Robert J Abalos

Director of Partnerships, Validate Venture Partners. No cost help for startup founders needing funding. Email us. [email protected]

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

If you are a startup founder seeking pre-seed or seed funding, my company, Validate Venture Partners, Inc. ("VVP"), can offer you free help in securing this funding.

How does our process work?

Our approach is very simple. Founders struggling to put together a new startup should not be burdened with consulting fees of any sort. We see them advertised on Linkedin and numerous online forums. Everything from coaching services, pitch deck review clinics, venture capital funding lists and so on.

We do not believe in any of these methods. We work with startup founders because our clients want us to find great new ideas and help get them funded.

All of our fees are paid for by our funding partners. These include venture capital companies, family offices, and wealthy angel investors. In other words, our company is paid for deal flow and due diligence services.

I am the Director of Partnerships with VVP, and I take my title literally. Creating partnerships between startup founders and investors, helping both get what each need. My philosophy is win-win, or no deal. And part of this approach is not overburdening founders with all kinds of tricky, excessive, even nonsensical costs and fees when I know from experience, every dollar is precious and every penny buys another few seconds of runway.

So, are there any fees for getting help from Validate Venture Partners? Yes, there is. Just one. A $500 application fee. That's it. There are no other fees, costs, demands for equity, whatever at any time.

Why do we charge new startup founders $500 to apply for our services? Because we have learned this small fee separates the serious founders from we call the "tire kickers." Google the term if you don't know it. People who have no real intention of building a startup and just want to waste everyone's time, especially ours. We set this charge at $500 because it is high enough to eliminate the tire kickers, but low enough not to deter any legitimate and serious founder from giving our service a try.

And again, there is never, never ever, any fees to be paid us as a company at any time after this. NONE. I can't be more emphatic.

So how does this funding process work?

It's simple, really. Four steps.

1. You apply. We review your application, pitch deck (if you have one) and whatever else you can send us.

2. If we don't feel any of our clients would be interested in your idea, we tell you why and what your next steps should be. At a minimum, you will have an unbiased and objective assessment of your startup and what you need to do going forward to get funded. If we think your idea needs more work, we will tell you what is necessary and how to reapply in the future.

3. If we like your idea, we will begin a vigorous due diligence review of your startup. At this point, we have informed one of our clients about you and they are encouraging us to move forward. This step can take a few weeks, or longer. Much of it depends on you, your data room preparations, and so on.

4. Once we finish our due diligence, and our client wants to meet you, we give you and them our final report and we are out of the picture. What happens next is between you and the funding client. How you negotiate a term sheet, with what dollar amounts, is between the two of you. We encourage you at this point to have legal representation to fully protect your financial interests, as will our client.

To date, we have funded more than 260 companies of all sorts. While we primarily work in the "hard" industries like real estate and infrastructure and energy development, we have helped startups of all types, from retail products to SaaS to app developers. Fundamentally, we know what our clients are looking for and when we are lucky enough to find it, we pass our find on to them.

Anyway, this is a brief explanation of what we do, and how we do it.

If you are a startup founder, please give us a try. If you are undecided about us, please follow me on X and get a sense of our investing and business philosophy. I try to post useful information for startup founders every day of the week. Also, we won't let you apply if we don't think we can help you.

For more information, you can DM me here on X, or email at [email protected].

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@SMBDealGuy Sorry, but I have seen many entrepreneurs go broke and can't feed their families. Gambling with the mortgage money on a new marketing campaign or website or whatever. Society celebrates the entrepreneur but, at its core, it is just gambling with money you can't afford to lose.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@sabakarimm I tell my startup clients never to meet with an investor who has not expressed a serious vocal prior interest in funding. No blind dates. No "show us your pitch deck" meetings where everyone looks confused. Warm handoffs only. My company arranges them so I know they work.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@vitaliyk I know many wealthy people and most, not all, but most have adopted the Jesse Livermore safety strategy when they hit it big. Put enough cash aside in Treasuries and blue chip dividend payers to live a decent life, and speculate like a MF with the rest. What happens happens.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@InvestingAddict I know a guy who went to Costco for a $4.99 rotisserie chicken and wound up buying a coffin. Yes, Costco sells them, although they call them caskets. He needed it to dress a stage production of Dracula. True story.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@chestermtam Isn’t it amazing how many problems solve themselves if the government stops funding illegal aliens?

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@GadSaad A guy I know has worked with Cuban a few times in the past. He describes him as “easily distracted, like a child with ADHD” He also said Cuban is short tempered and extremely arrogant, especially towards staff. Always late for meetings, does not respect deadlines. Not a nice guy.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@nic_detommaso Great post. I work with pre-seed startups. At this level, there would be some, but not significant, evidence of traction, a solid theoretical proof of concept, and the formation of an efficient team which can manage the journey forward.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@nypost Remember all those leftist movements now festering in the dustbin of history? Occupy Wall Street? Black Lives Matter? How long until DSA and its cosplaying Marxist radical embarrassments are tossed into the same rancid pile?

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@sabakarimm VCs don’t manage mountains of cash, they manage equity values which need to be sold to get cash for investment. VCs have a CCC just like any other business. Really deceptive post.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@Chris_Hackney_ Very true. The source of most frustrations in daily life are the annoying, obnoxious, and demanding people which are thrust upon you, starting with coworkers and managers. The good news is 75% of these people can be exorcised from your life quite easily. It just takes effort.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@anandchokshi19 I'm a huge Buffett fan. But his advice here is too folksy by half, and essentially worthless. Yes, it only takes 4-5 trades or decisions to get rich. But, what he doesn't say, is knowing WHICH trades or decisions to make, and this is almost impossible without psychic powers.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@russellbrunson Superb advice. Founders, take note. Market complaints are just demonstrations of consumer pain points and solving them is the key to startup success. Future customers are literally telling you what they want to buy. This is the best post on X today. Powerful suggestion.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@4lexsvv I work with startups. "Educating the Market" is doomed because telling people they should like something new means lots of time, money. Your product should INSTANTLY be the obvious solution to an existing serious pain point. Their reaction is THANK GOD, someone listened.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@rubenssoto_ai Marketing is HARD. Engineering is science, so it operates under known rules, such as the laws of physics or even safety codes. Marketing is psychological guesswork, trying to figure out what motivates the human mind at various pain points. It's very difficult, unpredictable.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@coryalthoff Yes, this is not just unpopular but likely false. Most founders come from the growth company ecosystem, FAANG included. That's where experience, network, etc. can be found. Most people on X with forty followers are bots, or so uncommitted to X they don't post quality content.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@agazdecki I work with startups. The "few happy customers" is essential. But the "founder who refuses to give up" is dangerous. Just like in the stock market, a founder often needs to cut losses to fight another day. Most startups WILL fail, and founders do not need to fail with them.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@spencerpratt Every hardcore socialist I have ever known has been a spoiled rotten rich kid, selfish to the bone. I once knew a guy who wouldn't share his orange juice with a friend who just drove six hours to visit him. But, he could quote Marx and Engels like a pastor recites Bible verses.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@CapexAndChill Investors focus on earnings or revenue growth but not new share growth. Dilution is the enemy of the current shareholder. Study companies like $BRK.A where the goal is to shrink the number of shares outstanding, or pay a secret non-taxable "dividend" to shareholders.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@BraytonKey In theory, this is true. And it often works in practice. But VCs often act in packs like wolves. When X is hot, they all want X because PE has a demand for X. Your point is theoretically valid, for sure. But not being trendy is frantically swimming upstream much of the time.

[Robert J Abalos @robertjabalos]

@StevenFulop I work with startup companies. Ten years ago almost every one had a business plan leading to an office in SF, NYC. Now, the dream is Texas or Florida. Not even Austin anymore. Reality has won. It's not necessary to pay obscene rents or subject your employees to them either.