Ep. 113: VC Secrets: How Women Can Fundraise with Confidence with Naseem Sayani [The Investor Mindset Series]
EPISODE 113
VC Secrets: How Women Can Fundraise with Confidence with Naseem Sayani [The Investor Mindset Series]
About the Episode:
Today’s episode kicks off a game-changing series where we take a page from the Venture Capital playbook. We’ll explore how to position your fundraising pitches as strategic investments, moving beyond transactional donations. Learn how to frame your ask like an opportunity funders won’t want to miss, positioning them as essential partners in driving long-term impact.
I’m joined by Naseem Sayani, a general partner at Emmeline Ventures, a group of investors steadfastly committed to investing in and serving as catalysts for new, emerging founders & businesses. They invest in female founders building game-changing businesses that empower women, in particular, to manage their health, build their wealth, and live in a cleaner, safer world.
Coming from the nonprofit world, I was struck by the speed and audacity of VC funding compared to the slower approach rampant in the nonprofit sector. Naseem shares invaluable insights on what it takes for women founders to succeed in this fast-paced ecosystem from building genuine connections to her advice to lead with the numbers (not empathy). After this episode, you’ll feel more prepared in your role of leveling the playing field for female founders – whether that be in the private or nonprofit sector.
Topics:
The urgent need for more women in venture capital: A look at the barriers women face and how Emmeline is leading the charge to create bold new pathways for women in the space
Lessons from the front lines and why women face unique challenges in VC fundraising —and the critical role that strategic relationship-building plays in overcoming these obstacles.
Mastering rejection in fast-paced environments: Naseem’s essential strategies for staying resilient and pushing forward after hearing 'no.'
Trailblazing as a woman in venture capital: Naseem’s game-changing tips for preparation, effective follow-up, and standing out in a competitive industry.
The cornerstone of fundraising success: networking and relationships—and why even introverts can thrive by building authentic connections.
Leading with an audacious vision: Why women must step into their power, lead with bold ideas, and understand the long-term influence their ventures could have over the next five years.
Think you’ve reached out to “everyone” in your network? Out of ideas to get noticed and get funded? Generate leads for your nonprofit or social impact business: https://www.splendidcourses.com/prospect
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“We need to adjust the ecosystem so that we understand where the bias is and we're prepped for it. A lot of that is practicing prevention versus promotion questions and really playing the game with yourself.” – Naseem
“If you're going to get a check from somebody who's not a woman, you have to lead with the numbers.” – Naseem
“When it is about making money, you have to lead with the money. If you lead with empathy, it's very hard when their lived experience isn't the same, for them to lean in and ask better questions.” – Naseem
“What I've come to really appreciate is that relationships move this industry more than any other industry I've seen.” – Naseem
“Your pitch deck will never be perfect, ever. Use the input you get from meetings to rework your pitch deck every few months.” – Naseem
“A lot of fundraising is listening… asking questions, leaning in, and listening.” – Christina
“Where we can sometimes assume neglect, it's actually just lack of awareness, and we're in a really interesting position to educate the other half of the ecosystem.” – Naseem
“The success of any founder-led startup is going to be hugely on relationship building and networking.” – Christina
“Showing up is more than half the game.” – Naseem
“I should always be audaciously bold because even if you’re half wrong, you’re still half right.”
About Naseem:
Naseem Sayani is Co-Founder and General Partner at Emmeline Ventures, a seed-stage fund investing across healthcare, financial services, and sustainability specifically where technology and innovation are helping women live and thrive. The fund has 23 companies in its portfolio, including Alloy Women’s Health, LunaJoy, WealthMore, and The Beans.
Connect with Naseem:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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Christina Edwards 00:01
Y'all, I am so excited for today's episode. We have Naseem Sayani. She is a general partner at Emmeline ventures, and we're gonna dig in to fundraising pitching today. So before we do Nasim, tell us about your work, and let's kind of get a little bit of the lay of the land of your work with Emmeline. Yeah,
Naseem Sayani 00:19
absolutely. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Let me start there. So Emmeline Ventures is a seed stage venture capital fund. We're focused on healthcare, financial services and sustainability. We specifically invest where tech and innovation is helping women live and thrive. So first order, winner of anything we write a check to has to skew female. We're very happy for everyone to win over time, but we do need women to win first. We have 25 companies in the portfolio. We have been running at this for the last about four years, and everyone is doing great. We've got good companies growing fast, great markups. It's all good as far as like lay of the land. You know, fundraising has been tricky at best. The last couple years, I think for even some of the best business fundamentals, raising around has taken more time than it did in years prior, but good companies are still getting funded, so the checks are still moving. It just depends on from where and how long it takes. The
Christina Edwards 01:19
I was looking at your portfolio, and it's, wow. Some of the companies that are in it are doing really amazing work, and maybe we can set this, yeah, set the stage a little bit. So I first heard about your work when I went to the film premiere here in Atlanta for show her the money. And it was like, Oh my gosh. And everybody, whether you're for profit or nonprofit, should go to that film. Go, look, go, you know, stream it. It's such a good anchor, and really the problem that you seek to solve. So can you talk for a moment, just to set the stage on that, on women in VC and venture capital in general, being really hard. Yeah,
Naseem Sayani 02:01
oh, yeah, absolutely. So this is, you know, I like to say that we are actually trailblazing. So when you think about venture capital as a category, it's existed for 40 years, 3040, years, maybe more than that. But women haven't been in the category until about 10, maybe 15 years ago. So the first venture capital fund led by women, was launched in 2013 which is not that long ago, right? And wild, wild. And so prior to that, if we use that as a milestone right, prior to that, all of the funds that were making investments were led by men, run by men, making investments in men. And it's just became the nature of how the money moved is, you had startup founders who grew up got funding, exited, took their money and put it back into the system, but they put it back into people that look like them. There's a very natural human approach, right? Where we gravitate towards people that are like us. We gravitate towards people that have similar lived experiences. And so women haven't been in that room, just by way of where the ecosystems were built. And so now we're entering this room, both as founders, and saying, Hey, I have a great business. Write me a check. I'm going to make money. Then we'll come back to that when there are a whole host of issues happening there, and then you have more women in check writing seats like us, where now we are saying, Look, we're going to show up and we're going to write checks, and we're going to say our pattern recognition is different. The things we're looking for are different, and so we're going to find a whole different set of founders with the right skill sets to be successful. And what happens on the founder side, very often, is because of that gap in lived experience and because of just unconscious bias and stigma and stuff that sits in the system. They don't often get taken seriously. They don't get seen as being strong founders. They will get prevention questions more than promotion questions, and so they'll walk into a meeting and they'll get, what about this? What about that? What about what about that a male founder, same business will get, like, what's the vision? How big will it get? How much money do you think you're really going to make? And they'll get these really great questions that let them lead with the story, and the outcomes are after. Women will get hamstrung by prevention questions and end up in defensive mode and never get to the check, because you don't get it's hard to then navigate out of those defensive questions. And so we need to reconcile both sides of this right? We need to adjust the ecosystem so that we understand where the bias is and we're prepped for it. And a lot of that is practicing prevention versus promotion questions and really playing the game with yourself and saying, How am I going to turn the question around? How do I shift the conversation right. Side
Christina Edwards 04:41
note, we see politicians do this all the time, right there, not all of them, but many of them are excellent at this, right, being thrown a question that would be more defensive question, and they're like, they will navigate over here. And it is. It takes practice, right? It takes Yeah. Yeah, and we're gonna move into fundraising, for sure, we're gonna talk about that, but before we do, I do think it speaks to sort of like, this disparity in women founded companies, and getting this funding is like, I'm watching women's healthcare and the ecom world of women's health explode right now, and it makes me so happy. Like all the conversations happening around menopause, perimenopause, like all of the different companies that are coming out of the woodwork. And I think women are like, can Yeah, or like, we look at women's healthcare being traditionally underfunded and understudied, and it's like you are trailblazing. You are trailblazing by by saying, here we go. We're going over here. And I think the money is following. Like, consumers want this too. Women want this, yeah, yeah,
Naseem Sayani 05:44
yeah. Well, there's a big generational shift happening, right? And, like, I've said this a few times, and I don't know if my mom has heard me say this yet, but my mom won't say the word menopause, right? Like, for her, it's it's not a thing we talk about. I'm just fine. My fertility is okay. Of course, things change, but we're talking about it, right? We're having these conversations every single day and going, Wait a minute. Why do I feel this way? How do I make it better? What do I need to adjust? And it's, it's conversationally, we're in a different place than our parents were, and so we're demanding different things from our health care, and we're finding solutions outside of the core health care system, because most doctors aren't trained on women's health, there's no curriculum in med school teaching them women's health. Most, even menopause practitioners, haven't been trained appropriately on menopause, and a lot of that is because the data doesn't exist. That's right. It doesn't. That's right.
Christina Edwards 06:33
And like, you look at those bro Wellness Advocates online, and they're like, well, there's no research to support that this is good. And I'm like, that doesn't mean it's not an appropriate course of action. It just means it's underfunded and under research that speaks
Naseem Sayani 06:46
nobody's done the work. No, that's right, research, and the system has thought about us like small men for a long time, and we
Christina Edwards 06:52
have to stop doing that. Okay? We got to get into we got to get into to the nitty gritty here, with with fundraising. So what prompted this investor series on the podcast is this idea of watching the documentary and just watching your work, and seeing the boldness, seeing the like grit, the relentless, relentlessness that it does take to trailblaze in a sector, and being like, okay, what Can we learn here in fundraising, because my guess is, you've seen both sides. You've been on both sides of the table because you're receiving the pitch, right? Yep. And you're also yourself a fundraiser, right? Yeah. And so talk to me about that, like the good, the bad, the awkward. What have you seen? What have you learned? And how do you how do you coach your clients, or coach other people, or coach yourself when you're like that needed some work. Yeah, yeah. So
Naseem Sayani 07:47
I'll start with so our thesis for the fund, the way I described it right when we started, is different than how we used to describe it. So we used to talk about the fund as being focused on investing in female founded companies that are building, companies that are helping women manage their health, build their wealth and live in a cleaner, safer world. We love that language. I will still use that language in some places. The problem with that language is that you get people will get hung up on female founder right out of the gate. It's little red flags go off for for stigma reasons, nothing else. And then you're asking someone to understand the empathy that sits underneath, manage her health, build her wealth, live in a cleaner, safer world. You're asking someone to understand the lived experience of why those phrases matter before you even told them about the opportunity. Yeah. So a big lesson for us in the last two years of fundraising has been we have to, one, keep it simple, and two, lead with the money, right? So if I, if I did a healthcare, FinTech and sustainability, and then the follow up is, okay, great healthcare. Well, how big is the opportunity? Well, Women's Health is a trillion dollar category. I don't need you to be empathetic at all. I just need you to care about the trillion dollars. And so that we've learned that as a fund in the last two years, and it's completely changed how we engage with LPs and the kind of stories we tell them. I can get to empathy later. I don't need you to be there first. And the same thing applies for female founders, because we will get founders who come in and they're talking to us about pain and depression and the things they're going to solve around women's health, and it's grounded in empathy. And five, six pages in, you get to the size of the opportunity. And what I tell every one of them is like, don't, don't I get it. I'm female. I understand. It's a lived experience. But if you're going to get a check from somebody who's not a woman, you have to lead with the numbers. And it's simple things, like, if you talk about a menopause opportunity. You can say it's hot flashes, it's la it's sleepless nights, it's all these other things. Or you can say 50% of the population is going to be in this experience for 40% of their life, and they're spending $200 a month on products and services to resolve the symptoms. The platform I've built is going to get. All of these folks on a subscription, and so my CAC is gonna go way, way down, and I'm gonna be able to build a business model that scales. It's still menopause, it's
Christina Edwards 10:09
Yeah, but that takes, I don't know what the word is, but that I love the way you just mapped that out. First of all, like, masterclass. But that takes a lot of, I don't know if it's pride or something swallowing to be like, Yeah, but I want to talk about the the pain points, you know, like, because a lot of founders, I mean, they're here because of a passion. They're here because they were in it. They are here because of their why. And it can, I could. I can hear resistance from the founder who's like, no, dudes need to care about this too. So what do you say to that kind of push forward? So where are
Naseem Sayani 10:44
you going to get how will you get the check bottom line right? And so if you you can tell the empathy story after you tell the money story, it's fine. I'm not saying don't tell the empathy story. I'm saying, but to get someone hooked in in a way that gets them leaned in asking you follow up questions in this industry, because it's about making money, you have to lead with the money. If you lead with the empathy. It's very hard when their lived experience isn't the same, for them to lean in and ask better questions, because what they will say, which happens all the time, is, let me talk to my wife, let me talk to my daughter, let me get the assistant. And then you're dead in the water at that point, because you're not going to get past that hurdle. Yep, people understand money, especially because this is venture and VC funds are here to make money, and yes, supports you, but the end game is an exit, so you have to get them hooked on the fundamentals being very strong, and then they will lean in and understand the empathy later.
Christina Edwards 11:39
Love it. Okay. I'm curious what you what you think. So as an outsider, my point of view, what I'm seeing is I see a a clip, a speed with VC funding that feels so much faster, so much more audacious, so much more like hungry, relentless on it, and for nonprofit fundraising. Kindly, my friends, it's like a snail, right? It is so slow. It's what we would call like, in my role, like a very long cultivation process, when you're asking for 50 to hundreds of 1000s or dollars or even millions, right? It's this, like, slow. It's like dating, and then it's like, we're we're then we're committed, and then it's like, when it's like, relationship, right? And it seems like VC funding works very, very fast. Am I wrong or right? Or what do you what do you
Naseem Sayani 12:33
say to that? No, wrong and right. I should say right and wrong. I should say positive. So VC funding moves fast because the relationships make it move fast. So you still have to spend time cultivating. You still have to spend time getting to know the people before they're gonna write you a check. And this is another thing. I was just on a panel last week and talked about how women we need to get better at doing this, and so we'll hear the stories of the two male founders who raised 10 million over a weekend, and it's deeply frustrating because female founders have been spending two years raising two or 3 million. And what I've come to really appreciate is that relationships move this industry more than any other industry I've seen. And so the reason the two men raise the round over a weekend is because they spent the last six months greasing those relationships. They spent time with those investors. They've been at their events. They're on text message with them. They're sharing details about their business anytime something happens. And so then once they're ready to raise, they're literally just having to ping people and say, Hey, I've got the save. Are we ready you raise the round over a weekend? What's happening with women again, because we're new to the ecosystem in the last 10 years, right is we're showing up transactional right away, and we aren't. We haven't had the time, or spent the time building the relationships, but if we spend the time building relationships, then the money is going to move a lot more quickly. We have to do both. Yeah,
Christina Edwards 13:57
okay, so we're showing up transactional right away. Say more about that.
Naseem Sayani 14:01
So that means what there are. I've tell almost every female founder I meet, the first time I meet, you shouldn't be when you pitch me. You'd have if I'm speaking at an event. Yeah, ventures like show up to the event, introduce yourself at the event, ping us on LinkedIn, send us an article that you think is interesting. There's we have three. I have two partners. There's three. We're all over the world at any given moment, right? So you can find one of us somewhere, find a way to relate, to engage, to introduce your business to us outside of a pitch conversation, so that we know you. We just committed as a fund to two new investments like two weeks ago. We've known both of those founders for almost a year. There we go. Okay, right? We've spent time with them. We've understood their business. They've sent us news articles, etc. And then when they were ready to raise they came to us and said, here's what I'm thinking, yeah, what do you guys? Can you guys be in? And now we're like, okay, group, let's look at it more closely, diligence. Now we're not meeting you for the first time.
Christina Edwards 14:57
This is that like priming. So going back to the dating Exam. Example, it is. It can feel when it's transactional, like a first date, where you're like, Let's get married. And that is just, we're leaning out. We're leaning away. It's too much, and it's reminding me, I don't know, when I pictured you at an event and I pictured like the way that I think this probably still happens to musicians, where they're like, listen to my CD, listen to my, you know, my single, and they're pitching, you know, it's like a hungry musician pitching another musician. You're like, Wait, you've got to pause and develop that relationship first. Yeah,
Naseem Sayani 15:29
yeah, absolutely.
Christina Edwards 15:31
So let's talk a bit more about fundraising pitches. I call it sometimes, giving your yourself a soft place to land, handling the nose. Because as I look at the parallels again, with with your space versus nonprofits, it feels like nonprofits take the nose, very, very, very heavy, and your space is like and we go, and there's our relentlessness to it. So school me.
Naseem Sayani 16:01
So two, couple of maybe three things, two, two things for sure. One is absolutely there will be more nos than there are yeses, and that's just a numbers game, right? So you can't let the NOS discourage you, because there will be no so you just have to know that you also, as women, we have to understand that, like we're allowed to fail. It's okay to iterate. We have to just learn from it and move forward. So what you should do anytime you get a no is ask for feedback, tell me, give me a few billets on how the pitch could be different in six months. If we're raising again, can I come back? And what do you need to see? Just ask for those things. Because people will give it to you. They'll tell you, they'll say, Well, it's B to C. We only invest B to B. We really would love to see you have 1000 names on a mailing list, not 500 names on a mail like, whatever the minutia is, but ask for it. The other thing is to ask for other references. So okay, I understand that Emmeline is not going to invest, but do you know other funds that are really interested in what we're doing that's smart? Yeah, and do that because it's an this isn't a relationship business. It's an ecosystem. We know all the GPS you're meeting know every other GP in the ecosystem. They can absolutely make a connection. And what you're doing in that also is, one, you're continuing to build a relationship, and two, you're getting a read on that investor. Because let's say you ask for feedback, or you ask for network, and they say no and no, it's probably not an investor you want in your cap table, right? Because that kind of openness should be there. We should all be supporting the ecosystem and doing great work and building great businesses. And if they don't want to support those, like simple asks, then can you imagine what would happen if they were on your cap table? So you're testing a little bit also, the the other thing is that it's you, your pitch deck is never going to be perfect. Never right, and it's not even like, it'll get the perfect at some point. But you should be listening for the kinds of questions you're getting during pitch meetings. You should start to, like, take stock of where people are digging in, where are they asking questions, where are they getting excited, and then use that input to rework your pitch deck every couple months so that the most exciting things are what you're optimizing for. So if you get to page six and you have a little box in the corner that talks about a segment that you think you're going to pick or sell to, and somebody goes, every single person gets anchored on that box, you better believe that box better be more important in your pitch raise. And so it's, it's, again, it's listening, and it's taking in the implicit feedback as much as you're taking the explicit feedback, because people are telling you what they want or don't want, or what they think will work or not work, even through the pitch meeting. And we, we can all get better at just listening to what kind of feedback and questions we're getting. Yeah,
Christina Edwards 18:40
I think a lot of fundraising is listening, is just asking questions and then leaning in and listening. And I see a lot of founders get stuck in talking at and presenting and not leaving any space even for questions, because I think there's some fear around, even if there's a little bit of moment, you know, that that that quiet, and then somebody asks a question of not being prepared, or they have an objection, or they're not sure about it. It's like, again, it's like, this being a real, a reflection of you, and that self talk coming in as really negative. Do you see that
Naseem Sayani 19:15
happening? Absolutely, yeah. And I think what I've also told a lot of founders is to practice their pitch without the deck, yeah? Because the best pitches we've heard are literally, it's a conversation about what they're building, why they're building it, how it's working, what things are they learning? Where are their speed bumps? And there's no deck involved, yeah? And, you know? And because the deck also becomes a bit of a crutch, and you're like, oh, but that's not till page five, yeah, but they asked you it now, so just go there. Now. Doesn't matter where it is, in the back, and I think we again, it's confidence. It's just knowing that you know, feeling very confident about your story and knowing why you're doing it, yeah, and being okay with questions, right? People will interrupt you. They will ask you questions. They will jump to Page nine when you're on page two. Yeah, but that's okay, because if you know your story, and you've done the pitch without the deck, you can roll with it, right? You have to, you have to be fluid with how you talk about the business, and then the pitch meetings are not as hard, right? It'll become a lot more fun.
Christina Edwards 20:16
What's your philosophy on the follow up process?
Naseem Sayani 20:19
So follow up is deeply important, very, very important, and like within 24 hours. So if you meet someone on Monday and I say, great, so interesting, send me the deck, any other materials, and then let's plan to talk in three weeks, within about 24 hours, maybe, maybe 36 because things happen. That's great. There should be an email says, here's the deck. Really great to meet you. Really love that you thought X, Y and Z were interesting. I will keep you updated. I'll follow up in three weeks, and then actually follow up in three weeks. Yeah. So the founders that do that well are the ones that say top of mind, really easily and and so you just, you have to work the follow up, because VCs have 1000 things going on, like we're managing a lot of deal flow. You're one of many founders we're talking to. It's on you to stay top of mind with the funds that you care about and that you think are important. Otherwise it's going to fall off, because there's a we're meeting so many people. I want
Christina Edwards 21:17
to shift gears and talk a little bit about how you trailblazed With your organization into rooms where you were maybe one of the few women in the rooms, one of the few found women founders in the room. How did you handle that, and what did that feel like? And did it always feel like, I always have this picture of me, just like elbowing my way in these rooms? Did it? Does that get tiring? Does it? Did it feel welcoming? Like? How have you navigated that space?
Naseem Sayani 21:44
So it is exhausting, for sure, but it becomes to one prep is always important. So knowing what kind of room you're walking into, who the people are that are there, what kinds of things they might be talking about, so you have to, you've got to do the prep regardless, right? And be ready for the rooms you're walking into. The other thing is, I have found that for me, it works really well to have five or six talking points on the things. No matter what the room is, I've got five or six talking points that I know I'm going to say that are unique to me, and I can walk even if I'm coming into the room without any prep, there's five things I can say that are going to be interesting because I know they've been interesting in other rooms. So really being thoughtful about that. It could be research that you care about. It can be a headline that you saw, like whatever the thing is, but authentic to you, so that as you open up conversation, you have a place to start. Right? The other thing, and this is more kind of, relates to women's health in particular. So I'm in a lot of rooms with a lot of women, like 90% of the time, right? This is where I spend my life, but I do a lot of speaking in rooms that are predominantly male as well on women's health. And what I have found in those rooms is that where you could go in thinking, oh my god, they don't care. This doesn't matter to them whatever. What I have found is actually they aren't even aware that there's a gap, they don't even know there's a problem. And so I did a talk on women's health at a conference last November. It was like 90% men in the room, and they wanted me to talk about women's health for 30 minutes. I was like, okay, and it was but I kept it all data driven. I compared it to what happens with Men's Health, and gave them here's what's going on, right? Here's the baseline. And I had more than half the room come up to me afterwards and go, Oh my God. We had no idea. We had no idea that the research gap was so bad and that the funding gap was so bad. Thank you for coming and let us sharing that with us. And so where we can sometimes assume neglect, it's actually just lack of awareness, and we're in a really interesting position to educate the other half of the ecosystem, because they live in abundance. Everything is fine. Everything works. They don't need. You know, the women are good and you know, no, not you know, but they're not even aware. And that for us has become a really important opportunity to educate, because that once they know, they then they lean in and want
Christina Edwards 24:01
to help. It's a huge, like, foundational shift to go into a room going, I don't belong here. They don't care to they don't even know this is a problem. Here we go. Like that is a different way to come into the room of people who, yeah, at face value, don't this ain't for them to be and positioning it in a way where they're like, whoa, tell us more. Leaning it. We want to know more. I love that example. So I want to talk a bit more about you've mentioned it kind of throughout, but networking and relationship building, it seems to me like the success of any founder led you know, startup is going to be hugely on relationship building and networking. Talk to me about that. So
Naseem Sayani 24:47
it's like, the biggest part of the job you'll do second to building your business, right? And it's going to events. It's meeting people in spaces where they are. It's, you know, la tech week now happens every year. New York Tech Week happens every year. There's. Events like show her the money that are happening everywhere still, and even if you don't think you should go show up to something because you're going to meet somebody who can be useful. And what I my other big learning in the last four years with the fund, and this has been true my whole life, but it's become much more obvious in the last four years, is that showing up is half the game. It's more than half the game. Just showing up. You just don't know who you're going to meet in that room, and so show up. Don't give it a go, right? Don't we have a tendency as women to be a little bit more reserved, a little more risk averse. We may not feel as confident going to things if we weren't invited to be there, but, like, forget it, right? You have one chance to build a company you want to build. You have one opportunity to go meet people who can help. Just show up, because you might meet a person there who maybe isn't writing checks, but might know people who are or can connect you to a customer, or can introduce you to somebody who could be a co founder. And so we you just have to show up, then you're always going to meet someone who could be useful,
Christina Edwards 25:59
even if you're an introvert, even if you're not, nobody
Naseem Sayani 26:03
believe I am absolutely an introvert 100% my husband laughs at me all the time because I'll travel for a week and come home and sleep for three days. That's right. He's like, That's how I know you're an introvert. Otherwise you would just, you still would recover with other people. I have to recover all by myself. I'm absolutely an introvert, but when I have to be extroverted, I can be and I think we just you have to learn how to do that so you can modulate in and out. Do you
Christina Edwards 26:26
have a way to get yourself in the zone when you're like, all right? I know I'm going to this thing. I know if you're not speaking necessarily a speaker at it, but you're in more of a networking or relationship building, and you're at an event and you're like, Huh? And you're feeling the jitters. What does that self talk look like? Or what is the strategy a little bit there?
Naseem Sayani 26:43
You know, it's a cut one is just like centering and like going, okay, we can stay calm. It's fine. We're gonna be fine in this room. It's no big deal. That's just, that's the self talk. The second, the second is, you know, looking up who else is gonna be there. Are there any connections to anyone else that's in that room and say, Oh, hey, by the way, we both know x or hey. By the way, we were both at this event a couple months ago, but we didn't get to talk. It's so good to see you again. Things like that become really easy ways to get comfortable in the room again. The third, which may not be everyone's cup of tea, is that finding a way to ask a question, if there's a panel and there's Q and A afterwards, and you have the opportunity to ask a question, and I will typically find a way to ask a question because and what that does is the whole room gets to know you a little bit. That's so good, yes, in that second. And so you just naturally can work follow up, because they've already heard you say something. They've already heard a little bit about how you think, yep, now you can just roll from there. But if you're quiet, nobody knows you're there unless you say something, and
Christina Edwards 27:41
when you do ask a question, say your name, say your company. And that's I've watched people do it, and I've watched my own self go, oh, I should do that too, you know, because it is. It's a standout moment. I was listening to another podcast, and the host shared, she's like, anytime I pay to go to a conference or anything like that, they've got the microphone going down the rows. She said, I always ask, and I always ask a question, and she and she does, and she's got a amazing brand presence, and she's a total introvert too, and so she finds these moments. And I think it's like my son said yesterday. He's like, first game for the season for baseball, he said, I'm gonna steal a base today. And it's like, all right, I'm gonna ask one question today. I'm gonna get up there, even if it's a little bit nerve wracking, I'm gonna do it imperfect, and I'm gonna go work on that known piece. Yeah, I love that too. As soon
Naseem Sayani 28:30
as you've done that, there's somebody in the room, it's gonna walk over and say, Hey, that was a great question. And now you're not fish outta water anymore. Now you're in right? And you have a way to build a relationship. Amazing.
Christina Edwards 28:42
Oh so good. Is there anything else you would add or want to share with our listeners about this conversation?
Naseem Sayani 28:49
So one other thought is on on the fundraising question, something that we see happen a lot with with pitches from female founders, and this is getting better, because I've been giving this feedback to everybody, is the we aren't leading with vision enough. So what can often happen in the pitch is that here's what I'm building, here's the here and now and then, six pages in, we get to how it grows, how it scales, how important it is to the category. I want all of that to go first. Here's what I'm after. Here's why it's going to change the category. Here's the relevance it has in five years. Here's the influence it has in five years. Yeah, and by the way, that starts with this, and it's a different way to tell the story, and every single male founder is telling the story that way. But here's
Christina Edwards 29:36
the thing, I think, that male founders, frequently white male founders, have a belief of, like, I have no proof that this is what's going to happen in five years. I just think it will, like my husband and I call it a healthy amount of delusion, like every founder who really has these, these just moments, I'm sure you've seen it the like, a healthy amount of. Illusion, right? Of like. And I think women are like, well, I can't say that out loud. That's aspirational. I hope it happens in five years. Do you know what I mean like? And I think that's part of the push pull that's keeping us from actually painting that picture. Yeah. What would you say to that?
Naseem Sayani 30:16
Yeah, I would say, get out of your own way and try it, right? And try it. And, you know, it doesn't mean you rehearse it the night before, and then you come into a pitch with me, and it's the first time you've done it, yeah? Try run it with people. Try it with some friendlies. Try it four different ways. Use different words. See which one feels most natural, yeah. And go with it because it's, there's, there's a reason the money moves a certain way, right? And so if you're going, you're you might be fine raising with a certain number of investors who will say, Wait a minute. Tell me vision. Yeah, other investors won't do that. And so if you don't lead with it, you're going to get the no before you even have the option to get the Yes. And so Don't, Don't set yourself up for that. Oh, I
Christina Edwards 30:56
love that. Thank you so much. Okay, let's see, where can everyone connect with you, and then I will ask you our very last question. Yeah,
Naseem Sayani 31:04
absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way to do it. We also have a general email at Emmeline. So if you do meet us@emmelineventures.vc that all comes to me also. So if you want to reach out that way, and then we can chat more, and then I'm typically speaking on all kinds of things. So you can come find me at an event as well. Amazing.
Christina Edwards 31:24
Now we ask every guest on the podcast to share a thought that they like to think on purpose. So this could be an affirmation, a mantra, just something that keeps you going. Would you share yours with our listeners?
Naseem Sayani 31:35
Yeah. So I like to think that I should always be audaciously bold. Whatever it is, just be as audaciously bold as you want to be, because even if you're half wrong, it still means you're half right. Yeah,
Christina Edwards 31:53
that thought will and has made you a lot of money, no doubt and will and hat has, like continues to trailblaze in this sector. I love that thought. That's a good one. Everyone needs to I have my sticky notes here. Everybody needs to write that one on a sticky note. Thank you so much for today. This has been such a great conversation. Thank
Naseem Sayani 32:08
you so much for having me. This was great. I enjoyed it. Bye.