- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J6DF02G3ZY91R315X3EX95BH (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Ben Ornstein: Doing well, doing well. Tom Field: Thanks for your time. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, of course. Thanks for booking. I appreciate it. Tom Field: Yeah, good. You’re based in the USA? Ben Ornstein: I am. I’m actually in Delaware right now. Tom Field: Probably haven’t even heard of it. I have. What states are we in? Ben Ornstein: So Delaware is the state, actually. Tom Field: Oh, there you go. Where are you based? And what time? In Sydney, Australia. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Nice. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Yeah. Tom Field: Very cool. It’s 7.45am here yourself. Ben Ornstein: Oh, it’s early for you. Thanks for booking so early. Tom Field: It is 5.47am here. Ben Ornstein: Okay, there you go. I appreciate it. Well, yeah, how much context do you have? You probably don’t have too much, right? Tom Field: I’ve checked your website and no, who Michael Houck is and that’s about it, yeah. Ben Ornstein: Okay, cool. No worries. So basically, Michael Houck, founder of Houck’s Newsletter, loves creating content for founders. One of the things that he wants to build out is a resource for founders of something that helps with fundraising. We figured, why not have, you know, what’s better than speaking with founders who have done it themselves. I kind of agree that I don’t think there’s anything better than that. So that’s why we’re having these conversations like this one. Softball questions. Of things that you’ve definitely answered before or have the answer to if you haven’t. And it’s really just around your fundraising journey and stuff like that. You know, this is going to be only for, it’s going to be behind a paywall. So only like founders that are actively raising are going to be paying for this. So you can be pretty candid. That can include things like valuation when we’re asking like the fundraising questions. Only if you’re comfortable. But no one really has a problem with that unless there’s a reason not to. But yeah, basically the process will be, we’ll do this conversation. The reason we have the read AI guy in here is we need that to generate the transcript. Ben Ornstein: And I’ll generate the draft and send it over to you for review and then make the changes, say, hey, I want to take this out. Hey, I want to add this. Ben Ornstein: and then we’ll post it and go from there. Tom Field: Great. Ben Ornstein: Amazing. Yeah, do you have any questions? Tom Field: No, sounds good. Ben Ornstein: Awesome. Okay, we’ll get right into it then. Well, yeah, Tom, how about you start by briefly introducing yourself and your startup? Tom Field: So, my name is Tom Field. I’m the founder of Bearhug Pallet Wraps. I guess the, I could take you a tour of our warehouse to start. I guess you can’t transcribe the visuals, but yeah, yeah. So we share a warehouse space with a craft beer transport company. Ben Ornstein: No way, that’s sick. Tom Field: This, yeah, this is just one side of the warehouse. The other side part of that wall is four or five times the size. And you’ll see plastic wrapped pallets everywhere. So I’ve worked for that transport company for five years or so is my first job and job through uni. And I guess, yeah, I would churn through 350 grams of plastic every single day. And it’s got pretty poor recyclability, all that. Then what I found while I was working there is an existing product raised with pallet wraps. So they’re basically just a big PVC sheet that can wrap around the pallet once as opposed to sort of 15 times. And Velcro is on at the front, so they last 1000 uses as opposed to one. But the main limitation with them is that most supply chains, they intend to move from party A to party B to party C, rather than just pallets staying within one person’s warehouse. So what I found is that If you buy one of these, it’s restricted to just 7% of global pallet movement is where it’s applicable. So there are a fair few systems that already exist that allow people to send pallets or kegs or crates to each other. They’re called like pooling systems where one company owns them all and leases them out to allow them to move through other parties. So we’ve just basically launched the world’s first pooling model for reasonable pallet racks. Under that same premise. And yeah, I mean, in terms of the scale, 1.5% global plastic waste comes just from the pallet wrap, just cause it’s one product that no one really knows about, but it’s the backbone of all consumer goods really. That’s probably the short of it. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Wow. It’s such a cool innovation that you, I mean, you, you create it because you knew it was a problem. Like you literally saw it every single day. Yeah. Tom Field: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So cool. Very cool. You know, what can you share about the fundraising journey so far? This can be like how much money you’ve raised. If you’re comfortable, again, the, like the valuation that you raised at, um, different rounds of funding, if you’ve had multiple, all that kind of stuff. Tom Field: Um, so I guess I started out on this three years ago or something. We didn’t actually launch selling products until January, January, last year. So before then, I was speaking to a few companies that are sort of potential customers and asking for them to put in some funding to make it a sort of strategic partnership. That never really went anywhere. I was always looking for something in the region of 25k. I only really spoke to like five or six companies looking for that money, but that never got anywhere. We won a pitch competition, which got us 10K in, which definitely helped a lot. Tom Field: And then that sort of went to developing like a backend portal for operating the subscription system. Tom Field: And yeah, from there we sort of, the first order we made of stock wasn’t too expensive. I think I got, a loan from an uncle for 5K or something, which definitely helped a lot. And then I put in the rest, I think, was my own money apart from just small amounts from the transport company I work for, who were providing a lot of access to people to talk to and all that and prototyping improvements. But yeah, the main event was, I guess, starting in January. This year, we did a competition with the uni that I went to, and my co-founder went to, that was competing for 100k safe note. We got people’s choice, but didn’t win. And then after that, joined an accelerator program called Boomerang Labs. And the sort of end piece of that was a pitch night for funding. Tom Field: we were looking to raise 250K initially. And then I’d been talking with a friend’s dad who works in construction for a bit, and he does a fair bit of investing himself. And it lined up quite well that just before the pitch night, he put down 112K. And that really, I think, was the main thing that made the difference where on the pitch night, You know, we’ve got five or six investors that we started talking to after that. Within two weeks, one had put down 100K. Within another three weeks, one had put down 35K. And then we sort of looked to close it from there, but then the one who put 100K in brought a friend along to put in another 50K. So I think that stacked up to a 325K raise. Tom Field: Yeah, we, I mean, before that pitch night, we’d spoken to, we’d done a small amount of cold outreach, only really properly got in front of three or four investors with the cold outreach. So really put too much effort into that. But I mean, we had one angel syndicate that we had a personal connection with that was very promising. But I think, you know, the The opinion of the people running the syndicate was that if one person doesn’t just go out and put money down within it, no one else is going to. And that’s what they think happened there. So yeah, having a personal connection, put the money down first, definitely helped with getting other people on board and actually getting anywhere near the amount we were after. Ben Ornstein: Wow, that’s a crazy fundraising journey. That’s wild. One of the things you mentioned was the cold outreach. One of the questions that I usually ask later on, but I guess it’s applicable to us now is, for the cold outreach, how many people did you roughly reach out to? What subset of those people did you get meetings with? And then subset of those people actually invest? Tom Field: And roughly, as I said, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Yeah. As I said, we didn’t reach out to many people at all. So 50, we probably reached out to, let’s say four I would have gotten from meeting with and no one that we did any cold outreach to invested. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. It’s so actively about the warm intros, right? Yeah, that’s right. And that’s exactly what worked out for you. So that’s awesome. Ben Ornstein: And you kind of briefly talked about what you plan to use that money ahead of time for, was just kind of for like, it’s usually for some sort of growth, but you want to dive into that a little bit more? Tom Field: Yeah. So I guess one of the biggest reservations that investors had about us is that we don’t have any IP really. We didn’t invent these wraps and the system we’re looking to operate, there were already big players operating a similar system that, you know, If they were smart, they’d just swoop in and do the same thing. So we just earmarked virtually all the funding to go to R&D for developing automated devices for applying the wraps, mainly because any big company we’ve spoken to won’t adopt it for having to apply it manually, even if it is quicker than applying plastic. They just want to eliminate the labor component. So that’s where all the money’s going is towards building automated systems to apply as well as roll them after use. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. And it seems you’ve kind of covered your bases in terms of like what, what, how things are actually going to change. Like if you’re actually going to make it as easy as possible for them. Tom Field: Yeah. And that also definitely feeds in from the investor perspective to us having a more serious moat, um, and spans the market more than a lot of other things we could do would. 100%. Ben Ornstein: And so when you were kind of outside of the pitch competitions, because I guess you can’t really choose your investors. How did you decide which investors would be a good fit? Tom Field: I imagine it’s an Australian resource, Airtree. Do you know if you have that in the US? Ben Ornstein: I don’t know Airtree. No fair. Tom Field: Airtree is the list we have here that has just hundreds of investors on it, split-uppers, angel, VCs, et cetera. It’s also got like a filter function for different industries they would normally invest in or have experience in. So really we just filtered that for logistics, products, solid side, B2B, and just churn through that list. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So I guess that’s, that actually answers the next question of like how you got in touch with them. So then I guess it was through that platform. So when you did get in touch with them, when you got on calls with people, for example, was there something that made you feel like, yeah, this is the investor I want. I want them, usually want an investor more than just their money, right? Like you’re usually strategic in some form or aspect. Like was there, Was there anything that you saw in conversations with the investors that you did get on calls with or people, even the investors that did invest? How’d you know they were a good fit? Tom Field: I guess one investor who didn’t invest, but we reached out to just cold outreach. They had like a sort of open calendar where you can just book a slot in, which I was surprised that any investor would want to give anyone that much of their time. But then in the call, he sort of was, it was quite a loose and open conversation just about what we’re doing without too much probing. So I guess that seemed like a good indication that that first call to him was just understand the concept and what I want to get across about the concept, understand a bit about me, myself, rather than get straight into all the Fine sides of it, middle bitty. One investor who came on board for 100K, he was quite open from the start about knowing that it was our first proper raise, like telling us to do due diligence on him and how to do that, and gave us a bunch of contacts of people we’d previously invested in. And yeah, I was surprised that by reaching out to sort of eight of the people he’d already invested in, but like actually six or so responded, got on a call pretty quick and told me that he was their favorite investor. So that was a pretty good sign. And since then we’ve had, since only closing three months ago, we’ve had a few meetings and he’s put in what he can in terms of personal connections and all that. And of course also he was the one that looked in the other investor just at the tail end. I managed to get that other investor to close in a very short period. Ben Ornstein: That’s awesome. Now that’s a value-add investor right there, that’s for sure. And so you talked about earlier that a lot of investors, they couldn’t get over the fact that you didn’t have any sort of moat. What did you emphasize in your pitch that got investors interested? Tom Field: In terms of a key hook within the pitch, I can’t pick out anything exactly. I think it’s just quite, on some levels, quite a simple thing we’re working on. On other levels, obviously not. But it’s something that I think we can express in a pretty simple narrative like I did at the start there. It’s something that people haven’t often heard of and can hence be like, shit, this is a gap that needs to be filled. Tom Field: And in terms of people’s reservations, I think we were just well prepared with the answers for them. And, you know, for example, the use of funds directly being there to answer those reservations. Yeah, and obviously it’s been sort of, it’s been quite a long game. And I think most of them were in agreement that that’s the way we should tackle it by getting the moat in place as we’re sort of developing the system and doing a proof of concept around that system to then go bigger later on. And yeah, obviously it’s a risky investment in anything that doesn’t have a moat, but it’s sort of, it’s a $9.7 pallet wrap market globally. So I think that the opportunity is definitely there. Systems like CHEP get monopolies on that. So I think yes, the risk versus reward was something that they're willing to approach there. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. You're right. Like it is a simple product, but it's like there's no great solution. So you for that, for that crazy tan, you can attack it. Ben Ornstein: And so when it came to talking to investors, Did you ever drive urgency to kind of close the round and make and get that investment? Is there any tactics or anything you applied to, you know, close investors? Tom Field: Um, nothing, nothing too serious. I think it was the same as any sales process. Um, most of it was done. Over email, not too many phone calls with the, at least with one of the investors was a VC firm that was operating for, operating an angel syndicate within that VC firm. And they were definitely the slowest to close, but I think they were quite transparent as well with wanting to jump on a new call, a week after another call, because new questions had come up and sort of get through that process efficiently. But yeah, I mean, we just kept the same sort of pipeline as we would with a sales process and to make sure we're nudging someone a week after they're not responsive. Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Did you kind of tell them at any point where you're like, hey, we want to, we would like to close this round by this date or did you do anything like that? Tom Field: Yeah, we did. But I think Maybe we weren't too serious ourselves with that, rather have the money than close the round on someone. In hindsight, if we were stricter on that, it probably could have worked in our favour. But I mean, the last investor that came on board when we got, so the second last investor was the Angel Syndicate through that VC that put down 35K. And once they were down, we were like, this is a bit short of our goal, but I think we're ready to close. Just call the existing investors. Do you have anyone else who would like to invest? And then gave them, when this guy suggested a new person, just gave them a week deadline and that ended up being stuck too. So yeah. Ben Ornstein: I think that's probably, that was probably the tactic that worked best. It was having the other investor who already invested in you say, hey, they've got a week and then they're going to close it. So that's probably the best answer to that question. Tom Field: Yeah. And sorry as well, the first investor who was a family, a friend's dad, called him at that point as well. And he went to put another 45K on the table. So yeah. Ben Ornstein: So he nudged him, you're saying? Tom Field: Yeah. Oh no, sorry. In that last week, after the VC firm closed for $35K, called all the previous investors, the initial investor, friend’s dad, decided I’ll put down another $45K. And then the other investor who put down $100K found his friend to put in $50K. And that all turned around within a week. Ben Ornstein: Got it. I think you cut out for a second, so I missed that part. Nice. Awesome. You briefly talked about challenges, but what was the biggest challenge that came up during I guess I was the one doing all, not all the work around the Rays. Tom Field: My co-founder is working full-time elsewhere. So he just sort of does the mornings and weekends and he’s often focused on the sort of enterprise outreach side of things. So while I’m trying to manage all other tasks, you don’t want to be too distracted from customers by investors. And that definitely meant that the round dragged out a bit more. I think next time I’d definitely be more focused and set aside an hour or two each day for outreach at early stages and try to stay a bit more on top of putting pressure on people on going to close quicker. So yeah, I think just trying to juggle day-to-day operations alongside the raise meant it dragged out longer. Yeah, that was probably the main challenge. And that just sort of gets annoying. Ben Ornstein: I mean, that’s a lot. Dragging a raise out for that long. Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: That’s a lot to worry about all at once. That’s crazy. I mean, there’s a lot of founders who talk about like the investors that they want on their board, not their board, you know, who to invest in them. They’re the ones who say, hey, let’s close this up quick so you can get back to what actually matters, like building the business. Tom Field: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. No, that’s, that’s cool. And man, that’s a, that’s a lot on your plate. That’s wild. Yeah. Are there any other stories or, you know, unique or interesting stories you haven’t mentioned yet that were just related to fundraising that might be interesting? Tom Field: I guess in terms of being transparent with mistakes I made through it, that first investor, when they came on, we agreed over the phone the amount and he was more interested in, normally he invests in like gold or horses. So we agreed over the phone on like a, a certain stake in the company, like it was after 4% for this amount of money. And doing the calculations over the phone, I put it in post-money terms as opposed to pre-money. So once that was in, I was like, shit, then we sort of have to stick with it. Already talking to other investors on pre-money terms. So that ended up splitting the raise into getting that original 112K in on post-money terms and then raising the rest on pre-money terms. Tom Field: That kind of turned out to be a good thing because it closed the 112K and got that in the bank and could start developing the automated systems while we were still talking with other investors, took a lot of pressure off and helped us get a headstart. But yeah, that was obviously a mistake in hindsight. But yeah, still worked out in our favor. Ben Ornstein: Were there any interesting stories related to the pitch competitions? Because you did a couple of those. And then, yeah, anything interesting there or just kind of straightforward processes? Tom Field: They were pretty straightforward because I’ve done a fair few before. So UTS Startups is like a startups wing or society or whatever you want to call it. Tom Field: So we always had free office space there and they do a lot of pitch competitions. That’s where we won that first 10K. And so I’ve got a bit of practice in there. That was a real effort to drag a pallet and 24 boxes or whatever up a building in the city and set that up on the stage with the wrap on. I think that is sort of, if you’re a product-based business, that’s pretty game-changing for any pitch. That was also like another product-based business there that brought that in so they could do a live demo. So I think that for any product-based business. Definitely means you can cut a lot of the exploitation out of your pitch about what you’re trying to do. Make it a bit more visceral. Ben Ornstein: Pretty memorable too. I mean, if I’m an investor in a competition and I’m seeing like 10 15 to 20 companies, I’m going to remember the one that had, you know, the big box of wood with a wrap on it, you know? Tom Field: Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: Cool. Ben Ornstein: Any fundraising advice that you would give to other founders? Tom Field: I guess just do whatever you can to get the first investor through the door, especially even if it’s an unsophisticated investor, whatever you wanna call it, no one’s really gonna inquire too much into that. If you can get family, friend, anyone to put down any amount of money, then that’s gonna be a big weight off the shoulders of other investors who are considering that sort of thing. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, that’s great advice. We have a question here that’s like, it gives you an opportunity to kind of like shout out investor or, you know, who’s an investor you’d recommend other founders work with? Tom Field: Yeah. Danny Bandari was the one who put in the 100k and referred his friend pretty quick. He used to work for Tibra Capital was his startup. Yeah, he’s obviously done the rounds a few times before, sort of shows in how he works with us and approaches us. And he sort of also is very clear on whatever help you want and whatever level of involvement you want me to have, talk me through it. But otherwise, I don’t want to get in the way of the bearings. So I’ll say back, you may want to reach out to me when you need stuff. And yeah, beyond that, I think I’ve mentioned him a few times through the call. So yeah. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. Now he really does sound like a great investor to have on board. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Are there any resources that you recommend to founders, you know, like blogs, books, podcasts, newsletters, anything? Tom Field: I mean, as I was a driver for so long, I churned through YouTube, like every corner of YouTube and podcasts. And I mean, there’s a few great audio books out there. I haven’t been able to find too many good podcasts. On YouTube, there’s a few good ones, but I get pretty agitated by the sort of headlines and repetitiveness of them. But so yeah, in terms of audio books, things by Alex Hormozan’s two books are pretty bloody good. So that’s how it’s been. Never split the difference. It’s a good sales negotiation book. And Diary of a CEO, I was always a bit apprehensive to read, but that seemed like one of the best concise summaries of the different bits of ground you’ve got to cover. And obviously, Lean Startup. Tom Field: If anyone, like we sort of deal in network effects and building a bit of an ecosystem of getting manufacturers who are wanting to send reasonable wrapped pallets to distribution centers. So it’s kind of a supply demand balance there. And the cold start up, the cold start problem is really the Bible on anything related to network effects. So that’s probably been the most important one for us. Ben Ornstein: Those are all great, great call. Cold startup or the cold start problem. Andrew Chen was an investor in Houck’s last company. Yeah, that’s a great call out. Those are awesome. Those are great ones. And last question, do you have any hot takes regarding the fundraising process? Things that people might disagree with you on or anything like that? Tom Field: Controversial. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, controversial, yeah. Tom Field: This is probably based on too little experience to say, but maybe looking for strategic investors, unless you have a really good personal connection there or whatever, may be a bit of a time effort in the early days, especially like for us. This is before having anything neatly packaged about what we do or knowing enough about the industry ourselves, not myself, to actually close anything. But I feel like if you’re going into a pitch with a potential customer and asking them to get your product, get on your system, and give you money, it becomes a bit convoluted. And you might end up losing both sides of it. Despite that, having a strategic investor in the early stages would be really, really crucial. And this transport company that we work next to their work. And they didn’t really put money in, but they’ve put a lot of other stuff in. This warehouse space we have is free from them because of their shareholding. And I think if you can get a strategic investor into it, then obviously that’s the gold standard you want. Ben Ornstein: That’s awesome. And now that’s, I’d agree. You know, some people are like, cash is cash. Like I don’t give a crap who my investor is. Others are like, when I take an investor on, the only thing that matters is they can add something more than just their money. So there’s those two sides of that. So I would say it’s controversial for sure. Tom Field: There you go. Ben Ornstein: Well, no, uh, Tom, thank you so much for the time. This has been awesome. I really appreciate it. I think this is going to turn out great. Um, yeah, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I will, you know, write this up, send you a first draft and, um, yeah, you can edit it, say, Hey, I want this. I don’t want to say that, uh, Hey, I should have added this in there, whatever. Um, and then, yeah, we’ll, we’ll let you know when it’s live after that. Ben Ornstein: Have a good one, Tom. Best of luck. I love your-