NY Angel Pitch Secrets – Interview with Nisa Amoils
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Episode Summary
Nisa Amoils has a background in law, entertainment, and beauty tech. Nisa is an advisor on four boards and discusses the importance of entrepreneurs utilizing their advisory board’s expertise, on today’s show. She started investing when she went through the 37 Angels boot camp and, through her unique experiences in law, has a ton of helpful advice and pitch secrets to share with our listeners.
NY Angel Pitch Secrets – Interview with Nisa Amoils
Hi. Welcome to The Successful Pitch Podcast. Today’s guest is Nisa Amoils who is in New York City. Nisa has an amazing background from being a lawyer to working for NBC and Time Warner to now being at the heart of all things Angel investing in New York. Nisa, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.
It’s a pleasure. I always like to ask my guests about their background and the journey they took to becoming an investor. Can you take me back to your decision to become a corporate attorney? Did you have anywhere at the back of your mind that, “Someday, I’m going to be an investor,” or was your plan just to work in law forever?
My plan was definitely not to work in law forever. I did not have a plan to become an investor, it just happened along the way. I had gone to business school before law school, so I always knew that I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. The reason that I went to law school was I was graduating from business school, it was a recession and I thought, “This is a helpful degree. If I could get into a good enough school, I’ll go and I’ll take it. I can always use it somehow in business.” That was the plan.
Basically, I practiced law for a couple of years and knew that it wasn’t for me in the long term. It was really valuable because it really teaches you how to think and how not to get ripped off by other lawyers. I actually use it a lot when I’m doing either investing or I help startups with some of their legal questions or sometimes I can even draft documents if it’s an area that I know about or I’ll work with their outside counsel for some of the companies where I’m on the advisory board. It actually is really helpful, I find.
I’m sure. What were some of your favorite projects you got to work on, either at NBC or Time Warner?

Pitch Secrets: I was able to do big partnerships around the movies I worked on.
Actually, I would say at Time Warner, I was designated as the movie and television person. It was a corporate group that was set up to serve all the different divisions. It was right at the time when Lord of the Rings was coming out. That was great because I got to work on those movies and I was able to do big partnerships around them, promoting them and product placements with them. There were so many great movies. Devil Wears Prada was another one coming out at the time. I really had a lot of fun when I was working in the entertainment industry, being able to do those kinds of partnerships.
I was at Condé Nast when Devil Wears Prada came out, which is, for those who don’t know, all about Anna Wintour as the editor-in-chief of Vogue. Gosh, there was a ton of product placements in that movie. It was just ripe for fashion and beauty and all kinds of things.
In fact, there’s a funny story about that movie because we were working very closely with Mercedes-Benz at the time and they put a car in the movie that was … They had to cut it in half in order to film Meryl Streep playing Anna Wintour. That was something. They never cut cars in half but for that particular scene, they had to do it.
Wow, that’s fascinating. That’s a pivotal scene in the movie when she’s thinking about what’s going to be in her next move. What a fascinating background to have. One of the keys that I talk about all the time on The Successful Pitch is helping founders with their pitch and making it a story. You just gave us a great example of storytelling at its best. You took us back, you created a scene, you cut the car in half, you took something that could be very dry, like law, and made it very interesting. Thank you for that wonderful story and example.
We’re sort of glossing over. First of all, it’s very difficult to get a job at those studios. Entertainment law is very challenging. My sister’s a lawyer, that’s why I know, and I have a friend that works in law at Fox. What did you do to get your foot in the door? Because I’m thinking that there might be a story there that founders could be inspired by, much like how they have to get their foot in the door with investors. Was it some tenacity involved? Was it some connections? How did you get into getting to become an entertainment lawyer?
[Tweet “Pitch Secrets: Show investors how you think.”]
I actually started out as a corporate lawyer. I was doing mergers and acquisitions, contracts, all types of corporate law, working with SEC filings. I knew that I wanted to leave a law firm so I was just looking around and I saw this job posting. It was for an entertainment company. I thought, “Oh,” and it was USA Networks at the time, which was subsequently acquired by NBCUniversal, which is now spun out into IAC. It’s got a bunch of iterations. Basically, I just thought, “This is interesting and I like movies. Why don’t I go into this?” I wasn’t really an entertainment lawyer. I was using my business background more at that point. Just doing deals and it was Internet 1.0 and it was Barry Diller and he was acquiring a lot of different internet assets at the time. That’s how that happened.
Wow, I love that. I know what it’s like to work for Barry Diller. I helped launch The Daily Beast when Tina Brown was the editor-in-chief there.
Oh, yes. Of course. That’s great.
All right, then you make the decision to leave all that, entertainment law and all that, and go and become an investor. What made that decision?

Pitch Secrets: I was able to learn a whole new industry and be even more operational than I had been in the past.
There was actually one step in between. I’ve always been based in New York and I knew that I wasn’t going to move to LA for family reasons. I decided that I should put entertainment behind me. I had always wanted to do something entrepreneurial, so I ended up partnering with somebody on the launch of a skincare company. I did that for concept through to launch and that got me involved in the whole beauty industry. It was great because I was investing and I was able to learn a whole new industry and I was able to be even more operational than I had been in the past. That was a great experience. I decided, at the same time, that I wanted to start investing in other businesses. My time wasn’t scalable, so I knew that I had to be able to just either be on advisory board or invest in other people and that’s when I started to do it on my own. That led me into a bootcamp called 37 Angels.
I know it well.
Which is a network of women investors in New York led by a fantastic woman, Angela Lee, who you know. We, after going through the bootcamp, just started investing in startups and started really seeing more and more technology startups. That’s how I got involved. Then I subsequently joined New York Angels, which is a long established group and sees a lot of different varieties of companies, but a lot of technologies. That’s what I’ve been doing since.
How exciting. Let me just give the listeners a little background on New York Angels. They’ve invested over $45 million in entrepreneurial ventures. They have over 75 accredited Angel investors and they typically invest anywhere from 100 thousand to a million in seed in early stage companies and syndicate deals with Angel group partners and VCs up to 2 million. That is an amazing, powerful group to be part of. I’m sure they don’t just let anybody in to become part of that group like you are?
They don’t. They have an admissions committee and a process. There are 120 members now.
It even grew. Wow. Your background from M&A, because ultimately most founders, especially for Angel investors, the goal is, “How can I have an exit strategy in three to five years?” The M&A background that you bring from your legal days to actually running a skincare company and knowing the operational to being part of 37 Angels makes you the ideal candidate, I would imagine for New York Angels, yes?
They took me. That was good.
You’ve obviously heard quite a few pitches over the years. What do you think makes a good pitch?
I think there is the usual checklist that you need to go through in your pitch deck and your pitch, which is your team, your market size, your product, your go-to market strategy, your financials, your investors, existing investors, or how you plan to use the money, how much you’re raising, your terms, and exit. That is your basic high-level structure to it. I think what separates people is really how they present and how concise they are in getting that message across and how authentic and passionate the entrepreneur is. That’s what I look for when I’m hearing pitches.
[Tweet “Pitch Secrets: Be passionate, concise and authentic.”]
That’s so helpful. Concise, authentic and passionate. Those are three key elements, we’re going to tweet that out, to making a successful pitch. Do you have an example that you can share with us of a pitch you heard and you said, “Oh my God, what a passionate story? It was easy to understand. I saw the solution they were offering.” Anything jump to mind?
There are so many. I’d have to really come back to that question and think about it. There’s so many.
Is there anyone that you’ve invested in that you’re excited about that you want to talk about?
There is one that I actually did in the fall. It’s called Refresh. Basically, it is going to be starting in New York. It’s a one-stop club for women to be able to go in and change and buy whatever they need to be able to go out or go to work from there. It’s a women’s only club concept. There are a lot of different partnerships around it and it’s started by this great entrepreneur. What’s amazing about it is that she just closed her seed round, but 70% of the investors are women, which is a great example of how we’re changing the ratio and how there are more and more women investors out there. We’re really excited to see what happens with this concept. There’s some really, just a great group of investors behind it.
I know in LA and New York, these Blowout Bars are hugely successful where women can go in and get a quick blowout of their hair before going out.
Absolutely. This will include those types of services as well.
It’s almost like when you are traveling first class and you fly from LA to London and you get to go to the Virgin First Class Lounge and they have a complete place to take a shower, get your haircut, get a massage before you get back on the plane to go to South Africa or something.
Exactly. Part of the plan is, in addition to retail, there’ll be airport locations as well.
Who doesn’t want to get refreshed after a long flight?
Exactly.
How exciting. That could be very scalable, but not from a tech standpoint, which is always interesting to hear, but more of a, “This could just start popping up like Starbucks,” basically.
Exactly, or like SoulCycle.
That’s certainly a hot trend. Was there anything that you remember in that pitch that made you say, “Ahh,” you saw yourself using it and you knew your friends would use it. Is there something along those lines that you really related to from your beauty background?
There was definitely an element of that. The entrepreneur was great. When I look at investments, I always think about “why now?” because if you look at, historically, what are the best investments, it’s really a confluence of market forces coming together to make this the right time to build this type of business. I actually was just looking at the trends in terms of what women are doing and how they’re really clamoring for a club of their own. I think this is really the time to be launching something like that.
[Tweet “Pitch Secrets: Why now is key when you pitch.”]
We’re going to tweet that out. “Why now?” one of the most important questions. I’ve heard other people talk about the success of Uber and Airbnb is because the timing was so perfect. Before smartphones, nobody could use Uber, to the scale that it is. When I hear about what you’re talking about with Refresh is it’s more than just a place to go and get refreshed but it becomes a club. That transcends just the small problem of, “I need a place to freshen up.” If you start to create a community where, from city to city, and people start maybe even networking at these Refresh places, then you’re really onto something.
Exactly. That’s part of the plan.
Love it. It’s so important to keep in mind, have passion, be really concise, make it authentic, make sure that the investor can see and understand the problem and the solution, but then take it one step further and explain in your pitch why now, that this is the time that people would use this. Take it beyond just the obvious problem you’re solving into a more secondary benefit to joining Refresh so that people could go, “Ohh.” You’re not even so worried about competition coming into play if you are at the place that’s creating a sense of community. Would that be accurate?
That’s right.
Would you mind talking about when you hear pitches, what are you looking for when people come and talk about competition? I know one of the biggest mistakes new people can make is to say, “We don’t have any competition.” Let’s assume that you’re talking to a fairly sophisticated founder or somebody who’s at least gotten some training so they’re not making that mistake. What are you concerned about when you hear or see their competition slide?

Pitch Secrets: It’s all about execution.
I’m always asking how well-funded the competition is, the incumbents. It always comes down to even though they may have a slightly different attack on the market, they … It’s about execution. If one of the other companies is really much further along, that could be a real stumbling block. I’ve seen this happen over time where I invested in a company where I thought it was the greatest idea and nobody was attacking that segment of the market. It ended up that there was a much more well-funded competitor attacking a different segment of the market that ended up actually buying this company. They had raised a lot more money, they were much further along. Even though it wasn’t as great as what these people had done, they still won the game.
Interesting. That really speaks to, again, being Uber versus the competitor, Lyft. You want to be first to market whenever possible. Now, how important is it to you that the people you fund live within certain miles of New York? Do you only fund startups in the New York area?
No, I tend to also do a lot in Silicon Valley. It’s not necessary that they’d be in New York. It’s helpful if I am involved as an advisor. It’s definitely helpful because we’re on the same time zone. I could just go see them and go to meetings with them if necessary.
What percentage of the investments that you make do you end up being on the advisory board? You’re not just giving money, but you’re actually becoming part of the advisory board?
I don’t know the exact percentage. I’d say, right now, I am on four or five advisory boards.
You’ve probably invested in what? 50 or more companies?
Maybe a little bit less than that, but yeah.
Got it. People are lucky, A, to get you as an investor, and then, B, even really are luckier to get you on their advisory board. The numbers get smaller and smaller, don’t they? If one percent of pitches get funded, then out of those pitches that get funded an even smaller percent get to have you as an investor on their advisory board. Is that a key criteria when you’re looking to invest in someone? If they have a strong advisory board and the kinds of people they have?
Yes, definitely. Their extended team is very important. How they’re leveraging that advisory board is important. How much are they interacting, giving them information because there is this cycle of you give them more information, they tend to be more helpful. Then it’s a virtuous cycle from there. How strong the team is around, especially if it’s a first time entrepreneur, I think it’s really important.
[Tweet “Pitch Secrets: How you leverage your advisory board is important.”]
Got it. Nisa, would you speak to the importance of a founder being coachable. You want someone who’s passionate and confident but not arrogant, right?
Exactly. That is a very fine line. Often you don’t know if somebody is really coachable until you’re already working with them. You just try when you’re in your due diligence process to figure that out based on are they willing to listen to suggestions from you? Are they willing to make changes to the things you don’t think are going the right way? It’s really your gut telling you if this person is coachable or not.
Nice. Finally, I want to ask you because of your M&A background, do you like to see someone that’s thought through the entire process and says, “In three to five years, we could possibly give you a three to five return on your investments because we’ve identified the following two or three companies that could possibly buy us.”
Yes, definitely. I think that’s always helpful for investors who want to know what the exit is. They may not be so happy if you’re saying, “I’m going to stick it out. I’m not going to sell. I’m just going to go IPO.” That might not happen. You want to see flexibility in terms of if they get a good enough offer, are they willing to take it?
[Tweet “Pitch Secrets: Have an exit strategy to show ROI.”]
Are there any things you could share with your M&A expertise of things that you could give advice on about what to look for, what to avoid?
Could you be more specific?
Sure. If someone says, “Okay, we’ve got someone who’s interested in buying us. How do we decide which M&A firm to use? What things should we avoid when someone’s going to buy us?” Anything along those lines.
I think you have to figure out what kind of an acquisition is it. Is it an acqui-hire? They’re buying you just to get you to sign up to be talent on their team? Is it they’re really valuing the business? Is it really strategic to what they’re doing? Is it going to survive in the long term in the acquirer? Is there a cultural fit? There’s all kinds of considerations in M&A that you need to look at to figure it out.
That culture fit is so important. I’m so glad you brought that up because if they have a completely different philosophy, you probably won’t be happy there. If they’re compatible then it’s a great fit. But you definitely need to look at that. The same thing is true with the investors you take on, there has to be a cultural fit with who they are and who you are so that you value the same type of things. This has been a fascinating episode where you really shared a wide range of expertise and experience with us about pitch secrets. Are there any books that you recommend people read, either about business, investing, or just life, in general?

The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs
Sure. There’s a great book called The Creator’s Code by Amy Wilkinson, which you may have heard of, recently written. There’s also one that I love to recommend to entrepreneurs called The Startup Playbook, which basically goes through all the different founders who were very successful in how they got to where they are.
Love it.
Of course, they’re not books, but I read a ton of newsletters. For investors, I would say there’s things like Mattermark and StrictlyVC and Ben Evans’ List and the Term Sheet by Dan Primack and TechCrunch and things like that.
Great. We’ll be sure to put all that in the show notes for people so that they can have easy access to both the books and the other things that you just mentioned. Nisa, what do you look for when someone wants to pitch to you? You want a warm introduction typically? What’s the best way for founders to get in front of you?
Generally, it is a warm introduction but I’m also on Twitter, I’m on LinkedIn. I pretty much answer every email that people send me. I try.
How nice. What is your Twitter?
It’s your last name, first name?
Yes.
Okay, got it. That’s great to know. Is there any other piece of advice you want to leave the listeners with before I let you go?
I would just say I’m a huge fan of entrepreneurs. I really encourage entrepreneurship. It’s a lot harder to be the entrepreneur than it is the investor. I’m definitely pro-entrepreneur. Keep at it.
That’s fantastic. You’ve been a great guest. Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you so much.
Links Mentioned
J Robinett Enterprises
John Livesay Funding Strategist
37 Angels Website
The Creator’s Code by Amy Wilkinson
The Startup Playbook by David Kidder
Nisa on LinkedIn
Nisa on Twitter
Crack The Funding Code!
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Lunch with Warren Buffett – Interview with Guy Spier
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor and the author of, “The Education of a Value Investor”. In June 2007 he made headlines by bidding US$650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett. Guy talks to John on some of the key lessons he learned from that three hour lunch with Warren Buffett and how he helps founders get funded.
Lunch with Warren Buffett – Interview with Guy Spier
Today’s guest is Guy Spier who is the author of The Education of a Value Investor, he also had lunch with Warren Buffett. He had to spend $650,100 on a charity auction to get that lunch with Warren Buffett which lasted three and a half hours. This totally changed Guy’s life, his attitude, and his network of people. Guy has a whole philosophy about life, he said, “Generate more value than you take and be humble with everyone you meet”. Guy is full fascinating information.
Guy currently lives in Zurich and he has run the Aquamarine Fun for the last seventeen years. He is an ardent disciple of Warren Buffett. He launched the fund with 15 million dollars in assets, very closely replicating the structure and approach of Buffet’s original partnerships. Guy was educated at Oxford University, where he was a tutorial partner of the former British Prime Minister David Cameron and was the top of his class in Economics. After his stint in management consulting, he attended Harvard Business School, and then worked as an investment banker before starting his own fund. He is a regular commentator in the media and has appeared in CNN, in Bloomberg Television, as well as many other important places. Guy welcome to the show.
It is such a pleasure to be here. Hey, that Guy Spier sounds very cool, can I meet him?
Exactly. Isn’t it interesting when we hear our own bio sometimes? Like I did all that? I am in Los Angeles and you are in Zurich. Which is fantastic and cool that we could get to have this bi-continent, continental conversation. What I always ask my guests is to take us back, let’s start early, before your career, even before you went to Oxford. Did you have a personal passion for economics or investing as a child? What got you interested in all this?
That was not the case for me at all, John. The only time I heard something investment-related, was when we were living in Iran. Funnily enough, I remember the stock symbol. My dad was working for a German chemical company, and my father had opened up a brokerage account with Merrill Lynch in the United States, and he was following IBM. He would pick me up and I would sit next to him, and he would make me look in the newspaper to find out what IBM share price had done on a day-to-day basis.
But, other than that, I had no contact with the stock market until, really, my final year in business school. Then, actually, the guy who was interested in it was a classmate of mine that I was doing a project with, whom I write a little about in the book. He’s now really well-known. He’s the CEO of Zinger. He wanted me to go in with him to buy Philippine Long Distance, a Filipino telephone company, and I said yes, so that was the first time that I started talking about the stock market with somebody at business school. It was really in my last year, and after I’d already seen Warren Buffett speak in my first year, that I suddenly said, “Oh, I want to go to finance.” Now, I have to tell you John, I was twenty-six at that time, so I wasn’t that young. Warren Buffett was about a decade younger than me when he got going with investing the stocks. I have to say, at that time, I would not have admitted it to anyone, but I was all about greed. I fancied myself as a little Gordon Gekko, and I am not proud of that.
You have transformed yourself so that’s fine, right?
It is easy to talk about it when you’re something different. That true.
One of the things that I really want to ask you about is this fascination of where did you find the money? Did you find that it was a good investment? And tell us about how you were part of a charity fundraising charity event and bought an opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffett, right?
My story, I think, is far less inspiring in that regard in comparison to this other guy that I write a lot about in the book, my friend, Mohnish Pabrai. In my case, I had gone to this investment bank, D.H. Blair, and it really ruined my reputation, because it was an unsavory place that was ripping off orphans and widows. It would be the short way of talking about it. I really ought to have left within five minutes, but I stayed eighteen months. When I finally left, people did not want to offer me a job, and I went two or three rounds with a number of interviews, and people just shut down, and I knew it was because they could see that I had those stains. I saw that in my boo. I toyed with calling it a stain. A bloody stain like Lady Macbeth. It felt horrible to me. It felt like I couldn’t wash it off, and nobody wanted to hire me.
In my case, my dad – and don’t ask my why he did it – decided to gamble the substantial portion of his life-savings on his son, and he came along and he said, “Look, I think you should try and start a business and I’m willing to be your key client to do it.” I think that I am quite an entrepreneurial type, but with my dad and the proportion of his net wealth that I knew he was investing with me, unless he had something stashed away somewhere else that he had not told me about, I knew that I could not mess this up, and I was once in awe of his willingness to trust me, and at the same time I was scared stiff. And still, to this day, I don’t fully understand why he did that.
But then I think, John, the thing is there are so many difficulties in life. What I realized now – I didn’t want to accept it then – but if you should take the help from wherever it comes, and there’s so many people who are using whatever advantage that they have, and I realize now, in many ways, I had all sorts of disadvantages. I was an immigrant into the UK. I was kind of an immigrant into the United States. There are many people who had deep-rooted family and other kinds of connections that they are using. So if my dad was going to help me, that was perfectly legitimate and that was alright, and I think it’s something that I did not realize at that time, but to anyone starting a business, do not be afraid to accept help from those close at hand if that’s the help that is available. Take what you have and use it. But, what I would say John, is the fact that it was my original source of money delayed me about five or six years in terms of really learning how to sell myself. I did not really understood how to do that. So, it came with that kind of disadvantage, if you like. It got me going, but then I did not know how to scale from there.
[Tweet “Accept help from wherever you can get it and do not be embarrassed about that.”]
Interesting. I love that insight: “Accept help from wherever you can get it, and don’t be embarrassed about it.” One of the things you are describe in your book is how you spent a fortune, $650,100, to have one lunch with Warren Buffett. How did you find the money and what’s that story?
Let me preface it by saying that it was before the financial bubble burst, so I had a very good two or three years. I was not spending money I did not have, and it’s important that I was one-third of that sum; my friend Mohnish Pabrai, came up with two-thirds of that, and I had gotten to know him and he came up with this idea. Like you, I was like, “You want to do what? You want me to participate?”
And this is the thing, John, how can something that can sound so ridiculous, suddenly when you listen to the right person talking about it and their clear headed thinking becomes something that’s quite obvious and quite straightforward? My reaction was the same as yours, and then Mohnish Pabrai, at this breakfast in a Mandarin Hotel overlooking Central Park, talks me through why it’s a really smart thing to do.
Before we can get into all the reasons why, I can tell you that in terms of return on that $650,100, if you like, the people I have gotten to meet. It’s not just you saw that photograph of my wife with Bill Gates, which is really wonderful. I can’t say we had a long conversation with him, but even just that photograph with Bill Gates is very special. But below that, there are dozens of people that I would never have met had I not gone to that lunch with Warren Buffett. It’s not that Warren Buffett introduced me to them, it’s that there are just a lot of people who would not mind meeting the guy that paid $650,100 to have lunch with Warren Buffet.
What I understood beforehand, is that it comes down to the very special personality of Warren Buffett. So, it wasn’t just a soft of, “Let me meet you for half an hour and then I’ll run off.” He hung out with us for about three and a half hours. He came determined in a degree. It was unnerving actually.
I mean, here’s a guy who’s one of the world’s richest men. He does not have anything that we could give to him, and all he wants to do is serve us. All he wants to do is make us feel like we got so much value for it. That came afterwards. We showed up in Omaha one hour early for the Berkshire meeting and he invited us up to his office. He gave us a tour of his office. We hang out. Then he introduced us to Tracy Britt, is now one of these “30 under 30” women. She’s a rock star. She is heavily involved in the next generation of Berkshire Hathaway managers, and he says, “Tracy, why don’t you just come to lunch with us?” So, he’s been delivering value, and he invites us to this brunch every year, where you get to hand our with people. I mean, one year, Charlie Rose was there. Bill Gates is there every year.
He delivered enormous amount of value, and it has changed my life, it has changed my network. But also just to witness that, what does it say to you, me, and a whole lot of other people if Warren Buffet, at his level of success, is humbly trying to deliver value to some guy who won a charity auction with him, can you imagine what he’s like with his friends? I don’t think that he is any different, and so that really taught me that I had to have a tremendous humility with all sorts of people, not just because it is a good way to be, but because it is incredibly rewarding, and it’s smart business. I mean, look at what I am doing now. I am taking the time just to talk about Warren Buffett. It’s gets me so excited to think about it. The ultimate in being immense, being a good person, which will generate massive business rewards is to do stuff for people where there’s no way they could thank you, you know?. It is the kind of thing that they could not reciprocate.
Let me give you of an example of this in my work. I was giving a talk a couple of weeks ago to the CFA society, and a guy there emailed me and asked if he could come by and have and get his book autographed. I said, “Sure,” except I did not realize that he did not mean at the CFA talk, he meant that morning in my office. So, I get a knock on my door at the office, and I had some other things going on, but I realized that we had crossed wires and he actually came in the morning. Inspired by Warren Buffet, I said, “alright, fine. I’ve met him. Now I am going to take half an hour. I made him a coffee. I did the Warren Buffett thing.” This guy was a young student from Finland, and it was the same motivation. I wanted to make him feel that he got a surprising amount of value. I spent time with him in the library, I took photographs with him, we hammed it up a little bit, and I know that he is grateful to me, and he will talk about that. I took photographs of it actually.
[Tweet “Be humble with everyone you meet regardless of who they are.”]
It sounds like, to me, that you passed on what you learned from your lunch with Warren Buffett to the next generation. the idea is to be humble with everyone you meet, regardless of who they are.
I would argue that the returns of the lunch with Warren Buffet, not just the network that I got exposed to, but seeing him up close and seeing some things that were really surprising that I did not really expect, was priceless. Like so many people, I have a certain ego, and I feel like I’m quite a smart guy. There was some pare of me that thought, ” I may be as smart as Warren Buffet.” Sitting for lunch with Warren Buffett, I knew that I wasn’t. I knew that he had a clocked speed that was higher than mine, and it was painful to experience that, and as this friend of mine, William Greene, says, “weirdly liberating,” because it freed me up. I was investing a lot of energy trying to be something that I was not, and it is a waste of energy, and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. So I gave up that version of myself.
Well, just the freedom to not have to be the smartest person in the room all the time, I would think, would be very liberating.
Yes, it absolutely was, and not just liberating. I think that you use up brain cells that could be better used doing something else, thinking about whether it’s your and your wife’s anniversary, which it was yesterday. I didn’t do very well with that.
Well, we won’t let that ruin everything. You know, what you said to me reminds me, Guy, reminds me of a statement I once heard which is, “If you focus on being interested in the other person, as opposed to being interesting to them, you will have a better conversation.”
Yes, exactly. There’s a story about the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: if you met him, you left thinking you were brilliant, but if you met another Prime Minister, Gladstone, you left feeling that he was brilliant. You want to be like Disraeli. It’s not how you feel. It’s how you make other people feel. Can you make other people feel good about themselves?
That’s so useful for my target audience, who are probably in the position of going to pitch investors: if you make the investors feel good about themselves, investing in you as opposed to trying so hard to impress them with how smart you are, you come across confident but not arrogant, and I think that’s really what you are saying here.
Let me ask about the preparation you did for your lunch with Warren Buffett. If you are going to spend that kind of money, over $650,000 to have lunch with somebody, I’m imagining that you put some thought and effort into the kinds of questions you were going to ask during the lunch with Warren Buffett, right?
This is the funny thing John. So, this is me to Mohnish Pabrai, who is way wiser than I am and way smarter as well. I said, “Mohnish, shouldn’t we prepare? Shouldn’t we reread all of the publicly available information?” He said, “You know, Guy, we have been studying.” I mean, at that point, I’d been going to the Berkshire meeting for ten years. I was reading every single annual report. At the time, there was one biography that I’d read at least a couple of times and it was like, “Don’t worry the conversation will just flow.” So what Mohnish did, in investing in the lunch with Warren Buffett, was brilliant, and this is something that may be really valuable for everyone. What was will as a power lunch became a soft of family occasion. So Mohnish came with his wife and two children, and I came with my wife. It was very clear in a couple of radio and TV interviews that we were just there to say thank you to somebody that has taught us a lot. These were all things to de-escalate the tension, de-escalate the sense of defensiveness that Warren might have.
Here’s something that I just think doesn’t work anymore in a hyper connected world where everybody can just reach for anything through Google search, which is that the preparation of the pitch, in a certain way, it should be about saving the other guy time. It’s not about trying to force them to listen to you, because they can find whatever they want. We can all find whatever we want. All of it is on sale on the Amazon at a very low price. So, to save them time and to think about, “How do I reduce their sense of tension, their sense of defensiveness that will come up if there is something that is being asked for?” What’s so wonderful about being around and studying somebody like Warren Buffett is there are so many valuable stories to land. For example, I’ll tell you about Byron Trott, who’s the only investment banker that Warren Buffett deals with. He has told it in a couple of interviews. He got this one-off meeting with Warren Buffett. Byron got about half and hour, and he’d flown out to Omaha. So he said, “Warren, give me a problem that you’ve got that nobody else has been able to solve. I can’t guarantee that I will solve it for you, but I’d like to try.”
So, here are all the things that I love about that question. First of all, it says, “This meeting is all about you. It’s not about me. I want to hear what you want to say.” So, it’s offering something. It’s offering your time to listen to what’s on their mind. The other thing that it does is, instantly, without having to go through, it says, “I know you already have a lot of great service providers. I know that you have a lot of great stuff on your plate, and guess what? I don’t want to compete with any of them because I’m sure that you’re happy. I want your unsolved problems. If you’ve already got some people solving your problems, I don’t even want to start saying that I can solve your problems better.” I think that Warren Buffett is so brilliant. He heard that question, and he knew that he has a guy in his presence that he liked, because this guy was about Warren Buffett and his needs, not about what he was trying to pitch. Warren makes these decisions and, bang, Byron Trott was in his inner circle, and they have done I don’t even know how many deals. What Warren gave him, what he said to Byron Trott was, “Please, could you get me security issues that pay a negative interest rate.” So we are paid to issue the security. It did not actually work out financially. They had an embedded stock option in there that ended up costing Berkshire quite a bit of money. But, again, it got Warren’s mind churning, and it makes me think of when I was a couple of years out of business school, I know of a guy who got an internship with Warren Buffett. He wrote to Warren Buffett from Columbia Business School, and he asked for a job or for an internship, and then he included a check for his estimate of the amount of time it would take Warren Buffett to read the letter. I don’t think Warren ever cashed the check, but what Warren loved was that this guy was thinking in the right way. He was thinking about how Warren’s time was valuable, and he did not want to waste Warren’s time, and he thought, “A guy who thinks like that is thinking in the right direction.”

Turning lunch with Warren Buffett into a family affair made the meeting not as tense and more relaxed. Pictured from left are Guy Spier and his wife, Lory, Warren Buffet, and Mohnish Pabrai and his family.
Well, it’s a classic case of empathy, isn’t it? You put yourself in Warren Buffet’s shoes and you realize how valuable his time is, and you did a gesture that acknowledged that. The thing I love about the story that you just told us of how he picked that investment banker, “Give me a problem that you have not been able to solve.” That’s what everybody wants to hear in a pitch. “Tell me a problem that you are solving that nobody has solved yet, or you are solving it in a way that is unique.” It’s disruptive, it’s going to change the world, make the world a better place. So, on a one-to-one basis, if you can help somebody solve a problem, and, of course, on a global basis, if you are looking for an investment. That’s such a great story and so helpful.
I really want to dig in a little bit about what you write earlier in your book about, “the more you understand yourself ,the better of an investor you become.” Can you elaborate on that?
Even before we get to investing, let’s talk about teams. I’m sure that you’ve done it, man of use have done it. I have been in small teams. It’s usually people who work for me, and there is a commitment that they made, and they have failed to make it, and I realized that it is not of the lack of desire. It is because they did not understand who they really were and they didn’t understand, and it’s not that their communication to me was bad, that they were being dishonest or not trustful. It’s that they did not understand their deepest desires or they did not understand their own capacities. I think that when you have somebody who shows up at work, it is so much nicer to hear somebody say, “You have asked me to set up this computer. I am not very good at it, I am not sure if I will succeed, but if you really want me to try, I will, because it is not actually my strong suit.” This attitude really breed trust and I think, in a certain way, if we come to investing, it’s the same thing.
If I identify with my rational brain, I’m going to trip up, so I feel like I have these teammates inside of me that I have to bring along. So, there’s the rational brain but there is also this emotional thing going on, which is raging around all over the place, and that, unfortunately, it’s like a member of the team that you really wish you could lose but can’t sometimes. So, I can’t ignore that person. It’s like you try and ignore that teammate and you try and put them in a corner and shut them up, but then they go and really wreak havoc.
Then they get mad.
Yes, so you really have to find a way to involve them in a certain way, and I think that just being honest with myself, one of the examples that I write about is that, unlike Mohnish Pabrai, I have this inordinate fear of loss. I don’t want to have to start from scratch, and I am more fearful, I think, than many people of losing money. So, I don’t think it would have made sense to ignore that. I think I had to be honest with myself and with my investors and say, “You know, if I was utterly rational, this is a great investment. But you know what? It scares the hell out of me, and I can’t sleep with that.” So, I am not going to worry about it, even if it means that my returns will be lower.
Right. Know yourself and know your own risk tolerance. If you’re an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with your own risk. You might be risking not having a steady paycheck for a while, and what if your company does not do well, or whatever it is, you have to know yourself and your comfort zone, and I love what you say about thinking of all the different parts of our brain, left brain, right brain as members of the team as opposed to fighting ourselves. We’re all on the same team here, so let’s figure out how we can best work together instead of shutting everybody up.
[Tweet “If you want to become an entrepreneur you have to be comfortable with your own risk.”]
It’s like I think that we’ve all been through these times where we fight with the forces that are arrayed around us in the universal. Like Jacob struggling with the angel, it just does not work very well. It works much better when we align ourselves with those forces. Then, in a strange way, actually, when you talk – if you don’t embrace the risk or you don’t embrace the fear saying, “You’ll do this, this is great. I’m fearful or you’ll do this. This is great.” It’s like because I see the risks so clearly or because I feel the fear so much, this is motivating me to take all these actions. So, if I’m not honest with myself about my fear of loss, or if an entrepreneur is not being honest with himself about the very real possibility of failure, we are not going to be motivated to do everything that we can possibly can to make it succeed. The strange thing for me is that the times when I’ve been in those kinds of circumstances, on the one hand I feel utterly alive. You know, actually, writing the book was actually like that. And then, on the other hand, it’s like once I am through it, I’m like, “I don’t want to go through that again.”
I understand. In fact, I wrote a whole blog about starting a podcast and the three faces of fear that I had to overcome. The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, and the fear of the unknown. For me, identifying those fears in the three faces helped me deal with them. So, it wasn’t just any kind of fear. I would say, “Which fear is this?”
But there is something else that I think is so incredibly critical. I learned this from a friend of my who’s a psychologist: emotions are a call to action, and if we don’t feel those emotions, we are not going to take the action that we need to take. I felt it as you were saying it that the fears that you were dealing with, it wasn’t that you were just dealing with them, they were motivated you to do stuff. If you did not feel that, you wouldn’t have done as good a job when setting up your podcast.
Emotions are a call to action. I love that.
[Tweet “Emotions are call to action.”]
They’re two side of the same coin, you know. I was just listening to Brene Brown TED Talk with a couple of friends the other day. It was about how the vulnerability is what gets the healing, is what gets the result, and we just cannot have the one without the other.
It’s so true. Earlier you and I were speaking about your sense of liking to help people, especially the founder, possibly even get funded so that when they sell their company, they’ll remember you. Talk to me about how that all works in your world.
I’ll tell you because it’s just amazing the way it started. It started out of a very venal place, which wasn’t generous at all. I read Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and it’s got this great story about these Hare Krishna money raisers who would hand out plastic flowers in airports. The human reciprocation tendency is so strong that even if you hand out plastic flowers, they you still will feel obligated to give something is very effective. So, I’m thinking,”Damn, I could use this.” So, I am in New York and I’m giving the doorman a piece of candy; I’d carry sweets or chocolates around with me. I’d be giving stuff to people all the time, but I wasn’t coming out of a place of love for humanity or of generosity. I was coming out of a place of pure manipulation. I was like, “Let’s see how I can manipulate people to do stuff for me,” and all sorts of things happened as a result of that. But, really, this is part of why I wanted to write the book: I suddenly found that I actually enjoyed it, not because I could manipulate people into doing something, but because I realized that people genuinely responded, even to my fake giving. I know, over time, I think my fake giving turned into something which was much more genuine. Then, over time, what happened was that I started wanting to do it on a large scale. I have a friend who starts medical technology companies in Minnesota, and I suddenly realized that i was coming across people that he would be interested to meet, and it sort of tapped into the same idea of finding a way to be generous because good things come back to me if I’m generous.
Actually, I’ll give you a story. I am a member of this organization called the Entrepreneurs Organization, which is fantastic. So, I helped start the Israel chapter. Again, this was my idea of wanting to help people, but, with the idea that, at some point, these guys – some of them might build big businesses and have money to invest and then they might send that money to me. One of the members is a woman who is looking for funding. Her name is Mikhail Lodski. She was looking for funding. I hadn’t even met her. So here’s what I did: I wrote up something which said, “Dear, First Name, I am a member of an organization called EO, and EO’s has a member called Mikhail Lodski, and she’s got what looks like a great business plan and I would be really grateful if you take a look at it.” Then I wrote, “Look, I don’t understand a lot about it, but if you were to at least take a look and see if you could help, it would mean a lot to me, and I would be grateful to you for that.” Then I went to my LinkedIn profile and I did a search for a hundred people who, in some way, were involved in the world that she was looking for funding in. They were either venture capitalists, or they were angels, or they were in that business, and I just cut and pasted that message like I don’t know how many times, and you know what was interesting? It was unlike asking for it yourself; the fact that I was asking for it and they know me, there was some connection, I’d met them at a conference or something. Even if they had no interest, they could see that I was doing this out of the desire to help somebody, so they accepted it in a way that if she’d gotten in touch with them directly, they wouldn’t have, and then one of them actually took a close look, it was in their space, they liked it. They ended up funding her business.
What a great story. You can never underestimate the importance of a warm introduction. It’s everything. It’s been so wonderful hearing your stories, and personal transformations. I want to know how people can follow you on social media. What is the best way for people to follow you? Like Twitter and the other stuff.
My Twitter account is the first and last initial of my name, so its @gspier. I also started a LinkedIn group called the Education of the Value Investor. There are a couple of others there. I am actually really enjoying LinkedIn groups. It is a great place to be. I am also enjoying Twitter, I have to say because I just like the random conversations with all sorts of people from all over the world.
Your LinkedIn group is it the name of your book? The Education of a Value Investor?
Yes. That’s nice of you to do that.
Of course, perfect. Thank you so much for this discussion on what you’ve learned since your lunch with Warren Buffett. Is there any last piece of advice you have for someone who’s in the world of starting a business, looking for funding, or about life or business, in general, that you want to share as a closing thought?
What I would say, and the thing that I feel I’ve learned that is so important is always leave a little on the table, always generate more value than you take, always leave people wanting more. Then, just keep doing that for a decade. I told the guy that came and did an internship with me, I said, “If you help ten people you have friends. If you help a hundred people you will probably find a job. If you help a thousand people, you can probably start a business. If you help ten thousand people, you will have a quite successful business, and if you start being in the range of helping a hundred thousand people then you’ve got a substantial business. When it gets to million you are like Warren Buffet, and when it gets to ten million then you are like Mahatma Gandhi.” But that’s approximately the order of scale, and it’s just about having how many people out there that just feel grateful that you are on the planet.
What a great philosopy.
When you do that, good things will come to you. They might not be what you wanted. God might have other plans stored for you but good things will happen.
It’s just having that as the intention: “Generate more value than you take.”
[Tweet “Generate more value than you take.”]
I want to reach out and give you a hug, John. this has been wonderful.
All the way across the ocean, thank you.
Links Mentioned
J Robinett Enterprises
John Livesay Funding Strategist
Aquamarine Fund Website
Guy on Twitter
Guy’s LinkedIn Group
The Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier
TED Talk – The Power of Vulnerability
Crack The Funding Code!
Register now for the free webinar
Check out John’s Latest Book
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Secrets to Crowdfunding, Kim Kaselionis | TSP060
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
Kimberly Kaselionis is the Founder and Managing Partner at Breakaway Funding, a private business investment firm. She has more than 25 years of senior executive experience in the community bank and investment management industry. Kimberly has a wealth of knowledge on how to proof your idea and get funding from your customers.
What Was Covered
- 03:00 – How did Kimberly get started in this space?
- 03:45 – Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
- 04:25 – Why did Kimberly leave the banking industry?
- 06:00 – What were some of the surprises when Kimberly launched Breakaway Funding?
- 07:05 – What kind of challenges did Kimberly face? Kimberly talks about her business revenue model.
- 09:00 – Kimberly will be a moderator at the Global Alternative Funding conference.
- 13:20 – Kimberly discusses some of the benefits of crowd funding.
- 14:30 – What does a typical day look like for Kimberly at Breakaway Funding?
- 17:35 – Kimberly shares one more example of why crowd funding is so great.
- 20:15 – We are no longer living in a time where we get to benefit at your expense.
- 20:45 – Kimberly shares tips on how to get people emotionally engaged with your vision/pitch.
- 22:30 – Remember, the confused mind always says no.
- 23:10 – We do need time to read books, so read a bad novel and relax! It’s okay to take a time out.
Tweetables
[Tweet “Have stamina and determination to overcome life’s speed bumps.”]
[Tweet “Confidence attracts investors.”]
[Tweet “Convert your social capital to venture capital.”]
[Tweet “Be engaged and engrossed to show passion.”]
Links Mentioned
Judy Robinett’ Website
Breakaway Funding
4th Annual Global Alternative Funding Forum Addresses State Of The Art Options – Los Angeles
Kim Kaselionis on Linkedin
Breakaway Funding on Twitter
Kim Kaselionis on Twitter
Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of US by Mike Belsito
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