- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J6DJDW1NY0AZKHCFXBABPTSY (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Hugh Dixson: Hello, Ben. Ben Ornstein: Hey, how’s it going? It’s good. Hugh Dixson: Thank you. How are you? Doing well, doing well. Ben Ornstein: That’s the way, that’s the way. Hugh Dixson: Nice to see you properly. Apologies again about last week, I think it was. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, it’s all good. It happens. Happens, you Yeah, all the time, it’s all good. Sure, I’m sure, I’m sure. Hugh Dixson: Where are you based again? I’m in, it’s a moving feast. I’m everywhere all the time, it feels like, but at the moment I’m in Sydney, Australia. Very cool. Which is nice for me, as you can probably hear, I am Australian. So it’s nice to be home for a little bit, but I will be, Heading off again soon. What are we up to, September? So November, December, January, and February, I will be in Europe and the UK for November and December, and then the US for January and February. So time for me. Man, you’re gonna be all over the world, literally. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hugh Dixson: No, it’s good. Well, the problem is that, well, not the problem, but the thing is that in Australia, it’s summertime over, then. And so December and January, not a lot happens here. Like people aren’t closing deals. They’re not like everyone’s on annual leave. And especially like, because you pack in like summertime with the Christmas and New Year, public holidays, and no one’s here. So yes, I take the time to go and obviously, as you as you would well know, right business runs as usual in the US and in Europe at that time. So that’s just the more productive place for me to be then. Ben Ornstein: It must be so weird just going to all these different places all the time when everyone’s on a different schedule. Well, especially like the US versus Australia. I always think that’s so interesting. Oh, totally. Hugh Dixson: I always forget about it. Well, now that I live in such a like weird timetable where I’m all over the place. But because I grew up in here, obviously, as you can hear, you know, our year is very calendar year, right? Like you start in January and you end in December, and then you have your break. Whereas it’s obviously different in the Northern Hemisphere. And I sometimes forget about it. And so I’ll be emailing people in like August in Europe, and they’ll be like, what do you go away? Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Well, very cool. Thank you so much for spending the time here. I think this is going to be a fun one. How much context do you have? Probably not too much. Very little. Hugh Dixson: Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So I work with a previous Ventureback founder, startup employee, and now founder of a whole bunch of stuff. Michael Hauk. Maybe you know him? Yes. So he’s got the newsletter, Hugh’s newsletter. And I’m working with him to build out something interesting for founders, uh, to learn how to fundraise successfully. We figured what, what better than to actually speak with venture back founders themselves about the journeys and ask questions all about that. So basically there’s going to be a library of, of these for founders to access. Um, they’re going to have to pay for, it’s going to be payment gated and, um, Yeah, with all different founders in all different niches and stages and with all their unique stories and just really good questions and answers from founders like yourself. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Great. Hugh Dixson: I think it’s a great initiative. Yeah. Awesome. Ben Ornstein: And yeah, so really going to be softball questions. Things you’re going to have no problem answering. Right. And we’ve got the read AI guide here because that’s how I generate the transcript or the transcript to create the template. Again, this isn’t going to go to the public. This is going to be for founders, like that’s your target audience when you’re speaking here. You can be pretty candid because this isn’t going to go you know, to the general public. So you want to talk about valuations when I ask about like fundraising journey, that’s a lot of people, again, only if you’re comfortable, don’t not forcing you to do anything. But just as an example, and yeah, I’ll send you the draft of this before we, you know, push it to the wild, you know, to the web. And you can say, hey, I want to add this, hey, I want to take this off, etc. So yes, you will have a chance to view this before it goes live. But yeah, any other questions? Nope. Hugh Dixson: Makes sense. Awesome. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Okay. Ben Ornstein: We’ll get right into it then. All right. Yeah. Hugh, how about you, um, you know, briefly introduce yourself and your startup. Hugh Dixson: Sure. So. Hugh Dixson: I, so my startup, we provide, we’ve built a product that makes it fast and easy to integrate and connect the various enterprise IT systems that power supply chains. So that can look like And I’m going to try and not get into the technicalities too much, because everyone’s eyes will glaze over. But these are ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, Warehouse Management Systems, Transport Management Systems, Inventory Management Systems, Auto Management Systems, and a whole kind of swath of them. But we essentially, so I come from a supply chain, transport and logistics background. Was a very, I was like employee number three at my previous startup, which was in the transport and logistics and supply chain space. And so as I was building and running that business, essentially just kept running into this problem where, because I was running ops initially. And so I kept running into this problem where it was really difficult and really expensive to connect all these systems up, even for us, a technically enabled business. You know, it wasn’t easy, and certainly for our partners that weren’t perhaps as technically sophisticated, it was nigh on impossible. And so it’s very expensive, time-consuming, just a shitty process. The direct result of that, as you can perhaps imagine, is I was paying 8 or 10 people a full-time salary to sit there and receive emails with PDFs on them, open up an email, type some numbers into a system, download a separate PDF and email it to somebody else. And as you can appreciate, that adds cost, that adds process, it adds time, it adds people make mistakes and mistakes in the supply chain game can be exceedingly expensive. So that’s the kind of world that we live in and our product is about connecting into those systems in a in an easy and faster way than the sort of more legacy, gold-plated IT consultants building an integration for you that you might imagine. So that’s what we do, that’s what we live in. So as I mentioned in that kind of description, my previous job was in another early-stage start-up. I worked there for a few years from about seed to series B. Hugh Dixson: or just before seed. So maybe technically you get my point. And I came in as a very early employee. It was me and the founder pretty much and a couple of junior folk. And then, I mean, it’s that business is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has, you know, They’ve done a bunch of acquisition and stuff and all this kind of thing. And before that, I worked at Uber in Australia and New Zealand. I owned the driver app for this region and did a bunch of work on the supply side at Uber. And I started life as a management consultant at BCG. So, yeah, that’s kind of the brief background I suppose. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That’s awesome. Ben Ornstein: Very cool background. Hugh also worked at Uber, actually. He was helping with Uber Eats and Airbnb, so that’s cool. Hugh Dixson: Oh, that’s a super interesting business. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Fascinating. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Hugh Dixson: We will get distracted on that tangent if we touch it, so let’s not, but very interesting. Ben Ornstein: Good call out, because I would get distracted by that. Yeah, what can you share about the fundraising journey? This can be, you know, all the different funding rounds that you’ve been through, if there are multiple valuations, if again, only if you’re comfortable, just because that’s interesting to for founders to see. Yeah, anything on that one? My reflections. Hugh Dixson: So I’ve seen fundraising Because I was very involved in the previous businesses fundraising as well. So I’ve been around it for probably five or six years now. Hugh Dixson: I’ve raised two rounds for my own business and I was in three or four for the previous one. Observations are, it is definitely getting harder. Hugh Dixson: The processes are taking longer, the valuations are not as good, and the VC funds are more exacting on their requirements and the DD processes are pretty arduous. So, I mean, all of this has always ever been the case, right? But It’s at least comparing, and I mean, you know, we’re talking about just two companies, right? But in the numerous data points that you collect, perhaps you’ll see some trends here. Hugh Dixson: You know, when we were looking at, when we were raising money in my previous business, not to say that it was easy, but, you know, the round that I closed a fundraising round a few months ago, and it took me about nine or 10 months to do, to do that round. And we weren’t doing anywhere close to that at my previous company was, you know, maybe, you know, four months, five months, something like that. So it’s kind of doubled, right, the time that’s required. And that’s, and I think that’s driven by a few things. One, There is less loose capital flying around in the venture space at the moment. And so funds are being more defensive with their money. And that is certainly true outside the US. The US is one thing, the Europeans and over here in Asia Pacific, it’s actually the Asian funds have started deploying a bit more lately, but like it’s especially last year and the first half of this year, very defensive with their money. And so that meant that I did, and many founders that I spoke to, had to do many more processes than perhaps they would have in the past. I mean, I had to speak to I mean, well over 100 funds. And, and that’s not in and of itself abnormal. But like, you know, there was a lot of a lot of processes, a lot of a lot more rejections. And the DD processes were very more detailed than I think they have been in the past for the early stage. Like a seed round investment and that kind of thing. So that’s kind of my first observation. The process is harder and longer. Valuations have absolutely come down. I mean, well, we were raising at Offload, my previous business, we were raising in kind of 2021 um 2020-21 when it was you know like money was free right um at least in this in this neck of the woods um it was much easier to raise money and there was much more money going around and so businesses were raising on big evaluations um and that also I mean as soon as you can’t do that anymore like we can’t anymore you know you’re there’s just less cash in your business you’ve got to be much more cash conscious the teams are much leaner Um, uh, you’ve unit economics is very important. Um, and you’ve got to start fundraising sooner. You know, we, I’m getting geared up already to, to start again. Um, because I just know that it’s going to take a year or most of to get it done. Um, anyway, I’m just kind of rambling around the point. Is anything that I’m saying vaguely interesting? Yeah, no, this is great. Ben Ornstein: Keep going. Hugh Dixson: Um, So yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve seen, I think. The advice that I’ve been getting from my investors about, so we’re getting ready for Series A, which as many people know, of course, that’s a big dance for startups. It’s a big milestone fundraiser and a very important one. Hugh Dixson: we can talk later perhaps about the metrics and that kind of thing, but there are lots of metrics that we need to show and hit. And yeah, the advice I’m consistently getting is start early. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, it’s literally, I don’t know if there could be a better segue because the next question is kind of like, you know, what did you plan to use the money ahead of time for? That can include milestones that you need to hit to actually kind of get that, secure that funding, Yeah, and then how you plan to allocate that money. Hugh Dixson: So for us, and our business is a bit funny, and I’m sure every founder says and thinks that, but so let me tell you, let me answer the first part of the question first, then we can talk about other stuff later. For me right now, so we write and build software. We build and we sell software. And so my big expense is team, people, salaries, right? We have, so I raised a pre-seed round in Q4 22. What are we up to now? 24, right? Yeah. And then seed in Q2 24. These are calendar quarters, by the way. And then, yeah. Hugh Dixson: The difference, I think, so prior to Seed, we had a much smaller team. It was me and a head of engineering. And he had, I think, one developer under him. And then there was a couple of interns that were helping me out with stuff. And eventually, we brought in a sort of mid-level manager person as well, who we’ve since gotten rid of But the team was very lean. Following Seed, that really unlocked a lot of headcount. And so specifically, the big needle mover for me was I could professionalize the sales function. Hugh Dixson: And so, I can’t even tell you the difference it’s made. I wake up every day and thank God for it. Like, it’s amazing. Let me give you some specifics. We’ve gone from managing two, three, four active deals at a time, because that’s what I could handle. I think we’re doing like 20 something now. Ben Ornstein: Wow, that is a huge difference. Hugh Dixson: It is just gone 9am in Sydney. I’ve already had two really warm customer calls today. That’s amazing. Ben Ornstein: It’s incredible, right? Hugh Dixson: It’s fantastic. And it’s difficult to separate out you know, causal factors, except to say that it’s, it’s, I think, a combination of things. And absolutely, being able to hire a couple of really experienced BDMs has been amazing, right. And that is unlocked by the fundraising, of course. And the other part of it is we’ve hired a product manager, and we’ve hired more developers. So we’re able to deliver better and faster. Obviously, as we as we hire more salespeople, and we have more volume coming through, we need to implement it. And so, you know, all of that’s kind of what’s really kicked off. And for us, the, you know, at least and every business is different and that kind of thing. But the the point of our pre-seed through seed was, you know, Pick this idea up, build a good MVP, get some customers using it, show some traction. This is enterprise software and enterprise sales. It’s hard to build a little bootstrap MVP that people are going to take seriously. You need to have a bit more of a serious product and team to be able to deliver it. And so that’s, that’s why we raised money early. And that’s, and that’s what we’ve done. And we absolutely got it, you know, hit our targets for the seed round. And now it’s about, you know, aggressively expanding our customer base. Hugh Dixson: across the world, ahead of a Series A And so for us, kind of moving now into the other part of your question, the game for us now is about customer volume, even more so than revenue. But that’s an idiosyncrasy of our business. I think for other businesses, it would be revenue would be absolute. I know revenue is still very important for us too, of course, but we have a volume-based pricing model. So the revenue that we charge the customer grows over time. And so our immediate revenue today is not really the point, it’s more the customer base that we have. And because we can show very clearly, right, they’ve onboarded these many partners, and they will onboard these many more later. So the revenue trajectories are important, but it’s the customer base that’s critical for us. But that’s specific to our business. And But so that’s really what we’re running out as far as series A is concerned. Just the other thing that I would mention is that like, while certainly it’s tempting to tie the step changes in customer volume and team and everything to the fundraisers and obviously that is in part true, right? Like, you know, when we have more money, we can hire more team, we can hire more professional team. I had to fire a bunch of the previous sales team because, you know, when you raise more money, you can attract a higher level of talent and, you know, part of being a founder is you’ve got to make those tough decisions sometimes. But the other thing that I just also is worth mentioning is, and I think that this is sometimes undervalued by founders, at least I undervalued it early, but there is an extent to which you’ve just got to be around for a few years, right? You’ve just got to do the reps and you’ve got to like, I mean, today I’ve had, one of the meetings that I had just before this one was, I’ve been talking to that company for two years. We’ve just today, this morning had like the serious, like an actual proper like conversation where it’s going to be like, okay, good. We’ve got next steps we’re going to implement. Like it’s finally going to come through. Had a call earlier this week. It was similar day or two, two and a half years of, of kind of being like, hi, we’re still here. Like, you know, and part of that is, I think, especially in the enterprise sales world, If you’re still around a few years later and still talking to them, people are like, okay, well if these guys have survived this long, like there’s something here, like we can talk to them. And also, so that’s part of it. And the other part of it is we’re just better at it, you know. We’ve just done a few thousand of these calls now and our product is a bit more robust and we’ve got more of a team. And there’s just, I guess the point that I’m trying to articulate is that Absolutely, fundraising is a big part of it. And those, and having additional money in the business, obviously, and clearly leads to step changes in the team and capability that drive their material impacts. And for us, that’s, I mean, that’s been shown in a tenfold increase in, in our, in our pipeline. But yeah, there’s also, I think, being around is also just important, you know. Ben Ornstein: huge for trust, right? It’s innate trust. It’s like, all right, if they’ve lasted, they’ve gotten through some pretty shitty times probably, or even if they haven’t, they’ve found a way to survive. So it builds trust 100%. Exactly right. Hugh Dixson: That’s exactly right. So that’s, I think, been really critical for us as well. And it’s nice, to be honest, I’m sitting, I’m on a panel tonight about a similar topic, funnily enough, And I must admit, it’s really nice being on the other side of it. You know, I remember going to these kind of things and you listen to these founders talk about it and say things like I’ve just said to you, like, yeah, you’ve kind of got to be around for a few years and then when you get some money in and you can hire a professional team and all of a sudden it starts to work. Hugh Dixson: I remember being like before I’d even started or in the early days of pre-seed just being like, fuck, that’s so far away. Yeah. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: No, I mean, look, like actually doing it is different than, than talking about, you can say, I know the steps it takes to get to that next level, but until you actually go through those grueling investor knows all of those sales conversations where guys like, yeah, Hey, not yet, but maybe in a few months, Yeah. I mean, totally. Hugh Dixson: And it’s not to say that we’re like, you know, job’s done, let’s all go to Cabo. Sure. But there’s been a, for us at least, there’s been a really like palatable and tangible change. Over the past couple of months, because you raise money and then it takes a couple of months for it to settle. Not just the funds to be transferred, but then you’ve got to change the team, hire people, they’ve got to settle in. You’ve kind of got to deal with the media stuff you’ve got to do and then get back into the business. So it’s taken us like, you know, whatever, cash plus maybe three months to like really start to run properly in the new phase that we’re in. But now that we are, it’s a whole new world for us. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Can you talk about how much you’ve raised in the last couple of rounds? Yeah. Hugh Dixson: So I raised about half a million dollars as a pre-seed in And I raised one and a half million dollars in our seed just now. 22. Sorry, keep going. Ben Ornstein: I was gonna say, like, not huge raises. Hugh Dixson: And again, that’s like another symptom of the, of the economy that we’re seeing, I think at the moment, because I would have loved to have raised another 500k or, or whatever. But the valuations are just not allowing that. And, and frankly, like, you know, Yeah. And what I had, I mean, what I had to cut because of that, unfortunately for me is my support, right? Like the, the role that gets cut or the couple of roles that get cut are like, you know, the, um, the chief of staff or the, like, you know, someone who can, I can hand stuff to, because I can’t compromise on tech and I can’t compromise on sales. Ben Ornstein: Um, and so, you know, you gotta, you gotta do what you gotta do. Hugh Dixson: It’s just it’s just part of it and like, you know, whatever in another year. We’ll raise a series a hopefully we’ll raise a good few million dollars and then I’ll be able to put people into those roles and And that’s fine. But yeah, that was the cost of the lower valuations for us this time. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, I get it and Let you talked about like all the investor calls that you had we’ll talk about those numbers in a bit. But before that I How did you do, how did you get, I’ll ask a two parter, how did you get in touch with investors? And then when you did, and you know, you, you had them, how did you decide which investors would be a good fit? Hugh Dixson: Yeah. So I did a combination of, um, cold outreach and especially once So I generally would cold outreach to VC funds. These days, it’s more of a blend because we’ve had a couple of raises and a bit of media about it. I get a bit more inbound now, but I still do plenty of outbound too. So, I mean, yeah, a lot of just cold emailing and LinkedIn outreach, but once I found at least, once you start talking to VC funds, they’re all very willing to introduce you to other ones as well. And I would, especially when I’m fundraising, I will take every meeting, right? Because you just don’t know. And it’s funny, actually, like, both of the, or two of the investors that joined in the last round, at the first call, I was like, it won’t be these guys. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Hugh Dixson: And, and then it turned out that it was right. Hugh Dixson: Yeah, so that’s how it was. A lot of outrage and now a combination of outrage and imbalance. But still I have to do a lot of the pushing and it’s actually on my list of tasks for this week because I need to send a bunch of emails. Hugh Dixson: That was the first question. How do I decide who? Well, I think that there’s kind of two things to say here. One, there’s an extent to which the decision can get made for you, especially in these economies. And, you know, while it’s all well and good, and given the choice, you should make a very deliberate choice about who you partner with, but also there was an extent to which for us, there wasn’t a heap of choice. I’m going to take the money where it comes from eventually, right? Obviously, I wasn’t going to sign up some ludicrous deal or anything stupid like that. I wasn’t going to take money from some Somali pirates or anything. But if you’re talking to serious venture capital funds and you’re kind of circling around a similar deal with a few of them, You know, it’s kind of fine, I suppose, to take the money when you need to. However, for me, what became really important in the couple that we spoke, that we ended up partnering with, so one of them had good, there were two, One of them, the chairman of the fund and the guy who most of the money is his, he’s a billionaire who set up TOL, you know the logistics business? And Global Express or IPEC and all that kind of thing. And so for me, coming from like we live in the supply chain world and so you know, that kind of a business, excuse me, sorry, that kind of a person has, you know, obviously good insight into us and it’s a great, it’s a great endorsement of the problem we’re solving and the business that we’re running and that kind of thing, but also obviously has a great Rolodex for us to tap into. So that was one of them. And then the other one had good, again, good credentials in the space and had some good advisors that we liked. But also had some offshore presence that will help us in Asia specifically. So we have obviously customers in Australia and New Zealand, but also in the US and the UK and the EU. And I’m quite interested in the Asian market. And so the opportunity for us to break into that as well was interesting. Ben Ornstein: Makes sense now, a hundred percent. And when you’re, when you need the money, you don’t care where it comes from As long as it’s not too predatory, but like, yeah. Hugh Dixson: And you do have to be careful, right? Like there are, make no mistake, right? Like there are predators out there. Hugh Dixson: And so yes, you got to be sensible about it, but within, as long as you’re operating within the error margin, if you have the luxury of choice, then I think looking at, credentials in the space and their ability to, I mean, like, let’s be really honest with ourselves, Ben. Hugh Dixson: The venture capitalists are not like, they’re going to give you money and they’re going to give you intros and that’s about it. Right. And so, um, like they’re going to be less helpful than they think they are or that you think they are. At least in my experience. Yeah. They’re going to sell you this dream about how we do this, and we do this, and we do this, and we do this. But really and truly, the value that you’re going to get from them is money and potentially some introductions. And maybe if you’re struggling with a big thorny issue, maybe they’ve got someone to talk to, or they can help you out with it, and that kind of thing. I mean, you know, that’s certainly for business in our stage of life, which is about growth and about acquisition, customer acquisition, like that was where the value was. And so that’s what we really focused on. And so we had a handful of funds that, as I said, were operating in that kind of bracket that we were happy with. And well, I don’t know if I’d say happy with, but like wasn’t, wasn’t predatory. And so then from within that, it was about who’s got connections. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I have a question later on that might be interesting to dive into regarding this. But before we get there, so yeah, I’d love to hear about how many people you reached out to, what the subset of those investors kind of you had meetings with, and then the subset of those that ended up investing. Just give me some rough numbers. Don’t ask me to actor, to actor. Hugh Dixson: So, I would say it was probably around, like, from absolute top of funnel, like, where at least I got some engagement, roughly I would have had serious, like, multi-step conversations with, I can probably tell you actually, hang on. Hugh Dixson: Oh man, opening up this file is some pretty serious PTSD going on here. I had, so let’s see here. Hugh Dixson: So I, yeah, I, about I had 50 some conversations, decent conversations with probably about that shuffled down to about 20 30 that got pretty interested. And then the shortest lists I have here are about nine or 10. And then we got three checks. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: The funnel’s crazy. It’s nuts how quickly it goes down, right? Hugh Dixson: So I mean, that’s a failure rate of like, what did I say? Three of 98% or something like that. All you need is a couple, right? Ben Ornstein: Right. Hugh Dixson: But like that, yeah, it’s, that’s a a 97 half percent fail rate. I mean, that’s going to have an impact on how you’re feeling about stuff. But yeah, I mean, there is a degree to which it’s a volume game, right? Hugh Dixson: The reality a little bit with these venture capital funds as well is that like, you know, they’ll take the meeting. Like they’ll have a call with me, like for sure, right? Well, most of them will, unless they don’t invest in our space, in which case they’ll just exclude us straight away. But you can normally, if you’re a founder who’s raised a couple of rounds, you’ll probably at least get one meeting. And so the real test is if you can get more, but yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, that’s great. And when you were on these calls, what did you emphasize in your pitch? Hugh Dixson: Well, for the stage that we were at, and this will obviously, like, so for instance, the upcoming round, we’re going to emphasize very different things. But for Seed, what we spoke a lot about was the size of the market, the size of the problem. Hugh Dixson: And the, our solution, because we’ve got, of course we had customers and we had revenue flying and we had some data points, but it’s only some, right? Like it’s not like we had hundreds of customers to talk about. Um, whereas, so in this upcoming one, we’re going to talk a lot more about, um, our customer base and our trajectory and our forecasts and all that kind of stuff. Now, obviously we had forecasts too, but it’s a little more, you know, then it will be at series a, um, as you’d expect. So yeah, a lot of what we spoke about was. The market and the problem and how our solution worked and the few customers that we did have of course. But mostly it was a more kind of discussion around that. The other kind of important piece of context to bear in mind though is that I had to do quite a lot of education on these calls too. We deal with a pretty niche, well so if you are at all in the supply chain world, what we do is front and center. But most venture capitalists that deal with fintechs and this kind of stuff, they don’t know a lot about supply chain and the systems involved or the processes. And so I used to have to do quite a lot of education and that’s normally at least a call, right? And I remember one and I actually ended up investing in the end, but I had one guy, a venture capitalist say to me, hang on a second. I was giving an example and he was like, I just don’t believe it. Like, I know someone who works in this business. I’m going to go and talk to them. And he came back a week later and he was like, fair enough. You were right. That’s totally how it works. I had no idea that it was so manual. And I was like, yeah, right. I mean, Yeah. And this kind of thing happened a fair bit where, for us at least, we had to kind of do supply chain 101, then we have quite a niche technical product, so we had to talk a lot about that as well. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, I mean, sometimes you need to spend the time to kind of, you know, help them learn a little bit. That’s right. Hugh Dixson: And that’s part of their job, right? Hugh Dixson: is building some understanding of the space and the company and that kind of thing. And they all do, that’s no problem. But what we do, if you don’t work in the industry, you probably wouldn’t necessarily know or maybe believe that it is, there is as much manual handling going on in these major enterprise supply chains. Like, everyone just, I think the general public might, might make the assumption that there’s quite a lot more sophistication involved than there is in reality. And so we also had to overcome a bit of doubt. But we did, so. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, no, that’s amazing. Ben Ornstein: And, you know, when you were in these conversations with investors, you kind of had to, or maybe you didn’t, but drive an urgency among investors. How did you, how did you create it, whether it was real or not? Hugh Dixson: To be honest, this is not something I did well. So, and this is kind of a learning for me, a little bit, is I let it take too long. And we were fine in the end, but we got down to like a couple of weeks, right? Like it got to the wire. Now, I knew we were going to be fine because I’d already gotten commitments and it was, and you know, whatever, but then you still got to fuck around for a month with the lawyers and, you know, whatever else. And you, you know, we got, it was razor close. Right. Um, as I said, we, we had the commitments and the, and the documents signed. So it was fine, but, um, you know, it was too tight. And I think for me, my, and part of that, just to be really honest with you is, you know, in the market and the economy that we were in and facing 98, 99% rejections, and when the product is new, and the business is new, and lots of businesses fail at seed, right? I mean, we’re talking about 98% or whatever, right? And so I think there’s a, at least I perceived, and I, as I said, this was not something I did particularly well, but I didn’t nail the time, the power dynamic, and I didn’t nail the urgency. And so I think I tried, and I’d be like, oh, look, you know, we’ve got this fund that’s coming in, and we’ve got these people that are talking to us, and you know, that kind of thing, but I wasn’t confident enough in how I did it, I think. Hugh Dixson: Coming into my next one, Series A, well the world’s very different for us now that we have a bunch of customers and we’re kind of good. Not good, you know what I mean. It’s a materially more developed business now and based on the trajectories that we have, we should have more than enough traction to raise the round that we need to raise in the sort of early new year. Hugh Dixson: And so I will be much more able to play the game a little bit with the funds and push and try and get that urgency on. And that FOMO, I mean, it’s so key, right? That’s how it works. So anyway, yeah, I wouldn’t describe myself as having done a particularly good job on that front last time. There’s value in that, right? Ben Ornstein: Like knowing what you’re going to apply in the next round. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Hugh Dixson: And part of that is me and my personality and learning about it and all this kind of thing. And the other part of it as well is I think the context and just like, it’s kind of what we were talking about earlier, right? I’m just a year older and uglier than I was last time. And in this kind of a job, you know, I’ve aged 47 years in the last six months. And so, you know, you just have a much more, much tighter grip on what’s going on and how to do it. And also I’m just much more confident that we’ll get the round done. And so I’m willing to kind of be a little bit more pushy and drive a bit more of that FOMO than, and I perhaps wasn’t as, as, as open to taking that risk in the previous round, which I think was maybe a mistake, but also I don’t want to like, I don’t want to post-mortem it too much because we got a good outcome. And so like, you know, that’s great. Ben Ornstein: There’s a certain extent that you just got to be like, all right, we made it. That’s all that really matters. Hugh Dixson: Well, frankly, that kind of is to some degree right now. There’s always things you want to learn and we want to do better. And that’s, you know, what we’re talking about, but especially in those very early rounds and especially in an economy like that, we had, I mean, it’s getting better, but like it was dog shit. Sorry about my language. I’m Australian. Yeah, it’s all good. But it was terrible towards the end of last year. And so, you know, there’s an extent to which survival was the goal. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: And that leads into the next question of like, you’ve definitely talked about challenges that you’ve occurred, but like, what was the biggest challenge that you had during fundraising? 100%. The mental game. Hugh Dixson: You can’t have 100 and whatever meetings and be told no 115 times and not have that have an impact on you. 100%. It’s taken me until pretty recently to come out of it, to be honest, just to be honest. Hugh Dixson: has a really big impact and it’s really hard for it to not and I think I’m a solo founder so I don’t know how if people have co-founders perhaps they have some camaraderie but I have to have these investor calls and then walk out of the room and still be a leader to my team, right? Still be upbeat, pushing them in the right thing. And there’s a balance of honesty around like yeah, we all wanted this process to be done now it’s taking a little longer than expected and Your balance that honesty with It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna get it done. It’s absolutely on track. We are good. We are golden keep running really hard and then also So it’s an emotional tightrope to walk both internally and with your team and with how you engage with the funds and not being too desperate and that kind of thing. So, I mean, that I think was absolutely the hardest part. Hugh Dixson: staying out of my own head. Obviously, you have to work very hard, right? I mean, that goes without saying, you’re going to have to have a million calls, you’re going to have to do all the work, you’re going to have to be up every hour that God gives, whatever it is. But, you know, I feel like working hard isn’t, if you’re a founder, you’ve almost certainly come from a background where that’s part of the course. So yeah, I think it was much more the mental game for me. Ben Ornstein: No, it’s crazy, especially as a solo founder. 100%. That’s extremely difficult, yeah. Hugh Dixson: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: You’ve already given some pretty great advice, but is there any other fundraising advice you’d like to give founders? Hugh Dixson: I think that the things that I would say are start early, start often. And so advice I was given was to never stop fundraising. And one of the founders that I know claims, but he claims to have five meetings a week every week with hedge capital funds. I don’t reckon that that’s true, but that’s the kind of thing that I think one should aspire to. You know, talk to lots of funds, talk to them as often as you like, as many times as you can, you should be having these conversations, if for no other reason than to stay sharp, right? Hugh Dixson: Fundraising is a muscle and you’ve got to have the reps and do the practice. So I think that’s really valuable. Hugh Dixson: I’m going to immediately contradict myself though and say, however, I have really valued taking a few months off fundraising. I finished and it was all a job done in about like May-ish, just a few months ago. And I’m just now like starting to get a bit more serious about it. I mean, I probably could have started a week or two ago, but whatever, right? Like it’s kind of close enough. So having had a couple of months of like breathing room, I’ve actually found really valuable, probably related to that kind of mental health point we spoke about earlier, but it’s allowed me to get back into the business and really focus on what we’re doing, especially with the new team that’s come on. I’ve had to really like kind of push and drive and they’re running well now, but that takes a month or so for people to get settled, right? Hugh Dixson: I think having a couple of months off fundraising has been really good for me to recover, frankly, and to really push my energy back into the team and really motivate and drive and inspire the team. And it’s been high energy around here for the past couple of months, which has been great. And so now that I’m going back into my standard advice of early and often and trying to talk to lots more funds over the next few months that we have to do. And then the kind of other point I suppose would be, yeah, especially if you’re raising an early round, like a pre-seed or a seed, where you may not have the security of knowing that your business is going to survive. I know that by hook or by crook, we will survive from here. But you don’t know that in the early stages and it is very stressful. Hugh Dixson: I guess my other piece of advice would be just to understand that it is going to be hard and that you’re going to face an enormous amount of rejection and that is 100% normal and in no way a comment on you or your business or anything. This is just the way that the game is played. And so, a founder once said to me, all you need to do is never give up. And while somewhat spartan and laconic, it’s a little bit true, right? Like you just have to keep coming to work and like, you know, on the days that it sucks, you just got to get, put your shoes on and go. And, and yeah, that’s kind of what it is, right? It is a bit of a white knuckle grind. But, um, but it is totally doable. And once you do it, I mean, as we were talking about at the start of this call, right? Like we’re now in this position where we’ve 10Xed our volumes and we’ve got this, and I’ve got this team that’s running really well and, and they’re doing good stuff and, and, and accelerating everything. And it’s great. Right. It’s amazing. And we’re going to like fully smash it into series A and it’s phenomenal. Right. And we wouldn’t be here without the fundraising. So I guess what I’m saying is it’s worth it. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: What I love about your answer was that paradox of always be fundraising, but also don’t take the time off. It’s a beautiful paradox, because they both play into each other so well. So I also saw we’re out of time, but do you have a few more minutes? We only have a few more minutes. Hugh Dixson: Yeah, I’m good for about half an hour. Perfect. OK. Ben Ornstein: We only have a few more questions, so not too bad. But no, I’ve really enjoyed this. This is great. I’m glad we have taken the time here. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: So, okay. Ben Ornstein: And so I love that answer. There’s also an opportunity here for you to talk about like investors that you’d recommend other founders work with. Do you have any top of mind, anything like that? Hugh Dixson: I think that our funds are pretty, I don’t know where your audience is based. The funds that we have at the moment are pretty Asia Pacific. Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Ben Ornstein: We’ve global, we’ve gotten companies all over the world here. Right, okay. Hugh Dixson: So depending on the phase of business that they’re in, and we’re an early stage company, so in Australia, I have found I think after work ventures are really good and 1013 has also been great. After work in particular I think are really nice. There are young guys who get it, they’re not founders themselves and we can talk talk about that in a minute. But early stage is what they do and they get it. So I think they’ve been really nice and really valuable as is 1013. The two funds I brought in, I brought three in, but the two major funds have been Scalata and Investable in this round. Both have been great. Hugh Dixson: They’re very thoughtful. Scalata in particular, like this guy, I never get replies to my update emails, which I think is not unusual, but they’re like, he like sends me thoughtful responses. Like asks questions. Have you thought about this? Like, and like these guys live in a paradigm of fundraising. So their whole thing is about like at the next round, investors are going to want to see this and this kind of thing. So, you know, that’s been good. I mean, but also their VC funds, right? Like, let’s not pretend that it’s not all, you know, sunshine and rainbows. Um, But yeah, they’ve been fine. The other kind of just maybe slightly unrelated answer to your question that I would give, something that I’m really interested in, I spoke to a number of these funds in our last round, but they’re more Series A players, so we’re going to talk to them again soon, but there are a number of them that There are a number of specialist investors in our, in our industry. Not in, not in Asia Pack. But in the US and the EU, there are supply chain specific investors. Hugh Dixson: And they’re very interesting to me because they have, obviously, networks that are particularly pertinent. But also, you skip all the education, right? They get it. They like the space. They like what we’re doing. And they want to play in this kind of game. So already you are four calls in, if you imagine like a kind of the process you would have to go through with a normal fund. If you get a call with them and they like you, you’re a long way ahead in the process. So again, it wasn’t something that we did much in this round, but it’ll definitely be a feature for this Series A, whether or not we raise money from the remains to be seen. But I suppose I would encourage people to think about What’s the sector in the market that you’re in and are there sector or industry specific investors that are worth considering? UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Amazing advice. Ben Ornstein: Are there any resources that you recommend founders? This could be like books, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, anything that you found interesting or helpful. Hugh Dixson: So I have two answers to this question. The first is, uh, yes. Um, there’s a couple of books, the traction book, the Gina Wakeman traction book that everybody’s like, you know, required reading. Um, it’s great. Um, um, there was a book about marketing. I read lie to me or something like that. I’d have to check the name, but it was also good. Um, I’m getting more into, um, I like personally to listen to the podcasts with the Australian founders and that kind of thing, just because it’s where I’m from, that kind of thing. So there’s a couple of those that are good too, I think. But kind of related to our conversation earlier a little bit too, right? This is a bit of an unpopular opinion. Ben Ornstein: That’s our next question, by the way. Which I think you are going to have some unbelievable answers for. Keep going, keep going. Hugh Dixson: But my other thing is that like, I think people get a little bit caught up on, you know, you don’t have to read every fucking book, right? Like, also, like, yeah, and easy for me to say a little bit. I’m an expert in my industry. I’ve worked in it for a long time. And before that, I have a nice background, right? I spent years at BCG and Uber, like, kind of a depth of experience that I can lean on and that kind of stuff. So maybe this is easy for me to say, but I would put it to some people at least that, yeah, absolutely, read the stuff. It’s critical to read and to learn and to accept other opinions. And I mean, How the fuck would I know how to do everything? I need to learn, right? And that’s how you do it. But reading is important. I go to lunch with Jeff, the founder of my previous business. We have lunch every few months and we just chat about stuff. And that’s really valuable. Finding a founder or two that you get along with that’s a few steps ahead of you is actually the best because you’re going to get inundated with every prick on fucking LinkedIn who reckons that they’re an advisor on this or that. And just for a little stake of equity could do like, I’m so sick of these people contacting me. You know, had up to the back teeth with them. And so I don’t really engage with the advisors like that. I much prefer, I have a couple of founders that I know and I trust and I talk to them. The investors have introduced me to a couple of like retired people who are very senior at major retailers a few years ago. Who are just as happy to sit and have a coffee with you because they got nothing else to do in their day. So people that I find as valuable as reading books, because you get much more tangible and real and to the minute advice. But the other point I was going to make was also like read some other stuff, you know, read a fiction book, listen to a podcast about whatever your thing is, right? For me, I love, I find, so currently I’m really into an audio book thing phase at the moment, but before that, Ancient history, randomly, right? I wasn’t much of an ancient history person, but I’ve got it. There’s a podcast, which I really like, I’ll go for a walk and listen to that. And it’s just, I guess my point is, find ways to disconnect as related to the topic conversation we were having earlier, if you’re constantly at every possible minute, you’re like, ah, well, I’m going for a walk, I’ve got to listen to a podcast about business, or I’ve got to listen to a book about business, or if I’m lying about I’ve got to read a book about how to structure a sales team or whatever, you’ll go crazy. So I also think it’s really important to read some unrelated stuff too. That’s amazing. Ben Ornstein: And great, a great answer. And the last question is about hot takes. I think you might have maybe the best answers. I just, I can foresee some crazy shit coming out right now. So what, what hot takes do you have regarding the fundraising process? Hugh Dixson: Um, well, we’ve kind of spoken about a few of them. We definitely have. I think that. Hugh Dixson: So one of them is definitely like, remember that venture capitalists only care about fundraising. That’s all they do. It’s all they think about. It’s all they care about. They will tell you about how we do all this operational help and we know all these things and it’s all bullshit. Um, well, I’m sure that now I would say that on a panel and every venture capitalist would be up in arms telling you that how well we do this with this venture, this portfolio company, we do this with this one. This is fine. But like, They all have examples of it and whatever, but in reality, what they are is an ATM. They will hate me saying that, but it’s kind of true, right? And so what that means though, and the reason I think it’s important to understand that your business on fundraising metrics and that isn’t always the same as whether or not it’s a truly good business or not and you know so I guess what I’m saying is like just because a venture capital fund doesn’t give you money doesn’t really mean that it’s not a good business. But also once you’re dealing with venture capitalists, like these people often haven’t founded a business. Some of them totally have, right? And they’re brilliant when you’ve got them great, but many of them have just done a few years of banking or whatever, and then they go into venture capital. And so when you’re dealing with these kinds of people, you just have to remember that you are dealing with finance people. Um, and so don’t expect, um, Don’t expect, you know, the world from these people, or they’re going to help you with all your operational issues. They might be able to introduce you to people who can, but that’s kind of what it is. So I think that’s my first thought. Hugh Dixson: Another one is, yeah, and it’s something I didn’t do well, but that FOMO piece is key. And I think it gets easier to do the later you go. Hugh Dixson: Because you can create we’ve got more momentum to point out and there are more funds that are sniffing around that kind of thing But that’s very important Take time off from it learn to relax. I Don’t have anything good and salacious for you. No, you have already put in some great ones The other thing that I would just say, and this is what I say to founders all the time, see, that came out like I’m some… Yeah, I know what you mean. You know what I mean, is whenever you have, at least in my opinion, you will have moments in your week or month or day or whatever where you have nothing to do, or you like have nothing very pressing to do, and you should not feel guilty about taking time out. Hugh Dixson: like there is absolutely no way that the business isn’t taking everything from you, right? Like it for sure is taking its pound of flesh. You’re going to be thinking about it constantly, right? Like you are always working and I work every hour God gives, you know, like I get home and I do a few emails or I do this and lots of people who work other jobs do that too, but with founders it’s a bit different. And so, the one thing that you get is control over your time. You know, you’re going to work 80 or 100 hours a week, but you get to pick which 80 100 right? And so, I guess what I’m saying is don’t feel guilty about going for a walk at 10.30 in the morning or whatever it is that your thing is, or if you’ve got a spare two hours, like, go and do whatever you want, right? But like, obviously, don’t do it every day and don’t be ridiculous about it, but like, What am I trying to say? Don’t constrain yourself to this Monday to Friday, nine to five thinking, because it’s not accurate for your job. Hugh Dixson: If your break time is, so for me personally, like not anymore, I’m so fucking busy in the day. Like I’m in the office constantly, but like in earlier times when I had fewer client meetings, I’d have a break in the off, I’d have a couple of hours in the afternoon, go to the gym. It’s okay that it’s two o’clock because you’re gonna work at 8 p.m. Anyway, right? And so anyway, that’s kind of my thing I find like don’t just sit in your room or in the office Because you feel like you have to because it’s the afternoon, you know, I love that now. Ben Ornstein: That’s amazing Yeah, this has been so much fun. I think this is gonna turn out. I think this is gonna turn out really really good I’m gonna obviously take a look at this and I don’t know that very busy, just like you. I’m not a founder per se, but, uh, very busy doing 15 different things. So I don’t have a timeline for when I’ll get this to you, but I’ll get a draft to you and then, and I, you know, there’s going to be no pressure on you to get back immediately. Cause I know how busy you are. Um, but yeah, we’ll send you a draft. You can check it out. You can edit it, add comments, however you. Feel and be like, hey, I wanted to say this differently. You know what I mean? All that kind of stuff. And yeah, then we’ll put a live after that. Sounds good. Hugh Dixson: It’s been really nice talking to you, Ben. I’ve enjoyed it as well. Really enjoyed it. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: All right. Ben Ornstein: Well, you have a great day. And yeah, I’ll get back to you soon. Great. No worries. Hugh Dixson: Have a good one. And I’ll speak to you soon. Thanks again, Sue. Cheers. Bye. Bye.