- Platform: zoom
- Attendees: Ben Ornstein, Kat Dey (ettitude)
- Source: Read.ai 01JBCY3MX9WFECB4K4Q302FNXX (via Ben Ornstein’s account, imported 2026-08-06)
Transcript
Kat Dey (ettitude): Hey, Kat. Hey, how’s it going? Pretty good. How are you doing? Good. Hey, Ben. Ben Ornstein: Is that my read AI guy in here? Kat Dey (ettitude): Yeah, I have one. Perfect. Ben Ornstein: I’ll tell you why I need that in a second. But yeah, nice to meet you. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Same. Ben Ornstein: So how much context do you have for this call? Like none. Yeah, well, so I work with a founder named Michael Hauk. Do you know Hauk and Hauk’s newsletter? Kat Dey (ettitude): No. Ben Ornstein: So Hauk has he’s a former founder, former founder and founder himself. He raised $50 million from A16Z for his last company, Launch House. And now he is the founder of a bootstrapped company and doing a whole bunch of other stuff as well. One of those things that he wanted to release was Well, he has a startup newsletter with a peak about 100,000 subscribers, founders, aspiring founders, VCs, a bunch of stuff like that audience. Another resource he wanted to create was something for founders for fundraising. And we figured what better way to do that than other than by actually speaking with founders themselves who have done it. So that is what our call is for today. We've done about 75 of these and from founders across all different industries, all different regions, all different stages, and each one of them is awesome. So that's what this call is today. It would be another one of those conversations. And yeah, I'll leave it at that. Kat Dey (ettitude): Any questions you have? No. To end up in and which format? Yes. Ben Ornstein: So the Read AI guy, thank you for asking that, the Read AI guy is in here because I'm going to turn this conversation, this video conversation into a text-based document. The video will go nowhere. It is just to create the, just for us, and then to create the case study, which is a text-based document. Where it's going to end up is going to be behind a paywall for how audience for the premium subscribers to be able to access this case study library. Kat Dey (ettitude): Okay, so I see fundraising case study, Beehive, that's like an example, right? Beehive is one of the examples, yes. Ben Ornstein: And actually it's through Beehive as well, which is where we have the case study base. Kat Dey (ettitude): Oh, Beehive is a case study, like what is BF is an email newsletter platform. Ah, OK. Yeah, that's the only case study I see. Are there more? Ben Ornstein: So yeah, there are about 75 of them. We have one of them public right now, I believe. But yeah, there's about 75 of them. Kat Dey (ettitude): OK. Is there a way for me to see one as an example? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, so after this, when we post this, I'm going to give you access to as a thank you to to like a lifetime premium subscription Okay, you'll be able oh And and one thing I forgot to mention is you'll get you'll be able to see this before it goes live I'm gonna send you a draft of it. You can okay it you can say hey, I didn't want to say this Hey, I actually want to change this and of course, you'll get that before it goes Okay. Kat Dey (ettitude): Yeah, that's awesome Yeah, I can see the archive And there are actually not many case studies in there. There's like different kinds of posts, you know, why founders should hire a chief of staff, those kinds of things. So that's the newsletter itself. Yeah. Oh, OK. So I should subscribe and get that content. Ben Ornstein: But this is all the past content. Yeah. Kat Dey (ettitude): He releases newsletters every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. OK. And the fundraising case studies, they will not be in the archive, where will they live? Ben Ornstein: So every Saturday to all 60 plus thousand readers, we show which new case studies have been added to the library each week. But those all 60,000 will not get access to read it. Only the premium subscribers will actually be able to read the case study. So you do get, you know, shown to everyone, but only only the readers will read the entire case. Kat Dey (ettitude): Yeah, yeah, the premiere. Okay, cool. Sounds amazing. Let me know how you want to start. Ben Ornstein: Amazing. So yeah, Kat, if you could briefly introduce yourself and your startup, that'd be great. Kat Dey (ettitude): Hi, I'm Kat Day. I'm the co-founder and president of Attitude. I joined Attitude in 2018. When Attitude was already four years So my co-founder and CEO of the company, Phoebe Yu, founded the company in Australia. She's a textile expert and she founded this company with the vision to transform the textile industry. We are a next generation materials company and we have pioneered new fibers that we can then turn into yarns and textiles that are better for you and for the planet. And we have a brand. That uses this technology. The brand is called Attitude, which stands for Eco Attitude, and it makes home goods, the best sheets in the world. Literally, that's why I joined as co-founder is because Phoebe sent me the sheets in 2018, and I had the best sleep of my life. I loved them. They were just so incredibly soft, so breathable, very natural feeling, very luxurious feeling, and I was blown away. And I realized this is the company I need to join and help scale. And my previous background was in health and wellness and startups, growing companies, consumer brands. I founded, scaled and sold a mission-driven food company before joining Attitude as a co-founder. That company was named number three fastest growing company in New York before it was acquired in 2017. So I was very familiar with the trends in the consumer industry for more health and wellness, which starts with food, organic food, natural, but then went into clean beauty, making sure that whatever you're putting on your skin is equally clean and not full of toxic chemicals and fragrances. And then I was very excited about Attitude when Phoebe reached out to me, that Attitude does not use any harmful chemicals to to create its textiles. And we use regenerative plants, and we don't deplete the planet of its resources, unlike traditional materials like cotton, tree-based, or other materials that are animal-based. So that was what excited me about joining the company. And since then, we've grown tremendously, and we're able to raise some funding to fuel some of that growth. Ben Ornstein: Amazing. Very cool background. Very interesting. Actually, you led right into the end of your answer into the next question of, you know, talking about the fundraising journey. So, you know, if you could tell me how many rounds of funding you've raised, if you're comfortable, the valuations those rounds were raised at, and, you know, how long those rounds took to close? Kat Dey (ettitude): Yeah, absolutely. So when I joined in 2018, we already had the technology in place. And we already had proof of product as well. As well as revenue. And the reason I joined is because I absolutely love the product and saw the potential. So I could come in with my skill set of scaling a brand, a consumer brand, and also with fundraising connections I had in New York City to help this company grow. And we decided to apply to an incubator in New York called ERA, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. And completed the program. It's a four-month program similar to Y Combinator and many others, where your goal is to prove product market fit and then start to raise capital. And so that's what we did. Even though we had a business already with the product in Australia, it was almost like a brand new company in the US with a new consumer, different positioning and thinking about price points, and what are we talking about? How are we marketing the product? So our first round of, or our first capital in was this accelerator. It was about 100K. I don't remember how much percentage equity they took, but it is common stock that most of these incubators take. So they're aligned with the founders. They have the same incentives. And they also help to introduce you to angel investors as well as VCs, early stage investors, for you to raise your pre-seed or seed round. And so that's what we did. After the incubator, we started to raise our pre-seed, which was mostly from angel investors. And a lot of these angel investors were partners at early stage seed funds who ended up later leading our price round. And that was our 2020 priced round. The total that we raised was $3 million between the pre-seed and the seed. And I would say that was typical in the space. And we actually closed it at the worst time ever, which was March 2020, when the world collapsed due to COVID. And nobody knew what would happen. And we had to convince investors that our business would stay afloat. And if it needed to shut down, they would not lose their investment. Or if it needed to shut down temporarily, what we would do to keep the lights on and make sure that we could come back when the world opened up again. It turned out that e-commerce companies benefited from shutdowns of the COVID era. Especially home goods companies. So we actually skyrocketed in terms of revenue and tripled the business in the next year. And we’re able to raise additional funding just a few months later at a slightly higher valuation. So that was awesome and continued to grow the business and really focused on delivering on our promise to investors, growing our revenue, putting in place infrastructure for scaling the business, and also working on our technology. Part of what we were doing was becoming a B Corp. Corp is a certification that ensures that the company is adhering to the highest standards of ethical business practices, sustainability, et cetera. And we actually got a very high score as part of that process. We had to go through several certifications just for our own brand, including a lifecycle assessment, which is a third-party quantification of how many resources your product actually uses. And the resulting, well, the results were astounding. It proved that we 98% of water and 38% of CO2 versus the main conventional material embedding, which is cotton. And we were blown away by that. We knew that our material was sustainable because we were not using any toxic chemicals and we were not growing an extremely dirty and thirsty crop like cotton. We were leveraging regenerative plants like bamboo with an incredibly clean process, unlike previous bamboo processing, but we didn’t have the third-party quantified data. So once we got the quantified data, we realized that we had a much bigger mission than just growing our brand, that we needed to power other home goods and apparel brands, the users of textiles, to help them replace conventional, toxic, unsustainable materials in their clients. And that’s how our B2B business vision was born. And with that vision, we realized that our business could become in the billions as far as valuation. And so for that, we needed to raise additional capital. So we decided to go out and raise a seed extension because we didn’t quite yet have a B2B business. We just had a vision for one. We started to raise capital on a unpriced round. We use a safe note to raise the seed extension to help us get to milestones that would demonstrate that there is adoption and interest from the industry for these materials. And that’s what we did. So we actually raised about six million dollars on the seed extension from 2022 to 2024. So So it was actually a rolling close. We kept taking on the money until we got more and more validation and proof points to be ready for a Series A And we’re now in the process of raising a Series A Ben Ornstein: And that’s where we are. Wow. What a journey. Closing in March of 2020. That’s pretty incredible. Yes. What was the split between the pre-seed and the seed amount? Kat Dey (ettitude): About equal. Was 1.5 and 1.5 something like that. And so the price round is usually when you convert all of your convertible notes. And that’s what we had in the precede. Ben Ornstein: Awesome. Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. You guys have been around an incredible journey. Kat Dey (ettitude): That’s very exciting. Ben Ornstein: Yeah. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: So you kind of already talked about this a little bit, but you know, what did you of time to use the money for? Kat Dey (ettitude): Well, in the beginning, our strategy was to grow our brand. So a lot of the uses of funds went towards brand building, brand awareness, marketing, as well as some inventory and product development, talent. So we did use non-dilutive funding as well that was available to us as a physical goods company. So we actually had a $4 million line of credit from Assemble Brands, which is a great capital partner for consumer brands with physical goods. So we started working with them in 2018, and that helped us stretch our dollars so much faster and didn't require us to dilute as founders as much because we didn't need to raise equity in order to fund inventory. So that was a tool for us to use. So the rest of the equity capital actually went towards building the company, R&D, talent, marketing, distribution, etc. Awesome. Ben Ornstein: And so when you got in touch with investors, how did you decide which ones would be a good fit? Kat Dey (ettitude): For us, it was very easy. We're a mission driven company. So we were working for investors that were aligned with our values. And fortunately, everybody is on our cap table. So it was actually a mission-driven impact investor that led our seed. It's called Drumbeat Ventures. They only focus on seed. And their focus is to find companies with a mission because those companies tend to deliver higher returns, is their thesis. Because the motivation is there for everybody in the team to do the best they can. It's more than just creating a good product that can solve a problem. Hopefully it's a problem that aligns with their values, that makes them get up in the morning and actually do the work. So that was a fantastic investor that was on our board for a long time. And still is on the board as an advisor. So that's been really fantastic. And then the seed extension was led by a similar VC that focuses on clean beauty, new materials, fashion, those types of areas that also align with both our industry and values. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Ben Ornstein: And you said Drumbeat Ventures for the first one? Kat Dey (ettitude): Drumbeat, yeah. Drumbeat, cool. Yeah, New York City-based VC and Ignite Excel is a Palo Alto-based VC. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Awesome. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, I totally agree, by the way. That's a great thesis to have. It's like they're driven more, founders are driven more than, and founders and the teams are driven by more than just money. And that is, I think that's a great thesis. Kat Dey (ettitude): Mm-hmm. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: 100%. Ben Ornstein: And so how did you get in touch with these investors? Kat Dey (ettitude): It's a constant networking and outreach and follow-up process. It feels like a second job sometimes to fundraise. So a lot of it is basically through introductions. I have found that those to be the most likely to as opposed to sort of cold outreach. But I've also used, you know, pitch networking events, especially early stages, pitching everywhere I could. There's so many of them. I've used angel networks, where I've pitched, and a lot of it was happening during COVID. So that actually streamlined a lot of the networking because you could literally reach anybody in any part of the world and nobody needed to meet in person anymore. So that opened it up to a wider network of investors. So we have investors from all over the globe, mostly concentrated from the US, but we do have some from Europe and some from Asia. And I think it was because of COVID that we could reach these investors and have these pitches and everybody was open to seeing opportunities to invest in outside of their normal geography. So pitch and pitch events, networking events, introductions. And I've also worked with brokers. So basically broker dealers who introduce you to high net worth or family office types of connections. We have quite a few of those as well in our cap table. And there are some that are, you know, there are lists of specific investors that we've also done cold out reach to people through LinkedIn that were relevant to us or they've invested in similar profile companies. We also have a newsletter for our potential investors that, you know, it's been on and off that I've been, you know, managing it. Sometimes we're more active, sometimes less active when we have more things to share, but we constantly update that list and add new people to it. Usually people that are not just from a cold list somewhere else, but somebody that we've already spoken with, but they didn't invest yet. We put them on this list and keep them updated on our progress. Because I find that for some people, it takes multiple exposures, like in marketing for them to actually pull the trigger and invest. So it's about building a relationship, giving them an update every so often, at least every every six to 12 months, reaching back out and saying, here's what's going on. Or by the way, we have a new round. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Are you interested? Ben Ornstein: Yeah, no, those are great ways to do it. And that leads really well into the next question of roughly how many investors did you reach out to? And if you think about it like a funnel, how many did you reach out to in the first place? How many of those turned into first, second, third meetings? And how many know, resulted in actual investment, rough numbers, obviously. Yeah, I think it's probably in the hundreds. Kat Dey (ettitude): So I mean, some of it is also people that I didn't actually reach out to myself, but someone else reached out to on my behalf, they forwarded the blurb, or, you know, they loaded the idea of maybe a one pager to somebody, so actually don't have the full numbers. Because there were a few people that were outreaching on my behalf, a few brokers. So probably, you know, sub 1000, but, you know, several hundred were exposed to Attitude as an opportunity to invest in. And as far as meetings, I probably took hundreds of meetings, like And then as far as investment, I think we have 50 people. Ben Ornstein: That's a pretty good hit rate. Kat Dey (ettitude): That's not bad. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Ben Ornstein: And when you were doing these pitches, you know, what what did you emphasize in the pitch? Kat Dey (ettitude): Well, it's our technology, it's extremely unique, it's patented, it's trademarked, there's a lot of moat around it, and there's so many benefits to it. And when people feel the product, they're much more convinced. So if I can meet somebody in person or ship them the product, that really helps. And what's amazing is that we have a product for anyone. Everyone sleeps. And it's not an age product. It's something that literally everyone can understand and experience and feel the immediate benefits from sleeping better. And when get somebody to sleep on attitude or at least feel the fabric. That's a win. Ben Ornstein: You're convincing me, now I want it. Good, good. Kat Dey (ettitude): And also to these networking events, I always come with product. As a consumer founder, if you have a product, always bring it with you. Or even if you're a technology founder, like if you can show what it does, like right there, when you meet somebody, your hit rate will increase. Ben Ornstein: That's a great point. That's a great, there's a section a little bit later where we talk about fundraising advice. I'm absolutely gonna include that piece because that is so true. Yeah. And so did you do anything to drive urgency among investors, any FOMO tactics or anything like that? Kat Dey (ettitude): There are some natural FOMO tactics and some manipulated ones never actually used the manipulated ones. For us, it was more like, OK, this is happening now. Do you want to be in it or not? Typically, we'll tell them what the timing is. The thing is, most investors can't make a decision right away. It's really hard for them, especially if they're an institutional. They have to go through their process. They might have a six to eight week process. And so I've actually had a very hard time creating urgency with some of them because they're like, well, we can't meet that timeline, then you miss out. So I usually tell people, you have about four to six weeks to make a decision. And that's enough time usually for most people to do their due diligence. You give them that deadline, but you don't make it unrealistic. Yeah, I don't want to like, I don't want to say it's next week, because then they able to do anything with it. Ben Ornstein: Right. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Right. Kat Dey (ettitude): That makes sense. Especially, you know, the the later stage rounds. The more time they need for diligence. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. No, absolutely. Ben Ornstein: More money at stake, right? Exactly. Kat Dey (ettitude): And they tend to be more sophisticated investors with teams, they're doing the checking and the due diligence and they are understanding the market. So they need that time, especially if it's a new area for them. If they already understand the area, then it's faster. But if they're kind of been investing in something adjacent, but not quite the same, then they need the extra time. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah, a hundred percent. Ben Ornstein: And in retrospect, when we talk about it now, it of course sounds like it was all easy. I mean, you mentioned a couple things, roadblocks that happened, but you know, what, what challenges, biggest challenge that came up during the fundraising process? Kat Dey (ettitude): I think everyone experienced challenges in the last two years. It's been very hard because the funds themselves don't have the money. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Yeah. Kat Dey (ettitude): A lot of GPs had or founding partners had difficulty raising from LPs and that dried up the capital for early stage startups. And so that just made it so much harder. Even if you're talking to investors, they're not ready to deploy. So you're just wasting your time talking to them. Also, a lot of people have shifted their theses because of the turmoil in the macro world. So when people have previously invested in consumer brands, for example, which is my experience, all of those consumer funds overnight investing in brands even though previously they were the backers of some of the best category defining brands. So it became very difficult to find the target investor because all of the ones you would find on a list were no longer doing things that they used to do. And so that made it very challenging and also extremely disappointing for founders in the space because we keep talking to people that are supposed to invest in your space that they're telling you no over and over and over so you kind of just you lose momentum like personally it's hard to hear no so many times so I just needed to shift strategies and not talk to those types of investors because also in conferences you would hear them talk about oh we no longer invest in brands we actually now invest in technology that supports brands okay and I'm not that so let me stop talking to this group of and talk to other people. So for me, it was more about shifting to a different type of investor. It probably delayed our ability to raise from institutional investors. And what we needed to do is fill up the round with smaller family offices that don't have that mandate. They invest in whatever they feel like it. Angel investors, and a few VCs that were open-minded still. So I would say that was the biggest challenge, is shifting the target investor. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, that is very challenging because it comes with a whole different set of issues by switching to a different type of investor. So no, I can imagine that was not easy. Kat Dey (ettitude): It's just trial and error. Once you've spoken to a few, you kind of hear the trend and you realize, OK, there's this thing that's going on. Ben Ornstein: I'm not going to continue to spend my time on something that's not working. Are there any other unique or interesting stories related to fundraising that maybe haven't been brought up yet? Kat Dey (ettitude): Well, as a female founder, we definitely, well, two female founders, you know, experienced some interesting questions, especially pre-COVID. I was fundraising as a visibly pregnant female founder in person at different events and networking and meetings. So we got a lot of questions about my maternity leave and what would happen to the company, which, you know, considering we've been successful since then, That shouldn't be a question that gets asked of female founders because it doesn't get asked of male co-founders who are expecting children. Well, first it's not very visible, but even if they disclosed the information that they had a child coming, nobody would be like, Oh, like how many weeks are you taking off? Like, what are you going to do for your business? How's it going to operate while you're taking time off to be with your family? So that was a unique challenge that, you know, female founders face, especially if they're visibly pregnant, or even if they're not visibly pregnant, sometimes people will wonder, are they going to take time off? Are they going to have kids? And that is very unfair. That is very unfair, especially because female founders, since they only get 2% of all venture capital, tend to outperform. Under-invested founder group that can have outsized performance. Yeah, I totally agree. Ben Ornstein: And I can only imagine the awkward situations that you've been through. I've heard some very interesting ones from the female founders that I've spoken with. It's ridiculous. Questions around maternity leave make no sense to me. If a founder's fundraising, doesn't matter if they're female or male they're in it to win it like it's I don't yeah but about all I'll stop there about that because I could go on for a while with that but if I had my own capital I would probably make it a female only fund personally because you're right two percent of the actual funding dollars and they outperform so there's a crazy opportunity right there but I'll stop there but you've already given some pretty fundraising advice, but are there any other pieces of fundraising advice you'd want to give other founders? Kat Dey (ettitude): I've never been a solo founder in my life. I think it's so important to have a co-founder, in my experience, that have complementary skill sets. So I think that's what's been really successful in both my companies, this one and my previous one, where the co-founders have complementary skill sets and personalities that jive together. We can work well through ups and downs. It's been up and down for every entrepreneurial journey. So I think it's very important to have the right co-founder to be successful in fundraising or in general in your business. But if fundraising is going to be part of your journey, if that's part of your path to success. Your founder, your co-founder needs to be, you know, on the same page, first of all. And there needs to be really clear division of labor. You both need to be on phone calls, especially follow up calls. Usually I'll take the first call, maybe the first couple of calls. And once I know that the investor is interested, I'll introduce them to my co-founder. So I actually spare my co-founder's time and I spend more time in the fundraising and the funnel process so that she only speaks with the people that are truly interested and are likely to invest. And then same thing, then we loop in some of our other executives to make sure that, you know, we don't waste their time on unqualified leads. But yeah, I think it's very important to divide labor, you know, in a way that is, logical for you. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Absolutely. Ben Ornstein: Makes a ton of sense. Who's an investor that you would recommend other founders work with? Kat Dey (ettitude): Well, we're very happy with our seed extension lead investor, Ignite Excel. They're a great VC based in Palo Alto. They are focused specifically on consumer focus, clean tech, clean beauty, fashion, consumer, all kinds of consumer. So they've been great. And also another angel investor in Attitude, Odile Rougeau, who's the general partner of Fab Ventures. So we were a bit late when I discovered them. They only do seed and pre-seed. But she invested personally in Attitude. And I think her network, first of all, is really amazing. She has a network called fab community or something like that. I can send it to you later. They're great, especially for consumer brands. Both of these people are focused on diverse founders. And typically you'll see diverse founders in these categories. But they've been fantastic as far as creating an ecosystem that is collaborative, that is productive and introduce people to each other. So I would say 100% those two people, Claire Chang and Odile Rougeau. Ben Ornstein: Incredible. Awesome. Thank you. Are there any resources you would recommend to founders? This could be books, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, whatever, anything. Kat Dey (ettitude): Sorry, I don't really have a good one. Maybe I'll think of something later. Yeah, not right now. Oh, actually, I mean, the podcast, I kind of stopped, I'm so busy. But for a while, there was a really great podcast. And let me see where I'm subscribed to too many things. One second, you're done. There's a DTC on specifically. Oh, Limited Supply. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Do you know that one? I don't actually. Kat Dey (ettitude): And I'm a huge podcast listener, so I'm surprised I don't know. Ben Ornstein: Well, Limited Supply is specifically for founders of consumer brands. Kat Dey (ettitude): And he talks about all the tools out there that are actually working, not working, some fundraising advice, just in general. I think people have sort of paused on fundraising and really focused on profitability in the last few years. One, because there's no cash available or very limited amount of it. And investors are now looking for that EBITDA in order to invest. And growth has been really challenging due to a lot of changes in the industry. So you're no longer having these crazy growth rates that people used to underwrite at the expense of profitability. Like nobody had profitable businesses, very few did. So that's what people were used to invest in is these fast growing companies, then the growth stopped, slash, you know, got much less exciting. And everybody started to focus on EBITDA, because no more outside capital coming in, you really need to support yourself be sustainable. So I would say, just in general, a great podcast that reflects how people have shifted their business and how he can do it, too. Ben Ornstein: That's awesome. Thank you for that. And our last question here is, do you have any hot takes regarding the fundraising process? Kat Dey (ettitude): Hmm. Hot takes, I mean, it's it takes time. It takes time in either of my companies. I just in the first company I raised seven million dollars for and then exited. This one, it's been almost $9 million at this point and we’re not close to exiting. I think there’s a really long, amazing opportunity and runway for us. It just takes time. And I’ve never, you know, maybe it’s the kind of businesses I’ve been running, but for me, I’ve never gotten like a huge amount of money right away to just sit on. It’s always been, you know, bit here and there a little bit here and there like let’s get to the next milestone what can we do with this cash we’ve never been like here’s 20 million dollars or 10 million dollars and it just instantly hits the bank on day one or you know whatever day it is uh there are cases where that’s the case you get your you know round it closes at the same time everybody sends the check at the same time and now you have a huge chunk of money and you’re deciding how to best use it in the next 18 months. That’s never been my case. I’ve always been, even though, I mean, 9 million is not little. That’s a significant amount of money to raise. It’s been six years, but, you know, we used it to, at different stages for different purposes. So my hot take is there are two ways. The one way is you get all the money at once. And the other way is it’s slow. And dribbling, like trickling in. And both ways are fine. As long as you’re achieving your goals and you’re doing the thing you set out to do, both are absolutely fine. Ben Ornstein: Interesting. So the hot take would be, the thing that people probably wouldn’t fully agree with is that there are multiple ways to get to an exit. Kat Dey (ettitude): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s awesome. Now there are a lot more non-dilutive capital options than there used to be, even though that’s also becoming less available recently just due to the macroeconomic conditions. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: That helped a lot. Kat Dey (ettitude): And I would say between 2018 and 2022, that industry really helped a lot of consumer brands. Before it was not available. When I had my previous startup, that was just not an option. At all. There was either banks, which startups don’t qualify for, or you have to have at least two years of EBITDA, like positive EBITDA, which is hard to do as a fast growing startup. So not available at all, I would say prior to like 2017. And then 2017 through 2022 became a great option. That helped a lot of founders save equity. They didn’t have to raise as much. Now it’s drying up a little bit. It’s getting really tough. So maybe there’s going to be something new. The industry needs some other solutions. Ben Ornstein: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. There is probably going to be something new that comes eventually. And just out of personal curiosity, I won’t include this I think there is something new. Kat Dey (ettitude): There’s something new, at least what I’m feeling, is broker-dealers has become a lot more available to earlier stage companies. It used to be more like, okay, traditional M&A bankers that help you raise Series B plus, and we pay them 30 grand up front, they do a beautiful book, which I did actually with my previous company. Maybe not quite those numbers, but expensive upfront retainer, they start pitching you to different potential strategics and financial sponsors. That’s a process that was available and still is available, especially for companies at later stages. But I think more recently, there’s been an influx of mini investment bankers who come in to help at earlier stages, and they usually take very small retainer, if any, and they take a success fee on helping you raise. So that I think that is a new trend in the new industry that’s cropping up because there are multiple players now and some of them are better than others. I think that’s going to help founders a lot in the next few years. They’re able to tap into non-traditional investors. So those would be not the VCs, but high net worth and family offices. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: No, that’s very interesting. Ben Ornstein: Absolutely. And this won’t be included in the document, but out of personal curiosity, when you think of an exit for Attitude, do you think it’s going to be a sale or would you go public? Kat Dey (ettitude): I think both will be an option for Attitude. So we actually ourselves as two businesses. One is a more mature brand, a home goods brand that’s been operating for now for several years and is now operating profitably. So at some point we’ll want to sell the brand to someone else that could provide an exit to investors or a partial exit, hopefully full exit, but then they’ll have the upside of the B2B business that continues to grow. And that’s a much more nascent business that has a tremendous opportunity to get to a billion dollars valuation because of the technology that we’re continuing to develop to develop and what we already have. So it’s just a massive opportunity. So, yes, I mean, we do see a potential to go public in the future. I think it will take years. So that’s that’s the thing. You know, it’s a it’s a long journey. It sounds very, very exciting now. Ben Ornstein: It seems like you’ve already been on a really exciting one. And it’s awesome. It sounds really cool. Yeah. Well, Kat, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. I think this is going to be a really cool case study. I think it’s going to take about, it shouldn’t take more than a week for me to pull it all together and send you a draft. But I’ll send you a draft. You can edit it, say, hey, I don’t want to say this. Hey, I actually wanted to include this, et cetera. And when you give me the go-ahead, I’ll post it with the rest. UNKNOWN_SPEAKER: Amazing. Kat Dey (ettitude): Thank you so much. Ben Ornstein: Thank you very much.