GoldCapital Client Story: Deveren of Uluru

0:00 The Funding Table: GoldCapital Consulting podcast

[Cold open - highlights from the episode.]

Max: What's going on everybody, and welcome back to The Funding Table, episode number eight. For those of you that are new here, this is a show devoted to all things venture capital, startups, and raising money, with the hope that you avoid some of the costliest mistakes we made on our own journeys. If you're returning, as always - please drop a like below, subscribe, and leave a comment. We're starting to hear from more of you in the comments, which is greatly appreciated, and we'd love to see more suggestions for what to cover on the show. Now, for those of you that tuned in to last week's episode, you'll know that we are doing yet another client story - and we're joined today by the one and only Deveren, who we'll let introduce himself in a bit. I see you trying to chop at the bit there, Deveren - I love that. He's antsy to get started, as are we.

2:13 Meet Max Goldberg, Mike Spidaliere, Sam Poon & Cam Owen

Max: Before we get into the episode, it wouldn't be a Funding Table episode if we didn't go around the table and do our introductions, so you know exactly who you're hearing from. As the host of your show, I'll go first. My name is Max Goldberg. I'm a two-time exited startup founder, Techstars alum, and former investment banker, and I'm currently the founder and managing partner of GoldCapital Consulting, where we help startup founders raise capital. On to numero dos - Mike, welcome back to The Funding Table. Looks like you've upgraded.

Mike: I appreciate it, man - just moved in last week, so I'm starting to populate the bookcases back there and make myself look a little more executive. Mike Spidaliere, great to be back. Multi-time founder, started First Time Founder Capital about three years ago, where we work with early-stage founders to help them get to the point where they're both investable and investor ready.

Max: You'd think in three years you'd have a few more books on that case. When's the last time you actually read a book?

Mike: They're all in boxes right below the screen - still unpacking. Thank you for calling that out live. Last time I read a book was about six hours ago.

Max: Good for you. I don't know where you find the time. He was reading Green Eggs and Ham. Without further ado - resident VC Sam Poon, welcome back to The Funding Table. You look frustrated. What's wrong?

Sam: When you said "the costliest mistakes," I remembered that I messed up my introduction last time. I'm not going to mess up my intro this time. Sam Poon - I was on the venture capital side: diligencing, sourcing companies, taking them all the way to the investment committee before deciding whether to write a check or not. That was from pre-seed to Series B, in a generalist, global capacity, working with general partners with over 40 years of experience, having been among the earliest and biggest investors in your Ubers, Venmo, Beyond Meat, Facebook. Really happy to be here, guys.

Max: We're happy to have you back, Sam. And look - it's real empathy. A VC can bomb a pitch too. Turning it over to Cam - usually last in rotation, but with these client stories, in the second-to-last seat: Cam Owen, your favorite enemy or superhero depending on when you spoke to him. Welcome back.

Cam: Thanks for having me. Cam Owen, one-time exited startup founder, owner of more books than Mike and probably fewer than Deveren - somewhere in the middle. I'm the partner and COO here at GoldCapital, and I take a look at founders early and bring their questions to the funding table for us to talk about.

5:00 Who is Deveren Fogle, founder of Uluru?

Max: And last but not least - the anticipation, the librarian - Deveren Fogle. Welcome to The Funding Table. We'd love to hear more about you, your background, and what you've been up to.

Deveren: Thank you so much for having me - it's an honor to be invited to The Funding Table. It's been quite a journey, and things have gone really quickly with you guys, which is also awesome. I'm Deveren Fogle, founder and CEO of Uluru, where we are maximizing human potential by increasing humans' capacity to learn. I'm a former attorney who worked in contract law after graduation. I launched an iPhone app in 2009 called My Genius Trainer - my first foray into having a startup. After that I built a small agency, working with Vanguard, Sotheby's, and the Wall Street Journal, building applications and solutions for them. I got burned out, and went into education - because my wife kind of dared me, and because it just so happens I'm really good with kids. I had really good success in the classroom, and after I left teaching I started working with psychiatrists and psychologists, supporting students with complex learning challenges. In the beginning I was teaching in inner-city schools - families and kids who didn't have the means. Then I went into private practice, working with families who had all of the means, literally. I became the person in New York City you would call if you wanted to get your kid into Hotchkiss or Riverdale. And in 2022, a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Owen Lewis, out of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia, asked to have coffee - to ask what I was doing with the kids to get the success I was having with our mutually shared clients. After talking through the theories of metacognition, he challenged me: how are you going to scale what you're doing with these kids? Because it needs to happen. And that's how Uluru was born.

Max: I mean, come on - that is fantastic. Give me the routing number and the account number. Talk about a modern-day Renaissance man. When we first met, I believe that was one of the first things out of my mouth about you, Deveren. Talk about a couple of anomalies: a lawyer who's good with children - I can say from experience that's a little bit rare - and maybe the only lawyer who has also released an app. You went from what is, in my opinion, very technical, maybe even boring work, to something that is the maximum form of expression - and really noble as well. Before we get deeper into the company: what was that shift like, from something literally black and white to unlimited imagination?

Deveren: Working at a desk as a lawyer was never really my plan. In law school I thought I'd maybe work at the UN as an international lawyer - and I did intern at the UN, in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, in my second year. And I realized - safe space here - it's just a big bureaucracy. I was a small cog working on a document that had been worked on for 20 years. Deep down I'm a very creative person, so I have a lot of outlets pulling me toward creativity. It's similar with my wife: she studied at Cornell's industrial and labor relations school, interviewed at McKinsey, and realized it felt like she was dying inside - so she went into education, Ivy-educated, working in inner-city schools, actually trying to make moves. That transition was natural for me because, at the end of the day, I think it's all about helping people and feeling fulfillment through that. If I wasn't doing Uluru, I know it's a problem I would still want to be solving - which helps energize me each day. And I think that's key in what you build: I hope things go well - meetings with you guys have been great - but as a founder you have to ask, what if it doesn't go well? The good news is that doing this work with kids and families, whether or not I launch a billion-dollar company, is a day-to-day I can live with, and it has meaning.

Max: We can all respect that - a lot of folks approach us wanting help raising for nonprofits, and that's a completely different game we don't play in. But you're an increasingly rare case: someone doing genuinely noble work who recognized that a for-profit engine might be the best way to have the most impact. And one thing to frame, unlike last week's episode with Sofiane's story - there, the framing was looking back at the success of the process from start to finish. Deveren is about five weeks into the relationship. We've already accomplished a lot, but there's a lot more to go, and we'll get into all of that about halfway through. Mike, you wanted to add something?

Mike: Out of curiosity, Deveren - I've never heard of someone getting burnt out and then going into education. I hear a lot of stories about people burning out in education and leaving. Your wife dared you to dive in head first - did you have past experience, a love for it? Did you know you were joining one of the most burnt-out groups of professionals?

Deveren: The burnout comes in any respect. When I was running my own small tech company, the more success I had, the bigger the fires - the bigger the client, the more they want for free. I had enough headaches that I realized this wasn't what I wanted to be doing right then. We'd just come back from a destination wedding where all our friends were educators - it was summer, they were all partying, and I'm on my iPad trying to shell into a crashing server while my developer's asleep. I said, I need to take a step back - what's the next problem I could solve? And that's the positioning my wife, Avalon, gave me: you always have all these things you want to say about education - you should do education. Which is also a bit of social commentary: in education and mental health, everyone has an opinion, but if you look at their knowledge base, they haven't actually done the work. I was fortunate going into the classroom, because I had another background to fall back on. Some of my colleagues didn't, so they kept things status quo - whatever came down from leadership, they did it. Me? I'll tell a quick story: at a school in Corona, Queens - the epicenter of the pandemic - I had data beating the city averages, but I was still this outlier doing things my own way, because I knew they worked. A vice principal came into my room asking why I didn't have all the posters on the wall like the teacher next door - checking all the boxes. I said: listen, the person next door, their data isn't great. They're not moving kids. I'm moving kids. They can do what they want to do; I should be able to do what I want to do. No one else would make that argument, because I could leave the next day and be fine. I actually have a book being written now with a ghostwriter - it's called Education Scapegoat, hopefully out next year - about that internal gap between what's expected inside the classroom and what's actually happening.

Max: That might be the most respectful way I've ever heard someone say "I'm excellent and they're not - let me do my thing." But that's interesting: you're a rule breaker, and that's what defines a lot of entrepreneurs. They're comfortable breaking rules and not conforming in pursuit of their thesis - which is ultimately what we're doing here. And we'll see very shortly whether what you're doing has the legs we all think it can.

17:37 What does Uluru actually do?

Max: Talking more about the platform - as I said, we're about five weeks into this engagement, live in the middle of a fundraise. Before any of that: can you go into a bit more detail, maybe 60 seconds or so, on what the platform actually is? And you never know who's tuning in - how would you sell it to an end customer?

Deveren: Thank you - that's a great leading question. When discussing this with Dr. Owen Lewis, we talked about the difference between cognition and metacognition in schools. Schools give a lot of content and curriculum - things that require output. You do addition and subtraction before multiplication and division, and those before linear equations. In your career, you learn whatever the rules are and apply them. That's all cognition - the what and the how much. Metacognition is the how, and whether someone can do something. Think about a student transitioning from multiplication and division to linear equations. They're rocking out on multiplication - and suddenly they're failing linear equations. Why? It's not the numbers; they know numbers. That gap is the metacognitive capacity needed to perform - and it requires executive functioning skills. Quickly: executive functioning skills are something humans developed over time. When we were hunting and gathering, it was "me hungry, go find food, eat, sleep." But that only works so long - what happens when it gets cold and there's no food? Your tribe dies off, because nobody was planning: hunt now, store food, so when it's cold, you eat. That's when humans started developing executive functioning - metacognition, future- and goal-oriented behavior. That's the missing piece in education. We have all this content and curriculum - but how do you teach someone to actually do it? That's what Uluru does. Uluru fills the gap by providing real-time execution guidance, because to build those capacities, they need to be positively reinforced in the moment. Most of us never got executive functioning coaching - we either compensated by inventing our own systems, or we didn't, and then later start asking, "Do I have ADHD? Do I have anxiety?" - because you've compensated so long on the how that things eventually get too hard. That metacognitive piece is the piece nobody has solved. People were paying me a lot of money to provide executive function coaching to their students one-on-one - I didn't even know that market existed; it was just what I naturally did. When I was deciding whether to launch, I asked Dr. Jeremy Nobel, an adviser: should I even do this? Because I know a lot of me is in that - I make this difference for kids in person. And he said: if you can productize 80% of what you do with your students one-on-one, you should launch it. So I outlined it - took myself out of it as much as possible. Charles Lang at Columbia, who we've started partnering with on research, asked me one day to lay the theory out in a flowchart so he could explain it to people: the foundational principles of executive function development, externalizing the capacities, finding the micro-habits people need to build, and giving feedback on those so they build self-awareness - so the next time they approach the same thing, they understand how to approach it, and what their deficiencies may be.

Max: That's helpful - and as we get deeper into the pitch and the work we've done, I think it's unique when the academic side is interwoven that deeply into the user experience. You're productizing yourself, in a sense, and that's an interesting moat. But that's a lot - most people tuning in don't know some of the words you just used, and that's okay. That's the raw version; that's why this started. You're clearly obsessed with what you do, and that leads to great outcomes. But investors - some of them won't even know what you said.

Deveren: These people just want to golf and smoke a Cuban.

Max: So the question is: how did we take that - because that's the reality of what this is - and turn it into something venture-backable that anyone can understand?

25:07 What happens in my first month with GoldCapital?

Max: The person most equipped to talk about that transition is Cam, because not so many weeks ago - feels like yesterday - you were Deveren's first call. What did that conversation sound like? Not just what he's working on, but where the gaps were in his process and his knowledge, and how we got to today.

Cam: I look back on my first call with Deveren fondly. He said something that was really funny: "I'm a really good storyteller, but on the fundraising side - holy crap, I'm a country boy from Kentucky. I don't know how to ask people for money." What I'll say about Deveren is he's a blank slate - open to learning; I think that's also why he went into education. And the biggest shoutout of all goes to Deveren's wife. She listens to the podcast, and she said, "Those guys sound real. They sound knowledgeable." Having already pushed him toward education, she's the one who pushed him over the edge to work with us. Deveren's wife - I appreciate you. So let's tell the story: what have the first 30 days or so looked like? Walk us through that first month - what actually happened week by week, and what popped up that you didn't even realize you needed to think about?

Deveren: You both hit the nail on the head. One of my biggest problems is that I understand the problem so deeply. I'm starting to realize why it's easier for people to start companies who don't understand a problem deeply - they can just tell a VC, "It's another text messaging app," and the VC goes, "Yeah, people use those - here's $5 million." Meanwhile I'm thinking, how did that get funded? It was always this idea of: I don't know how to simplify this enough. And - VCs watching, I'm not saying you're dumb; I was the dumb one - I thought saying all these things would make people feel smarter, when in fact they were thinking, "Huh?" That was the impetus: I need to figure out what I don't know. We had some unsolicited conversations - VCs wanted to talk to us - and I always felt like they didn't get it. They wanted to put us in a box. And I kept wondering: is that okay, just to get the round done? I didn't think so. So let me start from the beginning. Cam, you've been great - when I came on, it was never a push or an upsell; it was natural. And Max, what I said to myself was: okay, he sounds honest. He's not trying to be overly verbose about what's happening. I'll say it in broad strokes: you do exactly what you say you do - which is not common. Not just in this world; in the world in general. What a crazy concept, doing what you say you're going to do.

Cam: What a crazy concept.

Deveren: Country boy from Kentucky: say what you mean, do what you say. So if anyone's thinking about working with you guys - they do exactly what they say they do. And then the process of taking what I so eloquently say about what I do and bringing it down - that's the magic Sam has me do. Sam is so great on our calls. He'll listen to all my great pontifications about the world and life, think for a second - he always thinks first - and then say something, and I'm like... yes. And he knew early on that some of the language we were simplifying was crushing my soul a little bit, so he was careful with me: "Deveren, we're not going to put you in a box. I know you don't want to be put in a box." And what we have now - we're not in a box, but it's actually something someone can understand, and you can see there's something different here. I'll give one tip - you hear it, but you don't really know how to do it until you do it: you want a 5-year-old and a 90-year-old to be able to understand your deck. I'd read that and thought, okay, but what does that mean? It actually really changes the words you use. You might write "context" - wait, no, a 5-year-old may not know what context means. Just say the thing. Going back to: say what you mean, mean what you say.

Cam: It's a unique challenge every founder faces - we talk about it all the time: your positioning and your story matter so much, and it's hard to see the forest through the trees. You're so entrenched, hyper-fixated on the problem, running down 70 different avenues as a founder. But a VC, a family office, a corporate venture arm, an angel - they don't need that context. They need broad strokes that paint the picture, because they're having a 30-minute meeting with you, and then a lot of other 30-minute meetings. You'll lose them if you overcomplicate it. Telling the right story to the right person is a big piece of the battle, and that's what we honed in on over the first few weeks.

32:36 What goes in my seed-stage data room?

Cam: My follow-up: Mike, from your side - what is it that Uluru, or any company, needs to do before ever being allowed near an investor?

Mike: One hundred percent. Before I jump in - Deveren, keep in mind: while the initial conversation with an investor should be at that 5-year-old-to-90-year-old level, it's also hugely beneficial that you can speak the way you did when you introduced the company to us. Being able to back up what you're saying and dive deep on a specific aspect of your pitch is always going to be beneficial - in the first call or the follow-ups. Don't be scared to blow their minds. As far as what we've done so far: you and I started with the data room. What do we need? What are investors going to require? What should we take out? A lot of founders put two or three files in there - or 500 to 700 files, and the ones who put in 700 often think it's the best data room an investor will ever see. Sam, a couple quarters ago, would open that data room and go: no. No chance. There is such a thing as too much, especially early. You're not going out to banks to IPO - you don't need an S-1-level data room. So we built it together, answering questions, understanding what it should look like cohesively - fantastic work on that. Then while you were going through the education process with Sam, you and I started deeper conversations about valuation: how do we determine it, how do we talk about it, how do we negotiate, what will investors ask, how do you defend the number you're coming in at, how do you use traction. And meanwhile you were working through Max's and Sam's education series, and working directly with Sam on the deck and narrative - really crafting that beautiful piece of pottery into what it is today.

Deveren: A pinch pot. Even just the advice on the data room itself - the very first thing I got from Max after signing was: hey Deveren, here are the things you've got to do, and here's a data room checklist. So clear, so matter-of-fact - what's required, what's nice to have, in the different categories. Another feather in your cap. You know, I've been privileged to be in this world with wealthy individuals - I didn't lack entry points. Because of the people involved with Uluru early, I was in rooms with big banks and private equity. People at the biggest institutions wanted to talk to me - "Wow, there's going to be no shortage of money for you." And I was chomping at the bit for someone to say: and THIS is how you do it. Still - no one. After many conversations with people who run funds, I realized there's a lack of knowledge, even at that level, about what startups actually have to do. These are people who come in later. So another feather in your cap: that realness you provide for companies that are hopefully the next big thing is itself innovative. On one of your recent episodes you talked about there being maybe a 1% chance of raising money right out of the gate - and even though I had introductions, no one was telling me: this is what you need to do; you have this, let's do this. It was refreshing. I mentioned it to Sam - it literally made me feel lighter, because I now know what I didn't know. That's all I wanted. I had all the contacts - "Oh, call me sometime, Deveren, what are you building? You're doing great" - but could someone just tell me what it is I need to do?

Cam: And Deveren, you raised money prior to working with us - we'll keep it surface level, but a pretty substantial amount comparatively. It's just such a different beast when you don't have the immediate warm connection with the person you're asking. That's the "someone show me how to do it" versus what you'd done before.

Deveren: It worked - but you can't do that forever. You can't keep going back to that. It's a skill set you have to develop as a founder. I was in a position where the money was close to me - they knew what I was doing could be big, and they had no problem writing the checks. It creates its own problems. Sometimes they don't even know what the struggle is, because they have all the money: "Don't worry about fundraising." And I'd say - no, I know I need to start fundraising. I didn't really know what that meant, but I knew I didn't want it to always be friends and family. And honestly it makes me a little emotional, because the kind of problem I'm solving - I wouldn't have been able to get to this point with just a little bit of money. It's a brand-new type of product, building a brand-new market. It took launching, launching again, testing, figuring out what works. I was very, very lucky - and I know how lucky I was.

Max: I'd love to reflect on that. When you told me some of the folks whose children you'd worked with - massive, dynasty-level names in many cases - I sat there thinking: what the hell are you doing speaking to us? Here's why I think it happened. Zero to one is a completely different sport - a completely different set of skills and mindset. It's not even 1 to 10 or 10 to 100; the big family offices and private equity firms live in billion-to-trillion views of the world. Zero to one - creating something from nothing - is not financial engineering. In my investment banking days I saw it: huge value created by moving numbers, discount rates, and zeros in a spreadsheet. But long before anyone can financially engineer a company, some crazy person had to decide to create fire with no flint. And it turns out you're plagued by a lot of success trying to go zero to one, because what you need is delusion and unbelievable self-conviction - plus guiding principles that are generally best practice, many counterintuitive, some common sense. We view GoldCapital and FTFC just like a startup going zero to one - it feels like that every day. People tend to put a group like us in one of two camps: either we're "zero-to-one experts" - which don't exist; a billionaire founder can strike out on their next company, it literally happens all the time - or "what the hell have you done, prove yourself." So it's interesting to hear you describe us in the gap: we've given you lessons learned through struggle, but it's ultimately what the founder makes of those principles, because after the raise, your guess is as good as mine what your product roadmap needs to be. The first round or two is the very beginning of the company, not the end.

Deveren: Two points to reflect on. One: it's "too much of a good thing" - you get rocked to sleep. I had no illusions that this person would fund it forever, but I was being rocked to sleep: "This is fine, I don't need to build this skill set." In the back of my mind: but what if they're not there anymore? I don't want to keep asking for money. And part of the problem was I didn't get the money all at once - they funded it in these inoculations of cash as they saw what I was doing, so it grew into a real number, but the way it came was its own hindrance. There's a book I'm reading - reading books, Mike, read your books - called Antifragile, and it talks about how sometimes help can hurt you. You can be better off never getting the help. Say this doesn't work out: someone gave me a lot of money to start this company, then leaves - I've thrown my life into this thing, and I'm back to square one, climbing out. Luckily, I'd like to think I'm antifragile. The second thing: eventually you have to do it yourself. You never said "we're going to do it for you" - I'm still doing the work. And that's something listeners should watch for when evaluating people to work with: there is no one person you can hire who's just going to do it. My wife - super smart, super annoying when she makes these points - says it too: you kind of have to do it. You have to build the capacity. And you guys - you always mention on the podcast that you're expensive to work with, but it's the best money you will ever spend. Just our first conversations, Max - the negotiation side - it felt like you'd solved cancer or something. These are things passed down through investment banker talk, things you learned. I'm a country boy who went into education and law - I would never have learned that. But some of those negotiation tactics - yeah, why wouldn't that work? That's how people are raising money. It's those one or two unlocks.

Max: That's exactly it - and to speak freely, unfortunately it's often the folks who can't afford to work with us - and trust me, we're going to try our hardest to build more cost-effective ways to work with us, because it is expensive - who want us to promise the world. A lot of people go, "What do I get? Okay, what else? What else?" - like pulling everything off the shelves into a cart. Have you gotten groceries lately? That'll be a big bill. Sometimes it's one thing. One anecdote, one call, one unlock that changes the trajectory. We hear it all the time: "This was all great - I just didn't know it would be that ONE thing." That's the mindset for evaluating any advisor: not everything in scope - what are the one or two real unlocks? Not everything in Techstars, candidly, was valuable. There were sessions where I thought, I know this already. But the one or two things - "oh my god." I've passed those down to you and everyone we work with.

Cam: What about the handshakes, Max? I thought the handshakes were the most important thing you learned at Techstars.

Max: They taught us a handshake. Bob Metcalfe - created Ethernet and 3Com; Metcalfe's law, network effects, all come from Bob. Bob's like: the most important thing I can teach you is a handshake. We're at a bar - I hadn't even turned 21 - and we're all in a line doing charades, shaking his hand. And he goes: "That is what has made me the most money in my career." Completely serious. That's why I love the old-school guys. "It's the handshake - that's what's going to make you a billionaire." All right.

Mike: Before we move on - something Deveren said earlier brought this to mind. You talked to banks and all these people and got no real direction on how to fundraise yourself. On the flip side, we're in this heavy content era where you go on X and one investor says do this and the next post says do the opposite. So there's a chasm: "I have no idea what I'm doing," and all the content is contradictory, so you never get to the actual physical steps. Step one: understand the prep. You can't just go talk to an investor without a data room, without understanding your business model, your go-to-market, your ideal customer profile, how much you're raising. That prep work is necessary - but it's genuinely difficult to pin down. It's info overload.

Deveren: When I first saw how you were packaging what you do - the organization, the prioritization, the sequencing - it was actually touching, because I thought: they're really trying to build something that makes sense. It's like a curriculum. At some point you had to ask: what are the things I need to teach somebody that I know they don't know? Maybe it's because I'm an educator, but it really struck me - everything you do is to get to the thing, efficiently. And I don't know if I told you this, but right before I started working with you, I had tried to start with another firm - paid them $15,000. Luckily I got the money back, because they really didn't do their side. And I can be the annoying one - I'm an only child; every day: "Hey. Kindly, Deveren."

Max: That's just your saved Gmail signature.

Deveren: And the smiley faces - I was telling Sam yesterday: everything I text my team, I add a smiley face at the end so they know I'm not coming down on them. The packaging is the thing. You're not just picking and choosing what's valuable - you're asking people to pay you, and you've done your best to streamline the information so they get to the place where they're raising. There's an intentionality to it, even in onboarding. And I think when you say you don't work with every company, some people assume it's a marketing stunt - false scarcity. But if there's an inkling in onboarding that a person isn't going to have a data room - or the capacity to build one - you really can't take their money.

Cam: It's both ends of the spectrum - and I'd argue the harder person to work with is the one who thinks they've got everything correct. That end is far worse, and we don't work with people like that. I love working with people like Deveren, who are an open, blank slate. And like Max touched on - there's going to be a nugget in there. We have yet to work with anybody where there wasn't some real unlock; you just don't know which one it'll be for each person. And then investor targeting - that's Mike's alley - in terms of who you're going to be ready for.

Deveren: I still can't even believe that's going to happen, honestly.

Max: You want to know why that scarcity has to exist? Because this is our livelihood and our time. We already don't do anything else besides work - believe us, we'd take on as many clients as we could; we're also running a business. But when you have four people on the vast majority of these calls, you have to decide. And it's not just the business - is this person a pleasure to talk to? We've worked with clients that are just boring. Give me something, man - show me you're excited by what we're about to do together. If you're not excited, you're going to hate working with someone like me who's amped about absolutely everything. If our personalities don't mesh - it happens; we've lost deals. They'll say, "Max is some fiery asshole. You're great, Cam." I'm the Boston guy and he's the Midwestern, civil, normal nice guy. But when it doesn't mesh, it usually saves us from a disastrously frustrating slog of a client relationship. We want to be friends with everyone - that's how we run things. We're not suits.

Deveren: If it's a struggle, it's usually not meant to be.

57:38 How much time will fundraising take me each week?

Max: I know Cam had something interesting planned - and as always, these are unscripted and unplanned. Do you know what's coming, Deveren?

Deveren: I have no idea.

Cam: So - I get asked a lot of questions from founders who are thinking about working with us and trying to vet out what we do. I wanted to ask you, Deveren, the actual questions I get asked. Number one, easily the most common: how much time is this going to take, per week? Founders are busy - I respect the hell out of that; part of what we're here for is to be that leverage. But the time commitment, on your side - because you've been building and working the whole time we've been working with you. What has it actually taken?

Deveren: The structure you provide - the packaging of what needs to happen and the pacing of it - lets people feel like it's not that much time, because it's reasonable, and there's no false push. Mike and Sam - and at the end of every call I ask Sam, "Are we on pace? Are we on pace?" and he says yes. I think people ask that question, Cam, because they have no context about what this process even is. As you learn the context of what's required, you figure out how much time you need to spend. I luckily had a lot of my data room material ready - so for me, I literally took a weekend. The whole weekend - but a weekend. It's about how you schedule your own capacity. You give the freedom, and the guidance - then it's up to the founder to fit it in. It's not something where you have to do everything at once and work nightly. And honestly, founders should learn to let go sometimes and let someone guide them - because it's very lonely. That's what you guys do.

Cam: Absolutely. I would not argue that it's 40 hours a week whatsoever - it is definitely not a full-time job; we make things about as efficient as they can possibly be. But as Deveren said, there's still work you have to do. It's not just done for you completely - because then you'd miss the story. Deveren is about to go pitch investors. If it were all done for him, he'd have to memorize it - and Deveren's an extremely bright individual, but it wouldn't come across as authentic when talking to an investor. The guidance is what makes it efficient; without it, this does become a 40-hour-a-week job, because you don't know what investors actually need.

1:01:00 Is GoldCapital Consulting too good to be true?

Cam: Second question - and this is people just vetting whether we're real. I'm pretty sure I was on the call when Deveren was sending over the payment, and his question to me was: "You guys are real, right?" And yet again, his wife in the background: "Babe, they're real. I've heard them speaking on the podcast." It is a common question, and what they're really asking is: are you going to be yes-men? Or are you going to tell me the real, raw truth even if it hurts my ego? So tell the truth, Deveren - are we real, or do we just say yes to keep things moving?

Deveren: You are certainly real. I actually turned my phone back on to find a text Cam sent me. I wasn't trying to delay paying - I was just so busy. And then I disappeared for a minute, right when we were about to kick off -

Cam: I'll tell the story, brother. As Deveren was about to pay - and we're toward the end of the year, so we wanted to get moving - I kept messaging him about where things stood, because we'd talked about kickoff on this day and the next day. And then I get an email from Deveren, and what do you know: it's a phishing attack. Deveren had been hacked, and the email going around was him telling everybody, "I've been hacked, please don't open anything." That's why he wasn't responding. For as intelligent with computer systems as he is - somehow, hacked.

Deveren: That was really embarrassing. But we had that back and forth, and Cam showed he was genuinely interested in what I was doing. And there was a funny moment where Cam was sarcastic with me - if you're trying to get someone to sign up and you've had real exchanges, you don't answer the way he did unless you're real. I asked something like, "Do you help with fundraising?" - during the US Open, over text - and Cam's response was: "Of course we don't, Deveren. We don't do that." And I thought: wait, what? I don't know how to respond to this... I'm definitely going to sign up now. And the deeper reason people ask that question, Cam - don't be so humble - is that what you're purporting to do, and what you actually do, sounds too good to be true. If you're in it thinking, "I don't know how to fundraise, I know my odds are low" - and people aren't honest with you about how difficult it is without warm introductions. By the way, anyone out there offering to send you a spreadsheet of 500 family offices: close down all of those Substacks. Just don't. You have less than a 1% chance that way - actually.

Max: It's funny - I'd say the opposite. It doesn't sound too good to be true to a lot of people; a lot of folks ask "what else can we get?" I think your reaction is more indicative of you: you were comfortable with your own interpersonal skills - which is essentially what your platform teaches; it's executive functioning. You knew you could hold yourself accountable, and you already spoke the language of money. Very few people have that - it's a huge leg up. With the right leverage - which is the theme we always come back to - I wouldn't say it's too good to be true. It's just really great. If we were doing it for free, I'd say it's too good to be true - but we have to charge. And we'll continuously charge more; I can't wait for people to listen back in a year and hear the rates we're charging then. The thing you clearly understood: you have to believe in yourself, or no advisor can help. You can have all the materials and all the strategies, but you've got to be the one who knows to use that tactic in that situation, on a call with an investor. You've got to be the one who takes it seriously. That's the hardest part of our screening - and people think we're the only industry with frauds? There are a lot of startup founders who are complete fraudsters. We're equally screening for that.

1:08:21 How do I pitch my startup in 60 seconds?

Max: One thing I wanted to do - Cam threw me for a hula hoop, and a Uluru as well - I'm going to put you in the hot seat. Now that we're about to run the roadshow part of the process: Deveren, I'd love for you to pitch the business in under 60 seconds. And Sam - you've been super quiet, very analytical - you're back in the room now. You're an investor at VU Venture Partners. React like this is a real meeting and you don't know each other.

Deveren: Can I use notes?

Max: Do whatever you want.

Deveren: This is going to be hard, because my initial inclination is to go into my one-sentence. Uluru is maximizing human potential by building the tools that increase humans' capacity to learn through metacognitive awareness. What that means: most people get content and curriculum given to them with an expected output. But people lack the ability to deliver on that if they don't have the underlying - what some people call soft skills. To build up those skills, you need real-time, in-the-moment guidance. Uluru provides that real-time, in-the-moment guidance, so people can be constantly aware and building up their metacognitive capacities.

Max: Sam - straight up. Is that pitch going to get a second meeting? You're in an elevator with some big shot. One chance.

Sam: Honestly? Yeah - I would say that would get me a meeting. But Deveren, as we mentioned on the calls: when you first talk to an investor, we're going to strip away that metacognitive language a little bit. Simplification. You went right into it. Based on everything I know - when you said earlier, "I've been privileged to have these connections" - that speaks to your solution and what you're building even more. I've been quiet because, Deveren, you know how excited I get on our calls - whenever you say "I finally get it now," that Eureka moment gives me a lot of happiness. Based on your distribution channels, the doors you can open - and when people ask "why now? AI?" - actually, AI is making the problem worse, and the problem has been around for a while; it's exacerbated now. Remember all the statistics we have - COVID, loneliness. What you said in your pitch was: it's not just a curriculum; it follows you. Remember, I wasn't caressing you - I genuinely didn't want you bucketed. Education, workforce, relationships - it's your entire journey. That's rare. You're not another edtech tool.

Deveren: Sam and I have great calls. And I like that Max put him on the spot. That's the language we're working on - we just had our final deck work call, it's being designed now, and we're doing practice sessions next week. The thing is being able to tell the story so people understand how big the problem is. And even after this, I'm realizing: I can use those 60 seconds to highlight - I don't always have to talk only about the company. I can talk about the problem.

Max: And yourself, Deveren. And yourself.

Deveren: And myself. I have like a three-minute version of the myself pitch on my phone.

Max: Harder to do a 60-second pitch after you've spent an hour and ten minutes talking about yourself - which is intentionally why we saved it for the end. Now - were you all American Idol fans back in the day? Mike, time to embrace your inner Simon Cowell. What would need to improve before Deveren starts pitching VCs?

Mike: Deveren - it sounded beautiful, but there were pieces missing. Like you said yourself right after: the market. Sixty seconds, on the spot, fantastically done. But if I'm an investor who doesn't know this space intimately, I would have loved a better sense of: is this a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? How big is the market? What sort of customers are you targeting or already in touch with? What traction do you have? Obviously on a podcast I don't expect you to put your financials up in front of everyone - but you want it more holistic. A quick 30 seconds on what you're building, then: the market is begging for this, it's X billion, we're already seeing this traction with these customers - would love to dive deeper into the weeds once we're off the elevator.

Deveren: I like that.

Max: Here's the thing every founder should take away - and we don't always actively teach this, because venture pitches are generally predictable: a 30-minute slot, maybe 15 to 20 minutes on the business, the rest Q&A. You should always have a one-liner - literally one sentence of what it does. "GoldCapital helps startups raise capital." You'd have to be an idiot not to get it. Honestly, I could change "capital" to "money" and "startups" to "companies" and reach a much wider audience - social media will tell you that when you simplify the words to the bare minimum, more people understand. You want the one-liner, you want a 30-second version - literally half of what you did - and you want the 60-second version. And you retrofit based on the circumstance you find yourself in, because you never know. Your life can change on the sidewalk getting a bagel in New York - and you'd better be ready for that moment. This is about being clutch.

Cam: Could be a fast elevator. Big difference between jumping on an elevator to floor three versus the top of the Empire State Building. Be ready for whatever situation you find yourself in.

Deveren: I was so appreciative of our first practice pitch with Mike and Sam. Part of the problem is I understand the problem so deeply that it's easy to slip into founder mode and hope that the more intelligent it sounds, the better - when really, I know they didn't understand two-thirds of what I just said.

Sam: Remember: we pitch for clarity. The questions they ask should be because they want to learn more - not because they're confused.

Deveren: So many good nuggets. One more thing - meeting Sam helped me realize that VCs are people too. They have feelings and emotions. And the perspective you should have working with a group like this - now that we know you're real - is: when I'm on a call with Sam, or talking to Mike about valuations, Mike is experienced in this and he's taking his time right now to help me walk through it. That's a very good human thing, and it's more valuable than the money you're spending. And the time it takes is the time it takes - this is philosophical, but don't rush. Sam is not trying to push me to finish the deck in one week. We've taken three weeks - 45-minute calls, not too much, not too little - and I think that's all intentional. Spending time with people like me is very valuable, and people should appreciate that.

Sam: Thank you for that - because there are founders who say "I want to move in a week." The way we do it: you're getting the messaging slide by slide, and when I freestyle, you see why we wrote it down the way we did. It's an absolute joy working with you. Even at the end of our calls you say, "I don't want my assistant to handle this - I'll just put something on the calendar myself. Does this time work?"

Max: That's amazing to hear. And it doesn't mean I'm not in the background bitching at Sam - "What the hell is taking so long? Tell Deveren to hurry up." Not because we're a factory with an assembly line, but because we deal with a range of personalities, so our base assumption is: move as fast as possible. If a founder says, "This is what works for my schedule" - we have executives and founders running companies full-time - we're never going to pressure a pace that isn't natural. Where we get a problem is folks trying to rush faster than we know is good for them. This is why we're casual - to build trust as humans that we kind of know what we're doing here. If we tell you we want to pace it out and not jam 17 meetings into 48 hours, it's because it benefits you - and then economically benefits us at the end, when we get to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There's a lot of intention, and I'm happy the invisible militarism inside our company stays invisible to clients - I'll just tell someone "terrible work, horrible" - so we can deliver excellence to the clients.

Deveren: And you're doing work when you're not on the call. When Mike and I had our valuation call, Mike didn't just start thinking about my valuation when he pressed go on the meeting. And Sam doesn't come to our meetings knowing nothing about executive function. I'm like - wait, they're actually doing work when they're not on the call with me too. I'll give an anecdote - three things, back to back to back. Cam, am I allowed to say something personal? I'm going to do it anyway.

Max: You have permission. Cam, in his office, had to install a separate bed, because he's not even making it to sleep every night - he's rolling over on the computer. Sam - I called him last night and he's in pitch black like Batman, literally Christian Bale eating frozen dumplings in a cave. I see this blue light - "Are you eating at your desk at 11:45 PM?" "Yeah man, there's just so much to do." And my girlfriend and I have had our fair share of arguments about the workload. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make this machine go.

Deveren: In that valuation call, the first thing Mike told me was, "Man, last night was rough - I woke up at 4:15 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to start shipping deals." You're living my lived experience. I hope I do well by you - because I really do think you're personally invested in what I'm trying to do, and I think you're doing that for all of your companies. You're like a part of the team. I saw one of your posts recently, Max - people offering equity in their company instead of cash, and you telling them: no, you don't want to give away equity in your company for this. For people having difficulty making that decision: these guys are living and breathing what's going on. When he said "I didn't sleep last night, I was shipping deals" - I thought, wow. He's really in it with these people.

Max: Full circle to the beginning, right? You don't burn out when you actually love it. Candidly, I would do this all for free. I did my time doing it for free - that's why I don't anymore.

1:24:06 How do I raise money with no money or network?

Max: Final thing - we're definitely super long here, but I'd love a tight answer. If you had to speak to a founder in your position, or one deciding to begin a fundraise - say they did not have access to us, or an accelerator, or the privileges we share - what's one thing you'd recommend they do for their fundraise to be successful in the next 90 days?

Deveren: Apart from saving money to work with you?

Max: Kind - but no. They have zero. Let's handicap this: one arm, zero dollars in the bank, $50,000 of credit card debt - that about sums up most of the United States. They can't build a product, they have no resources. If the VCs don't give them a dollar, how are they supposed to do it?

Deveren: The first thing: you can't do both. You can't build a product and fundraise at the same time. Once you go into fundraising mode - all the books tell you - that's what you're doing. So either you're fundraising, or you need to figure out how to get to the point where you can fundraise, which means you need some sort of product. Do whatever it takes to build something so you can get your first little bit of money. There is money out there. Look in your network, and have realistic expectations about what you need - maybe you're not raising millions the first time, but maybe you can get $50,000 together to get the product built. You don't have to do everything all at once. If you're struggling, take a deep breath. And I'd recommend reading The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby - it puts the founder journey in perspective. Even the Google founders could barely scrape together $30,000 when they were starting out. Those stories really help.

Max: Amazing advice - and they're not alone among the great entrepreneurs. Travis Kalanick took over a year to raise a million before Uber. Sometimes - and I know it's the worst thing to hear - when a raise takes longer, or people aren't buying, it can mean it's not fundable or there's no product-market fit. But in a lot of cases the irony is that the ideas people hate, or think are stupid, often become the generational ones - the very non-obvious, super-niche things. Kind of like yours. You had to live an experience to even conceive an idea like Uluru.

Deveren: That's the last thing I'll say: are you solving a problem that you love? But also - don't love the problem so much you won't adjust it. Too many people think "I'll just think of an idea and start a company." That's not going to come through, especially in this day and age, if it's not authentic. If someone listens to you and wonders, "Why are you qualified to solve this problem?" - it may not be believable. Even though I was put in a situation where I got a decent amount of money early, it wasn't because I just asked - I was performing at what I was doing. It's okay to take the time to become an expert in whatever you want to solve. Your product gets better, your story gets better, and people will want to follow you and see you win - because you've done it for a decent amount of time.

Cam: And Deveren, what you said at the very beginning - "I would still be building this company if I raised zero dollars." That passion is sadly rare nowadays. Kudos to you.

Max: If you have one arm and $50,000 in credit card debt, you definitely need that passion. And as rough as it sounds - one arm is enough to go on Lovable and start vibe coding your MVP. Don't sit there and tell me with two arms you couldn't vibe code an MVP. It takes all of 17 minutes to have at least something you can show someone with money. There's hardly any excuse to be pre-product nowadays. As Mike brilliantly pointed out back in episode two: if you're not hardware, why are you pre-product? That sound bite has lived rent-free in my mind. Gentlemen - we're at about a buck thirty here. The longest episode we've ever done, but honestly maybe the most natural, free-flowing conversation. I could go for hours - although we actually do have other things to do, believe it or not, and you should get back to building your business too. Enough of your break. Deveren, this was incredible - we're super appreciative you came on and shared the story. And in maybe several weeks or a couple of months, once you're post-raise and deploying - because there's no time between closing a round and attacking - it'll be super cool to have you back for a before-and-after contrast: the infinite new headaches that now exist, which I'm telling you are a lot more painful than what you're dealing with now. We'd love to have you back. To tease next week: no guests - back to the core group, Mike, Sam, Cam, and I. We have a lot of news, headlines, and things that have happened that we've been dying to cover and just haven't had time to. That's coming next week. And the week following, we'll have a startup attorney - from a firm that has reviewed a number of our agreements - coming on to talk best practices from a zero-to-one incorporation standpoint, including for our international founders listening in. Deveren - for anyone who hadn't heard of your company before and is now super excited: where can we find more of you?

Deveren: You can find the company at theuluru.com - we just launched a brand new website; I think it's pretty cool. And I'm on LinkedIn - Deveren Fogle. There's a lot of my background on there.

Max: Like I told you, I enjoy our calls. Always a pleasure. Thank you to Deveren - and thank you to Deveren's wife for getting him to work with us.

Deveren: Thank you, Cam, for chasing me via text messages.

Cam: And ignoring that I slightly ruined your US Open day. No worries.

Max: Chicken nuggets and caviar. Thank you, gentlemen.

Deveren: Thank you, guys. Bye now.