In this episode, Hall welcomes Flavia de la Fuente of BuildGroup. BuildGroup is an operator-led investment company that provides permanent capital to entrepreneurs building the next generation of technology businesses. Their innovative structure allows them to invest for the long term, so founders can focus on running their companies instead of raising the next round.

Flavia started her career as a community organizer at the Sierra Club, where she worked on the organization’s flagship Beyond Coal campaign, before getting an MBA at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. After business school, she worked for four years at the Employees Retirement System of Texas, flying back and forth to Asia to invest in technology stocks and lead an initiative on improving Japanese corporate governance policy. Flavia is a builder and senior associate with BuildGroup. She handles due diligence by going through financials, contracts as well as products and technology to see what makes a company great.

The startup world is open to anybody and it seems like everybody comes through it at some time or another.

I receive calls daily from entrepreneurs who are seeking to start a business, raise funding, or hire a team member.

I can always tell who is the serious entrepreneur and who is the pretend-preneur- someone who likes the idea of running a startup but is not committed to the work required to make it a success.  

That’s important because a pretend-preneur who raises funding will ultimately waste it and there are too many good startups to invest money in those who aren’t going to see it through.

Here are some telltale signs of a pretend-preneur

They are more worried about job titles and credit for the work.

They don’t seem too focused on the customer and what it will take to make them happy with the product as that’s ‘a detail to figure out later.’

They focus on the superficialities of the business and not the core functions of building the product and selling it.

They look for ways around the hard work rather than working their way through it.

Problems are the fault of everyone else and there’s nothing that they can do about it.

They don’t know who their customers are and it doesn’t bother them.

They think funding will solve all problems and life will be easier after the raise.

They don’t know their numbers but someone else in their organization does and that’s good enough.

As an investor, be on the lookout for these signs.

Let's go startup something today!