Fulcrum Venture Accelerator was founded in 2019 by serial social entrepreneur Will Sacks with the mission to empower socially-minded entrepreneurs and help them succeed at raising capital.

Will once created a solar powered race car that he raced from Chicago to Los Angeles and most recently founded Kindara with the mission to empower women everywhere through body literacy. Kindara raised around $9M in angel and venture funding and was acquired in 2018. He and the Fulcrum Venture Accelerator team are based in Boulder CO, and Nashville TN, USA.

Key Moments:

[00:03:32] Solar car project led to entrepreneurship inspiration. Introduced to Robert Kawasaki’s books by friend Gabriel Miranov. Obsessed with creating and getting paid for it. Solar car venture required fundraising and product performance.

[00:07:53] Some businesses struggle with raising money, while others are prepared but need guidance due to changing trends, such as the recent struggles of SVB.

[00:10:41] Tech accelerators focus on business, not fundraising. Founder’s struggle to raise money.

[00:13:51] Record positive vision with hype music. Listen daily.

Find Will Sacks

https://fulcrumventureaccelerator.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamsacks/

If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please give us a review on the podcast directory of your choice. We’re on all of them and these reviews really help others find the show.

GoodPods: https://gmwd.us/goodpods iTunes: https://gmwd.us/itunes Podchaser: https://gmwd.us/podchaser

Also, if you’re getting value from the show and want to buy me a coffee, go to the show notes to get the link to get me a coffee to keep me awake, while I work on bringing you more great episodes to your ears. →  https://gmwd.us/buy-me-a-coffee

Follow Seth Online:

Seth | Digital Marketer (@s3th.me) • Instagram: Instagram.com/s3th.me

Seth Goldstein | LinkedIn: LinkaedIn.com/in/sethmgoldstein

Seth on Mastodon: https://s3th.me/@seth

MarketingJunto.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. With the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everyone. Everybody, welcome to another edition of The Entrepreneurs and Thinking, my podcast. I’m, as always, Seth, your host. Your humble, humble host. I am here today with Will Sachs, the founder of Fulcrum Venture Accelerator. Might eventually become Fulcrum Accelerator, but we’re talking about in the Preshow right now. Right now it’s Fulcrum Ventures Accelerator. He is based in Nashville, Tennessee, but his team is in between there and Boulder. He is a serial entrepreneur. He drove a solar car from Chicago all the way to Los Angeles. It must have been sunny the whole way. I hope we’ll hear about that. Let me bring Will in here and let’s get the party started. Hey, Will. How’s it going, buddy?

Will [00:01:13]:

Hey, Seth. Good, man. Good to be here.

Seth [00:01:15]:

Thanks for having me. So the solar car, let’s talk about that first. Did you run house out of battery at some point? It can’t be sunny the whole way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Will [00:01:27]:

Yeah, we had a very sophisticated battery system and battery management system, and we would look at the weather. So if there wasn’t going to be that much sun, we would drive slower until sun came back out and then we’d speed back up.

Seth [00:01:40]:

That’s clever.

Will [00:01:41]:

Yeah, it’s kind of like a normal electric car.

Seth [00:01:45]:

Exactly. Only you don’t have to deal with solar as much, but you kind of like, all right, I’m not going to speed today because I have to get to Wawa, at least in Philly. Wawa is where they have all the outlets for people to charge.

Will [00:01:57]:

Wawa.

Seth [00:01:58]:

It’s Wawa. It’s like our 711.

Will [00:02:00]:

It’s very big in Australia. They call the Outskirts or Whoop whoop whoop whoop.

Seth [00:02:08]:

Wawa is a Native American term. And then there’s actually a town in Pennsylvania called Wawa, and that’s where they founded Wawa, the convenience store. And a new Wawa literally just opened up today around half a mile from my house. So we have three in my town. It’s a little ridiculous. Think of a how can I describe a Wawa? Describe a 711 on steroids. That’s what pretty much what it is. Okay. It’s fun. They have, like, a food area. I can build your own area for food. It’s pretty cool. One day I’ll get the founder of Wawa on the podcast.

Will [00:02:42]:

Yeah, I’ve never been, but now I’ll have context for when I go to Phil.

Seth [00:02:45]:

When you come into Philadelphia, I’ll take you to the wall. Now I’ll take you to get a cheesesteak first. So, Will, you are a serial entrepreneur. I mean, I always say you are. Of course. You know what you’re doing. So you had a good exit. And then you found a Fulcrum adventure accelerator, and you’ve helped a lot of companies alive. I was looking at your logos, and they kept on going and going and going. So you’ve accelerated quite a few startups to seed an A round, which is pretty exciting. But how did this all get started? What’s the backstory? How did you get started, honestly?

Will [00:03:26]:

Well, I mean, how did I get started as an entrepreneur? I think it was that solar car project. Honestly.

Seth [00:03:32]:

Really?

Will [00:03:32]:

Yeah. It was a solar car project in college. And my friend Gabriel Miranov was an incredible human being. He’s since passed, but he introduced me to Robert Kawasaki’s books. Oh, he’s rich dad, Poor dad and cash flow quadrant. And I remember being obsessed. We bought all the books, we read them all, and we were like, oh, my God. This is a profession where you get to create professionally. You get to just create things, and then people pay you for the things you create. And I remember being blown away by that and entranced by it. So the solar car kind of turned into the first entrepreneurial venture because we had to raise money. We had a product that we had to produce. It had to perform in the marketplace, which against the other solar cars.

Seth [00:04:22]:

We got to Los Angeles, and I got there.

Will [00:04:25]:

We got to Los Angeles. Yeah. And I remember going back to my college roommates, and I remember having this conversation with one of them being saying, I got it. I want to be an entrepreneur. I figured it out. You can create things, and then people pay you for the things you create. And I remember her if you simplify.

Seth [00:04:45]:

It that far, but it’s kind of a little bit more than that. But there’s bookkeeping and all that behind it.

Will [00:04:52]:

You learn rainbows when you get closer, and when you actually do it, you learn how many moving pieces there are to make that happen. But that was the beginning. That’s how it all started. Yeah. I had another lighting company after college, and I did some building management, environmental stuff and then founded Kandara with Katie. And that was an incredible journey, helping women understand their fertility. We were one of the first venture funded Femtech companies.

Seth [00:05:25]:

Oh, wow.

Will [00:05:26]:

Kind of helped to start the space. Like, when we started at Femtech wasn’t really a thing.

Seth [00:05:30]:

No one knew what that was. Yeah.

Will [00:05:32]:

So we got to go on that ride together, and that was an amazing learning experience.

Seth [00:05:39]:

I bet.

Will [00:05:40]:

We raised a number of rounds of angel and venture capital and then the business we sold the business in 2018 to another women’s health company.

Seth [00:05:51]:

That’s wild.

Will [00:05:53]:

Yeah. So I got popped out the other end of that and learned so much. They say you learn more from your failures and mistakes and from your successes, and there are tons of failures and mistakes. I canar and then started working with founders started coaching. I had founders approaching me and asking for help, raising money. And I started doing it, and I realized I probably raised more early stage rounds than anybody should raise. We raised, like five early stage rounds at Kendara. Small rounds. Not a good sign.

Seth [00:06:30]:

But you made it. I mean, look, you were purchased. It’s not like you fizzled and died out. You were able to sell it to another relevant and it wasn’t like you didn’t sell it to private equity. You sold it to another company that was relevant. Yeah, another one which says something. It’s not like, oh, crap, we got to sell this thing. Dumpster fire. No, you sold it to a relevant company that wanted what you made, which is kind of cool. Yeah. We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show.

Will [00:06:59]:

That was super cool. But because I had so much experience raising this early stage money, I thought, well, why don’t I create a program that helps other entrepreneurs so they can save the two or three or four years that it typically takes people to figure out how to play this game?

Seth [00:07:15]:

Yeah.

Will [00:07:16]:

And that was the beginning of Fulcrum.

Seth [00:07:18]:

And you’ve been doing that since 2019. Yeah.

Will [00:07:21]:

So four years now. We’ve had over 100 companies go through our program.

Seth [00:07:25]:

Four years. That’s incredible. Yeah.

Will [00:07:28]:

Close to $50 million have been raised using our process.

Seth [00:07:31]:

That’s wild.

Will [00:07:32]:

And the number keeps going up, and we keep getting better, and our team keeps getting better. Our investor network keeps getting larger. Our mentor network is growing. So there’s definitely a need for it.

Seth [00:07:45]:

There is.

Will [00:07:46]:

People don’t know how to raise money. It’s a weird part of human endeavor.

Seth [00:07:53]:

It is. Because there’s some that don’t want to raise money, and then they realize they need to raise money. Then they’re like, oh, crap, we got to figure out how to do this the right way. There’s others that start out knowing that they want to raise money and to grow their business that way, but they still don’t know how to raise money, and they still need help because it’s a different beast. And things are ever changing too. It seems like it’s always the venture world is changing, especially with SVB going bust. That was scary, I’m sure, for a lot of people.

Will [00:08:22]:

Yeah. We had a couple of founders in our cohort that had their money in SVB on that day.

Seth [00:08:27]:

Oh, no.

Will [00:08:29]:

Yeah. We were trying to help them the best we could, figure out what was happening. That was a very scary weekend for everybody.

Seth [00:08:36]:

I was glued to my newsfeed all week, and I was just like, what’s going on here? What’s going on here?

Will [00:08:40]:

Yeah, we had at one point, like $3 million in our Silicon Valley bank account at Kindara. So I was just picturing if we had there were so many startups that were in that scenario, not knowing if they had just been vaporized or not that weekend.

Seth [00:08:55]:

That sounds painful. A hard weekend. Yeah. Anyhow, with that shiny note, being an entrepreneur, doing Kandara, doing the solar car, doing your buildings and all that over time, what have you found is the best thing about being an entrepreneur versus trying to work with in a bigger company?

Will [00:09:19]:

I think the best thing about being an entrepreneur is the freedom to create and the freedom of time and place that you can enjoy.

Seth [00:09:30]:

I love that. Yeah. On the flip side, what’s the scariest thing?

Will [00:09:37]:

The scariest thing is, as Dan Sullivan says, you’re in the results business, and if you don’t produce results, then you don’t get paid.

Seth [00:09:46]:

Yeah. It’s tough. And then people are like, well, they want to get paid and they want their money.

Will [00:09:51]:

And you’re like, old team gets paid no matter what, but the entrepreneur only gets paid if you produce results. I think that’s the hard part of it.

Seth [00:10:04]:

So, going to Fulcrum back to Fulcrum, it’s been, what, four years? Over 100 companies, lots of money going through it and all that. Describe what Fulcrum does. You help coach companies and whatnot but you do also seed invest in those companies as well. Are you y combinator that way?

Will [00:10:26]:

We’re getting there. We run a 90 day accelerator program called fundraising mastery. And so the accelerator program that we run is really focused around helping founders close seed financing.

Seth [00:10:40]:

That’s brilliant.

Will [00:10:41]:

So it’s different than other accelerators that are more general. They help you work on your business, and then you’d go to demo day. And good luck. Good luck. And I mentored at some of the techstars and some other places, and so I think those programs are incredibly valuable, and everyone should do techstars if you can. And they don’t really teach founders how to run a fundraising process and how to how to do it effectively and efficiently and what the steps are to follow. So, I noticed this after having mentored at techstars and working with other founders, there’s just this gap in the market for founders who had been successful. They’re building cool companies that have potential, but they don’t know how to fundraise, and so they’re struggling. And sometimes these companies would go under, and I would see this happen and think, this is a travesty because this was a good company, but this founder just didn’t know how to raise money.

Seth [00:11:37]:

It didn’t need to happen. It didn’t need to go under. Yeah.

Will [00:11:39]:

Didn’t need to go under.

Seth [00:11:40]:

Right.

Will [00:11:40]:

So that was the genesis of Fulcrum. And we work with companies that we think have potential and that we’re excited about. And we do take a small piece of equity as part of our accelerator program. It’s a lot smaller than techstars, but in that way, we invest in the future success of founder.

Seth [00:11:59]:

You have some skin in the game, which is nice.

Will [00:12:01]:

Yeah. Part of the way we get compensated is through equity.

Seth [00:12:04]:

Yeah.

Will [00:12:05]:

And so, yeah, we’ve got some companies that are in Series A stage now, and hopefully soon we’ll have companies in Series B, and we’ll get our first exit eventually.

Seth [00:12:16]:

That’d be exciting.

Will [00:12:17]:

That’s the model. It’s really sorting through all the companies in our universe every quarter and finding the top 15 to 25 that we feel excited about and then taking them through a program together where we teach the founders exactly how to architect a raise and to raise more money from better investors on better terms in a shorter amount of time.

Seth [00:12:36]:

Oh, I love that. That’s awesome. So what is the most important thing to carry with you all the time as a founder?

Will [00:12:45]:

Raising money, you mean?

Seth [00:12:46]:

Or in this, you in general, as an entrepreneur? Yeah. What do you carry with you? It could be physical. It could be your phone. It could be a notepad. It could be deep. You can go as deep as you want on this.

Will [00:13:00]:

Yeah. For me, it’s probably say the vision, my vision. So I’ve got a very crystal clear vision for fulcrum and what I want it to become, and I crystal clear vision for my life and what I want in my life. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that you can’t control life, but you can vibrate at a certain frequency. And that’s been a real lesson learned for me, is sometimes it’s hard to vibrate at the frequency that we want to vibrate at.

Seth [00:13:29]:

Yeah. Vibrating off table, and it’s like, not the way you want it, right?

Will [00:13:34]:

Yeah. So I think having the vision helps me come back to the frequency that I want to be vibrating at.

Seth [00:13:41]:

That’s awesome.

Will [00:13:43]:

And actually, I’ll throw this out there for any entrepreneur. Write down your vision in the present tense from the perspective of the future.

Seth [00:13:51]:

Right.

Will [00:13:51]:

So, like, I’m standing I’m standing on top of a mountain. Our company was just acquired. We just signed up our millionth customer, or whatever it is, in the present tense. Write that out, that whole vision, and then record yourself speaking it. But wait for a day when you feel great. Wait for a day when your vibe is high and you just feel like life is a beautiful gift and you’re in joy, you’re in love with your life. Record it, and then take that recording and put your favorite hype music, like instrumental hype music behind it. And then just listen to that thing every day because it’ll represents you to the energy of your vision.

Seth [00:14:33]:

I love that. Oh, that’s such a good idea. Everyone who’s listening do that. That sounds awesome.

Will [00:14:39]:

I want to do it with our founders.

Seth [00:14:41]:

I think it’s a great exercise.

Will [00:14:44]:

Yeah, it’s really great.

Seth [00:14:45]:

I have to do that with my buddy Pete, who has his own little startup, and I’m coaching him through it. I’m like I’ll say, because he gets very this is tough. And then there’s days where he’s like, this is happy. This is awesome. I’m loving life. And then it’s like, this is tough. Yeah. And it is. Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster.

Will [00:15:04]:

Such a roller coaster. And there’s so many things that are out of your control. Like the Silicon Valley Bank thing, for example.

Seth [00:15:11]:

Yeah. Seriously. Even without VC’s control, too, I mean, everyone was like, what the heck do we do here?

Will [00:15:17]:

Yeah.

Seth [00:15:19]:

And I think I only think the people that kind of flub stuff at Silicon Valley Bank thought that was going to happen. I don’t think anyone thought that that was going to explode the way it did. And then there was two other banks that went that day, too. It was like, what the heck? It was a very quick, very quick scare, but it’s not going to be forgotten for a very long time.

Will [00:15:43]:

Yeah, 100%. So I think it’s like, we can control certain things, we can do our best, and then at some point, there’s things that are out of our control. And that’s part of what’s hard about being an entrepreneur, is it’s not often easy to tell if your certain business results are because you’re a genius or you’re an asset or the market or something.

Seth [00:16:07]:

Exactly.

Will [00:16:08]:

It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Seth [00:16:10]:

It really is. So best place for people to find you, I guess, would be Fulcrum over fulcrum, right? Fulcrum Ventureaccecelerator.com, right?

Will [00:16:19]:

Yes. You can just Google Fulcrum venture accelerator. You’ll find us. And we’re always looking to meet founders who are building impactful companies that are going to make the world a little bit better and who are at the seed stage raising money.

Seth [00:16:35]:

That’s awesome. Where do you hang out online? Are you on LinkedIn a lot? Instagram. Where’s your watering hole?

Will [00:16:43]:

I don’t really seth well, you’re brave.

Seth [00:16:46]:

That’s awesome.

Will [00:16:47]:

The real answer, I mean, I guess LinkedIn.

Seth [00:16:49]:

Yeah, you kind of have to kind of dabble.

Will [00:16:52]:

Yeah. I make music on Instagram. If anybody wants to check out my Instagram, it’s Kukaro. K-U-K-A-R-O. But I don’t do much business stuff on there still.

Seth [00:17:03]:

If you’re interested in need some background music, want to listen to music and jive and get the vibrations the right way?

Will [00:17:09]:

Get the vibe. Get the vibe.

Seth [00:17:11]:

Get the vibe. That’s awesome. Well, this has been so much fun. I’m so glad we got to get you on. This is fantastic.

Will [00:17:16]:

Yeah, me too. Seth thank you, man. It’s been great.

Seth [00:17:18]:

Awesome. And we will see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketingpodcast Network@marketingpodcast.net. Goldstein Media hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Marketing Podcast Network.