In this episode, Leanne Dow-Weimer welcomes RajNation who shares his unique formula for crafting compelling Hype Decks, whether it's for personal branding or investor pitches. Discover the secrets to translating your vision into a captivating value proposition and harnessing creativity to build meaningful connections with your audience.
In this exciting episode, Host Leanne Dow-Weimer takes us on a deep dive into the world of marketing strategies tailored for startups, and we've brought in none other than the renowned Rajiv Nathan, known as RajNation. With his wealth of experience in agency work, startups, and branding, RajNation unveils his secret formula for creating compelling Hype Decks that pack a punch. Whether you're looking to build a personal brand or pitch your entrepreneurial vision, RajNation's unmatched creativity and knack for setting you apart can lead to remarkable success.
During our conversation, we explore:
🚀 Translating Your Vision: Transform the abstract concept of your product or service into a compelling and meaningful value proposition that resonates with your audience.
💼 Navigating Investor Pitches: Insights on the highs and lows of pitching to investors. Discover common pitfalls to avoid and strategies to increase your chances of securing funding.
📊 The Formula: Dive deep into the unique formula RajNation uses to create Hype Decks that captivate and persuade. Learn how to approach it the right way to maximize its effectiveness.
💡 Fostering Creativity and Connections: Unleash the power of creativity to forge meaningful connections with your audience. RajNation sheds light on the art of building a music album that shares the journey of entrepreneurism.
Tune in to this episode and supercharge your startup marketing strategies with Markigy, the Science of Marketing Strategy. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting your journey, this episode is packed with actionable tips and inspiration to help you succeed.
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00;00;11;26 - 00;00;27;11
Leanne
Hello, this is Leanne with Markigy. And today I'm joined with Raj Nation. You are the founder and chief pitch artist for Startup Hype Man. What is Hype House about? Tell me all about all these things.
00;00;27;27 - 00;00;51;02
RajNation
Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Startup Hype Man. We've been around for about seven years now and really focused on addressing what I call rush hour syndrome for startup founders, which is if you've seen the Chris Tucker movie Rush Hour, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. Yeah, there's that scene where he's like, Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
00;00;52;10 - 00;01;10;01
RajNation
That's essentially what all these startup founders are facing. They've got this big idea in their head. They know the way the world is supposed to be. They know they've got a killer product. And then when they talk about it, when they go out and they pitch it, their audience, whether that's investors or customers or other stakeholders, they look at them confused.
00;01;10;01 - 00;01;33;26
RajNation
They scratch their heads and they go, Huh? What is it again? Or I would argue even worse. They say, Oh, I get it. It's another insert generic app, SAAS, whatever here. And I would argue it's even worse because when the stakes are this high for these companies, you know, you really can't afford to be another anything. You can only really be the only you should be.
00;01;33;27 - 00;02;04;12
RajNation
Do recognize that. So at Startup Hype Man we focus on helping these startups become the goat to market, and we do that through developing pitches designed to really stand out and stand apart so that their audience recognizes them not as the best, but as the only. And that's a big distinction, because the ones who can get recognized as the only and their true unique differentiation and appeal is is really coming to light and coming to the surface.
00;02;05;04 - 00;02;10;10
RajNation
When that happens, the scratch tags and confused look start turning into people writing checks.
00;02;11;07 - 00;02;31;15
Leanne
Yeah. And I mean that's that's always a struggle is trying to get other people to see that the value in what you're doing. You know no one wants to hear that their baby it's ugly but no one wants to hear that their baby is just another uber blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's.
00;02;32;24 - 00;02;49;25
RajNation
That's not it's actually better if you hear that it's ugly because then you at least know they don't like it. Yeah. And you can fix something or it's not for them. It's worse if they are like, Oh, cool. But they're like meandering with that cool because they don't know where to take the conversation or they don't really understand it.
00;02;49;25 - 00;02;53;24
RajNation
And then you never get a true yes or a true now or real feedback.
00;02;54;06 - 00;03;14;14
Leanne
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I love feedback, negative feedback. I honestly, because I come up with so much of it on my own, I'm like, Oh, I should have done X-Y and Z or you know, Oh, that was a up to snuff. But sometimes we're harder critics than ourselves and sometimes we're just not hard enough and we just miss the point.
00;03;14;14 - 00;03;22;12
Leanne
Missed the plot completely. So how did you end up, like, doing this? Like. Like what's your story like? How did this come about?
00;03;23;16 - 00;03;56;25
RajNation
So I think the it's if you look at the entire, like, spectrum of or the timeline of my life, it kind of makes sense. I'd end up here just in the sense that like everything that I do centers around some form of storytelling and using a voice. This specific endeavor came through. I had a previous business before this which was really focused on personal brand strategies and we were really good at was helping people answer the question, What do you do, witch?
00;03;57;01 - 00;04;19;06
RajNation
Or rather tell me about yourself, which most often came up in job interviews. We got really good at figuring out people's personal, individual sort of life elevator pitches. And from there, we could just, you know, we had a lot of good strategies, just could never figure out the right revenue model. And so it didn't really go very far, but we made a lot of good connections along the way.
00;04;19;06 - 00;04;38;18
RajNation
And as we were sunsetting, that company, an opportunity sort of fell in my lap through one of the connections I had made over the years, and it was with a startup accelerator, and the head of that was like, Hey, do you think you could also do this? Pitched up for startups and small businesses because we have this new cohort coming in.
00;04;38;18 - 00;05;01;06
RajNation
The last one that we had had a demo data went terrible for and I know they're going to need help. So I was like, Oh yeah, totally. I got you. And that was a phone call. I admittedly, I hung up the phone and I'm frantically Google search. What is the startup niche? And through that, I, I was like, Oh, okay.
00;05;01;06 - 00;05;14;19
RajNation
I was able to like pick up on it pretty quickly and I was like, okay, I get, I get it. I just needed to know, like, this sandbox I was playing in essentially. And then I found a lot of the hatch strategies and stuff we were using on the personal side, really it pretty directly applied here as well.
00;05;14;20 - 00;05;43;00
RajNation
And so that accelerated it. I was a part of this is back in 2016, it accidentally incubated my business, right, because I found through working with about 20 different entrepreneurs, they're the ones that work closest with me were having a lot of success. Like one guy went from idea for his business to like 130 K in revenue by the end of the 13 or 14 weeks.
00;05;44;08 - 00;05;56;24
RajNation
And I didn't, I was like, Hey, do you think our conversations, any of the stuff that we worked on, helped with this? And he was like, Dude, you literally showed me how to talk about this. I don't know if I'd have any of this money if you didn't show me that. It's like, Okay, all right. It's like, there's some merit here.
00;05;57;08 - 00;06;23;20
RajNation
Some other people raise money. And I was having the most fun that I was ever having working. So I was like, Okay, I think we've got something here. Let's see if we can turn this into a business. And so that's how it got started. And again, that was like end of 2016. So kind of formally decided to make it a venture at the beginning of 2017, started it solo, and now here we are all these years later and we built up a small team and we've got others on the team making pitches as well.
00;06;23;20 - 00;06;31;02
RajNation
And the Hype Man brand has been growing and now he's been doing cool content stuff along the way to Awesome.
00;06;31;15 - 00;07;06;27
Leanne
And for those of you that haven't sat through a demo day or just like a stream of pitches, is that the hardest thing that these founders have to do is not just one into the stream of demos and pitches like you sit there and it's like, these are our it feels like you're back in school. And I can say this because like in grad school we had to do the same shit and there was ours were better than the people that were actually founding it.
00;07;07;07 - 00;07;36;17
Leanne
And after like two of your eyes are just kind of like, okay, your financial projections tell me that you're going to make money and you know, this is why you're different. And it just gets to be like, wah, wah, wah, blah, blah. So standing out air and having a story or just being engaging is is such a huge battle because you're no one ever goes to listen to just one pitch at a time, usually.
00;07;36;25 - 00;07;49;05
Leanne
Or if you're so lucky that you have an investor want one, like you have to be able to talk about it without like them being like, okay, cool, I've got other shit.
00;07;50;28 - 00;08;14;08
RajNation
And not just that, I mean not just that, but also in a way that makes it easy for them to re-explain it to the other people on their team because they're likely going to have to now if they like what you're doing, unless it's an individual angel investor, most often they have to now make a case for you to the overall investment team to say this is where we should put our money.
00;08;14;26 - 00;08;22;26
RajNation
So it's got to be easy for them to now explain it back to other people. And the more complicated you make it, the harder that's going to be for them.
00;08;23;12 - 00;08;58;02
Leanne
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because you can't give them homework to go research stuff that you just didn't tell them and you can't. It's not their job to make your kid interesting. Like they're not going to do it. They're going to be like, okay, I've got like 30 more of these to explain to my team. All right. And if it's an angel investor investing their own money and they do this all the time, then, then sometimes they're a little bit more a quick they're a little bit more quick to make a like a snap judgment.
00;08;58;14 - 00;09;16;19
Leanne
You know, they're just it's going to be like yes or no done. You know, they don't want to waste time with drawing out long decisions that don't need to be long decisions. So so when you do it as as opposed to all these ways of, you know, making it boring that the like, how do you make it, like more engaging?
00;09;16;19 - 00;09;26;19
Leanne
Like like kind of like what's your strategy in, in creating these kind of like differentiated pitches? Like, like how would you explain it? Like I'm five.
00;09;28;00 - 00;09;53;03
RajNation
Yeah, the big thing here is so we center everything around this pitch formula we came up with years ago that we call K parser, which is, you know, Spanish and a lot of five year olds. No Spanish, no enough conversational Spanish. Now Que Pasa means what's up or what's happening in Spanish? And that's the essence of a strong pitch is you're telling people what's up.
00;09;53;19 - 00;10;23;06
RajNation
Now, this is the formula we use to develop an elevator pitch. But it's not just that, it's your elevator pitch is that you kind of build your entire pitch deck around this k passive formula and you fill in details around this. So K process stands for essay problem approach, solution action, problem approach, solution action. That is the general format to be thinking through and then pitching through.
00;10;24;03 - 00;11;06;04
RajNation
And when you have one minute, Hey, Paso is there for you, when you have three or 5 minutes, you use Que pasa as the centerpiece and you add detail around that. It is the sort of the the grounding force behind whatever you're going to talk about related to your company and the reason why it works and we've seen it work time and time again with our clients is because you are you're establishing a reason for why upfront by leading with the problem and you're providing context and frame of reference for why you would exist.
00;11;06;27 - 00;11;31;10
RajNation
Most importantly, you are leading with empathy. You are showing you understand your target audience and what they're going through, whether you're talking directly to them or whether you are talking about them to an investor, you're showing you deeply and intimately understand the needs of your potential customers and for those reasons, you have a product that can help them.
00;11;31;29 - 00;11;50;16
RajNation
So you're tying it back to their core pain or their core problem or need. And in so doing, it makes understanding your offering a lot easier. It also means you don't have to say so much because some of the conclusions become obvious and natural. So if you do a good job at articulating the problem.
00;11;51;21 - 00;12;11;03
Leanne
Yeah. And I mean, one would argue that I be able to present what you do in this format is the foundation of your sales, your marketing, your pitches, like all of it. Like there's never a moment where it's not relevant.
00;12;13;25 - 00;12;38;15
Leanne
But you know, that being said is there's always a risk or mistake or something that like goes awry. So like if someone was going to take this concept and they were going to like try it themselves, like, what are some things that you're like, don't do this if or if you do this, think about it like this way.
00;12;39;29 - 00;13;09;25
RajNation
Don't lead with a market size number. I see this time and time again. The reason you don't want to do this is a simply leading with a market size number. Like, I don't know, like insurance is a $38 billion annual industry or something like that. That's a hypothetical number, but you get the point. You're going to automatically lump yourselves in with the 95% of other entrepreneurs who lead with that number, who lead with like who lead with a number and think that's the big point.
00;13;10;11 - 00;13;39;01
RajNation
But that's not the big point. It's also not unique to you or a differentiator or anything like that. It's a it's a number that anyone can claim. It's also inherently numbers on their own, inherently lack context. So whatever magnitude or weight you think that billion dollar number carries, it's not there if you lead with that big number because we don't have any context around why that number matters.
00;13;40;25 - 00;14;08;21
RajNation
The other important thing with this is we also can't picture what a billion of anything looks like. So you're you're creating a vague concept, but as your lead message, if you lead with a market size number, right? Like if I ask you, Liane, what does $1,000,000,000 look like? Can you describe that back to me? I'm actually curious. Describe back what $1,000,000,000 looks like.
00;14;09;04 - 00;14;26;23
Leanne
Yeah, I mean, like like, I wouldn't know. Like the volume of whatever denomination bill. Like, I don't I wouldn't know, like what equivalent physical space that looks like. All right. And I think that, yeah, that's a really crucial component is like, it's just so abstract.
00;14;27;17 - 00;14;45;21
RajNation
We don't know what a billion people looks like. We don't know what $1,000,000,000 looks like. We certainly, you know, a ten, 10 billion or 30 billion of these things is at best we can picture what like fills up a large stadium of people, right? So like I think University of Michigan, probably the biggest stadium is like 110,000 people or 120,000 people.
00;14;46;07 - 00;14;55;23
RajNation
That's probably the biggest thing we are capable of picturing. And even that you just if you think about it, you think of a sea of faces, but nothing. You don't think of any individual face, right?
00;14;56;02 - 00;14;56;12
Leanne
Yeah.
00;14;56;19 - 00;15;42;02
RajNation
You just think of like a blur of people. So what's really important is you bring it down to the value of one. What is this problem look like for one individual person? Start there, highlight that and use that as the entry point to talk about your solution for that one individual person or company or entity. And then once you've gotten that out, then depending on the situation, you can say something like and by the way, that's representative of like that one person or, or, you know, this issue is experienced across X hundred thousands of people or is makes up, you know, a market that is this much money.
00;15;42;29 - 00;16;14;06
RajNation
Right. That's how that's how the number has a lot more impact. The other thing that I think is, is a big mess is not taking enough of a stance because you're worried about potentially crowding out some people. But you've got to you know, another analogy we like to use is like know yourself as a superhero, but it's also your job to set the village on fire and burn it to the ground, meaning like the problem has to be real and you've got to like go in on it.
00;16;14;26 - 00;16;38;15
RajNation
It's not a, you know, how like maybe kind of sorta this is an issue for some people. It's like know for your market. If they knew a better way, they would have figured it out by now. So it is or it is not the own there. There are a couple exceptions to that rule and one that I can think of is years ago we worked with a company in the city prevention, SDI and STD prevention space and we couldn't say.
00;16;38;15 - 00;16;59;12
RajNation
And that one, every time you have sex, you contract the disease. So that was one where we went with like a and that, you know, using the maybe language actually made it a little bit more kitschy. And it was the it was the message. The lead message was sometimes when you go out and have a good time, you catch more than just feelings.
00;17;00;22 - 00;17;09;20
RajNation
Right? And so there's like some humor built into that, but it's obviously that's a case where you can't be like free. EV Every time you touch another person, you're getting a disease.
00;17;09;29 - 00;17;17;09
Leanne
Right? Because one that's not true. And two is, you know.
00;17;17;21 - 00;17;17;29
RajNation
Yeah.
00;17;18;20 - 00;17;41;13
Leanne
But I like the way that you phrased it instead. You know, I think that for for that one, it's still elicits the feeling, the what it feeling. And when we're storytelling or when we're doing marketing or we're doing like, you know, visualizations, you know, just the human brain works better when it can equate sensory details to what we're doing.
00;17;41;13 - 00;18;14;15
Leanne
So if, you know, you're or you know, you talked about the storytelling and making it a good story and starting with something that's too abstract. Well, yeah, you can't feel a number. You can't smell a number. You can't you know, what sound does the number make? You know, like you can't get into those physical sensory experiences that make storytelling like stick with people the same way when you start off without the problem, without the feeling, without the, you know, the ability to envision yourself in it.
00;18;15;00 - 00;18;28;10
Leanne
And, you know, I think that that makes a really big difference. And then also, when you had too much, you're just like, well, maybe this may be a problem. Okay, well, that doesn't elicit any feelings either. Okay, cool.
00;18;28;16 - 00;18;31;20
RajNation
Of why she would do anything about it if it if it's not really a problem.
00;18;31;26 - 00;19;06;00
Leanne
Yeah, like. Okay, well, I'll remember that later or not, you know, and so, so I hear you that, you know, there's, there's definitely some ways that this could go awry. And it comes down to the how of what you're doing now when you're thinking about like the impact and kind of like doing it right or when it's, you know, what are some ways that this really kind of helps the bottom line?
00;19;06;04 - 00;19;28;17
Leanne
Like, is there any if you have any like numbers like, oh, well, you know, in this many percent we did it this way and this was the result. Like we love stuff like that. But even anecdotally, like you shared a couple stories with us. But what are some, some ways that this creates like revenue or long term wins or short term wins or or was really just stood out to you?
00;19;29;06 - 00;20;00;13
RajNation
Yeah. I mean, this is literally what's been the backbone behind pitches that have done anything from rate winning five, ten, 25,000, $100,000 pitch competitions all the way up to raising one $5,000,025 million Toyota billion going rounds. So it has real significant impact behind it. It also allows you to it's not just that it's a pitch that you use in like a singular method.
00;20;00;13 - 00;20;22;17
RajNation
It's also it becomes the building block that all of your communication then derives from. So you have that right up front. It makes figuring out the messaging for everything else so much easier because it should all tie back to that core message. We've had sales teams utilize this stuff and and you know, it's weird in sales, everyone's like, No, you can never talk first.
00;20;22;17 - 00;20;42;09
RajNation
And it's like, or you could give them a pretty quick understanding of what you do so they know what kind of conversation is the right conversation to have with you and you know, we've seen recordings on calls where sales reps are like they deliver that K parser and the buyer will be like, I'm really happy you shared that.
00;20;42;26 - 00;20;59;11
RajNation
I didn't realize it was this also that's really helpful to know and and then they'll start talking about whatever's going on on their side and you know, yeah, we also seem to influence clothes rates and things of that nature too often.
00;20;59;12 - 00;21;35;24
Leanne
Yeah. I mean, I could imagine that for the person or the people, the team that that raised millions of dollars in their fundraising, you know, then they're able to employ other people. They're able to deploy like on a greater scale. They're able to accomplish a lot with that type of investment. That can really be the difference between whether or not thy startup moves on and continues to exist or if it just fizzle and, you know, and and that can really impact not just singular people's lives, but, you know, everyone that works for them.
00;21;35;24 - 00;21;37;27
Leanne
And then the economy is as a whole, too.
00;21;38;16 - 00;22;17;27
RajNation
Yeah, that's all things we talk about a lot as you know, whatever a startup founder cares about is money. And that can mean investment getting an investment or revenue. But money can also mean being able to employ people, create local jobs in the economy, provide for your family, create generational wealth. All of those things are what's baked into the concept of money and that's like the trickle down of if you get it right up front and you get the initial money for yourself, now you can create the money for other people.
00;22;18;20 - 00;22;36;05
Leanne
Yeah, absolutely. Because I mean, that's that's the difference is like you can have a great idea, but if no one knows that you have this great idea, then it's not that it doesn't. It's useless. Like if you can't get it into people's hands that it might as well not exist.
00;22;36;22 - 00;22;36;29
RajNation
Yeah.
00;22;38;01 - 00;22;38;10
Leanne
And.
00;22;38;22 - 00;22;55;25
RajNation
And that's that's actually the that second part of that quote, what you just said, I think is important because it's not when you talk about a longer form pitch like in a pitch deck to raise money, it's not just to can you get people to understand what your product is. That's a very that's a small portion of it.
00;22;55;25 - 00;23;19;18
RajNation
But do you have more than just an idea on your hands? Can you articulate your go to market strategy? All these kinds of things become really important so they don't, you know, just understand what it does or what your product does. But they also understand that they understand the real opportunity that's there for them that they should be capturing alongside you or, you know, with you at the helm.
00;23;20;17 - 00;23;39;11
RajNation
They understand you're the right person to captain the ship. And you you pitch in a way that reduces their that reduces their risk or they.
00;23;39;11 - 00;23;39;25
Leanne
Preceded.
00;23;40;03 - 00;23;41;17
RajNation
Or reduced their yeah. Their skepticism.
00;23;41;17 - 00;24;13;10
Leanne
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so it sounds like this is a good fit for everybody. I'm just going to throw this out there. My $0.02 is that this is the wrong fit. If your idea sucks. Yeah, it's. It's still a good fit to try. I mean, it's one way to find out if you're ever going to get that product market fit because you don't get this far and give it your, like, you know, hundred 10% and then find out whether or not the market actually cares about it.
00;24;13;19 - 00;24;28;11
Leanne
You know, like that's the only way you'll get to that stage. But I do in my chronically online time, enjoy the, like, useless inventions that just exist that people up with my guilt.
00;24;30;04 - 00;25;00;22
RajNation
I also think it's the wrong fit for like it. Like you it can be utilized by really any thing and everyone, anyone. But I actually think it's almost not worth it for a commoditized industry or a commoditized product. If you're selling insurance solutions and it's not insurance technology that's new and groundbreaking, you are literally like an insurance broker dealer or insurance agent.
00;25;00;22 - 00;25;17;11
RajNation
Could you help your customers at baseline better understand what a product is that you're offering? You know, like home insurance? Yes. Early work there. At the end of the day, that customer's probably still going to make decision based off of who can get me the best rate so it can help. And then.
00;25;18;05 - 00;25;19;00
Leanne
I you.
00;25;19;08 - 00;25;20;22
RajNation
Even understand. Yeah.
00;25;20;29 - 00;25;21;10
Leanne
I mean.
00;25;21;12 - 00;25;37;11
RajNation
It's not like I think some of these commoditized industries where we just kind of we just shop on lowest price. It's not like the Kapos. There is going to be the thing that people are like, Well, I was planning on spending $2, but now the you can't possibly I'm going to spend $2,000.
00;25;37;23 - 00;26;00;10
Leanne
Well, but here's the thing, is that even in a commoditized industry is die when you position yourself just slightly different. Right. Because what sets you apart from you know, there's going to be five people that have the exact same, right? Maybe what sets you apart is what it's like to work with you and what specific niche of that widespread.
00;26;00;10 - 00;26;32;17
Leanne
You know, once again, when you're standing for everyone, you want to stand for only some people without discriminating because insurance should never discriminate. We need free and fair and accessible and you know, all of that. But what I'm saying is, is that if let's say you know, there's there's a way where you can commoditize yourself and build relationships and build customer centricity and really call out a certain segment, then, you know, you would still want to kapos it.
00;26;32;17 - 00;27;07;06
Leanne
You would want to say like your problem is, is like you keep finding insurance companies that, you know, they take too long and then they have deadlines that have too much or, you know, something about like or they don't speak the same language you do or they don't understand your unique needs because maybe you're at this stage of life or at this point, you know, you can still address a specific problem and then explain how, you know, you're the solution and how you are differentiated from the 10 million other people with the exact same rate or maybe a couple of basis points off, right?
00;27;07;06 - 00;27;44;08
Leanne
Because at the end of the day, somebody is going to be like, look, those like ten basis points. We're not worth it for the headache and nightmare that it was dealing with this like conglomerate commoditize, you know, insurance, whatever. I'm like financial facet people careful about that. And I know that, you know, it's the same reason why we use like Uber Eats is or, you know, any food DoorDash or any other who delivery is because at some point it's where they what's the speed a little bit extra money to just not have to deal with certain conquerors or inconveniences so.
00;27;44;27 - 00;27;50;21
RajNation
Well I guess I think the point there is when it's a mature market like let's just keep using the insurance example.
00;27;50;22 - 00;27;51;02
Leanne
Yeah.
00;27;52;22 - 00;28;37;11
RajNation
And the market is already generally problem aware and product aware. Yeah. The problem you're highlighting is less about the need for insurance, most likely, and more about the problem that they may face potentially with other providers. Whereas if you're say a traditional or a more new to market tech startup, you're not necessarily painting the problem as the other providers that are out there, you're painting the problem around what does the buyer, the consumer go through that requires them to even think of needing a solution ultimately?
00;28;37;27 - 00;28;39;07
Leanne
Well, it sounds like the same thing to me.
00;28;40;14 - 00;28;42;04
RajNation
Well, let me give you an example.
00;28;42;06 - 00;29;06;10
Leanne
It's like like very rarely do you have like State Farm me, like well, we're State Farm and we're not blah, blah, blah, blah. What they are doing is they, they're saying like where this, that and the other. So the majority of companies will market themselves, not eyes like where, you know, shaded in this, you know, comparative thing. They would shade it eyes.
00;29;06;10 - 00;29;25;13
Leanne
This is the problem that we're solving for you is just a very differently defined problem that is coupled with, you know, the need for their product. So I see them as being very, very similar, if not like the same being. But, but please go ahead.
00;29;26;13 - 00;29;59;27
RajNation
So similarities. Yeah, I think you don't have to worry about what the I should say this when you're coming of age startup you don't need to worry as much about what the competition is doing or saying. You can focus more on just like your customer and yourself. Whereas when it's a very mature market and all the players are basically and you've got to dial it in more into what is the market doing or what's the competition doing versus how are you doing that differently?
00;30;01;22 - 00;30;37;19
Leanne
Yeah, eating it is a good it's a good way to think, you know, a interject some jobs to be done right because if you're a new start up and you're thinking about what you offer differently or why what your solution is, and even if it may not exist exactly why people are still getting that job done somehow. And then you're competing with all of the things that accomplish that, that kind of thing in in maybe not like a direct competitor way.
00;30;38;01 - 00;31;20;12
Leanne
So I, you know, it's it's not to be taken lightly. I think we can agree is that it really requires more than just a cursory glance of how you position yourself and how you go about doing the the process of defining what the problem is and how you're addressing. And and in any world, the, the way it would be, like the most strongly fit would be if you just don't care or you should just don't have the the autonomy to go about defining in a quality way.
00;31;20;12 - 00;31;59;10
RajNation
Defining inequality way is a is it and kind of the operative part of that statement because you can say the problem, but if you say it in a way that's boring or I was too buzzworthy or just doesn't make sense, doesn't matter. They said the problem because they still don't understand what you're saying. Which one of the things we have to you know, when we when we do this for companies we got to figure out what's the easiest way to say these things and not get caught up in like the jargon, if you will.
00;31;59;10 - 00;32;25;09
RajNation
And I also think what's important with that is coming back to this notion of speaking to one person. So when you are figuring out your Que pasa, don't think about how do I broadcast this to as many people as possible. Instead, it's what if I were talking to one individual person about this? How could I communicate it to them?
00;32;25;27 - 00;32;53;17
RajNation
That will take you away from the big words that don't make a whole lot of sense. It will make it much more relevant and real, and it'll give people something they can sink their teeth into because they'll feel it. If you if you start with, everyone's going to hear this. So how do I make sure it's you know, it sounds good as a quote unquote broadcast.
00;32;53;17 - 00;33;02;29
RajNation
It's going to lose the meaning. Or if you focus on one person, it will sound great and broadcast because every individual person feels like they're being spoken to directly.
00;33;02;29 - 00;33;43;19
Leanne
So we haven't talked about it yet. But one of the ways that you do this different, right, because we talked about like what are typical pitches like are like all these like really boring like jargon things. Now you have some like amazing skill sets that we haven't even tapped into yet. And, and I’d like to hear more about, like how this intersects with different medias and modalities and methodologies that that are a little bit more out of the box to really get into that like quality and engaging and deeper way of connecting with your intended audience.
00;33;45;01 - 00;34;29;06
RajNation
So what we you know, what I've been working on for the last 18 months and we released it earlier this year in September of 23, was a hip hop album about the founder startup life. It's called Go to Markets. You know, we use that phrase in a lot of properties, but the go to market is the name of the album and you know, I personally have been rapping for a long time and I started to find a niche in what I call founder hip hop and it's funny, several years ago I had the original idea to do this album, and at that point my idea, my thought was more like it would be like Schoolhouse
00;34;29;06 - 00;34;50;19
RajNation
Rock. But for startups where I'd be teaching pitch philosophy or concepts through rap, through hip hop, but then I abandoned because I was like, No, I don't got to teach people anything. So it had to be an educational piece because then it's also kind of gimmicky and whatever. Instead, it's just good music that resonates with a certain audience.
00;34;51;08 - 00;35;42;11
RajNation
And that's what this album is. It's, you know, it's a eight track concept album that documents the journey of a founder going from idea to capital raise and all the sort of like the ups and downs that happen and the changes in mindset along the way in between and I felt like I had the ability to put this together because I've been an entrepreneur myself for almost a decade now, but also for the majority of that time I've been working, working alongside other entrepreneurs to where I think this combined collective experience gave me enough juice, enough knowledge base to be able to write lyrics that would really deeply speak to them as listeners and become,
00;35;42;11 - 00;36;23;25
RajNation
you know, help sort of champion their voice and create this idea, this idea of like the voice of entrepreneurship and with the album, that's what we've put out. And then it was very intentionally designed from a sound and song style perspective to be really meaningful lyrically to this subset of, of listeners, but also have mainstream listenership appeal. And I know we've hit on that really well because I've gotten a lot of strong feedback from founders about how much it resonates with them.
00;36;23;25 - 00;36;46;27
RajNation
I had someone call me middle of the day, out of nowhere was a founder in Silicon Valley to tell me just how meaningful the album was to him, and specifically the songs that he was vibing with and what he felt on this one versus that one, etc.. And I'll say I'm flattered. I got throughout that conversation, he made comparisons to Eminem, to Drake, to J.
00;36;46;27 - 00;37;08;15
RajNation
Cole and to Lin-Manuel Miranda. Those are all people I look up to as artists. And at the same time, my brother is a doctor. He doesn't know is no shit about startup life and he vibes with it and he puts it out to his friends who are mostly other physicians or people in medicine or nowhere near the startup game.
00;37;09;00 - 00;37;27;22
RajNation
And those people are bumping it in their cars and not as like a courtesy thing because they're like, Oh hey, we're being nice. But like they're actually going out of their way to listen to it and add it to their playlists. And, you know, they're posting on Instagram how they're they're putting it on in their car when they're driving kinds of things.
00;37;28;23 - 00;37;58;01
RajNation
And that's because the content, again, was constructed in a way where I knew I could do this with with mainstream listening appeal, and I kind of model that off the idea that how is it, you know, like the question I worked off of was how is it that I've never sold a drug in my life but I can listen to Biggie's music, I can listen to it to push its music.
00;37;59;10 - 00;38;24;07
RajNation
And it's all about the crack game. And even though I've never been anywhere near that, I still feel I can, like, resonate or relate to it or vibe with it in some way. I can still find myself in their lyrics, even if I'm not doing that. What we did with this album was pull off the opposite, which was we're going to highlight and put center stage the voice of the founder and the life of the founder.
00;38;24;19 - 00;38;41;01
RajNation
And whatever endeavor you're in professionally or personally, you're going to find yourself somewhere in these lyrics. And for that core super super bass or super user base or listener base of the entrepreneurs themselves, it's going to be doubly meaningful and triply meaningful for them.
00;38;42;13 - 00;39;04;12
Leanne
Yeah. And I mean, that's that's part of, you know, a lot of things that we've talked about so far is is telling a quality story and being a dig and finding a way to like reach people. I think that sensory experience music isn't just something by you like hear it, you turn it up the right way, you feel it like you can feel.
00;39;04;12 - 00;39;27;23
Leanne
And that's one of my favorite memories of so many songs is, is the bass line in the what I can feel like when I'm in my car like different places and how the you're just a it's more than just a sound so to me cheesy could we call this music white girl.
00;39;28;28 - 00;39;48;12
RajNation
Hi I'm musical add growth there might be there might be room for that. Yeah right. I mean I think at minimum maybe it's concept led growth, but but if we get hyper specifically that, yeah, maybe, maybe it's music like growth instead of go to instead of go to market, it's go to music.
00;39;48;19 - 00;40;12;07
Leanne
Yeah. You know, just it's funny because I have another episode that talks about acronyms, but I couldn't help myself. You know, I love I love that you're using like go to market because I'm all about puns. All right. So so what's all the crazy, you know, tell me about, like, the releases, the events. Like what what are some things that you will look out for and then how can they get in touch with you?
00;40;12;22 - 00;40;36;26
RajNation
Yeah, well, the album came out September 14th, so it's available on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, really. Any streaming platform, YouTube music, just search, look up Bridge Nation all one word or go to market and it'll pop up. We celebrated the release of the album by with an album release party in concert the last week of September. And we we built that along with that.
00;40;36;26 - 00;41;01;09
RajNation
We built an entire week of events here in Chicago called, Hype Week. We did nine events across five days. It was awesome. We had everything from educational events to entertainment events like the concert to networking and athletic events too. So it was just a really cool way to bring the tech and the startup community together in very different and unique ways throughout the week.
00;41;02;00 - 00;41;19;29
RajNation
And of course, the concert itself was just, you know, the word I keep using was it was surreal. And that's how cool it was to pack a room and have people, you know, the album came out a couple of weeks before the concert and people already knew the lyrics. And so to have a room of people like singing your songs when you're not even prompting them was really freaking cool.
00;41;21;18 - 00;41;54;27
RajNation
So there is enough momentum to say, Be on the lookout for Hype Week 2024 at some point, probably last second half of next year. But in the meantime, you know, obviously check out the album, but otherwise we do monthly pitch workshops usually at least once a month and we've got two happening in October. So just check out startup Hype Man Dotcom and you can be in you'll know when the next one's coming out, especially if you subscribe to our newsletter and also at our newsletter.
00;41;55;02 - 00;42;19;19
RajNation
Every other week we share upcoming pitch competitions or grant opportunities that might be valuable to you. And then when you subscribe, you also get a video sent to you that takes that kind of in a truncated fashion, breaks down the K positive formula, and gives you an example as well so you can get started on creating your own suite.
00;42;21;01 - 00;42;24;01
RajNation
And I should clarify startup hype mccolm is the website.
00;42;24;10 - 00;42;27;14
Leanne
Yeah. Could you just spell it out for us? You know. Yeah.
00;42;27;15 - 00;42;44;02
RajNation
Startup. Startup. Yeah, I saw all the hype hype man. Hype PMA and Amway and startup hype man. That was a trick question. You can't spell startup hype, man, duck.
00;42;44;02 - 00;42;59;06
Leanne
Who knew it would include a spelling bee? Announce my turn. So if you have any questions for me, you know I'm always available on LinkedIn or you can email me at info at mark g dot com info at M_A_R_K_I_G_Y dot com