The Money Mondays
From $0 to $100M: The Truth About Capital Raising w/ Hunter Thompson 📈 EP102
Mon, 30 Dec 2024
Hunter Thompson reveals the strategies, tactics, and behind-the-scenes realities that helped scale ventures from scratch to a hundred million-dollar success. Hunter opens up about the challenges, obstacles, and triumphs he encountered while navigating the complex world of funding... --- Hunter is the founder of Asym Capital and owner of RaisingCapital.com. He is considered a significant thought leader in the space and has been featured in Forbes, MarketWatch, USA Today, and well over 100 podcasts. --- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 He Built a $500M Real Estate Empire with NO MONEY: • He Built a $500M Real Estate Empire w... Why You Must NOT Miss Out on the Modern Day Gold Rush: • Why You Must NOT Miss Out on the Mode... What Erik Huberman Knows About Marketing That You Don't! : • What Erik Huberman Knows About Market... Meet the Man Who Did Over $4B in Acquisitions: • Meet the Man Who Did Over $4B in Acqu... Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: • The Money Mondays Podcast - FULL EPIS... --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: / @themoneymondays Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: • The Money Mondays Podcast - FULL EPIS... Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Twitter: / themoneymondays LinkedIn: / about TikTok: / themoneymondays FB: / the-money-mondays-110233585203220
Chapter 1: How did Hunter Thompson scale to raising $100 million?
ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money mondays this is a special edition because right now right this second we are in the midst of the world's largest toy drive 10 cities over 16 days but luckily we have this rv motorhome which allows us to drive around and find guests like we have for you today we have the creator of raisingcapital.com
His name is Hunter Thompson, and I'm going to deep dive with him about all things money. Now, as you guys know, our podcast runs for about 34 to 38 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. So this will be 34 to 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.
We're going to cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity, but with a bit of a twist. Because Thompson, Mr. Hunter Thompson, has raised over $100 million, I want to ask him some questions about raising capital because a lot of you guys out there might be thinking about starting a company. Maybe you already have a company. You want to scale it.
So I'm going to ask him all the questions around that topic. But first, we're going to have Hunter do a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
What's up? Honored to be here, first of all. Yeah, so name is Hunter Thompson. I have a background as being a slacker in college and not taking life too seriously, but getting into the world of business and entrepreneurship, I fell in love with it.
And like I said, went from struggling to raise my first deal and coming half a million dollars short on my first raise, to raising a hundred million bucks from hundreds of investors, buying hundreds of millions of dollars of deals, and I feel like I'm just getting started, so stoked to talk about it.
Awesome. Okay, so someone out there listening is considering raising capital. Is there a time that's too early? Like when they have the idea phase, is it too early? When they have the business plan, is that when they should do it? Should they already have a little bit of sales, 10 grand, 50 grand, 100 grand sales? When is too early?
I mean, I think when people think about raising money, I think what comes to their mind is like having a really good pitch or like not taking no for an answer or something like that. And like the reality is the question about like when you should start I'm thinking like when you should start generating leads to have those conversations.
Cause even if you know exactly what to say, it's like, who are you going to say it to? Maybe your friends and family, but then how far can that really get you? And even if you are from a family that's rich, even those families raise money, obviously. So like billionaires raise money all the time. So like, there's no time that's too early to start digging the well, meaning how can I generate leads?
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Chapter 2: What should you prepare before raising capital?
Chapter 3: Why do wealthy individuals still seek outside investors?
said a really good point just this month Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian raised four point five million dollars to do popcorn Chloe decided should you do popcorn and so they raised four point five million dollars from investors now as you guys can imagine Kris Jenner and Khloe Kardashian are very rich and they have infinite capital and they make millions millions millions millions dollars per month why this is my question
why does someone with that much money that much reach that much social media power still want to raise capital from strategic investors yeah man i mean it's ultimately come down to leverage right so most people think of leverage think of debt borrowing money and stuff like that but there's other mechanisms think about leverage like what's a higher leverage activity how can i leverage my business how can i pursue high leverage things and so for for them
They've got money working for them, but they also want to bring in other money to grow something where they're going to profit on someone else's capital. And now that's what all capitalists do, including the investors themselves, is they want to rely on their brand, their reach to scale this business that, I mean, does anyone think that she's the best popcorn producer out there?
Probably not, but she's got a huge audience. So I don't know the details of that deal, but I imagine there's someone that's really good at popcorn. that reached out to her that said, yo, let's do this thing together. You go on social media. No one knows us, but we're good at popcorn. You're good at attention. That's the art and science of raising capital. Let's do this partnership together.
Same thing with Connor, right? Same thing with the rock. Like it's not the rock and kitchen cooking up that tequila, but now they got a billion dollar valuation. That's why.
Yeah, Logan Paul and Prime, Jake with W, all these brands. The numbers on Jake Paul's W brand, I think it's like $55 million or $60 million or something the first year. People are only figuring it out, man. Logan's Prime is the fastest growing beverage in history. People don't realize the sheer magnitude of...
these influencer brands yeah Connor got like 650 million dollars for that deal for the anyways okay so someone out there is listening they got their business plan they got their financials prepared I do what's called and I recommend calling setting up shop in a couple core things before you raise capital because what if you come to someone like Hunter Thompson or myself and say I want to raise 1 million dollars
we actually like your idea but you don't have a business plan you don't have financials you don't have the investor documents what if we say yes and you don't have investor documents mmm they don't have the corporation they don't have their bank account like you literally can't take money from us and I've seen it happen so many times where people pitch me asking me for 100k or 250k or 50k or a zillion billion dollars and they don't have a bank account
they don't have a corporation and they literally don't have investor documents so that I might like your idea. You're like, oh, I'm going to sell Money Monday's pillows. That's a great idea. Can you send me the investor documents? They're like, well, I don't have those yet.
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Chapter 4: What are the key elements of a successful investment pitch?
And that will work for mobile home parks, self storage, you know, buying existing businesses, nonprofits, like you name it, if the money has to leave their account to go to yours, you got to paint them that story. And so that's kind of what I built my career doing.
So how does it work? Let's say someone wants to invest the raising capital.com or wants to raise money through raising capital.com. How does that work?
So we don't like raise money for people. We kind of teach them how to raise money and they can rate, like we buy a deal in Phoenix, we buy multifamily properties in Phoenix. And so if you want to partner with us on a deal, we can teach you how to raise money and it's effectively your deal that you're partnering with us on.
But then other people come to us and they're like, you know, I've got this, I've got this fix and flip business that I've raised a couple million bucks or a couple hundred thousand bucks, but like, how can I take this to the next level? And so usually that next level is us teaching them how to do things like basically marketing, right?
Attracting leads, nurturing leads, building a brand, attracting attention, because you mentioned the example of the kind of Kardashian story, like that's the most pronounced example. And they've done it across multiple niches where you just take attention, interest, buy-in of clients and direct that to here's the bank account, right? And so that's her first,
popcorn initiative she raised four million bucks on her first go it has nothing to do with popcorn right and mr beast burgers has nothing to do with burgers it's all about the attention and so to answer your question directly a lot of my day is spent finding people that are very good at what they do and making them realize that to take it to the next level they have to learn about marketing
and operations of marketing. So, but it's a message that's lost on a lot of nerds and I'm a nerd too, right? But that's great. It means you're in a good market, to be honest.
So over the last three years, I raised $56 million through Elevator Syndicate. I have 970 investors that are all accredited investors. And I just text them deals once a month or so. And it's optional. They can invest if they want to. If they don't want to, I always tell them, say nothing. You don't say no, just say nothing. And we won't bother you again.
And so we raised $4 million for this and $6 million for that. We do $3 million to $6 million per deal. Into companies that are doing $2 million to $20 million in sales. Okay. That's our requirement. $2 million to $20 million in sales. It's mostly been food and beverage brands and consumer products.
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Chapter 5: How can you maintain investor relationships after raising capital?
You know, well, yeah, that would have been really good.
What's a billion dollar exit? Go ahead. Yeah, exactly.
Chapter 6: What strategies can help shorten the time to value for investors?
Chapter 7: How does marketing play a role in raising capital?
Chapter 8: What is the importance of emotional connection in investment?
What Hunter's also mentioning is it's not just us. So you might get us emotionally excited, but Hunter and I have a lawyer, an accountant, And typically an executive or a CEO, I have a CEO that oversees it. I call it the four horsemen. I have a CEO, I have an advisor, I have a lawyer, an accountant. If you can get by the four horsemen, I'm in.
I'll wire you to your pillow company, 100 grand, a million, 500 grand, whatever you want, I'm in. But you gotta get past the four horsemen. So a lot of times people are like, oh yeah, I know this really rich guy, Hunter, RaisingCapital.com, he's going to love my deal.
You pitch him and Hunter says yes, but Hunter has his version of the Four Horsemen that are going to look at the paperwork, the documents, and you to vet the deal.
During the vending process, you've got to be able to back it up like Hunter just said, because even though we might emotionally be excited by what you present to us, maybe you pitch us at an event, you pitch us at a nightclub or restaurant or a business meeting, or you catch us in an elevator and you give us an elevator pitch and we're like, yeah, that's exciting.
We like your pillow company, but you now got to back it up and prove it.
Yes. I mean, there's two sides of the equation. One, the people that just they think their story is amazing. They think that they're going to present this deal and we're going to be super high buying and do it. Other people that are just so obsessed with the nuances and the details of their offering that that's all they really know. And they can't tell the story in a compelling and emotional way.
For me, I was on that side of the spectrum. I got into the world of real estate at a really good time where, you know, post great recession, mobile home parks were for people that are knowledgeable in the space trading at 10% cap rates, meaning you could buy a property in cash and it would produce 10% cash flow like month one.
So this to me, I got in this world and realized how powerful that was and just was obsessed. That was torn property as I was meeting sponsors or operators. And like, I could see the writing in the wall, this niche was going to explode. And so when I get to pitch, the first time I went out to pitch, The language I was using was like as if I was speaking to a bunch of real estate nerds.
And the reality was I was speaking to like some friends and family, some dentist, some doctor, and they don't even know those terminologies. So like the story of raisingcapital.com is I bombed on that pitch. Even though there was $30 million in the room, I couldn't raise half a million. And earlier I said I was half a million dollars short. Yeah. on a half million dollar raise.
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