Nicole Washington: You Closed Your First Round of Funding, Now What?

Congratulations! You closed your first round of funding, what's next? To scale, you better have a plan, a structure and commitments for who’s on board.

 Today's Quote:

“If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.”

- Elon Musk

 Show highlights:

• The importance of having a structured plan
• Stick to the plan
• Layout structural elements

Stick to the defined plan!

• Cause, Mission, Vision
• Should have an active pipeline ready to go
• Key positions in place, partners, hr strategy in place
• Hiring without compromise- values and mission driven alignment
• Investors should have dig into core company values and compromise levels of hiring
• Just a bunch of people winging it… you won't be able to hire right in today’s landscape

Create a team that investors will continue to invest in

• No, no’s
  • Knowing the difficulty creating a team
• Hard for people to find a good technical people
  • Don't hang out in the same places
• Setting Expectations & writing them down
• What happens when it doesn't work?

Structure… Have everything lined up!

• Company values in cement
• Define your Road map
  • Set the stage for what happens next
• All documents & agreements in place
• Getting people to join before you have funding or a product
• Leverage university talent, students, - easier to get people to resonate with them
  • Students: finding the ones who are doing research in your particular field
  • Develop the relationship with the professors
  • Reach out directly to the student *attractive to investors

Takeaways:

• Do not make compromises!
• Goals of the company first
• Hire with the end result in mind

Nicole Washington, Director of Innovation and Growth of OCTANe OC, focuses on engaging with strategic partners to accelerate the growth of early to later stage ventures and small to medium size business throughout the entire Southern California Ecosystem.  

She currently serves as Chair of the Academic Committee and Trustee of the Board of Education for Samueli Academy. A (STEM) high school that delivers state of the art education to a large population of underrepresented youth.

Nicole is a member of the Ohio TechAngel Fund, the 2nd largest Angel Investor Network in the United States, where she served as the due diligence team, technology lead for several years.