If Serena Williams FaceTimes you to learn about your business, you’d better answer. That’s what Emly Hosie did.
The CEO of Toronto-based re-commerce startup Rebel recounted how the tennis superstar wanted to invest in her Series A round in a panel discussion at Toronto Tech Week’s Homecoming event on Wednesday.
“Serena Facetimed me, and I was like, ‘what is happening?’” Hosie said, in response to moderator Andrew D’Souza’s question about how it felt to court celebrity investors like Williams and rapper Jay-Z. Hosie explained that the fateful phone call came with a “network effect,” stirring up “FOMO” with other funds and celebrities hoping to get involved.
“We didn’t want to build a company that literally had no Canadians reaping in the upside, when we were actually going to grow and win here.”
Hosie shared the stage with two other founders, Float CEO Rob Khazzam and Neo Financial CEO Andrew Chau, who each came with their own fundraising tales.
According to Khazzam, Float was fortunate to even raise a seed round. He said multiple investors had passed because they didn’t believe Float could outperform big banks; a feeling Khazzam oddly relishes.
“I’m a bit of a sicko, and I love being rejected,” he said. “I put it in a list in my mind, and I go to work, and I compete with myself [to] prove this person wrong.”
The motivation paid off, as some of those investors eventually returned to Khazzam to buy into Float at a higher price, D’Souza said. Khazzam said that’s how he learned it’s powerful to walk away from failure without losing enthusiasm, instead using that to make a product even better.
“I think the reality is fundraising is the easiest thing that you do as a founder,” Khazzam said. “Building a brand, building a product, [and] serving customers is the hard part.”
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Like Khazzam, Chau said Canadian investors once questioned how his fledgling FinTech firm could challenge the big banks. But that spite wasn’t what fuelled him when he came back to raise nearly $70 million earlier this year from almost entirely Canadian investors.
“Prior to our last round … I think our investor base was like 98 percent foreign or American,” Chau said, adding that Neo initially decided to return to courting Canadian investors when it was more established. “We didn’t want to build a company that literally had no Canadians reaping in the upside, when we were actually going to grow and win here.”
It was a difficult process courting the more than 100 Canadian investors for the round, Chau said, as Neo had to convince “older money” types from the oil and gas industry that it was worth investing in a Canadian FinTech company. By inviting wealth from the successes of an entirely separate industry, he likely learned the same lesson Hosie did when she courted a tennis star and a rapper: don’t be intimidated.
“They’re the greatest of all time at what they do, but they’re genuinely interested and have no idea what you’re doing,” Hosie said. “You have to remind yourself that they’re coming to you to learn, just like if I tried to go play tennis, I would be hitting [Williams] up for a lesson.”
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Feature image courtesy Sarah Rieger for BetaKit.