VIB : Very Important Business

How do you find investors for your business, then pitch, raise and ultimately close a round of capital? What should go in your deck? What are the key mistakes to avoid?Every founder knows the fundraise is brutal. Forty no's in a row. Decks rewritten on request. And the VCs want a chart going straight up and to the right - while claiming that chart means nothing.Carl and Emily are joined by Nick Katz - exited founder and fundraising advisor who runs RAISE, a consultancy helping founders close their rounds - for practical tips on the full arc from first outreach to closed deal.They dig into Nick's "three layers of yes" - a cold LinkedIn strategy for getting angels interested before you've even asked for a meeting. Why warm intros waste more time than most founders realise. And how to use DocSend analytics to see exactly which slide is killing your pitch - then fix it.Plus: what do you actually do about the flywheel problem - when nobody wants to commit until someone else does first? Nick shares the "always be half committed" approach, and how to make your round feel further along without crossing any lines.Also: Nick accidentally sends a cold outreach sequence to a close investor friend. It doesn't go well.Can Nick spot the real pitch deck lines from the ones we completely made up in Pitchin' or Fiction? WeWork's actual mission statement is in there. Plus Founder Diaries, your listener pitch disasters, and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.showLinks from this episodehttps://nickkatz.comJoin Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a genuinely strong company culture look like - and how do you know if yours is working?Carl and Emily are joined by Brett Putter - founder of CultureGene and author of Culture Decks Decoded, to get into the culture challenge every growing company faces.They dig into what Uber's "toe-stepping" value reveals about how a startup culture can become its own undoing when it fails to adapt. Why Brian Armstrong paid 20% of Coinbase's staff to walk away voluntarily. And why most founders haven't thought about company culture for their AI agents - but probably should. And the whole thing was recorded live at a founder retreat in rural Turkey, complete with an uninvited cockerel.Is there such a thing as a good or bad culture? Brett says no - only strong or weak. We put it to the test with a round of Good Culture or Bad Culture: real office scenarios, real verdicts, and the final ruling on swearing in meetings.Plus: Carl shares the story of explaining a founder retreat to his wife with the word "seminar" - while his holiday photos synced quietly to the family iPad. Your listener stories, and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.showKEYWORDSbusiness podcast, founders, entrepreneurship, startup, UK business, CEO, investor, entrepreneur interviews, leadership, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement, Technology, company culture, culture building, hiring, team management, company values, remote work cultureLinks from this episodehttps://www.culturegene.aiSound effects used in this episode:Ambience nature Australia 05 by busabx -- https://freesound.org/s/715252/ -- License: Attribution 4.0Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Hey, let's 'circle back' on this." You already know what that really means - and the chances of you ever discussing it again, let alone 'circling back' are pretty slim.Carl and Emily are joined by Scarlett McCabe - CEO of Debate Mate Training, a UK company teaching people to speak well, think on their feet and, crucially, disagree better - to get into the communication crisis every founder can see but few know how to fix.They dig into: why post-merger teams fall apart before they've even started working together, why conflict avoidance is more expensive than the difficult conversation it's avoiding, and how to tell an employee they have a body odour problem - without it being the last conversation you ever have with them.Plus: Carl and Emily put Scarlett to the test as they play "What do you mean?" - can they get a communication expert to say, on air, what the phrases your team uses every day actually mean?Plus: Emily on how to run a productive board meeting (and make sure your board members actually read the pack first), Carl on finding fractional work without accidentally becoming the product. Linda Du's "One Thing" on AI and your headcount assumptions. Your listener war stories from the communications trenches. And the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.showJoin Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a genuinely agentic marketing operation look like in practice - and can a founder actually build one that runs itself?Linda Du, Founder and CEO of Moola, has built it. A full content and distribution pipeline - blog posts written, creatives built, posts scheduled across every channel, ad spend tracked and attribution mapped - running on a weekly loop, almost entirely without her having to step in. And it works.Carl and Emily are joined by Linda to find out exactly how the pipeline is architected, what it took to get there, and whether any of it is replicable for the rest of us.They dig into: why their TikTok agent is now generating AI videos of a Nicki Minaj GIF telling people to sort their pensions out (and why the engagement is real), the question of whether AI is actually coming for salespeople - Linda has a clear view on where the line is - and what happens when Reddit's human moderators start hunting your AI-generated posts. Hint: apparently X gave up that fight entirely.And we play 'Machine-made or human'? Carl has also made an advert for Moola. He wants to know if Linda - AI marketing expert - can spot whether it's human or machine-made. She can. And her reason is not flattering.Plus your listener stories and the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.showJoin Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At some point, every founder gets the question: have you thought about getting a coach? But is coaching the same as therapy? And what happens when you go into it as a client - and come out so transformed that you retrain as one yourself?Carl and Emily are joined by Richard Titus - serial entrepreneur and certified executive coach, now CEO of Kimono, an AI identity platform - to get into the coaching question every founder eventually faces.Richard shares what it felt like to be told he was a "terrible coach" by a (very drunk) former Samsung colleague - and why that single piece of feedback sent him to the Hudson Institute, where he trained and spent nearly a decade coaching founders. They dig into the coaching-versus-therapy spectrum, whether AI can ever replace a human coach ("a sycophantic sociopath," he says), and the surprisingly common coaching outcome: the answer that wasn't what anyone expected.Plus we put Richard to the test with our "Inspiration or Imagination" quiz. Listener stories, Founder Diaries from Carl and Emily - including Carl's gut-punch first customer exit. And the usual promise to never. Ever. Take ourselves too seriously.Join Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.showKeywords: business podcast, founders, entrepreneurship, startup, UK business, CEO, entrepreneur interviews, leadership, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education, Self-Improvement, Technology, coaching, executive coaching, founder coaching, therapy, AI coaching, personal developmentJoin Club VIB for our chat community, bonus content, newsletter and more at vib.show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.