684 - Lauren Washington (Fundr) On Automating, Diversifying, and Democratizing Seed Funding

What is going on, everyone? Thanks for tuning in to another episode of forward-thinking Founders. I am very grateful to have your attention at least for the next 15 minutes of this episode Forward. Thinking Founders is a hot ass, right? Interview or free Feed and Seed stage Founders about their products. What they want to build into the world and why we dive into how they spend their time, what's their Vision? What's the origin of stores? All these things, you can learn all about what's coming tomorrow. But these companies haven't hit a critical skill yet. Most of them, haven't hit product-market fit. These are just early stage companies and the big question is, what can this be it? And then this podcast, we bring that out. So with that, I really hope you enjoy your time. With me, today's episode, and I've already done two hundred plus. If you like this one, listen to some of the other ones, like, with a manicou and Austin, all red Leah, Culver give, great interview to check it out. Enjoy the repository in, for now. Let's get into the Days episode, where we go. All right, how's it going, everyone?

Episode of forward-thinking Founders. We talked to Sounders about their company's their business to the Future and Havasu Collide it today. I'm very excited to be talking to Lauren Washington, the co-founder of Thunder. Welcome to the show. How's it going? It's good. Thanks so much for having me excited to be here. I'm excited to have you on. I'm really looking forward to learning more about what you're working on. Haven't heard of under what is that? What are you working on?

The funder is a platform that automate Seton, best thing to help remove Baez from the process and maximize our Ally. So it's actually we take companies through an algorithm on 90 different pieces of data, score them. Put them into a portfolio and then take care of all of the deal, closed automated term sheet on transfer and even monthly tracking.

Walk me through a little bit about the, the origin story here. I have a lot of questions and ultimately be like, how it works for a VC, or how it works for. And it for a, for a Founder, we got like, you know, how many people are listening? Like a lot of people listening me about a lot of, you know, Founders on the podcast, some Curious to discover what's the origin story here? Why'd you decide to get started? And then we're going to dive into how this works for both sides or seven years under is my fourth company. And I think for any founder that has gone through this, I know that fundraising is hard and that was particularly. So for my my first business keep up. So I started that a couple of months. After we launch 31243 North competition up in Buffalo, which is the largest business plan competition in the world. We went to under $50,000 and we just thought we were set in terms of a fundraising and really struggled after that. And I think a lot of that came from the fact that I was very green and new to the space. I didn't understand that lingo where the process.

Or how to get access, but I think a lot of it just had to do with the the barriers that are put in place for certain types of entrepreneurs within the industry. And I really started seeing that when I started my second business, which is called black women, talk text and we are now the largest conference for black women Tech Founders. But it was started because we just needed some support and I wanted to find other people who will look like me who were going through, what I was going through in this space so that we can talk about our shared experiences. And the one big thing that I kept hearing over and over again and was the fact that fundraising was significantly more difficult for black women. And so I really felt like it wasn't just me. And I saw all these incredible women who have these great business and took years to get their seed, funding off the ground. And to me, that looks like a systemic issue, right? It wasn't an individual issue. It was something that I saw an opera.

Unity in because I felt like this was the time to make a disruption within an industry that isn't working for everyone.

Silicon walkthrough. I guess what a Founder. You know if I found her excited to work with you you just have to work with them. Ultimately what is this look like you can you hunt at walk us through the average process for a Founder? They wanted to kind of work with under her have to go through the process. It's very simple and it has been built to be that way because I think one of the frustrations of raising at the founder is that firstly it's a whole extra skills that that you have to learn that usually has nothing to do with your business. And secondly it takes so long to get to raise takes about 3 to 6 months and you're doing all day everyday until we want Sounders to be able to come in, get their funding and get back to their business as quickly as possible. So our process is really just the evaluation. It takes 20 minutes about 90 different questions but it's all quantitative. So goes really quickly. I know how it feels to take all of these applications where you're no writing these long paragraph.

At the band you're spending an hour, trying to Wordsmith it to get into the character counts and stuff. It's frustrating. So we truly just went and the whole quantitative ruined that allows us to remove tire from the process as well, because now, we're looking at everything in terms of the actual data Apples to Apples is not about warm introductions, it's not about the feelings that I get when I see you, it's truly just about all the data and what you're building with your company. And then from there, we have a score, the score tells you if you can be on the platform and how much you can breathe, you're able to build out your data room. They are. So you can put your picture back and historical financials for investors to take a look at. And then I'll leave exercise essentially come in there able to review on that, only your application, but all of your day. They may reach out to you to ask ask some questions. But then the commitment process is really fast for them. Is it truly takes just two minutes for them to click a button, sign their documents and and get money over to you.

I see. So this is a pretty much a full like the whole process happens on the spot but I wasn't the money is transferred to an investor. Can go on looking for someone to invest in and invest all on funder. Exactly on that process from start to finish and even the monthly tracking and Reporting the were a monthly basis doing automated reports again. Super easy don't need to spend hours filling out. I'm writing a q email to all of your investors against out directly. You can track it on the dashboard and a new investors who are interested in. You can track your progress and so that they can jump in when they feel like you're at the right age for them. I feel we're truly trying to automate this entire process and bring efficiencies to the space.

And it tell me a little bit about it. You know, as you started this that this company I feel like it's a it's a very tricky and hard space to navigate although needs a hunt like total Innovation and needs to be, you know, change and improved obviously 10 times over but I'm serious for you. What have you learned? Since you kind of got into that they could be about the market or could be about yourself or Founders or investors? So what have been some lessons? They've taken away. I just kind of gotten started with thunder.

Yeah. I mean I I think it's an entrepreneur, you're probably learning a new lesson every single day if you're doing it, right? We started in November, just finished it in March, we were able to get funding to the Alta, 15 companies who went through the pilots. That was really exciting, but there were definitely a couple things that we learned. I think one for us is about finding a credible ways to promote the company's and making sure that they are validated on our site. So for example, we have a lot of really Incredible Pizza, through text hours and Google for startups. Then, I've got an awards, but how do we prevent that in the, in the right way so that all them doctors were coming in? You can see it and they can see it in a really easy to process kind of way. It's the one thing that we're doing moving forward is we're creating automated template for one pager ism.

Will eventually be creating Decks that can be auto-populated with the information that you're putting in. So that there is truly a standardized way of showing all this information on so that these companies can shine and then I would say on the investor side we found that most of them do not want to give out a lot of information about themselves, which is fair. So because we are 506c regulated platform. We essentially need to make sure that everyone that accredited investor and we have to verify that. So, one thing we found is that day, they tend to get stuck in the process of providing that verification which looks like I'm either two years of tax forms or a letter from your wealth manager or bank statements and understandably that is a bit of a barrier for people to continue to move forward. So what we'll be doing is actually getting a broker-dealer license so that we can make that process a lot more efficient in a lot faster. So

couple things that we've been learning along the way and fixing and changing as we as we grow,

And if you were to look out into the future, like 5 10, 15 years, what would you see? Is the big vision for Thunder? I guess. In other words, what direction are you rolling in and in and out? What, what, what's life going to look like in venture capital and do, you know what a decade after, you know what? You know, that's what you're supposed to do and what it look like. I would love for everyone who is looking for funding to think of Thunder first. I'll be intentionally start in the early stages because there is the biggest Gap right now and that friends and family and Angel around, I think a lot of the money is now moving Upstream right there at moving towards larger rounds and feel when people are thinking about getting their funding, they automatically know that funder is the place to do it and then I can do it quickly and efficiently and without any bias and I think that there is a shift now that's happening within the industry. That I'm really excited about because now Gartner just put out a survey that said that 75 /

Find a venture decisions will actually be led by or include a i in five years and that's up from 5% now. Right, spill, the whole industry is about to be using a a i and that's a big shift because I think when we first started talking about this a couple of years ago that the pushback we got was first thing, you can't replace me as an investor because I have the feeling, you know, I get the feeling and I know how to choose great companies and then also the idea that they feel like the industry is in meritocracy, which it is not right. That is definitely a lot of privilege in it. And so I think even within a couple of years that people are are really now acknowledging, the fact that they can use AI to help them, make better. Decisions is huge and I were really pleased to take part in that.

I love that and I agree with it at all of it, you know, and I'm excited to watch this industry, you know, for me, I disrupted or whatever but improved like, you know, do you know, he's just in a lot of improvements to be made at and, you know, it's awesome. You know, it's a fact that you're pretty much too. By former from sourcing to funding, is it is incredible. So I know I'm really excited about this and my next question is, how can I or any of the forward-thinking founders listeners help? They aren't, are you hiring that you raising money or you, are you looking for more Founders to join the platform or investors? I guess. How can we assist

Yeah, all of the above actually. So we just opened up our current rounds. So we mostly bootstrapped up until the fall, and then we went through the Sputnik accelerator here, and stand brought in $100,000, and are now doing our official reason of a million dollars, we will be opening that up on our platform actually, so people can come in and it just for fun Durant. Under the lookout for that in the coming weeks and then truly we really just need people to join the platform. So if you're looking for funding on the founder side, the rolling application still, come and sign up on. If you're interested in getting to know the best thing we really special eyes and a people who have never done it before. Dark platform is built the Beast them all and built to be accessible to those who are just getting their feet wet and still come and check that out. And then if you have any questions, you can always reach out to us on the website or find me on LinkedIn at Laura.

Washington.

And then I guess just lost Quest. You covered a little bit of it there. I just wanna make sure we cover all the bases of someone to find you online find thunder. Can I become an ultimate Lee? Get involved it. What's your website? One more time, do social media. Yeah, you know what you mail? How how can someone get in touch and I'll call it a call today. Have solutely still our website is funder that Ai and that's spelled f. U, n d r, a i and we're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn on, you can reach out to us at hello @funder. AI.

Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.