Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. Hats off to you that you were able to pull together this amount of angel capital because that’s a tough thing to do.

Lori Steele Contorer: It was a tough thing to do and as I said, I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. Now, we’re in a very good position.

Sramana Mitra: Right or wrong is only relevant if you have options. If you don’t have options, you do what you can do.

Lori Steele Contorer: Really good point. In hindsight, it’s genius.

Sramana Mitra: What else is interesting about your journey that is worth sharing in terms of your experiences and things that are good lessons from the trenches worth sharing? I avoid theory. I try to get more experiences and anecdotes of specific situations on what happened and how you reacted.

Lori Steele Contorer: When I started this company, almost everybody said I couldn’t do it. I’ve never been an entrepreneur before. I think part of it is true and a part isn’t because as I raised my investment funds, it wasn’t building a corporation. I thought that was ridiculous. No one is born with a CEO card in their pockets. I don’t think I’m just going to fail just because I’ve never done it.

I can tell you. They were all right. I shouldn’t have been able to do it because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t have a network around me of people who could give me the experience that they had. I know several successful entrepreneurs who learned how to be successful entrepreneurs because they grew up professionally in corporations and they had good mentors who were their bosses. They had colleagues that they could learn from. That’s something I didn’t have at all. That was very hard. I didn’t know it.

I’m sort of a street fighter. I’ll slug it out. One I’ve committed, I’m going to get it done but it’s certainly by brute force and not by having had the training that would have helped. If I had a corporate background with good mentors along the way, this probably would have been significantly easier than it was. I’m glad I did it and I learned a lot along the way. I’m very good at finding mentors now. It makes a huge difference.

Sramana Mitra: First time entrepreneurship is an incredibly steep learning curve. That’s just a fact. At the same time, you can’t be a serial entrepreneur without at least being a first-time entrepreneur.

Lori Steele Contorer: Some people say this is my fifth startup given how long it’s taken and how many things I’ve learned along the way.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. I’m glad it all worked out. Good luck with closing your funding. I’m glad we connected.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer
1 2 3 4 5 6 7