Jared Brier

Founder & Co-CEO of AKKO ($100M +). Entrepreneur, advisor, investor, musician. “a chill and nice guy”

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

If you're a founder looking to raise capital for your product/idea, comment here + DM me. I'll provide free feedback and advice on your deck/memo.

I've raised $25M+ for my startup (pre-seed, seed, series A, series A2), helped a company I advise for raise their $2M+ seed, and have done multiple angel investments.

#startups #fundraising

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

@filipscaleson 🙏💯

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

If you're a founder looking to raise capital for your product/idea, comment here + DM me. I'll provide free feedback and advice on your deck/memo.

I've raised $25M+ for my startup (pre-seed, seed, series A, series A2), helped a company I advise for raise their $2M+ seed, and have done multiple angel investments.

#startups #fundraising

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

I too noticed the omission of horses haha. Sheepdogs got a call out as the other animal we relied on for intelligence and not the millions of horses humans relied on for centuries as primary method of travel! If horses didn’t have the intelligence capability they did, the world would be a vastly different place today.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

If anyone is an AI consultant / contractor also and you’d like to see the project scope and possibly submit a bid, DM me.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

An enterprise AI consulting firm pitched a local restaurant owner I know on $500k+ of development work ($100k per distinct project/tool build) for automating/improving various aspects of the business (staff scheduling, tracking beverage turnover, building profiles on customers, and some other things).

What stuck out to me was the fact each project was quoted at the same cost split 50/50 between an MVP build, then productionizing it if shows success.

I was pretty shocked and offered to take a review of their proposal... My first thought was that there had to be SaaS tools out there already tackling some of these areas for restaurant businesses, and likely with recently released or soon-to-be released AI features and functionality! (In the U.S., the restaurant industry is ~$1T industry!)

Sure enough, running the firm's proposal through @claudeai, I generated a report within 30min aligning each distinct "feature" of the tools this firm was proposing to build to existing SaaS solutions in the market for restaurants and their features.

While existing tools may not be able to tackle everything, I also know that some of the functions they were looking to automate and enhance could be done with no more than a couple days to a week's worth work of someone who's pretty competent with using agents.

Question for you all:
How do you bill or have you seen service providers bill for AI consulting/contracting work when building bespoke solutions for a business like a restaurant? (so containing integrations to their reservation system, POS, private events/dining booking, etc + spreadsheets, financials, and documents on procurement or training)

Hourly rates? Project-based fixed fees? Outcome-based/fees tied to success of revenue lift / cost savings?

Additionally, when you're working with a business that doesn't have an in-house tech/IT team to actually monitor, maintain, or continue to build on a system that's delivered from an outside firm, what does maintenance and updating look like over time??

This proposal I saw had no mention of hourly or monthly retainer rates for after these tools would've been turned over, and also nothing about estimated ongoing token costs for the various functions each tool would handle.

In my mind, proceeding with the proposal would've resulted in quite a disaster... and for a firm to charge a hefty upfront fee for a tool delivered, but no incentives to ensure these tools are going to be reasonable to maintain and not burning through excess tokens seemed like a real flaw to this style of engagement. I couldn't help but think many such SMEs are being pitched similarly and am curious how many business owners/operated not that familiar with AI are potentially being led down paths without being fully informed...

(For context, this restaurant does well north of $10 - 15M/yr so the proposal was clearly bid to be somewhat in line with knowledge of the relative size of revenue of the business, but I was still pretty shocked at the large figures that seemed much more fitting to Fortune 500.)

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

This is not a joke, I just used @GeminiApp live conversation mode and asked a question. It spoke back to me in a clone of the sound of my own voice…

Went into settings to check the voice selected, definite bug. This is not a feature to have some custom voice, and the voice selected was just their default one. When I went back into live conversation mode again, back to normal.

I launched Gemini from my iPhone action button shortcut initially.

Wild. Anyone else run into this?

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Had a couple of people DM. Still open to reviewing more!

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

I was thinking the same. However, if you ideally live in a city with some events going on, you can avoid travel costs and just attend.

Sometimes you can get lucky with finding access to a free pass also. Funny enough, not exhibiting at conferences has sometimes yielded as much positive ROI as just attending. You've got more open time to interact with people vs. holding down a booth.

I respect the spirit of the OP, but do agree that it's likely unrealistic to include in-person conference/events... I'd say save that for round 2 after you exhaust the first test of channels haha.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

@PuniaProtocol Happy to help! And good luck.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Every Sunday, I’ll reply to people’s questions about their startup (as many as I can get to).

If you’re a founder/product builder/marketer:
- Ask something on your mind (fundraising, hiring/team, growth hacking or marketing)

- Or for my thoughts/analysis of your idea/company (paste your website or deck if have)

- Or something else (whatever)

Why you should ask me something (my background):
I’ve built 3 companies, the latest of which (and current) has raised $25M to date, team of 50, fully remote, valuation $100M+. We started DTC and added B2B2C, B2B and B2B2B. Have overseen millions in ad and marketing spend (digital and conferences), and led product across mobile and web catering to the wide set of use cases and user types we service (consumer, SMB, enterprise).

I’ve advised a few startups (looking to advise more! So DM me if you’re in 0-1 phase and want to chat) who have said my insights and guidance “were everything” to the start of their success.

This is week 1, so not expecting much… haha. But that comes with a new channel. I’ll keep this up weekly.

#buildinpublic #founders #startups

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Completely depends on your product and audience. For me, starting DTC it was google ads.

Google search ads are great because you know people are already in-market and searching for a solution. If you have a solution that can be served up to a wide-enough searched query, I suggested giving it a test. Just to get initial traction and data.

Copying this similar aspect of matching your product up to people who already have intent would be in-person events organized around the particular audience or addressing a certain pain point.

I can see, based on your product, that you're definitely in a more competitive place when it might come to paid. The more expensive the "product" being sold is, the higher CPC (grad school is super expensive).

But see if you can find search terms around things like "grad school rankings" or "best <type> grad programs".

For in-person, hit up some grad school fairs/events, get a brand T Shirt made with your website and tagline/brand (if it's not a paid event that may block you from doing this). But otherwise, walk around with some business cards/flyers and just chat with attendees.

Partnerships can work too, I could see you may providing a promo or free access via college prep people. Maybe the ones who are the test tutors vs. who would think your product competes with them? Or staff at public colleges who just want to provide resources to students looking at grad school.

Happy to chat more on growth hacking strategies in zero-to-1 phase!

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

The answer is always customers. You obviously need to have enough of a product available first to start attracting them. But similar to some recent conversations I've had with early founders, a lot of times you might fall into a trap of thinking that "product" means something fully functional, working, and actually live.

An increasingly popular way to test your idea is to first just build a website landing page or piece of creative that clearly explains what your product will be and the values and outcomes it can deliver.

Path 1 - Landing Page:
Build a full website landing page marketing your product, where there's a "sign up" button, link the user to a wait list sign up form. Ensure your site has a product analytics tool like @posthog Installed so that you can view user session recordings in full. You can measure the success of the top of your funnel by checking how many people go from a page visit and how long of a page visit to clicking your sign up button to actually putting their email into the wait list form.

I highly recommend this before even building your product. However, it's also fair, especially now with vibe coding, to think through building your product as a way to iterate, understand the features you want to offer, and let that all inform how you communicate the value props and outcomes of your service.

Path 2 - Content / Social:
Create static images or upload short product demo videos to a social media page. Find your potential audience and users, and simply have a prompt for them to follow your page so that they know when you're live and ready for people to sign up.

Given what you're saying your product is, I would probably advocate for this path.

If you have already built an initial beta of your product just through vibe coding and you feel confident actually turning it over to some real users, then go ahead and let them sign up and try to learn from them. Again, make sure you have a good product analytics tool like posthog and be hands-on with your early users in getting feedback.

The movement of building in public (#buildinpublic) has been a winning strategy for many recent companies. I would highly suggest doing the same. Also creating a reddit/slack/discord for your early users to use and discuss their ideas and help inform your focus areas and roadmap.

Team:
Sometimes your team may even come from the pool of people who are your early users! But otherwise, don't focus on hiring and bringing people on until you've got some traction.

Raising Capital:
I've been hearing that it's become increasingly difficult to do this for first-time founders unless you have some meaningful traction. With the barrier to build having been torn down by AI, you need to instead be measured not based off of just your idea and the market you're going after for getting funding, but on being able to show actual traction. This doesn't necessarily have to be paying users and revenue. It depends on what you're building, but at least having something like a strong waitlist, following, or early data users and showing high app engagement metrics are all things that you can leverage when you're ready to talk to investors.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Not to discredit your take, since I agree and see it playing out similarlytoo! But I think that's sort of exactly what @gregisenberg's 2nd part of his statement is?

"or being interesting enough that the agent decides you're worth its person's time."

@claudeai and @GeminiApp are both already delivering me a glimpse into the results of this type of future/outcome.

On the work-side:
Claude daily sweeps my email, and surfaces what's important to me. It knows my businesses' contexts very deeply (with Granola + Fireflies + Slack all connected in as well as Google workplace). So once the cost to compute drops further and it can efficiently screen all the cold emails for things I may actually want to look into, I can see it.

On the personal-side:
Gemini's daily brief / gmail AI inbox could similarly aggregate cold email/promos that it thinks I would actually want to check out since google knows all my intent around what i'm actively searching for to begin with, or answers I'm trying to find.

Going to be exciting times as this all just gets more useful... I'm already really coming around to Gemini since it's improved. The level of context it already has on me is unmatched, so hot tip for anyone else who's been a google person for years...

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

I started out as a solo founder, today we've had valuations $100M+. What I can say is that an amazing hack for solo-founders is bringing on good advisors early.

Giving even a few early advisors ~2% each who have a couple hours a week to bounce ideas off, and who are genuinely interested in being a part of the excitement of 0-1 building and can give you learnings + open doors is huge leverage vs. a typical even co-founder split. You get the feeling of a "team" and people to talk to and work with so you're not in an echo-chamber (or just talking to Claude), and you can make it all the way to your seed round/post-revenue having only given up < 10% equity.

One of the first companies I started advising was started by a solo-founder also, he's often said it basically felt like I was his co-founder helping him get through and raise his seed round 😂. We have a handful of interactions a week on WhatsApp, and some calls every week or other week to strategize. In some ways, if you find the right advisor, they're a bit like a coach too, someone who holds you accountable to timelines/deliverables and helps remind you to stick to your strategy/process.

I at least got lucky with one of my first advisors who worked with me in that way, when you're only accountable to yourself you let things slip more... (just like working out with vs. without a personal trainer). Now with the companies I work with, I take a similar approach since it was so helpful for me early on.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

https://t.co/kyynrsaOnz

@BillGates via CNN: There's no plan to ease the entry into the AI era and we underestimate the impact of AI

I'm glad to see one of the more prominent tech figures in our society be more honest about this topic.

People saying "there will be new jobs created by AI" are not actually laying anything out to back that up in a way that would prove we are not still as a society about to face a massive and harmful disruption.

This piece from a few months back was an interesting read... by @citrini @alapshah1 -

"THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS"
https://t.co/5gfmkUnmq3

Anyone know of some compelling arguments/plans that point to a more optimistic future path?

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

In my last year of university, I started a small event company promoting events in San Diego and Las Vegas. As a solopreneur, I had to figure out how to put together a website, do graphic design for marketing, and do social media and digital marketing.

A bunch of those skills I picked up translated into moving into doing web design, development, small business consulting, and some SEO/marketing services. (Paid a lot better and more consistent work).

While I was running my web design agency, I had really gotten into the flow of finding different businesses who were my clients in a variety of different verticals and areas. I was going through the process to modernize their website, "sexy" up their brand, and deliver a final result that could help them with their operations using a suite of digital tools that were a fit for them.

One week while I was working on a client project, I had an issue with my laptop. Luckily, I had a warranty on it, but the claim process was an absolute headache. That got the gears turning on looking into a more modern, digital-focused brand around protecting my "stuff" (gear). Electronics, music gear, etc.

A bunch else happened in between that time and when I finally launched @getAKKO in 2020, the process of development and going live I was focuing on more part-time. But right during COVID, things clicked, we started scaling through some small google ads campaigns.

The first few years were a grind, long days, not a good balance in my life, just so work heavy as a first-time founder, and working fully remote (since we had no choice during COVID era).

Were fortunate to keep growing, raising money, hiring more great people to our team, and now over the past year-ish I've had some more available time shifting out of as much of the day-to-day (handing off ownership to senior team leaders, VPs/Directors/C-Suite).

Advising and helping other founders is frankly a pretty mutual benefit as it has a self-serving aspect for me haha. As companies mature and teams grow bigger, things do naturally "slow down" a bit. You have to build out more stringent processes, and when the size of the clients you work with gets bigger too, launch times can also take longer. (Big-company shit: people thinking in quarters and years vs days and weeks lol)

I love the creative-side of startups and product building/marketing, the zero-to-one. So chatting with founders and ideating/helping them think through that phase they're at gives me a rush and is fun. Also, I do always want to "pay it back". Some of the best advice/support/guidance you get building is from founder who are either a couple years, or sometimes just a few months ahead of where you are. You improve your success by learning from them and avoiding costly (time and/or money) mistakes and pitfalls building.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

@realy0usaf Thanks for the note!

Open to sharing something here on comment? Helpful for others to see!

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

@benbuaron_ Haha. It’s a great place. Hit me up if you make it. Happy to grab a drink/bite and chat about what you’re working on.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Not underrated, there’s just a time factor and inflection point.

If you post when you have no followers, no one will see it and it’s a gamble getting it seen in feeds.

If you comment on stuff already getting eyeballs, people will see it and if you share genuinely interesting thoughts (not AI crap), it’ll resonate with some people, they’ll follow, and then that will compound until you’re the one people are commenting on to access your reach haha.

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

Block the time on your calendar. Everything slips away in your day if you don’t block out the time. I fell into that trap the first few years building my company (now $100M +). 12hr days, 5-6 days per week, told myself no time for anything but work and then trying to decompress and reset to start the next day.

Don’t fall into that trap. Block time for walks, gym, meals, social time, and yes, other tasks like chores/errands or content.

Get started by just commenting. Refresh the “for you” and reply with some genuinely helpful insights or thoughts (no AI use!) on the first few posts you see. ✅

[Jared Brier @JaredBrier]

@zdogmode Social for sure. @gregisenberg has great frameworks for leveraging Reddit and X to find the audiences / communities with the problem that you’re solving (or hoping to solve).