This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Sydney Wong. Sydney is the founder and CEO of VenturX. VenturX is a platform that prepares startups for funding. She bought a one way ticket to Silicon Valley with no job, no VISA, and no place to live.
She attended every MeetUp event, visited the Yahoo campus, and met as many people in different sectors as possible. She met young, confident entrepreneurs who struggled through many obstacles to get to where they needed to be in order to compete. She found that every Uber driver, every dog walker on WAG, and every house cleaner on TaskRabbit knew the direction they wanted to go; they didn’t shy from sharing their ambitions to strangers.
Along the way, though, something changed. She found she had the opportunity to see people and places that others overlooked for decades. As Sydney says , “The startup industry is like a battlefield with few winners but the opportunity I saw and built my company mission around was “What would it take to produce more winners?” That is how VenturX was born.
Starting a business is hard enough. Getting the funding to help you grow and succeed is even harder. I’ve asked Sydney on to give you the best advice she’s learned on how to navigate the startup funding jungle.
www.VenturX.ca Misfit Nation,
Sydney is giving you 2 months of unlimited access to the VenturX platform for FREE! Just use the promo code: MISFIT when you sign up!
Sydney graduated university in Canada and then went off and got her MBA in Paris. She got into the tech world working at companies in the CRM automation space. She wanted to get more into tech and a good friend of hers told her that if she wanted to get really serious about tech, she needed to be in Silicon Valley. So she did. Within 2 weeks, she bought a one way ticket to Silicon Valley.
She immersed herself in meeting and learning what made entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes tick. As she says, she noticed that “They didn’t tell you what they were doing, they told you where they were going…” It was very refreshing and inspiring to her.
Seeing that people had a structure to get where they wanted to go gave Sydney an idea and when she came back to Canada, she knew what she wanted to do. She traveled across Canada meeting with start-ups and investors. The startups told her their biggest challenge was getting in front of investors and getting funding. The investors told her their biggest challenge was finding startups that were prepared and had their company ready to get funding.
It is this understanding that created the foundation of VenturX. The dashboard measures startup’s preparedness helping to do prepare the right way and also pairs them with investors that are a good fit for their needs.
Were you scared when you arrived in Silicon Valley? If so, what were you most afraid of?
What was the most important thing you have learned in going through this experience?
You help startups get funding, but yet you turned down funding for VenturX, tell us about that…
At the 20 min mark, Sydney talks about how perspective is important. It is all about your long-term vs. your short-term vision.
What else should entrepreneurs be doing to make sure they are properly prepared to get funding?
At the 26 min mark, Sydney takes us through the VenturX formula
Peel back the onion and really understand how the data in your business can be a powerful tool in selling as well.
At the 34 min mark, Sydney gives an actual example of a client that went through the VenturX process.
What are the top 3 things businesses seeking funding need to understand about investors?
Lastly, making sure to get the word out there about your solution and company is important. Get press. Get on shows. Go pitch at events. Have referenceable content that can show PR. Show that you are willing to put yourself out there.
Best Quote: “The more that you can endure the startup journey, the better the place you will be.”
Sydney's Misfit 3: