it makes sense to link it to physical assets. But nobody had a really key strategy for the operation piece. And because we had this exclusive partnership with Brinks, that put us a bit different than the rest of the population. And we had a good team and so on. So that's, I believe, why we entered the space and we went to IC there. But it really gave us a lot of exposure when it comes to investors reaching out to us and learning about what we're doing. Jason Kirby (12:30.346) Gotcha. And then how quickly after the drop and kind of that, you know, sellout day, did you guys go out and raise money and kind of what was the strategy? What did you guys think about when it came to how much money to raise? Who to raise from? You know, you guys are hot in a hot space doing something unique, so lots of attention on you. How did you approach it? What was your strategy? Nicolas le Jeune (12:54.498) So prior to the drop, we were like a lot of people reaching out to us. I think we had a very different experience than a lot of founders in that space because it was the hottest subject, something new in that, with a team that has something a bit different than the other. And they saw it as like the biggest, like a really huge potential. So we raised quite a bit before that. So we actually raised 3.5 million before actually dropping the revenue. How we did is really trying to optimize for the right people that were going to help us. And so talking to different VCs and so on. And after the drop, we talked to larger funds, like multistage funds, and ended up going with NEA. We thought we were good with 3.5 million, but we were expecting to have like a crash in the crypto because the moment was not right now with the economy and everything at the time was in March last year and So we ended up raising 3.5 million more which ended up raising like 7 million dollar in total Jason Kirby (14:03.55) And were they, I think, were these traditional YCCs, were they equity rounds? What was the structure? Gotcha. So to this day, have you guys raised money since? Nicolas le Jeune (14:08.574) Safe, just safe. Nicolas le Jeune (14:13.834) No, we kept the money, we kept frugal, we still have quite a bit of a runway, and we were building. So we were trying not to. And this is what we expected. Right now, the economy, we're in the collectible space, which is like a disposable income, I would say, is the first thing that goes away. Um, and so we're not in a stage where like, there's a huge boom when it comes to like NFT collectibles and so on. So, uh, this is why we keep on building on you, on you thing and, uh, looking to find that product market fit, uh, which we're getting close to, but, uh, still, still need to, to work a bit more on that. Jason Kirby (14:52.046) So you guys were smart in the sense that you capitalized on market momentum, but also realizing that this momentum is coming to a close pretty quickly. Kind of, you know, I think when it was like the big club was it Celsius, Celsius that went down first or yeah. Then FTX. Nicolas le Jeune (15:07.562) And then Celsius and then FTX. And then that was a big blow. And then, yeah. Jason Kirby (15:12.67) And then everything started, you know, block, uh, block five and everyone started kind of, you know, coming down, the party was over. Um, and what you guys did was basically kind of. We're concerned that this might be the reality raised a little bit more capital to give yourself some flexibility, some cushion, and I guess kind of since then, like kind of given the market dynamics and just kind of, as you mentioned, like, uh, collectibles being more of a disposable income area, what have you guys been working towards outside of like product market fit? Have you guys been selling? including transactions, revenue, kind of what's been the business experience as you kind of have to wade the storm here. Nicolas le Jeune (15:49.45) So all those NFTs that were live, some were redeemed so we could redeem globally, some started to be traded on OpenSea. So OpenSea was the number one marketplace of NFT. So initially we started talking to all those big luxury brands, watch brands and so on, to see can we do that for you guys. I think it was a bit too early for them to jump into the boat on that. And we built a system where anybody can send cards to us very easily. So they can just ship their cards. We print the shipping label automatically and they should be cards. We kind of realized afterwards in the current environment for crypto that the consumer that we have, there's a huge market for cars, but the consumer that we have are not especially into crypto and don't have a crypto wallet or don't know what the gas fee is or like all of that complexity, USDC and so on. And so we realized that we need to abstract the complexity of the blockchain because the blockchain people care mostly about buying an NFT that has a super high volatility that might 3X within two days. physical collectibles rarely do. And so we were trying to merge those two worlds, and so that's why we built the first market place that's fully Web 2 that's backed by Web 3, so no gas fees, no... No gas fees, we create an account for you, you pay with a credit card if you want or with crypto. So that was the main goal of us first. And we see quite a bit of traction. So we have about like 100 to 500 cards being shipped every week to the vault. And those cards are starting to transact quite a bit. So that's the first stage. The second piece now we're working on is building this concept of drops, because blockchain is very transparent. And so this concept of like you can buy a pack and you don't know when you see all the list of cards. Nicolas le Jeune (17:39.896) and really focusing on this fun way of opening pack digitally without having to go to the cart shop to do so. Jason Kirby (17:49.274) And just so I understand, you guys are basically keeping the physical items, collectible items, in the Briggs Vault, and the NFT is exchanging freely because it's backed by the physical asset, right? Nicolas le Jeune (18:00.242) Exactly. And whoever owns the NFT, we don't even call them NFT anymore. Like whoever owns the asset on the platform can at any point in time say, I want to redeem my asset and then we destroy it and then we ship it to you. Jason Kirby (18:14.062) Interesting, okay. And how often are people redeeming that? Nicolas le Jeune (18:18.198) So we had redemption in about 15 countries. I would say it's about 4% of the assets getting redeemed. And so it's much more liquid because the asset stays in the vault. It can be transacted from New York to Japan to wherever within seconds. And you have the whole history of transaction for those assets. And you can do a lot more things because it's on the blockchain. So rather than us doing things like collateralized lending, where you can put your asset as a collateral and borrow money. Jason Kirby (18:24.006) Yeah, be curious. Jason Kirby (18:28.211) Yeah. Nicolas le Jeune (18:43.85) A lot of platforms do that in the collectible space, but now we can just, without having to build it ourselves, we can just go to a platform that does that on the blockchain and say, here are the assets and just integrate with them because they can use the blockchain to prove that the person owns the asset. So that's really the power of the blockchain where you can only transact, like not only transact on our marketplace, but on any other marketplace that's compatible with what we do. Jason Kirby (19:08.09) That is pretty powerful from a platform perspective. And again, collateralized lending was all the rage. And then obviously, some companies collapsed due to it. So I want to go back. So this is a pretty interesting story in terms of how you guys got to where you are and what you guys are working on today. But something that came on before we hopped on the call was kind of the. amount of term sheets or just offers and negotiations, discussions you were having with multiple VCs. You were in a hot market, innovative solution, right timing, and coming out of YC. So just a lot of attention on you. How did you go about making your decision to go with the investors that you chose? Nicolas le Jeune (19:51.886) That's a good question. I think there was two or three main factors. The first one was the fit. Is that investor like... Reputable is like, does he know about the industry we're going after? And, uh, do we have good conversation when we discussed? So funny enough, I, I joke when I said that, that like the, I never presented a deck, I had a deck, which I sent, uh, oftentimes, but it was mostly conversation about the problem we're trying to solve and seeing like what the perspective is. And like, it was more of a conversation of like, um, trying to figure out what the position is and what do they think is the best way to approach this brand new market that's like very hard with a lot of challenges ahead and bringing them along as a kind of a team member and brainstorm with them and see how it fits together on this. So that was one of the main, the main principle. And then afterwards it was all about as well, like if they were interested, if they could bring us some external value, maybe they work in a company that's similar. So we had, for instance, somebody who is the CEO of the largest card grading company, who came as an angel. Like those type of contacts really help as well for where we were trying to go to. Jason Kirby (21:09.566) And when it came to one, I agree with you. Like I tell founders this all the time, if you're pitching your deck in a meeting, you already lost. Yeah. Nicolas le Jeune (21:18.398) You lost and you should send in advance. It's all about like, they have their own questions that they're interested in. They probably looked at the business. And so it was more of a presenting what we're doing and then having them ask the question they were interested into. I like to say that we often think that we're too interesting than we are, like from them, like they have their question in mind and they want that question to be answered. They don't care about this other area that you think is super cool from your business, but they don't care about it. So that's the main thing. Jason Kirby (21:53.15) Yeah, that's actually a really interesting point. I just, a lot of founders feel they have to share something that they're really proud of and like that they've put a lot of work into, but if you see ultimately cares about, you know, a few things that are in their head that they're going to ask and dive into more and it's better to appease those types of questions than it is to, you know, kind of drag them down a rabbit hole they weren't expecting or didn't have any interest in. And, you know, effectively you're selling, you're, you're selling a VC, they're your customer effectively, and you need to kind of make sure you're listening to the body language and the questions that they're asking. So next question for you is, what questions did you ask the VCs to kind of feel them out and kind of get a feel for who's actually going to be the best partner, and did you make the decision more so on the partner, or did you make the decision more so on the brand, the firm? Nicolas le Jeune (22:48.658) It's a bit of a mix of both, right? If you have like a huge firm that's very renowned, that it brings a lot more resources as well. And we have different investors that are, some are more seed focused, some are larger, multistage fund. You see the different types of resource they can help and even longer term, how they could help like follow up and stuff like that. So I would say it was more about the experience and like the asking them about how they think is the best way to go about like, when it comes to like go to market. or like bringing them along and brainstorming with them. So the ones that felt more like a team member, if that makes sense, or like if they were part of the team of like, how can we figure out that together? And that had really good comments and that had comments that showed that they understood what we were doing and were interested in that piece, I would say. Jason Kirby (23:41.574) Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. I think some founders feel it's about, they have money, I want the money. And as much as that's important, it's more so you're going to be building a relationship with the next 10 years. And for you guys to also have the foresight of the market, maybe not going to be perfect for much longer. Uh, you definitely want someone that's going to be comfortable in the trenches with you and not necessarily, you know, kind of forcing you to pivot the business into a direction that wouldn't make sense for you guys. Um, so. Nicolas le Jeune (24:07.294) Yeah, that's right. Jason Kirby (24:11.774) Kind of where do you see the NFT and just collectible market going in the next few years and how are you preparing for it? Nicolas le Jeune (24:19.678) I think it goes with cycles, similar to crypto. Right now, interest rate is so high, people live like the economy is not doing as well. They were not in a great stage from an economy perspective. The first thing that comes away, as I said before, is disposable things that you can get rid of. Some of the first things are collectibles or even crypto is completely crashing. Who would want to buy more crypto for now? I think the technology is the thing that I'm the most interested in. I think people see it too much as this speculative thing. I see it more as a technology that can enable us to use interoperability between different platforms. Now, if you go to eBay, you can buy and sell on eBay, but you cannot use the data from eBay automatically to another platform to provide other services. Or this video game cannot look at what you have in your account and just like integrate it with it. So I think we're going to move towards a stage that it's going to take a bit of time, but I think we're moving towards the stage where that blockchain technology is going to really bring something different. The last piece is, I think, we need to innovate. The thing we talk about, like drops and maybe repacking of assets digitally, is a new mechanic that hasn't happened before, and it needs to bring back the fun. I think part of the collecting is more than just the investment piece. It should be fun. And that's what NFT really brought. NFTs, to buy NFTs, it was exciting. And a lot of the platforms are still, to this day, very transactional and you just buy, sell. It's not as fun, which is why Whatnot exploded and is still growing quite a bit because it was fun to watch people opening packs live and so on. And so I think it's still quite a bit of an interesting market to focus on. It's going to grow a lot, but it needs to have the fun component to it. technology. Jason Kirby (26:21.298) Nah, I think that, uh, trying to think from, um... Jason Kirby (26:29.246) Sorry, we're gonna cut this part out, I paused too long. All right, so let me pop back in here. So kind of rounding things out a little bit now, you've had some experience from kind of going from Google like big tech firm to then YC to then raising from Midea and building your product and being smart with how you manage your money to give you the runway you need to kind of get to the traction to maybe justify a future round. What would be your advice for founders that are in this current market? You know, the hype is all gone. We're back to 2017 kind of, you know, fundraising market. What would be your advice to the founders to, you know, either get into YC or, you know, to raise, um, you know, uh, and get attention from multiple VCs. Nicolas le Jeune (27:21.166) So I think to unpack that number one regarding getting to IC, I don't think we would be where we are if we didn't go to IC. I'm a big proponent of, I know it's controversial on this, I think the advice they give, they see so many companies left and right, they talk to so many... people that do the same mistake, because we do the same mistake. Like every founder does, and it's normal, but they are really telling it to you how it is. They don't care if you don't follow the advice, and they just see a lot. And so a lot of really good advice came from YCN, so that was really helpful. And it helped us, like put us on the map as well as a startup. So that's the first one. In terms of advice, I think in this current market, it's difficult. I'd say a lot of people think of... Yeah, raising money is difficult if you don't have traction. So my biggest advice is you can still raise money if you don't have traction yet, because they don't expect you to have product market fit. Otherwise, you would be at series zero already. Right. What It's the most important to me and what helped me the most is build the best team. I spent all my time, you were talking, my role is selling to VCs, but it's also selling to people to have the best people joining the company and one leads to two and then two leads to three and then you're three people. So you're more attractive for people to come in. And so when you have really strong profile, uh, it really creates like the, the best environment. It's like a journey you all take together. And that's, that's what I'm the most proud of for now. It's like the team I've assembled. Uh, and, and tackling that. challenge together. So my biggest focus, because doing it alone is, it's tough. So I have a co-founder, be as fair as possible as your co-founder. So I told my co-founder that we were splitting it half-half, it's you and me, just because even if I brought your comp, it was... Nicolas le Jeune (29:17.434) as much work from both sides and it's all about giving it your all. So that would be my advice. Focus on the team, be fair to people. It's all about like if it's successful, it will be a huge success. It's all about maximizing your chance to success to me. And in order to do that, you want everybody on board to be like 2000% on board. You want them to be able to call until like 11 p.m. on a Sunday because it's a huge journey and like to be committed to it. Jason Kirby (29:46.862) And I think that's incredibly valuable to talk about the team. When it comes to pitching VCs and sharing the story and getting people riled up, VCs really do look like, can you recruit top talent? Yes or no. And if you're CEO and founder and you're not able to get great talent to the team, then that's a red flag to VCs, especially in that kind of pre-seed stage or early stage where they're really betting on the team. you're going to do X, but then six months later down the road, that X doesn't work, and you guys pivot to Y. They're really betting on the team. Nicolas le Jeune (30:23.946) I would say to add to that, order for YC batch, so you're putting groups of smaller and smaller groups where we're 30 companies, I'd say about 30% have pivoted. And most of the YC success, like Brex has pivoted, like Slack has pivoted. It was a game before. So they should like the idea and the concept, but it's all about the team and the ability to execute as well. Jason Kirby (30:49.171) And within that network, you know, just kind of shed some light in terms of what goes on behind the scenes, you know, from a YC participation. Like what's the community like of fellow founders and how has that been impactful for you as an organization? Nicolas le Jeune (31:05.262) I think the thing that's the most helpful is the relationship with the partner, but also you're part of a group of startup within the same industry. And so you talk, we still keep in touch to this day, we have monthlies where if you want you can join, if you don't want you don't have to. And we just talk about the same challenges, the same struggle we're facing as well. And so it's really good in that sense. I'd say the, yeah, that's pretty much like the... the main value and it helps you like push you to, like they have tons of resources and it push you to visibility for investors. Jason Kirby (31:45.814) And before we re-wrap up here, what's some final words that you would put out to founders that are currently in this market right now? Nicolas le Jeune (31:55.61) Um, so one thing I wanted to chat about on this is like every single meeting counts as well. It's a very small world and it's all about like at the end of the day perception. Uh, of the team on this. So even if it's not the best investor you want and so on, like I would take every meeting as it's the most important one because everybody talks. And it's when one person starts, everybody's friends, all the investors. And so when somebody starts to hear more and more about your company's name, they're like, oh, that's interesting. And so now they want it more. And it's very similar to nobody wants somebody who's. like begging for money is like desperate, right? So that's why you wanna be in a strong position on this. And so it's a very weird dynamic in a way that like you need to be, you need to be the most interesting person for them to want to talk to. You don't want to go and beg and ask for an intro and so on, which is easy to say and hard to do, right? But my advice to you is trying to... to feel confident about your business and really feel like if you're not 100% convinced that you're the thing, why should they? And so it's really like if you're the most convinced and you're like, all the investors that were not interested, I was just like, fine, good for you. It's bad for you. I have other things and I'm pretty sure on this, it's a loss for you. And that's the approach I feel like you should take because if you're not thinking this way, there's no reason they should think about it this way about your business. Jason Kirby (33:29.13) You know, you hit it on the nail in terms of like the difficulty of managing that perspective because, you know, as much as behind the scenes, you might really need the money or might really, really want the money. But, you know, when you come off as either desperate or kind of, you know, needing the money, it just is such a detract, you know, detractor for, for VCs to kind of show interest and want to participate in your round. And, you know, advice I give to founders all the time is never rebuttal. If they give you a no. it and move on your merry way. Trying to fight for them to change their mind never works and burns the bridge. And then you're talked about the guy that, or person that begged for the money or didn't present well, and it leaves a bad taste in their mouth to where you won't get referrals, you won't be talked up. And it can dramatically hinder your ability to go out and raise down the road if you're kind of having that combative or defensive approach in your fundraise. It's much better to be like, hey, thanks for the time. Really appreciate it. Maybe we'll see each other down the road. That's a way healthier way to communicate with investors. So I appreciate you sharing that input. So what's the best way for people to follow you or learn more about courtyard.io? Nicolas le Jeune (34:47.398) Going to CoreJet.io we have all our socials. We have, you can follow us on Twitter, on Discord, on Instagram. We're announcing soon. the first drops, so there's going to be a lot more drops and exciting stuff where you can buy Pokemon cards as close back with your credit card and you can open them and redeem them if you want to and resell them automatically. So there's a lot of fun stuff that we're trying to bring for the collectible space that is coming very soon, so feel free to check it out. And if you have some graded cards, you can send it to the vault and get them on the platform. Jason Kirby (35:22.802) Awesome. Well, I'm gonna have to go dig through my old collection in my parents' house at some point to see what I have there, but it's probably not worth much. But, you know, if you're in the collectible space, be sure to check out Courier.io and, you know, Nicholas, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and look forward to getting this out to our audience as soon as we can. Nicolas le Jeune (35:41.686) Thank you so much for having me. Jason Kirby (35:45.971) Perfect.