In this episode, Hall welcomes Stephanie Campbell of Houston Angel Network and The Artemis Fund. Stephanie is the Managing Director of the Houston Angel Network, one of the most active angel networks in the country. She is also Managing Partner at the Artemis Fund, the first female-founded, female-focused venture fund in Houston, Texas. The Artemis Fund is investing $20M in 15-20 female-led US-based companies that disrupt the Consumer Tech, Life Tech, Fin-Tech, and Energy Infrastructure industries.

Stephanie explains how Artemis Fund focuses on companies that make a difference in the world, solve real-world problems, and solve problems for overlooked communities. She provides advice for female founders and investors and talks about the investing world from a female perspective. She touches on some of the challenges startups face and emphasizes the importance of understanding your customers and how to get to them.

When I ask an entrepreneur what their competitive advantage is, most point to their product and say it's better. Of course, they spend ten minutes citing anecdotal stories to “prove” it.

My definition of a competitive advantage is that it increases revenue by 30% over the competition or is a decrease in cost by 30%.

Here are five sources of competitive advantage:
- Channel access
- Recurring revenue
- Platform based solution instead of singular products.
- Network effects in action -- the value of the product increases with the number of users
- Virality -- users invite other users -- it’s not the same as network effects

These advantages give your business the ability to scale. Scale comes from revenue increasing faster than cost.

In raising funding, competitive advantages can make the difference in closing an investor. The key is to quantify the effects of your advantage in dollars. If you just say you have it then it will convince no one. You must demonstrate with numbers.

Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

Let’s go startup something today!