I’m Xander Kanon. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Voicy.

I started as an analyst and also an intern for a Dutch B2B VC fund called Newion. We normally invested in people who already had revenue.

I was starting Voicy on the side. One of my current partners found out about it and didn’t believe I actually had a startup. 

He ultimately said I needed to stop my other job right away and go fundraise for this — so I did.

We faced some humble beginnings. A university fund I pitched to actually mentioned mine was the worst pitch they’d ever heard in their lives. 

That one really hurt. But I kept connecting with people and learning.

2 years ago we did a pre-seed round and raised $1.4M.

We decided it was time to raise when we truly understood the market size and potential.

We were a little bit shy when we were building Voicy and didn’t think that people would like it as much as we did — the conviction wasn’t there.

But then a VC partner and a few other people from the first matches were interested. We then realized that this was actually something.

We’d been focused more on striking out than hitting a home run.

We had been running on the money we had for 7 or 8 months so we also needed to raise because we needed the money to continue our operations.

I did a funny thing with the valuation. Every time I got into a new phase, I was being rejected so I decided to increase the number we were asking after each rejection. 

The funny thing was that the higher the valuation, the more serious people took us.

The conversations when we were talking about $300k to $400k were completely different than when it was $100k.

We were rolling from one investor to the next.

The upside was that we learned a lot. I asked people I connected with for tips on how to get an investment, and my pitch became better.

The downside was that we weren’t in the driver’s seat.

Around 175 people. I do remember having a list of people who rejected me. They motivated me. I had a mindset of “You rejected me? I’ll prove you wrong”.

Around 30 of the people I spoke to were VCs. We had a second call with 75%.

At the time I thought that was normal. At the VC I’d worked for it was. I learned straight away that wasn’t the case.

I just dumped information on the investors.

I didn’t know if it was relevant to them or not but if I had it, I sent it. I’d send 10 or 15 decks from a business model one to a GTM one.

They actually liked it. They got the impression that I was in it for real.

I also used the product during the pitch.

One investor wasn’t responding back to me so I sent him a Voicy using the Shia LaBeouf “Just Do It” meme.

My co-founder thought I’d fucked up. But the investor sent a Voicy back from a rapper that said “Let’s Go”.

Other times I would ask the investor if they had kids. If they did, I’d tell them to talk to their kid about the product if they didn’t get it. The product back then was especially used by kids from the ages of 10 to 16. They would understand it.

The investors would talk to them, their kids would be happy with the product, and they would come back more excited about it.

The simple tricks and hustle hacks go a long way.

I learned how to get rejected, but I always wanted to know what they liked and what they didn’t. It wasn’t easy to get that feedback.

It meant I was left with questions: Did they not like me as a person or didn’t think I was capable enough? Or was it because the market was too small?

We doubted ourselves a lot. We also didn’t know what we should change about the pitch. All we could do was continue on, which I did.

One time I had a first call with a partner and got a second call. The general partner in the next call was chilling on a beach while he asked a few good questions.

However after 90 minutes they just hung up. It took me by surprise, because I wouldn’t rank my pitch a 9 or 10 but it wasn’t that bad.

We actually got the deal. I thought it was too easy so we wanted to double the valuation. We hadn’t signed a term sheet. The end result was that we raised $1.4M instead of $600k.

One thing I did really well was that I was quite authentic.

I had situations where I was literally fundraising in my parents’ house, and I’d let my dad come in with a sandwich during the pitch. Then they would say, “who the fuck is that?” 

I’d explain that it’s my dad because I’m living at home and every euro goes back into the company.

I also swear a lot because I’m passionate and it’s how I express myself during pitches — I was being myself completely.

During the early pitches, I was trying to be the person that VCs expect. I tried following the normal advice of how to talk, how to follow up, etc.

But that’s not who I am. Every time I’d hear others pitch, it’d sound similar. It’s boring, it comes across as stale.

I was living on Crunchbase and LinkedIn. I was looking for people to build relationships with.