Amanda Zuydervelt and Michael Houck

• Duration: 97 min
• Platform: zoom
• Source: Read.ai 01JADHGGFJF1MPPAXJE6GNAE11 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JADHGGFJF1MPPAXJE6GNAE11)

Transcript

[Michael Houck]: Hey, it doesn’t look like anyone else is here right now. [Ben Ornstein]: That worked out. But yeah, it’s weird. This didn’t happen. I’m looking at the other ones that were scheduled there on my calendar. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, this one. I forget what happened. I don’t know if she scheduled it with me over email or something. It wasn’t through the typical. Like outreach thing that we do, so I probably just had the wrong link or something. [Ben Ornstein]: No worries. Yeah, it worked out. [Michael Houck]: here yet hopefully she didn’t stay and leave but yeah I mean I feel like generally people give five minutes but maybe shoot her an email just to be just to be sure yeah let me see if she replied to I don’t know where I was talking to her let me check a couple places see if she sent me something sounds good uh no I got a zoom notification that you have joined but not one that she has joined. So I think we’re good. [Ben Ornstein]: And she probably hasn’t been here yet. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: But yeah, I I tried the incognito thing and it’s I saw that it started uploading. So I’m like, OK, great. That’s I guess that’s the solution, which will work if, you know, strange. But if that if that’s foolproof, then I can easily do that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. So weird. But I guess, you know, technology has its quirks. Right. So Let’s hope it works. [Ben Ornstein]: Yes, it seemed like it was. It started uploading. I saw it get to 1%, but I was going to cancel it before, you know, making sure the computer has no issue doing it, doing the interview and stuff. [Michael Houck]: Cool, whatever you find in terms of it working. Like if it does work, just shoot Rena a message and let her know she was worried that she did something wrong. [Ben Ornstein]: Now rain and rain is great. She really is. I will, if that works, I will let her know. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Yeah, it doesn’t look like anyone else has joined. Let me see if I can make you the host here. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, there we go. Cool. [Ben Ornstein]: I’ll send her an email. I’ll just keep you on it just because, and then I’ll wait a few minutes I’ll wait till like 1140 after I send it and then. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Sounds good. How many others have scheduled? We’ve had a few people come through the cold. Two others, two others. [Ben Ornstein]: Actually, here, let me check that. I added them this morning. Yeah, outside of Amanda. Sorry, three others, three others. Oh, great. [Michael Houck]: There’s one tomorrow. Yeah, I would expect at least a few each week for the next few weeks. And we have a much bigger list of people who I can upload to the sequence too. So yeah, I think we’re pretty good. I would expect that we can get to somewhere in the 1 to 2, maybe even 300 range before to go get new leads for it or anything like that. [Ben Ornstein]: And then we also have the antler as well, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, he connected me with two founders. I keep forgetting to follow up with them, but I want to get them both on. So I’m gonna do that today. And those will be the first ones that we do with them. And then they’ll go from there. [Ben Ornstein]: Awesome. Yeah, no, that’s gonna be great. I think that’s gonna work out really well. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: And then on the content I feel like we’re, I feel like we’re getting real insights. Like those, the meetings that we have, like, I actually feel like they’re pretty useful. [Ben Ornstein]: No, no, I think they’re, this is great. And I’m finding different stuff every day. Like the one I found today was so different from the one that I saw two days ago. The girl dancing to this, those were night and day. So. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, but like we can get, it’s different insights we can get from each one. Like it’s all super valuable. I think, yeah, you found some, some good ones. So, um, yeah, I think let’s just keep it up. I think if we do this for like, you know, assume we do this every day through the end of the year, at least except for like, obviously, you know, days where we’re not working, um, and stuff. Um, I feel like we can get pretty good at it pretty quickly. That’s my hypothesis. [Ben Ornstein]: I think so too. Like the only way we’re going to get better is seeing what others are doing well, and then testing those different ideas. And we’re going to find so many different formats from doing this. [Michael Houck]: Right. So, yeah. So I want to test like over the next, I guess, rest of this month, let’s say two weeks, I want to test as many different formats as we can and not just do the split screen. We know the split screen can work, but I think before we commit to a format, we should test out as many as we can and see how it goes. [Ben Ornstein]: Absolutely. No, I completely agree. [Michael Houck]: Okay. I’m going to pop off. Um, if, um, I don’t know, maybe shoot an email cause it’s been a while. [Ben Ornstein]: Maybe she’s, Oh, She just entered. Perfect timing. [Michael Houck]: Oh, cool. Great. Cool. I’ll hop off. I’ll talk to you later, man. Sounds good. [Ben Ornstein]: Hi, Amanda. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I had a little moment and needed a reboot, and now my video camera, which is what happened to me this morning, it also seems to have decided that it, is that better? Yes. [Ben Ornstein]: Right. Perfect. I’m afraid I’m literally sitting in a wardrobe at the moment. I’ve got the world’s smallest desk. No problem. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: How are you today? Good. I’m an ambassador for a children’s charity. So I’ve been sourcing auction items this afternoon and it’s harder than you would think. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh man. I believe it. That sounds like a lot. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I am excited to learn more about your company. So what context do you have for this call? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So you do case studies around fundraising and how people go about it, and I guess that this is in my mind, that this is a tool to share with other founders that are starting the journey so that they can see some of the highs and lows of trying to raise money. [Ben Ornstein]: You got it. I mean, that’s that’s pretty much spot on. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: And I, you know, I put myself forward for this because I’m going to be this is a bit of a horror story. I came I won in the end, but I went to hell and back in the process. And I want to do this in a way where I’m not just complaining about, you know, NMS wasn’t very kind to me or whatever, but I do want to, I’ve, I’ve learned some very expensive lessons. And if I can give a little bit of that back, then I would consider that paying it forwards. And I have literally lived a life of paying it forward. So I felt like it would be, and also I thought, you know, it would be an interesting one for you guys. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. Wow. I’m, I’m very interested. This is going to be, this will be fun then. Um, and, and yeah, no, it’s so valuable for founders to see this, um, stuff. We’ve already gotten great feedback from it. Um, you know, founders across the world, different stages, different industries. Um, and, and, and me, like helping bring these to life with amazing founders like yourself. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I just established that the video doesn’t go anywhere and I’m not literally going to end up in public speaking out of a wardrobe. [Ben Ornstein]: The video goes nowhere. The reason we have the read AI transcript guy in here is because I turn the transcript from this into a text-based case study. So the video goes nowhere. It’s only for us here. Excellent. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Because I’m also I’ve literally, I don’t think I’ve had more than like three hours sleep tonight this week. I really am dead on my feet at the moment. [Ben Ornstein]: No worries. Well, I, I very much appreciate you taking the time to do this, uh, despite that. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Okay. So how, what is the format? How’d you start, you know, how’d you see this? How’s this work before? Give me some insight. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. So basically I have a bunch of questions ready to go here. Um, Okay. They are softball questions. This is going to be nothing that you haven’t answered before, or if you haven’t, haven’t at least thought about. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, what were you gonna say? No, nothing. Okay. It’s this is obviously pre-recorded. If there are things that you say that you were not happy about saying, you can, of course, just say, actually, I don’t want to include that. Or whatnot, feel free to say it right in. This is this is not, you know, we can. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Yeah. And there might there might be times that I try and I might be slow to articulate myself because I want to I want to do this fairly. I’m somebody that truly believes that you have to stand in other people’s shoes and that you even if that’s not entirely familiar to you, you you’ve got to do it in a sensitive way. I’m not a vindictive person. I think that there are a few people along the way that are going to mansion that didn’t behave in a way that they should. And I don’t want to necessarily name check or throw people under a bus, but I want to give some context around it so it doesn’t happen to other founders. I also need to close the door because it’s fucking cold. I didn’t realise that the double doors were completely open. I’m usually based in Geneva. Oh, cool. But it’s a British company, so I split my time with the UK and I hate living in hotels and I travel with a dog. So I live with a florist when I’m in England, but I’m only here like 10 days a month. So it’s literally, it’s like the world’s smallest room. I’ve literally even had to put up just sort of things that come out just to hang clothes on them. The dog is here, the dog’s out Sparco next to me on the bed. So it’s a very small space to work, but it makes it, you know, when you’re a family, in your bootstrapping. This works out as quid a day when the average hotel in London these days is 400 quid and they’re not very pet friendly. Yeah. So this is. Where in England? I’m in London. London. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I was made about. So I made about in London, which is West London, and the rest of the time I’m in the I’m on the lake in Verve in Geneva. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Nice. [Ben Ornstein]: I started abroad in London and stayed there for like four months. It was amazing. I loved it. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: It’s a wicked city. Where are you? [Ben Ornstein]: Right now I’m in Delaware in the States, actually. Very random spot. It is what it is. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Right. Come on, let’s start. Fire away. What have you got for me? [Ben Ornstein]: Let’s do it. Okay. Amanda, would you please briefly introduce yourself and your startup? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Okay. I am Amanda Zuydervelt. I am I am a half Dutch, half British entrepreneur who loves jewellery and dogs. I have a dog brand called Dudley & and I have a vintage jewellery platform called Omni. [Ben Ornstein]: Incredible. Can you talk about the fundraising journey for your company? You can break this down to the different funding rounds that you’ve done, if you’re comfortable sharing the valuations of those rounds. How long they took, etc. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So. Omnic was a really interesting business for me, I worked at Richemont, I was in Geneva, I worked within the watches and jewelry division. I’ve always been a magpie. I like old jewelry. I think it has charm. I think it holds its value. I think that the craftsmanship is just completely different. To mass produced, you know. I love the sustainability angle. I noticed that Richemont had bought Watchfinder and then it was like kind of actually, it’s really hard to buy vintage jewelry because as much as I loved it, I was a techie. I wasn’t a jewelry specialist. So, you know, you go around and that market is very fragmented. Like there’s sort of markets and antique markets and there’s a state And it’s kind of like, you know, and by the time it’s at retail, it’s just very difficult to know exactly where to find all the good stuff. You know, even if you go to a market, you go down to Portobello market, for example, you kind of have to have an eye because, you know, not everything is what it seems. So I really wanted to create a marketplace of vintage jewelry and I wanted to sort of load that with education so that people actually, you know, had the confidence and got real enjoyment and enjoyed wearing jewellery. And I think as women, we go through life with magazines and they tell you what you should wear, but they don’t always delve deep into jewellery. There’s a couple of really great jewellery editors, Annabel Davidson, for one. So I got her on board. And so we developed this sort of magazine and a store. And the idea behind it was to actually curate and authenticate authenticate all the jewelry before it came to the platform. So instead of a dealer coming to us and saying… Because we work on consignment. It’s a marketplace. So instead of the dealer coming to us and going, yeah, I’ve got all of this to sell. Yeah, I’m going to put it all on your website. We were like, no. Let our specialists come to you. They know what they’re doing. They can authenticate all the pieces, make sure nothing’s cracked. They can look at it through the loop. And then we’ll put actual proper collections together that people can then buy and trust that they’ve been handled by expert value before they hit the platform. And within a degree of accuracy, everything is authentic. So that was the plan. But I worked at Richemont. I’ve worked on some really great brands, Cartier, Van Cleef, IWC, Montblanc. And I see their budgets too, because I used to negotiate some of them. So then all of a sudden, you know, actually to, I had the skill set to roll out a global marketplace. I’ve done it. I rolled out Mont Blanc in Korea, you know, that is my speciality, big N sort of retail tech and rolling it out and making the UX and the design and everything work together. So Omniq was actually would have been my joyous job because it was all about jewelry, which I love. It was all about tech and retail, which was my background. So the problem I had was that little problem of I needed at least 2 million in the first year. And so honestly, I parked it because I’m like orphan Annie. My parents died in my early thirties. And I, you know, I didn’t have a husband that ran a VC or sold a hedge fund that went, Hey babe, here’s 2 million off you go. And I was also painfully aware that actually raising a woman as a woman is actually a really unpleasant experience, especially if you’re a solo female founder. I’d had a horrific experience attempting to raise money when I was 23. Me and my friend had a really great idea to set up a website called rubberjohnny.co.uk and we were going to sell condoms and add education about safe sex. And we got really far down the road. We were very getting the money. And it didn’t just it wasn’t a very nice experience. And we walked away. Or so I kind of put off I’d really been put off raising money. And then in 2005, I had style Bible. And this was going to be a lifestyle concierge, which was a bit too early, it was way before its time. And I got invited on Dragon’s Den. And let me tell you, the absolute shit show. I thought I had committed commercial suicide national television at the end of that process. So that was my second experience raising money. I was like, shit, that didn’t go so well either. So I kind of, you know, wasn’t all about, I just didn’t enjoy that process of raising money. I found the television experience was really quite dramatic. And so I had raised money for the dog brand. I found a great mentor and he had helped me basically raise money for the dog brand. And we worked together and it was just this dream experience. You work with someone that’s invested 20 years in you. We found the money within a month and it felt like the easiest thing in the world. And it was and actually that kind of softened the blow a bit from the sort of hideous experiences before. I thought, you know, but two million is a shit ton of money for a girl that’s been in Geneva and out of the London scene for 12 years. And I’m talking about now going from a blank sheet a paper to breaking into the vintage jewelry industry, which let me tell you is a close shop. So number one was the challenge was going to be, how would you do it? So I just parked it thinking like, I’m never going to find this money. I’m never going to find this money. But in my mind that the interest was there. So I was really going, well, we could do this. And how would you do this? And how would you do this? And then one day I was sitting in a bar and I with some people I knew and someone told me that the private equity guy told me that he’d got his house burgled and his wife had lost all her vintage jewelry. And, you know, I was like, oh, I got a business that could solve that. And so through discussions, I was effectively off the money. So. In that sense, I didn’t have to go up in front of big, scary people and have everything, you know, all mapped out. And he said, you know, I’d be interested in backing this. And so I kind of over the next six months kind of started mapping it out quite seriously. I’m a bit of a Confluence and Jira geek. I’m a little bit older than everyone else. So, you know, I’m old school. I love Atlassian. So I started mapping everything else and what it looks like and how you do it and what the strategy would be. And for me, that was really important. How are you going to bring this to market and go boom, right? Because you need that, you need to A, break into that market. And then two, you need to really get social proof as fast as you can. And my sort of estimation was that it would take 2 million in the first year just to see if the business had legs. And then straight after that, we would need about million to carry on at that pace and then to really hit market share. And you’ve got to remember that, you know, there’s great marketplaces out there like Vestiaire Collective. And Vestiaire Collective, I think at that point had raised like over $500 million. Like it was, it was, it was telephone numbers that I couldn't even begin to imagine. You know, I was a sort of account manager that absolutely thrived on negotiating contracts to get them for less than they should be. I'm half Dutch. I think that probably makes me the sort of tight side of me. Sorry to touch people, but I'm good at being frugal. You know, I've made a lot of money go far before. I've bootstrapped companies before. So in this instance, I knew that I could do it for less than other people, but I wasn't going to kid myself because if you If you really do want to become a global brand, it's not cheap. You've got to remember that when Net-a-Porter launched, I think Facebook had launched. I don't think Facebook had even launched when Net-a-Porter launched. Whereas now you've got 10, 15 social media channels, organic, paid, content factory, and the actual money behind that, especially with jewelry and especially in the luxury industry. There are lots of people who have really shunned secondhand for a long time. Now it's cool, vintage is cool, it's sustainable, it's unique, and people are really beginning to shift their mindset. But at the same time, when people buy Cartier, regardless of whether it's new or not, you want that experience, you want that luxury experience. Experience and the packaging's got to be right and the delivery's got to be right and the photography's got to be right. And that costs you an absolute fortune. So, you know, yes, I can do it on less, but I can't do it on fresh air. So I carried on the conversation and he offered me the backing. Now, this is worth four or two million. Right. So he said to me, you know, why haven't you done this before? And I said, well, I don't have, there's no way I'm going to have the money for it. And he said, well, how much do you need? And I said, 2 million. And he was like, I could raise that by Friday. You know, and I could like, you know, to my mind, that's entirely possible. If you've worked in private equity for 30 years, likelihood, most of your mates also work in private equity. You know, they all go for cigars at the Cognaught Hotel or whatever, these ritzy hotels, and they sit there with the four of them. And I can see someone turning around and going, you know, I could have the next Kronos my 24 hands here. Who wants it? I need this four of us. I need half a million of each of you. There you go. There's your two million. Off you go. It's possible, right? And to be fair, I'm sitting in a bar drinking a cocktail. I'm not in a boardroom pitching. I'm just going to take you at face value, especially because, you know, I've done that with my previous, with Dudley & Co. You know, my backer, I mean, was my mentor. But he brought three other people on board. I have four backers for Dudley & Co. Granted, it's 150,000 pounds. It's not quite 2 million quid, but the principle is very similar, okay? But, and whereas, you know, with the first investor, I had worked with him for 20 years and anytime he's ever said anything, he's always come through for me. There are certain times I might not be able to get ahold of him because he's busy. But what he says he's gonna do, he's always done. And actually I documented very little with him along the way. It was all done on gentlemen's handshakes and understanding a passion for business and actually knowing that you trust the person that you're working with because that's ultimately the relationship that you want. So part of this lesson in this case study is there are times you receive money. And it's not through the normal channels. You know, you're talking to your auntie and you tell her some idea and she goes, you know, I've got a bit of my pension or whatever it is, some friend that it doesn't always happen in the sense that you go, I'm going to do this business. I'm going to go out and find 2 million quid and I'm going to do my deck and I'm going to get everything ready. And then I'm going to stand in front of someone and I'm going to ask them for the money. And that was definitely not the case for me in either business. And without sounding arrogant, I'd like to think that's a testament in, or that that validates that actually investors invest in people, ultimately. You've got to have a good business. Someone's got to like you. Someone's got to trust you. They're putting their hard-earned cash in you. And the fact, if you're a founder, that they get the feeling like you're going to do this to the death. You are one determined founder and you're a backable pony kind of thing. So I didn't do the paperwork in the way that I should have done the second time round. I didn't do it first time round until about two years in. And actually there was never an issue. There was never a crossword and we've been working together for 20 odd years. So this is where my problems started because essentially my brain is a busy one. And if I, you know, okay, a glass of my walls. They look like this. Oh wow. All over there are plans, ideas, post-it notes, and the confidence that everything was being built. So for me, my main focus was making sure that I had all of the confidence filled out, how it's going to work, what the strategy was going to be, how we were going to bring it to market. And at the time, the investor went ahead and set up the company, allocated 100% equities for himself, and then said, we'd sort it out later. [Ben Ornstein]: Oh, that's, that's rough. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: You know, what's coming, don't you? Yeah, I think I do. So, you know, come September, I think it was September. I'm like, we really need to sort out the equity. And I, you know, I was a little bit worried about asking him because I felt it was unusual that it wasn't done before when it was allocated at the beginning. And I got an email from him and I had an Excel spreadsheet attached to it and it offered me 5%. That's it. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Now, at this point, I push back very heavily, but again, paperwork didn't get it done at the beginning. I've engaged a team. Money has already started flowing. We are gearing up for a launch as fast as we can. And I have a whole team on board and I'm in a position where I don't want to let those people down, but hang on a bloody minute. Five percent, you've got to be joking. [Ben Ornstein]: That's a joke. Yeah, there's nothing. That's a joke. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Anyway, that was also, I would argue, where our relationship started going downhill. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So I thought back and basically said, I'm going to walk. Sorry, there's just no way I'm doing this for five percent. I mean, you're out of your tiny mind. And at the end of the call, said, okay, 24. And then if, if we hit milestones and we had a big launch and things were going well, then it would be increased. Right. And again, I should have walked, but I didn't, you know, I, I felt enormous responsibility to the team that I had. Um, I had given up a job that was well paid. I'd walked out a job that was well paid. I didn't really want it to fail before it even began. And actually I'd fallen in love with this business. Like I, everything, I had named it. I had done the branding, you know, obviously with the team, working with the team, but I, there was everything about this business I was proud of And I was so excited about it that I just thought, well, you know, it's 2 million quid. So maybe you do get less kind of thing. Right. And that you prove your worth. I mean, it's not a few hundred thousand here. We're talking two million pounds of someone's personal money. Right. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: But then equally, I had someone telling me that it wasn't normal that founders took more than 30 percent of the business. And yet when I argued back and said, well, hang on a minute, I've done some Google research and I've spoken to my mentor and actually that stats the other way around. You shouldn't normally give away more than 30% in the first round. And this was, this was, I was utterly wrong. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: And so Christmas comes and we launch, get Vogue the first day, big article in Vogue. And yeah, and partly that was down to my strategy and that was down to my lovely year old auntie who said, How do you know the jewellery is real? And my strategy based on that conversation with my aunt was, okay, I'm going to hire some of the best of the best in the jewellery industry. You know, a historian, an authenticator, GIA specialists that are certified and that we can do these proper dealer days where we are curating and authenticating jewellery. You know, many of these platforms you can list on them and then it's only when they sell the authentication happens. I wanted to do it the other way round so that we knew exactly what we were selling. And it was a really great strategy because it tied some really fantastic names in the industry to the projects. And it got me pieces of press. Yeah, I'm talking like Buhook, Harper's, Tatler, Sunday Times, New York Times, Financial Times, like we were everywhere. Like I've got Lady Gaga was where my bracelet to the premier of House of Gucci. We were flying. We were doing so well. The PR company was amazing. I really liked her. The team that we put together was fantastic. I had one girl who was a real grafter. There was a couple that were more names and I can't, you know, they, they definitely contributed. I don't know exactly how hard they were, but they, they gave me the kudos to the site that I needed and we had enough people. That just were so inspired by the project that everyone worked so hard. So you can imagine my horror when not long after a massive Financial Times double page spread comes out, my investor basically says to me, you know what? I think you should probably get an investor that's in the jewelry industry. I'm sorry, what? We are, what, four months from launch? Just launched. We've done it on a shoestring so far. And the other huge mistake, and I probably should have said this before, is that, have you ever read a book called Boohoo? [Ben Ornstein]: I have not. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: It's a, it's a fantastic book. It was basically after the dot-com bubble, you know, when the dot-com bubble was around, everyone had all this money. It was like so much free money. And Boohoo was, they spent, I think they I don't know how many millions it was. It was so many millions. They were all made members of private members clubs. They had an in-house cocktail. Miss Boo, they flew over some hairdressers from New York to come to Claridge's. He then cut a wig. They made an avatar out of it. Miss Boo's haircut was 20 grand. Like the spending was fucking off the scale. And the book was Boo Hoo. It was like Boo Hoo. And why it went bust. And I learned a really valuable lesson from that book, which is actually you need to negotiate. A million quid sounds like a lot of money. Let me tell you, it really isn't. You know, you can spend so much money by the time you've done branding, photo shoots, models, you know, insurance, cyber insurance, cost of the shop, developers, app, like these costs and then of or what you call it, digital marketing, spending across Google, Insta, none of those algorithms are easy to crack. You know, it's not like there's a blueprint that says, if you do this, you'll do well. What happens is, is you find five agencies that all tell you, I worked for Google, I did this, I was at Matter, I know the algorithm, I've done this for this brand. But the reality with Omniq is that we have vintage pieces one of every piece. So I can't work with an influencer because, you know, she's only ever going to sell it once and she's charging, she wants eight to 10 grand per post. Fine if you're ordering lipstick, but not for vintage jewelry. Then you've got to imagine that my pieces are actually more expensive than the average basket. You know, you've got, you know, my average basket for fashion jewelry is probably 750 pounds. And my average for fine jewelry is probably about $2,250, which is kind of on par with luxury goods that I’ve experienced in the past. Sorry, I’m tired. I’ve lost my train of thought. Yeah, so advertising is, you know, I probably spent in that first year, $150,000 on advertising that brought me in relatively little. Wow. You’d be amazed at how many agencies, and I had one agency that were great. They actually turned around and said, we are getting somewhere. We were at a ROAS of, I think, two. But he was like, I’ve got to be honest with you, this is the hardest project I’ve ever done. You give me a client that sells lipsticks, that sells cosmetics, that sells jumpers, teapots, anything with quantity, but actually just little things like, you know, if you take an advert down for a matter too soon, like you don’t run it for very long, they penalize you for that. But if it’s sold, it’s sold. So I’ve got no choice unless you’re just running a carousel and it stays for longer until the fourth piece sells and then you’ve got no choice but to take it down. But anyway, the point was, was that we were six months in, we were flying, we were everywhere. I mean, there was one old antique dealer that was quoted when they opened up the Financial Times how to spend. It was a massive double page spread with a picture of me. Someone’s like, who is that? Girl, where did she come from The strategy was working. Offered the front cover of US Vogue. We were on a path. And so if I’m honest with you, I liken it to, I built this incredible ship with Rolls-Royce engines and I got the most amazing crew on board. And it was all looking so, you know, we smashed the champagne on the bow, the press told the world about it. And we got halfway across the Atlantic and we ran out of petrol. So I kept saying, look, until I find someone else, you’ve got to keep funding us. You can’t, like, I’ve literally left a well-paid job for this. There are people here. You can see we’re doing something here. You know, but he’d said to me, but the thing is, I really wanted to flip this business within a year. And you’re like, well, then you’ve backed the wrong business, mate, because, you know, this is a marketplace. Vanessa Porter didn’t make a penny for the first six years. The real real had only just in Q, I think one of this year posted profits in 11 years. You know, Vestiaire, like marketplaces take a long time to build traction. Once you get that traction, you know, they are great and you can stand for a really fantastic exit, but it’s not an overnight job. And so I guess that’s all a little lesson in who you take your money from Because, you know, for my mind, now I look back in hindsight, I see an investor who worked in private equity, who’d never built anything, built nothing. You know, what they do is they get given these amazing companies that have taken sometimes hundreds of years to create. And they’re nicely, they’re all nicely packed with a bow on top and they’re ready to sell. And I guess that that’s sort of burn of, here, let me watch, let me show you. I’m going to build a brand. These things take time and they’re not quick. So I started looking for, you know, I needed to raise and I needed to raise fast. So I, you know, watched YouTube movies. I follow the right people on LinkedIn and I got my deck together. I got my, you know, I had all the forecasts at the beginning, but like the fundraising deck took me a long time to perfect. And then pitching it, you know, I wasn’t, I was very nervous about pitching in front of someone. I’ve had two dreadful experiences and I wasn’t in a hurry. And then I was in the horrible position of actually, you know, whilst we had great sales, we hadn’t hit that million all VCs want. So we were way too early for them. And what actually this business probably needed more than anything was a private investor or a family office or maybe a luxury group that could see the early potential and who would hopefully like me and realize that I’m a pretty resilient founder and worth backing. But it was hard to A, run the company on a shoestring, because yes, he was giving us money, but he wasn’t giving us enough money to be able to do all the things that we needed to do to carry on on that trajectory that we had all set off on. It was it was harder to do it with less money. You know, we turned down the front cover of U.S. Vogue because we’d cut 12 grand off our photography budget. I mean, that, you know, and again, as a as a male investor, probably that doesn’t the significance of that doesn’t hone in. But the idea that for 12 grand, we weren’t on the cover of the front cover of U.S. Vogue because every industry person notices it. The average girl might walk past and just look at who’s on the cover, but the industry, the insiders, the luxury groups, they’re looking to see what clothes are there, what trends are coming. And that felt like a real kick in the teeth when we were working 80, 90, weeks 100 sometimes and missing a few things. We were still, but we were still going, you know, we were like, we pivoted. What else can we do? Pop-ups, retail. Do some events. We worked with this incredible bank vault and they let us throw a party in their bank vault. And we had an amazing turnout and we had a fantastic night of sales. So we found other ways to overcome, which is again, another lovely thing when you’re a founder, when you run out of money, you’ve got to pivot and find all these great ideas. But it was hard because we were running the company on less money than we really needed to be to carry on the great momentum that we had. I was having to keep asking for money and explain why I needed more and justify every penny that I had. I was also now fundraising at not the best time. You know, I was heading into the summer. Everybody was on holiday. I didn’t have a network of high net worth, which is ideally what this business really needed. And then the real kick in the teeth was I still hadn’t had my equity allocated. So actually, you know, you try selling that, you know, it’s not an easy one. Hey, I’m this great founder, but I own none of my own equity. And the guy who said he was going to invest in me, and actually he has put in half a million quid, but he wants out the door now. And so I’m just, I’m 1.5 million short. And I just wondered if you wanted in, like, it’s not an easy sell. And then at the same time, you know, that’s very despondent for a team, you know, because everyone felt turning down U.S. Vogue. Everyone thought we were nuts. These are girls that work in fashion that were all like about to squeal with delight. And they were like, what? So and then I also felt a huge responsibility because, you know, what I should have said, because boohoo. So I think I’m skipping a bit here. You’re going to have to go through your through your notes and marry a few more bits together. But having read Boo Hoo, I knew, I had said to the investor, I don’t want all the money at once. So that was great. But what I should have said is, you put that money in escrow and I’ll draw down on it when I need it. And then none of this would have happened, right? Because If you don’t do that paperwork, it can really come back and bite you in the arse. Now, you know, and the other thing is, is that if it’s not all written down, people have different perspectives. You know, it might have been as an intention all along to, you know, it might have been its intention all along just to put in a certain amount and to see if it works, but, and maybe the bit about it needed 2 million to see if it could work past in buying. Actually, as it turns out, we’ve been going for four years now and we’ve done that on 1.2 million. Actually, when you consider everything that we’ve achieved, a, the fact the lights are still on because in the first three years, most companies fail and we haven’t had the most smoothest of trajectories. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I was then in a situation where I was a founder without my equity. And that really pushes you because you’re working for bupkis and your standard of life is going down rapidly from what you’re used to in the days of being at the top of the corporate ladder. I’m not 23 anymore, I’m 48 slumming it’s just not quite as… I mean, I will, I’m in a wardrobe. But, you know, having that paperwork straight, and I think that you’re going to have to be careful with how you edit this because, you know, I really don’t want to be throwing people under the bus. But things like, you know, it’s actually a really good idea not to be sitting with two million quid in your bank account because you try negotiating with people when they know you’ve got that much money. But if it was an escrow and I’d have the sense to do that and I drew down from it, that would have been secured before I’d even started. I wouldn’t have been leaving my job. I wouldn’t have been hiring other people. And it’s amazing how on trust, and in hindsight, don’t mean to blame the other chap, but my experience before was working with somebody who had offered me the money. Again, with my old investor, he came to me. He was a non-executive director at an agency that I was working. And as soon as I left and I was doing this big He came and had a meeting with me and said, I want to invest in you. And he’s worked with me for 20 years. So maybe there’s a bit of that where just because one project has gone incredibly well, that doesn’t mean that’s the recipe for all projects. And in any way that this case study comes across, I don’t want it to come across as I failed because of everybody else. Because the one thing I want to put across And this is that I own all of this. The buck stops with you. I’m the founder. I’m the CEO. I went out and hired those people. I did it believing that I was fully funded, but I wasn’t fully funded. The money wasn’t in the bank. The paperwork wasn’t signed. The equity wasn’t allocated. And when it was offered, it was a pittance. And I remember I rang up a few of mine who works in arbitrage, and I was like, what the fuck am I going to do? Like, what am I going to do? And he went, Amanda, just fold it, walk away. He said, do you know how many people who’ve lost all their equity ever get to a point of getting it back? And I said, but I’m not everyone. And I’m not having anyone take my bloody equity. But it was a bun fight. And I’ve completely fallen out with the investor. And I’m really regretful for that. Because I, you know, confrontation isn’t something I want in my life. And this wasn’t me walking into a boardroom, pitching a load of cold heartless people. This was somebody who clearly saw something in me and wanted to invest in me. And I think that actually there was, you know, there was a, there was a lack of personality fit to some degree, which may be in all, you know, cause it’s very easy to get excited when someone offers you 2 million quid. You know, you think this is going to be great. I know it’s going to be just like before, but this time, you know, I’ve got access to Citi Cash. I’m not going to have to pitch to anyone. You know, from that perspective, of course, I was bloody excited. But I guess that some of what I want to put through in this case study is don’t get too excited. Stop for a second. Who is it that you’re taking the money from You know, what are the differences? I didn’t stop for a minute and think, you know, this is somebody who’s never built anything from scratch. I mean, actually, when I asked him why he wanted to do the project, that was one of the things that he said to me. You know, we don’t build things from scratch. I really would love to be part of this journey because I’d love to see how it’s done. I’d love to be able to contribute to that. But then equally as well, when you stand in someone else’s shoes, this was investor that had been in the same job for 27 years. And right when he offered us the investment, or a few months after he offered us the investment, he got a new job. So whereas before, you’re probably sitting in a job for 27 years, you know, whereas before, if you’ve sat in a job for 27 years, I imagine you can do it with your eyes closed. You’re probably a bit bored and you think, actually, I’ve got some cash in the bank, I like this person, this probably this is going to be fun. It’d be really interesting to see how they build it from nothing. I’m sure that’s what it was. And then all of a sudden you change jobs, you go up even more into the stratosphere of finance. And there’s probably not much time for some poxy little startup with, you know, and I can be annoying. I talk too much. Sometimes I don’t listen enough, you know, or whatever that whatever that confusion was. Actually, the blame is mine. And while I may disagree that perhaps some behavior could have been better in terms of being very clear, and I would make this to any investor, it’s fine if somebody needs more money. Someone needs 2 million, then turn around and say, I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you 500 go out and raise the rest. And then you go out and raise it before you start a project. That would have been another lesson for me. And then I think the other thing is that, you know, you, when it comes to that equity, I think it’s very important to give equity to the team. But I also think it’s very important not to give too much. That pool really does have to be earned. Isn’t it funny, how do dogs know the time, like literally to the second? We’re almost at 1723, just gone to the kitchen for a little, yeah, to say, by the way, love, it’s dinner. Dog! Come here! Now! Come here! Now! Go in the kitchen and stand there and shout at the chef. Get into the bed! Bed! Yeah, you can mumble. Dinner’s going to be five minutes late. You can wait. Dog is like, it’s almost human. So I guess the end of that story is I did get my equity back and I did come to an arrangement with the investor. And the cap table now looks exactly as it should look. And I’m in a strong position now to go and get, you know, to go and raise again. And I’ve been working hard on my network to make that happen. But I’m painfully aware that I’m a solo female founder, which makes it much harder. We get far less muscle. I get much less. Sorry, this poor thing is going to have to wait. Enough. So. Give me a second. Sorry. [Ben Ornstein]: No, no worries. Take your time. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Right. That’s muscle. Sorry, but you got you got wars. So, yeah, I I wish I had had I wish I’d been braver. You know, I’m I’m really Dutch. And I sometimes say, you know, it stings for the first 10 and then you get used to it. Because I say a lot of things which I know sometimes shock people, but I am really straight. I really would rather say what I think and do it with kindness. I’m not rude or anything, but I like knowing where I stand. And I think some of this journey has been very confusing for me. But I think some of it might be because it’s luxury and it’s jewelry and it’s a sexy industry. And I think a lot of people would like the idea of being associated with that kind of of kind of luxury goods. But I think that the lessons that I’ve learned is that even if you like an investor, I think you need to learn a lot more about them. I think you need to kind of really look at, you know, what they’ve done before. Are they a good fit for your business? Is it just because they believe in you? You know, make sure that that’s on paper, because then at least you can turn around and say, but hang on a minute, what we agreed. And I, and I know that it’s very rare that people have gone through the, well, I would, I’d like to think it’s rare that people have gone through quite the confusion or quite the difficulty to get my equity back. And I’m delighted to have it, but now I’m also in a race against time to find the money. You know what I mean? So, yeah, so that’s my experience. And then along On the way, I’ve obviously, now I’ve got my equity back, I have gone out and raised. And this is another bit you’re going to have to make, we’re going to have to think a little bit. I do get to read this before it’s published, right? [Ben Ornstein]: Of course, yes. Okay. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: And this is the other bit where I think it’s a topical one, so it needs some articulation. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Raising money. A solo female founder, the odds are stacked against you. I think that last year we got less than 2% of the money, but there’s also a darker side to it. And I think that, you know, I’m trying to think of how I can articulate it as well. I had one that I say, part of what I want to do with Omniq is I would like to introduce blockchain. I know everyone says blockchain, AI, they’re all the buzzwords, but for me, blockchain or digital wallets in particular would allow you to track serial numbers. It would enhance the provenance of jewelry. I think it will stop the circulation of fakes much faster. And I think that it will stop the ability to fence stolen goods in quite the same way. And I really believe with us being such a forefront of… Until very recently, we were the only dedicated marketplace for vintage jewelry. There’s lots of other sites that sell vintage jewelry, but they’ll sell lots of other things beside it too. I would really like to be at the forefront of how we use the tech to really transform this industry. Everything from using AI to authenticate jewelry, You know, I think that there’s some really exciting things that we can do with tech, specifically to old jewels. And I think that the vintage industry does need shaking up. You know, these are Fauci antique dealers who are absolutely wonderful, but there’s one I go to, he’s got, he hasn’t got a computer, he does everything paper, there’s paper everywhere, you know, and a lot of them operate between themselves, you know, they sort of, they’re exchanging they don’t have websites, they don’t deal with the public. But I think that some of the world’s best jewelry is found in people’s jewelry boxes. And I think if we can open up the peer-to-peer side of Omniq, we could truly scale this business. But because I’m so dedicated to making sure that the pieces that we sell are authentic, we have to find a way to be able to authenticate them at scale globally. So even if AI just allowed me to weed out definite fakes, and then there was a smaller percentage, so you don’t have to check all of the jewelry, you can say, no, we don’t want that, we don’t want that, we don’t want that. Then even if it has to be inspected on a manual level to start with, but I would love to get to a point where if we can authenticate jewelry through AI online, I mean, the ability to make this scale is It’s huge and super excites me. So now my funding strategy is this. All of this arguing and not having the budget and having to make money go further and finding other ways to keep the momentum going, which we’ve done. We sell in a shop now, we do pop-up stores, we do special jewelry nights, we do Christmas fairs. So we found ways to keep sales strong, but now we need to get sales. We need to really get over the dip that we’ve had, prove our sales, and then go for a bigger round. So at the moment, I’m doing a friends and family round for up to 500,000. And then my next round would be 2 million. And I want to use the friends and family round to put everything in the past behind us because it’s all now nice and tidy, which is great. And now push forward and find an investor that can really get behind the brand who can help us effectively really get the most out of Q4, which is the really big jewelry buying season. And then in the new year, we will start to think about a round where we can really go back to having the kind of budgets that’s going to allow us to take back that momentum. And I’m very lucky because we’ve got first mover advantage. And today, you know, there’s one platform in the U.S. That is competition to us. But as much as we sell to the U.S., right now, you know, our market is the U.K., so I don’t see them in the same competition. And actually, I know the lady who runs it, and we kind of work together anyway, if I’m looking for a specific piece of jewelry, she’s the first one I call. So there’s a lot of work to do. And if I’m going to be really honest with you, as much as I have thought tooth and nail for three years to fix fundamentally what was my own fault, there’s also a very real chance I won’t find the money in time and actually I’m going to pay the ultimate price for that, which would be a real shame because it’s four years on November the 20th and I would hate to think that we don’t see it through. But I also know that I’m an optimist and a grafter and I I truly believe that that’s not gonna happen. So you’ll have to watch this space and see if we find the money. [Ben Ornstein]: Wow. What a journey you’ve been on. I haven’t even been able to ask any of the questions that I actually asked for the case study. Some of them will be covered, especially the advice section, obviously. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Have you got anything else? Ask me what the others are. Sorry, I’ve just talked to you for an hour. No, it was amazing. [Ben Ornstein]: a podcast and I’m like, oh my God, this story would have just been incredible for the podcast if we could find a way to do that. But yeah, so amazing story. That’s incredible. So one of them is actually like, so you’ve raised, so you said 1.2, so you got 700, 700 K pounds from someone else? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So no, so the investor in the end, I think the original investor ended putting up a million. Okay. Okay. He forced me to sign a loan note to get my equity back. So I have a loan note against the equity and he retains 10%. An advisor has two, I have the rest. And then, so yeah, so the 1.2, one he put in and then I got two small friends and family round and the rest I put in myself. Partly because the other piece of advice is if you’ve got it and you’re able to do it, because I think it shows other investors that you’re really serious about this business. [Ben Ornstein]: Absolutely. No, it definitely does. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: And the other ones that I probably missed. [Ben Ornstein]: Well, so you talked about what you plan to use the head of the money ahead of time for, I can definitely find stuff for that answer. Cause you talked about like all the marketing campaigns and all that. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: And the money now, the friends and family round is really going to go into keeping us lean, keeping the lights on, putting everything we can into marketing to make as many sales as possible. The two million that I want is very much going to be dedicated to upgrading the tech. We really did do MVP at the beginning, and it was like a Shopify template that we butchered to hell and back. So I think it’s time for a re-platform. And I want to be able to open up the peer-to-peer, and I want to be able to open up the Hong Kong market. It’s my first rollout. [Ben Ornstein]: Awesome. Another one was, you know, how’d you decide which investors would be a good fit? I think I can probably find stuff from, from, I guess it would be the anti answer of, I mean, I think, yeah. How, what was the question? The actual question was, how did you decide which investors would be a good fit? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Um, my, well, in terms of, I actually do have one. So when I put the deck out, cause I’ve had been putting a deck out, um, I actually got an offer. And they valued us at 10 million and really liked the team. I grew up in Portugal. All the coders were Portuguese, would have made life really easy. Everybody understood each other, really liked what they did. And they were blockchain specialists, massively interested. And then they said, well, we just need you to meet the CEO. So the CEO, first he invites me for dinner at his private dining room, which I didn’t like the sound of at all. One was a little bit like that. And that’s where it all went wrong. So then we met at the office and he was the oddest man. He looked like a cross between Dominic West and Dominic West and William Shatner. And once you see it, you can’t, you can’t see it. And he was quite a controversial figure. Like it was in the paper. There was a few things in the paper about him that I’d read that I was a bit like, because you do need to do due diligence. You need to search, you need to Ideally, you know, I’ve got a good friend who’s a lawyer that sometimes does background checks for me or just sort of looks on the register and helps me out. Ask around who knows them. Go on LinkedIn. Do you have mutual connections? Who introduced you? Do you trust them? What have they done before? You know, those are all the kind of But with him, I went into it kind of skeptical because he really was a really controversial figure. He’s called Christian Naga Hansen. And I went to meet him and he sort of swaggered into the office. And he sat down and the first thing he said to me was, you know, I can give anyone money. What makes you so extraordinary? Wow. And I remember at the time I just laughed and I went, is that seriously your opening line? And I said, go on then, I’ll let you have it. I’ll go with it. And he sort of looked at me like, what do you mean I’ll let you have it? And I said, I actually hold the world record for shopping for the United Kingdom. And the actual competition was all about saving money. And I said, and that proves that I can be the most, the best founder because I’m frugal. I said, so that’s what makes me an exception. And then he thought about it a minute and he went, the world record for shopping. If you like kicked him, I went, yeah, that’s serious. And he went, I like you. And that was nice breakup, but it was a weird one. And then at some point he got up and just disappeared and said, I could go for dinner with his PA. And then he sort of pitched up later and he looked a little worse for wear, but it was late. Maybe he was just tired where he just sat down and said, I give you the money, but you’ve got till tomorrow five o’clock to sign. And I just thought, who is this chap? He was just so off the wall and everything that I’ve read that I basically called him out and said, listen, I think you’re very interesting and you’re clearly quite a fun guy and you take enormous risks. But I’m afraid that’s a risk too far for me. If I took your money, I feel like I’d be walking into the casino and putting Omnicom black. And after three and a half years work, I’m just not prepared to do that. So I turned down, I turned down the valuation. I turned down the offer. They wanted 20% the business and they gave me a 10 million valuation. So that was a very good example of he just didn’t feel right. And actually, as it turned out, my gut was right because about a month later, the board sacked him and all hell broke loose and he was all over the press and it all got a little bit ugly for a while. So sometimes you do have to follow your gut. And unfortunately, my gut about the original investor that I had was right, because I do think he’s a good person. I don’t want to throw this investor under the bus. He gave me a million pounds. He drip fed me a million pounds, which is not quite the same because it doesn’t allow you to plan in the same way. You can’t plan a full roadmap because you never know how much money you’ve got. But I don’t want to underestimate that somebody gave me seven figures of their hard-earned cash, and I never want to come across as ungrateful. I wish that we had sorted out the equity previously. It’s caused three years of incredible stress. I will admit that I had a couple of anxiety attacks last year. And, you know, for a girl that lost her parents in her late 20s, early 30s, I’ve got to be honest with you, if that didn’t break me, I didn’t think anything could. But when you find yourself on the floor shaking like a shitting dog, it is not fun. I was, and they are, you can’t help when they come. That was the scary thing. Like I didn’t even recognize it. I sort of went white, I went hot, I went cold, I threw up. I was like, I went to the doctor, what’s wrong with me? She’s like, you’re having anxiety attacks. And I’m like, what? Didn’t sign up for this. And I don’t, you know, I’m a very confident girl. I can take an awful lot in my stride, but being an entrepreneur is fucking hard. It is, you know, and you hear people go, you know, but if it was easy, everybody would do it. Yeah. So I don’t, The actual comprehension of quite how hard it is, I don’t think any founder fully takes on board, especially not when it’s a project where we’re talking millions of investment, not a few hundred grand. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Ben Ornstein]: Wow. Yeah, no, that’s great. What other question? How did you get in touch with investors? Your story in the bar will be able. What about the other investors? That you’ve been pitching to? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So the ones so really like my dad taught me that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I my dad was a real raconteur. Very lucky I got that gene or I’d like to think I’ve got that gene. I can tell a story or two. I I’m quite personal. I’m quite sociable. I’m an extrovert. I’m sort of like there’s parts of me where I’m introverted, but I like social gatherings. I like meeting new people. I’m fascinated by other people’s stories. I am a member of the British American Project. I was listed in the Cavazio Future 500 list. I do public speaking. So I have the opportunity to be around people from all walks of life. And so I think building up your network is one. Hang on a minute. Shit. Sorry, it’s a wasp and I’m allergic. Go because I don’t fancy this cool ending with me getting an adrenaline pan out. Right, get out. Please go. Where’s my EpiPen? It’s in my bag. Okay, sorry. I never, I don’t think I, where do you see wasps in England in fucking October? That’s extraordinary. Sorry, all the expletives. I’m a bit foul-mouthed. I’m Dutch, I can’t answer. I’m sorry. You’re definitely going to have to filter those out. So networking, go to stuff, you know, don’t sit at home. One second, please. Don’t sit at home. I say yes a lot. I say yes to all sorts of stuff. Build your personal brand. Find a social media platform that you love. For me, it’s Twitter. Maybe business-wide, people say it’s LinkedIn, but the one that I feel most comfortable on is Twitter. And I think that if you can be yourself as much as possible, then I find the medium that works for you is kind of my answer. Be kind to people, pay it forward, help other people, put yourself out there. You know, when you help other people, I mean, I, I had one guy who’s a VC and he said, God, I really need this duck done. Someone’s let me down. I said, give it to me. I’ll do it. I didn’t do it. I got my designer to do it. She’s sitting in the Ukraine. She did it in, I don’t know, three hours. It cost me, I think something like 50 bucks. And he was absolutely blown away by what she did. And, you know, he would open any door for me. He’s invited me to charity events. I’ve ended up becoming… Oh, what the hell is that thing? Sorry. I really need this one. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Sorry. I just can’t believe there’s a wasp here, like, in September. That never happens. I literally, the other day, was thinking, I just could get rid of my EpiPen now. I don’t normally walk around with it in the winter. What’s wrong, Daphne? Get out of the way. Sorry. God, it’s chaos. Go on, okay. So, I keep losing my train of thought now. So, yeah, network, basically. Do kind things for others. Don’t ask for anything in return. You get out what you put in. Go on, Daphne, up. Go on, get up. Sounds that one. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, that’s good. I one of them is roughly how many investors did you reach out to? So, well, technically it was zero. It was at the Yeah. Because you think about like coal outreach and that kind of stuff. You kind of didn’t. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I mean, the first one, the one that I didn’t get funding from because I walked away from it. I only went to one person and my mother introduced me to him because he ate in the restaurant and he said he works e-commerce and so my mom introduced me. The second one I met through work. He was a non-executive director at an agency I was at. The third one I met through mutual friends because of the networking I’d done and he worked in private equity. But how about other places I found them? Apart from events, for example, I recently spoke on a panel and there were 120 investors in the room. It frightened the living daylights out of me. The ex-chancellor, the ex-checker was on the panel. I was so overwhelmed. Actually finding the courage to do it has really served me well because three of my pitches this week have come from that. You know, there’s a couple of lists knocking around. There’s an e-commerce list, a seed list, and somebody’s very good at updating them. I think Jamie Hartford on LinkedIn is an incredible human being. He does incredible stuff to help founders, Jan Sedra, check that name because I’d hate to name check him badly. He’s another one that works with e-commerce or he works with founders to help them get ready, align themselves, practice, get them ready for investment. And he has a network of investors. He’s a really great guy who I do some work with. So I think that finding your tribe on LinkedIn, like I just, I’m a more of a viewer. I read more than I participate on LinkedIn, but the people that I follow, it’s like a little, it’s like a little education stream. I love it. They share such great advice. They give you hindsight that they’ve got from years of experience. So any lists like that, and then warm intros, you know, you’d be amazed if you ask, do you know anyone who works for a family office? Do you know anyone who works in luxury goods? You know, like just ask. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: It’s always been my experience of life. [Ben Ornstein]: Absolutely. And when you were pitching, what did you emphasize in the pitch? I mean, I think you kind of talked about that a little bit. You said, you know, using AI and blockchain to fully be able to, you know, verify authenticity, but… [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I made a video. I made a video. I did a trailer of my deck to try, like, say, for example, I’ll share it with you. Let me find it. I’m sorry, I’m smoking my I’ve been working my ass off all day and I have dinner tonight, so this is pretty much my break. I know that smoking is a really dirty, nasty habit. Oh, fucking hell. It’s right in my fucking light bulb, this thing. What is it? Sorry. Oh, bugger. Is it a bee? Is it a wasp? I think it’s just a giant fly. Sorry, I don’t mean to I’d be an idiot but I just need to know because I really don’t. Let me see if I can shoo it out without pissing it off. Where is it going? Go out. Sorry. This is a first. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Okay, so I’ll have the video slide on me. So, and actually I had a lot of traction from this, this video has gone down well. And I got somebody to do it on, um, I found someone on freelancer.net because I did the script. I did the script on AI and then I edited it myself. And then I found someone on freelancer.com and they basically created this really cool video for me. And this is the video. Now, people take two minutes to read a deck. That’s all you get is two minutes before they. So actually visually, I think it’s easier to keep people’s attention. Hold on one second. How do I do this on here? I go on here. There we go. There you go. I’ll see that later. But I’ve been using that to send it out. And then basically then I invite them to ask for the deck, and it’s worked quite well. [Ben Ornstein]: So where did you share this? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: In the chat. [Ben Ornstein]: I don’t see it there. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Oh, I sent it to read AI meeting, direct message, no, to Ben. There we go. You can see it, Ben. [Ben Ornstein]: Perfect. And you have no problem with me sharing this? Oh, it’s public. Okay. Got it. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Public. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: It’s public. And again, I guess that some of it, and this is a little bit on you too, because, you know, I am still raising. So however this case study comes across or however it’s shared, it needs to be handled delicately because I don’t want to put other investors off. I don’t want them to look at me and go, Oh my God, this company’s fucking marred with problems. Do you see what I mean? Hello? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Hello? You back? Hello? [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah, sorry about that. That was, can you hear me? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Yeah. You know, how this case study is put across is it needs to be done delicately because I am still raising, I don’t want them to think, oh, this companies had lots of problems. I want people to look at Omni and go, wow, that founder’s resilient. Didn’t matter what came her way. And all sorts of things come your way, whether it was a mistake I made or something else. There’s all sorts of mistakes that we make. We’re human. That’s the joy of learning, I guess. And I’m very proud of the fact that we got to a point where my equity was returned. He remained as a shareholder. Holder, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. I would have liked to have been a little bit smoother in terms of some of the troubles I faced. But ultimately, I only have myself to blame for that. So I really do want to do this as a way of, without just sort of maybe giving all the details, but just saying your paperwork is important. Because if you find yourself in any kind of equity dispute, you know, it puts investors off, you know, and it makes it harder. In my case, I had no equity to sell. Right. [Ben Ornstein]: I want to make a quick point that this isn’t going to be fully public. What it will be is behind a paywall for founders to see. So that will help. This will help. Okay, great. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I’m just, and I don’t mean to overemphasize the point, but I just think it’s important that it’s presented in a way that it helps founders without hurting me or the perception of Omniq. And I think that some of that is that is a difference. My mentor is one of the most outstanding human beings I’ve ever met, but he’s also one of the non-executive directors of The Big Issue, so he has a very strong charity arm to him, which really aligns with how I live my life because I’ve spent years volunteering for charities. I’m an ambassador for a children’s group. I’ve worked for Crisis at Christmas. Paying it forwards makes me happy. You know, I think that it’s unfair to expect a private equity person who, you know, they don’t, they don’t do that job without walking away with sharp elbows. You know, that, that’s their mindset is how they’re trained. That’s their job and how, if they’re going to be ruthless because that’s, sorry, that’s who they are. That’s, that’s their job to be ruthless then. But it’s different when you’re ruthless with a hundred year old company that you’re, it’s being sold for billions because there’s some kind of contractual niggles, that happens. That’s Big Boys Park. But effectively, sometimes when you’re a founder, you’re also joining the Big Boys Park or you’re suddenly becoming a small fish in a very big pond and there’s quite a few sharks in there. And sometimes people don’t differentiate between the founder and a big corporation because it doesn’t matter to them. It’s just their money and that’s where it’s invested. So to them in their eyes, it’s exactly the same. And not everybody’s going to see things the way that you see things. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Absolutely. [Ben Ornstein]: So I realize we’re way over time. I appreciate you. I’ve got I’ve literally eight I’ve got eight minutes left. So we can go through the rest of these as quick as possible. And if not, I’ll send you these questions. And when I send you the draft, feel free to make comments and then I’ll turn that into like Let’s see if we can scoot through as many as possible. So one of them is about driving emergency among investors. Is that something you did or didn’t really have the ability to? [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I didn’t do it very well. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I am. Yeah, I think that that’s something that I, my skill set could improve on. You know, I recently had a round collapse because the investor wasn’t as liquid thought he was. And I probably waited a little bit too long before I pushed hard enough to realize that. So I directed my energy elsewhere. Again, as soon as it signs, get shit on paper, get it done, and put boundaries in that. And I also would suggest that actually, if you are raising, don’t ever stop raising until the money’s in the bank. Because actually that’s that deal can fall apart. I’ve had one fall apart. As soon as he told me that he was in and he wanted the round and it was coming the following month, it was great. I stopped looking. Equally, I didn’t want the round to be oversubscribed either or too oversubscribed because I was doing this as a friends and family round on a lower valuation. So I genuinely only want to sell the 10% and I thought it was sold. The reality is, is it wasn’t sold because it’s never sold until the money’s in the bank. [Ben Ornstein]: 100%, absolutely. I got some obvious ones for these ones. Biggest challenge that came up and unique or interesting fundraising stories. We got those ones. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: So the unique challenge that came up, well, one was having to, you know, one was it taking a long time to get my equity allocated. The other was, you need to be a little bit careful about how much equity you give to the onboarding team to start with. I had a team who were very frustrated and they were understandably very frustrated. We didn’t have the money we thought we did. And they were the ones that were pulling these great things out of the bag. It wasn’t me that secured US Vogue. I had the foresight to hire the right person because I knew that she could, but she did her job and she got it. So, you know, if I was frustrated, there were other people that were frustrated too. You know, these were big names in the jewelry industry. They wanted to see it fly. But equally, you know, they weren’t going to be working for free. And if we didn’t have the kind of funding that we needed, then, you know, if we didn’t have the kind of funding that we needed, then it wasn’t going to work. Now, ultimately, Ultimately, because this is a jewellery website and because, as I’ve already told you, I’m the techie and that’s sort of the more nerdy side of things, they decided that actually they could do a better job than I. And they went to my investor and suggested exactly that. And actually, I found myself in a Zoom call one day where they were asking four of them who worked, they were contractors, they worked one or two days a week, but they were amazing. They were the top of class in their industry. But equally, they were paid a good salary. They were on good retainers and they had equity. One person had already had their equity doubled from 2% to 4%, which was a lot of money. And people have since told me I was an idiot for doing that. But equally, I also really believe in rewarding hard work. It’s really hard at startup. You’re asking people to do way more hours than they normally do for much less money when they’re actually really qualified And the reality is, is they’re worth every single penny that they’re asking for. And you want to give it to them, but if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. And I think that I was a little probably too generous with that equity because part of it is, is that sometimes your team isn’t always going to understand equity. And sometimes 1% doesn’t sound like very much when you’re contributing a lot. But I found myself in a situation where my management team were asking for percent of the business. And I already had an original investor that was holding onto 100 and didn’t want to give it up. So I couldn’t imagine, I mean, I was like, look, ladies, you’re amazing and I value you and I’m gutted and I understand it and I get your frustration. I’d be as frustrated as you, but it doesn’t usually mean that you go behind someone’s back and try and take their company off them and the door’s over there. But I lost my entire management team. And you know what, actually, that taught me a lot too, because although they were individually all amazing, and they were very, very good at their jobs. There are lots of people in the jewelry industry who are also very good at their jobs. So it wasn’t the end of the world. And we moved on and we pivoted and we rebuilt the team and we’ve carried on. But again, that was a it was it was that was a tough one. Yeah. Being ousted before, you know, no one wants to be ousted. [Ben Ornstein]: Right. A hundred percent. You’ve given so much fundraising advice. We can skip that one. Yeah. Who’s an investor you’d recommend other founders work with? Do you have any at the VCs or, or, or angels that, and maybe this is one we just skip over as well. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I mean, it’s a difficult one because I don’t, you know, if you say something like this, this poor person’s going to end up getting absolutely battered. I think that I think that if you’ve Build your network of people. The ones that come from recommendations of people that you know and trust are usually the ones that are good. I think that being appropriate for your rounds, very important. But then equally, when I was dropped in the deep end, I knocked on anyone’s door. I asked all my friends, does anybody know any VC? Anybody in finance, raising money, investment. And even if they were a VC, if they were gonna give me the introduction, I went and knocked on that door anyway, because he might go, look, it’s not quite ready for me, make bill down the road can help you kind of thing. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Right. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: Absolutely. So, yeah, build up your network, you know, read, you know, go on Twitter. Who are the people celebrating? Who are companies that are like yours? You know, I don’t know who, you know, I went and had a look at who’s, who invested in Investia, who’s invested in First Dibs, who’s invested in the RealReal, is there any common denominators? Is there one person in the industry, you know, in her day, I know that she doesn’t really invest in anymore, but Carmen Busquets was everybody’s dream investor. That lady had the Midas touch and I don’t know her personally, but I was gutted because actually at a point when I approached her, she said, you know, I don’t want to be the richest person in the graveyard and I’m taking a step back from investing. But there are key people. But if you read Twitter, LinkedIn and look at what’s going on in those circles and find people like Jamie Hartford and Jeanne Sedra, and there’s another guy who’s really great at storytelling. It’ll come to me. But people like that, you’ll find your way. It just takes research. There is no golden ticket where someone goes, here’s a list. Yeah, they’re all going to give you money. You’ll get the list, but, you know, there’ll probably be four or five people on it that would probably be appropriate. And then you’ve really got to do the research on LinkedIn to work out who they are. Don’t scattergun. You know, quality is bad. Than quantity. [Ben Ornstein]: Yep. Absolutely. And the next question was, there’s only two more. Are there any resources you’d recommend to founders that was basically LinkedIn? And then I’ll try to find some of those specific people. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I mean, it depends, you know, it depends what you’re looking for. I mean, there’s a couple of, I always forget the names of them because they just get added to my notion. I think that I love freelancer.com. I think it’s a great, I think it’s a great platform to be able to find people to help you do something that you’re not very good at for a very reasonable amount of money. So I think that’s a great platform. I think that, you know, if you’re a woman, then Solo Female Founder, there’s some great platforms like Female Founders Rise. Emily Faust on LinkedIn is a force of nature. I love her stories and what she shares on there. And there’s a few others around, you know, look for this you know if you are a minority look for people that specialize in your minority you know if you’ve got a niche find people who special specialize in your niche [Ben Ornstein]: they’ll relate to you better definitely that’s great and the last question do you have any hot takes regarding the fundraising process I feel like what do you mean by hot takes things that maybe not everyone agrees with you on. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: It disturbs me. Now we’re going to have to find a way to put this not in quite so Dutch way. It disturbs me that there are some investors who, when you as a single female founder approach them for investment, The investment comes with some strings or conditions. You know, I’ve been to a business lunch where I was invited to go and pitch. And when I turned up at the table, there was a bottle of champagne on ice. And I looked at him and said, oh, that’s nice. Do male founders get that? And he looked a bit embarrassed. And that was the idea behind it. You know, I had a pitch. I had another pitch. Someone left me a voice note on my WhatsApp. Married, got kids. You know, I think you’re a great founder. I think you’re, you know, you are fascinating. I really enjoyed our lunch and, you know, I think you’ve got drive and blew an awful lot of smoke up my ass before then telling me he was, but, but he said he was driving down. He said he was, but all he could actually think about was my décollage. And I took a moment where I was a little bit stunned and then said, because I speak Brunch and said, And yeah, that’s all well and good saying, you know, it’s a nice fancy French word, but I’ve just pitched you a business and you just told me I’ve got a great pair of tits. That’s not okay. It’s 2024. And that still happens. And I find that very uncomfortable. It was the reason that I turned down the investment when I was 23. And that was a slightly uglier situation, but it happens. You look at me too. If you look at, you know, we live in a world where there are some people who think that they can take more than that’s being asked. And I’m a very confident girl and I have no issues with saying, Oh, that’s nice. You know, I see the champagne to mail founders get that. Um, but it’s, yeah, there’s a, and it’s certainly not something I want to dwell on, but I find that it was part of why I found raising money. So daunting. [Ben Ornstein]: Yeah. Yeah, that’s some interesting people in the world, that’s for sure. But Amanda, this has been incredible. I am so grateful for your time, these stories. This one’s going to be a very unique case study to put together. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I thought so. I thought that you might come to that conclusion. [Ben Ornstein]: That’s for sure. And I thank you so much for the extra time and I know It’s your dog is probably self-hungry, but yeah. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: He’s actually in such a bad mood and he’s actually, he’s just buggered off. He’s not even in my room anymore. [Ben Ornstein]: He must’ve been listening in. I’m just kidding. Yeah. [Amanda Zuydervelt]: I think he’d had enough of me by then. Thank you very much. I do have to run because I actually have a pitch tonight. He was a client that came in. I had a client come in and I asked what he did for a living and he invested in seed rounds and he was there buying a present for Um, his wife, his wife very sadly passed away. Um, and six months later, I’m going to go and pitch now on me. So wish me luck. And, um, please, please be very careful as I’ve, I’ve been very, I’ve tried to be kind and honest because I believe that you get the best from that. But some of the information that I’ve given you needs to be handled relatively, you know, it needs to be handled sensitively. Sensitively, and how that’s put across before it’s published, I would really like to see. [Ben Ornstein]: You will 100% get to see it. I will be fair, as you said in the beginning, and I will let you go. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Amazing. Thanks.

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