zoom_1

[00:00:00] Alvin Leong: Three. Two one. Hi. Hi everyone. Welcome to Abyss Gazing. I'm Alvin
Leong. I'm the founder and this is a podcast where we interview entrepreneurs about how
they started their companies, the struggles that they go through and the specific strategies
and techniques that they use. The building of companies joining me today is my friend Andre

He's French, but he grew up all of America. He's a serial entrepreneur, having built a
company called LiveLike, which he brought to series B.

Today he's working on Divigas, a company building the next generation of hydrogen
purification membranes, which is going to revolutionize the green energy market in, uh, in
the next few videos.

So, Andre, Are you ready to begin?

Andre Lorenceau: Yep, sure. Thanks.

Alvin Leong: Okay. So, Mmm. .

Andre Lorenceau: Okay. Okay. Take

Alvin Leong: us back to your childhood and then like what was the first thing [00:01:00] that
made you want to go into entrepreneurship?

Andre Lorenceau: I actually never wanted to go into entrepreneurship at all. I've never
actually wanted to go into it. I fell into it actually multiple times because I had no other
options.

Uh, I, I was always a bad students. And I think I realized very recently is because I'm
completely incapable of reading. Like a kid just can't, can't sit and read a book. I just, I'm
completely incapable of it. And that's kind of super important for having good grades in
school. And, uh, I, um, I basically, the first time I fell into it is because I was.

Graduating from university of Texas and I was making beer with a friend of mine. We were
just casually making beer and we, uh, I graduated then he wanted to make a business out of
it. Then a couple of ideas on what sub segment we could hit, but mainly is just, I had a
terrible GPA. I had like 2.8 by the end out of four in the U S system.

And, [00:02:00] uh, basically I needed someone, I was French citizens, so I needed someone
to sponsor my visa, which would cost a ton of money. And. The whole procedure. And so
with that grades, nobody wanted to do it. So I basically had no other choice because I could
extend my visa if I actually started a company, because I was a business major.

I could, as starting a business, countered as a visa extension, sort of like a metric. So I S I had
to start something and we were making beer and we decided to start a brewery, which was
actually initially called Austin's pride. It was in Austin, Texas, and it was actually targeting the
LGBT community. It was like trying to.
Just fundraise for the LGBT community. Cause I realized that there's a ton of LGBT bars, gay,
lesbian, and what it what have you. And uh, and uh, visited all of them and I kinda got them
all too, or the vast majority of them had got them too commit to buying two barrels a week,
Mmm. Before I had a product.

And so I was like, okay. So there's clearly enough support for this for me to be able to launch
off of it. And [00:03:00] that was the first time.

Alvin Leong: It looks like LinkedIn, this company eventually became Olympus brewing.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, it was from the start, but we ended up never launching it, basically,
because. I mean, we, we did all the research.

We even had the product orders ready for the heavy equipment. We had some people that
are going to invest, like we were going to do it, but I, on one side, I discovered virtual reality,
which in 20 it was 2013, 2014 at that time, uh, and I got to try a really advanced version of it
and it just blew my mind.

Uh, and at the same time, my friends who was doing it with me had a six figure, uh, offer
from ExxonMobil to be a chemical engineer over there. And so I was like. You know, like you
could do the super risky thing with me. He was totally gone home, but. You can do the super
risky thing with me, or I could follow virtuality.

So I'd say it's a full virtuality. We ended up not launching Olympus brewering company, even
though we had prepared everything for like a year. And, uh, and basically I, uh, yeah, I had to
go back to France cause I lost my visa [00:04:00] because of that. And I, I just. Posted on
every virtuality forum I could find trying to find the VR related job.

And I found these, this great studio called Innerspace VR. The inner space is still around
today. Um, they, they make, uh, games and experience, but at the time, they were very
making very, uh. Experiential, sort of like experimental videos and virtual reality. And they
were very good at what they did, but they were just God awful at business.

And so they need a business guy. And I was like, I'll help for free. I just want to get some on
the hands experience. And then this new industry, and I have them for a few months. And
then, uh, I, uh, they got picked up by Samsung for their first. Mobile VR headset and they
went to South Korea. And I was like, okay, cool, bye.

I was still just helping them out. Uh, but at one day after call, after going over there, they
called me and they were like, uh, we need your help. We can't do this a little, and how fast
can you get here? We'll pay you $1,000 a month and we will not pay you the flight to come
over, but we need you to come over.

And so I [00:05:00] borrowed money from my dad. I flew. I was like, hell yes. I don't care that
it's terrible deal. I flew over. And I, uh, I started working with, Oh, I flew, actually the
cheapest flight was actually three days later. Very weirdly. So three days later I was in South
Korea working and negotiating with Samsung on this content deal with no experience
whatsoever.
Mmm. Yeah. And it worked out. It was fun. It was like a big roller coaster.

Alvin Leong: How do you think you managed to convince them to, hi, how are you as a
director? Mmm. Because basically at this point you, you had one business which didn't really
take off because you're interested in VR. Was it mainly because you will, you're okay with
like working for free and just what $1,000 a month?

What was that in the main reason?

Andre Lorenceau: That was a reason to, they were very, very bad at this. This, I mean,
anything, anyone, like I had a, I mean, you've got to understand also like the French.
Business mindset is [00:06:00] not the same as an America. Just as something that seemed
completely common sense. in the business world, in America, even basic like artists would
understand, and Francis status score is not the same.

So they were very, very bad at anything related to business, and they were far too cagey
about their technology. They were far too cagey, but a lot of things. And they were just,
we're not . Fundamentally did not want to be a commercial enterprise, but they needed
money. They wanted to just be artists that just do cool stuff.

And they kind of like, I help them for free. And I was like, guys, if you just like frame it this
way, you don't compromise your vision. And at the same time people might, right. You
don't. And they tried it a couple of times when I was helping him for free and they were like,
Oh wait, shit. That actually. That actually, okay.

Makes a difference. And so little by little like that, that kind of won them over. Um, but they
had like no money. And the only reason why I, they could bring me to Korea as, because they
had some money from Samsung too, to do some stuff over there, and so they could actually
[00:07:00] spend on me. But the only reason they spend on these, because they trusted me,
they knew that I was trying to get an the industry, I didn't particularly care.

They were also very suspicious of everybody else. Like everyone that's a business person was
just like, total. Bastard to them. It's, it's a fresh mentality. Business people are exploitative of
artists and worker. It's like literally, it's a thing in the French mindset that business people
are fundamentally evil.

It just is like that in

Alvin Leong: France.

Andre Lorenceau: It makes them suspicious completely. Yeah.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, so like in our space was really like your first
experience of fundraising from investors and meeting VCs and negotiating contracts with
Samsung, all these like big Bubi companies.

Andre Lorenceau: Yes, yes, it was my first time I picked up an angel at a bar.
I can't even remember how I met him, but there was at a bar, there was an angel there and
he ended up investing like 300 grand or something like that, which for an angel is like crazy
high is fell into my lap. And I was like, Oh, [00:08:00] okay, cool. Well, there you go. So I gave
him way more money than they ever paid a large amount and uh, and they were super
happy.

Obviously. Yeah, and I'll work with them for a few months. Hey, we did the content deal with
Samsung, a bunch of stuff like that. It was just all. It was a super fun. And even at the time I
was, I had a two hour commute every day and I work right next to the North Korean border
at this weird city called the

And yeah, but I live in sill, which is a capital and it's an hour bus up and an hour bus down
every day. A and I would work literally 12 hour days and, but I just didn't care cause I was
like. This is so cool. This is virtual reality. I have a real job in virtuality doing deals with
Samsung on the secret project that Ave announced.

Yet. I was like, I was breathing. The excitement was just like I was more than happy to do
1416 hour work days at that time. Mmm. It was super cool. The excitement takes you really
a long way. Mmm. Yeah. But at this point I wasn't an entrepreneur, you know, I was just
working for [00:09:00] 400 it was that, I wasn't

Alvin Leong: like your title was director of business development.

It was all right, but

Andre Lorenceau: how

Alvin Leong: big was the team at his point? Like when, when you were in Korea,

Andre Lorenceau: six, eight people, something like that.

Alvin Leong: And you all the rest of them are all technical people.

Andre Lorenceau: Yup. Or or yeah. Yes, yes. They all technical programmers or directors of
art and illustrators. Yes. That's something that I was the only non.

Non non technical version.

Alvin Leong: So so I notice that uh, you, you work for inner space until about 2015 and then
like the days kind of overlap with Lifelight you start life like while in the middle of working
for in a space is fine.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah. I didn't want to start laughing like I didn't care at all about, so first
of all, I'm not a big sports fan.

They had only one sports team I care about is the university of Texas football, and that's like
13 Saturdays a year, and that's it. Or 12th or 13 whatever. And, uh, but yeah, but I, I had a
[00:10:00] VR headset after Korea. I came back to Francis still working with inner space and I
just brought a VR headset to my brother who had a sports data startup.
And we just, uh, I just gave him the headset, we tried it on, and then we were just kind of
brainstorming while literally while playing board game and be like, Oh, we can do this thing.
And it would be cool if we did this and be very different than what I've seen out there and et
cetera. And I did this for a little bit, and then I realized that.

Like, Oh, that's actually a pretty good idea. So I went on Reddit. I picked up a, I literally just,
it was for like five minutes, there was a red as it separated channel, those called VR jobs. A
bunch of people trying to get jobs in the VR industry. And I posted, Hey, I don't have a job, I
can't pay, but I have this little projects and I've accessed the VR headset, like if anybody
wants to, which is very precious time cause there's not a lot of the release stuff.

And I was like, . Yeah. Again, somebody helped me build this little demo, and this guy was in
England who was super nice dude called Graham Graham Reeves. Uh, he, uh, helped me out
for free, built me a little demo. It was like, basically it was like a couch. So you have a 3d
room. [00:11:00] And you have a couch in the middle and it's sort of like, imagine a square
room, but there's no front window.

The front, whole front wall is like open. It's like empty. And in front of it we, he puts this
curved screen and that would just be playing a GoPro footage. So my brother was in a sports
data startup and he had access to some stadiums and stuff. So we went to the local rugby
stadium. Those just put a GoPro on a tripod.

And then we filmed the whole game. And so he gave me this, this like three D environment.
My brother gave me the footage and we just put it together. And we kind of had this like
taps review where you felt like you were at the stadium, but it was this very wide angle
view. Cause GoPros pros, this super fish islands.

And essentially. It's kind of, if you looked around and kind of looked like you were in the
stadium, like they gave a good impression. Video quality was terrible and a bunch of other
problems with it. But as a prototype validation, it works actually really, really well. And it
solved a bunch of technical problems in VR as well for other reasons if I'm going to get into.

But the thing is, so again, because of my brother, uh, he was [00:12:00] talking to some
sports, uh, TV channels and the, and he introduced me to somebody very low level, uh, at
those channels. Yeah. I was like, Oh my God, this was like way better than anything I've seen.
I was bringing it up and we brought it up too. Two levels.

One was a VP and then he brought it up to like basically the board of directors where I met
with. 12 executives on this TV, public, big public TV channel in the, in the, in France. And
they were like, you guys need to keep working on this. This is super exciting. And I literally,
that doesn't want, I'm not trying to do anything.

I'm like playing around the side prototype while working on an airspace. But then I sit back
at my desk right after that meeting and I'm, I've literally have a to do list of things I gotta to
do for both my job and for this. Travel list, and I just look at it and I'm like, I can't do both. I
just don't, it's not even an option for me to do both.
So I literally just pick up the phone, call my boss, and I'm like, Hey, I got to quit. And he's like,
well, it was supposed to go to San Francisco with them and help them get into this
accelerator, [00:13:00] et cetera. And I, I did still do that, but I phased myself out. I went to
summer suit with them, I handed them off and, and, and.

To help them along, sort of like Meg. I didn't make it painful for them. Mmm. And, uh, yeah.
And that was the beginning of live life pretty quickly after that, after that, by that point, I had
one, I had my brother's a cofounder, I had another co founder who was my chief design
officer

Alvin Leong: Graham, the guy who

Andre Lorenceau: Graham Graham never wanted to, he never wanted to start a startup.

And he also, he's a guy who likes to work on 50 little projects and he doesn't like. Like he
works at, he works at the time, I don't know if he still does, but he worked at an agency that
made a ton of apps and what do you like was literally just do this little prototype and do this
little prototype and do this little prototype.

And he liked to make little things, so then they just didn't make sense. But I'm sorry, we're
gonna have to work on the same thing for five, six years. It's like she was like, not interested
at all. Okay. And she, uh, yeah. And, [00:14:00] uh, yeah. So I, I basically ended up putting
the team together. We were four co founders and, uh, by February of that year, like four
months after I got back from Korea, um, you know, I was starting this new company and I
super quickly, I have a cousin of a VC

Didn't want to take money from him at all. But I wanted to show him and get some advice
on how to fundraise. And I went to visit him at his office. Somebody is passing by and
everyone, he was kept being like, Hey dude, check this out cause this is a cool demo on this
VR thing. And I showed it to people and people were like, Oh my fucking God.

Like this is amazing. Like, and, and one investor was like, I'll give you 350 K like $350,000
right there just to, just to do this thing. And I'm like, okay, we're doing it. And so I decided to
move to San Francisco. And, uh, and that industrial never gave us the money. And so we
actually had our first major crisis.

Um, we have two major crisis actually at the same time. Uh, but the first one was that just
like we were running out of cash, so we had to borrow money from a friend. [00:15:00] Oh,
from an acquaintance to to just like stay afloat. Even though there was like four of us in San
Francisco, four or five of us in, in a house in San Francisco trying to make this thing happen.

And we didn't, we didn't actually get any other investor for six months while we were five
people in San Francisco, which was like, not, not great. Not good. Um, but yeah, but we, we,
we did eventually we could, we kept thinking that the guy was gonna to . Pay us and he was
just having some liquidity issues. But no, you ended up never paying us.

You mean years later, which is, okay, let's

You showed it off to a few people. They sounded very interested in it. And then you came up
with all the things to do for this idea, which eventually became lifelike, and at the same time
you're looking at in a space [00:16:00] and then you decided, okay, like this, this idea seems
really promising and you want more on this right now, but you're never really a sports fan.

You're more in it for the VR side of things.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah, it was born for the VRF side of things. I mean,
there are now, I like sports more than it did back then, but it's forces, it's just fun be in, even
if you're not a big sports fan, it's just like, it's not the worst industry to be in and it's pretty
dynamic and

I don't know. There was a lot of good lining, but yeah, it was more in it for the VR initially.
Um, and if you are ended up never really taken off, you know, so like. Uh, I mean, it's, it's
growing slowly right now, but it's, it's still not a ubiquitous thing, as we know. Yeah. Yeah.
But yeah, it was just, it was really tough to, to have, to borrow.

And, you know, we got like in like $40,000 worth of debt with just people, um,

Alvin Leong: like living expenses, just living a life by everything. [00:17:00] Yeah. 2015 late
February

Andre Lorenceau: incident was San Francisco. The time where we were without money, it
was from basically, I think it was like March or April, March or April, 2015 is it 2015 no, it
was, see the 2015, 2014 I forgot.

Anyway, yeah. You have, you have the dates in front of you. I don't, but, uh, so probably
2015 and uh, yeah, until like September. Or August, September. We didn't have, it's an
August. We didn't have any cash basically. So it was like,

Alvin Leong: Oh, you feel like you are, you were going into debt and then, um, but you still,
you still believe in the idea and she was struggling to make it.

Well, at this point,

Andre Lorenceau: well, no, the idea was working on its own. The problem was. Like we
thought we were getting money. So to me, we had cash. To me, we were like, we're just
boring, but we got 350,000 coming. So what does it matter that we're like 40,000 in debt?
You know, like that doesn't matter. I don't care.

[00:18:00] No. In hindsight, that was actually pretty Brisky. But is it does a ton of these
problems that you're going to realize that like, cause I know there's one or two other issues
that you're gonna realize. It's like I was near the brink of death and aye. Didn't realize it and
not realizing is the only reason why I made it through ignorance is bliss is like a saves me a
lot of time.

And I mean, I'm sure it will again, like just because, yeah. Because I don't, didn't sometimes
just being like, Oh my God, we could, we could, we could. There was just like, no, we're
doing the thing. It's working and just make it work. Otherwise, you know, um. Yeah. So that
was the first sort of issue. And right around that time I got, uh, because you want me, I
mean, you know, you, you want to go through the struggles, right?

So, yeah. Um, there was right around that time, I think it was maybe July or June or
something like that. We're invited [00:19:00] to this startup event at the baseball stadium
over there. Exactly. Like in the CV show, Silicon Valley basically. Exactly. It was actually a day
after that episode aired too. And, uh, we were just, we have these, uh, experience center
preneurs come in and get, tell us about different things and their experience.

And one of them was about, so like managing stress, and I'm always been just super
confident, not a worry in the world, but I'm sitting there at the back of the room and this is
my two cofounders in the front row, and she's talking about how she felt crushed by
responsibility. Uh, how is she felt like she had bank stacks and she was freaking out a lot of
the times, but she got over three inches just powered through it and et cetera.

I'm just sitting there and at one point I go, my brain just gives me this idea of this like very
pernicious idea that just like these guys came halfway across like my two. I'm looking at my
two co founders and my brain goes, these guys came across. Halfway across the world on
this idea that you sold them and both of them are very experienced and [00:20:00] have like
awards and prospects and everything and they're making no money based on your word.

And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like, Oh my God, I don't know what I'm
doing. And I had my first ever panic attack, like ever, like in this like. Public environment for
startups or the ton of people around me, and I'm like, what the hell is going on? I was like, I
feel like I'm dying. Just like, and I was like, I felt like I was about to hyperventilate, so just like
run out of the room.

I was in the back, so I don't think anyone noticed, but they go to the bathroom and I'm like, I
call my brother hell is going on. Like, it's just like, I feel awful and like, I'm like, am I, did I do
all the wrong mistakes and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And uh, and my brother kind of calms
me down. Then whatever.

Panic texts eventually go away, and for the next month or two, I frequently have the same
thought that creeps in. That freaks me out. But I suppress it and I go, it's fine. they knew
what they were doing and, and like, you didn't force anyone. And for a month or two, I
[00:21:00] just have these panic attacks and then one day, Mmm.

Taking the train down to to Silicon Valley, and I, uh, I'm in a train and I suddenly get this like
little voice in my head. It's not really a voice. I'm going to call it a voice. It's not really a voice.
It's like more like a force, like a almost or somebody. Pushed you physically. And this little
voice basically told me to go outside the train while it's running and to jump on the track and
kill myself.
And I'm like, that's not a pleasant thought. Mmm. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that. And
the voice repeats and the voice repeats and the voice repeats. And then once it gets louder
and louder and louder, and I'm like, what in the world is going on? And I wasn't the stream
for like an hour and a half.

And I, I was just freaking out. I was like, that's like, I'm going crazy. What the fuck. One in the
world is going on. And so I, I, I get off the train at my stop and the sub supposed to get off
and I was fishing a M D [00:22:00] ventures that day and officially in the ventures. I'm
completely finding the bitch, like it's completely gone.

No voice, nothing. Get back on the train. The voice is back even worse, like screaming at me
like, you're going to kill yourself. You're going to kill yourself. And I feel like it's going to lift
me up and forced me to do it. Like it's going to take over my body. And I'm terrified. I mean,
I'm like what the world is going on.

And at this point I was starting to be like, I mean you're crazy cause you have voices in your
hand, right. And um, you need to quit the job and you know, forget about your dream.
Forget about your whole life. You need to be locked in for your own safety, cause you're
gonna like this feels like you're about to kill yourself and you don't want to and find a way to
quiet this waste very unpleasant.

Like probably the two worst hour of my life. No, I've had the worst hours, but one of the
worst hours of my life, definitely. Thankfully, I get off the train. I called my mom. My mom is
actually a psychologist and she's not specialized in this at all, but she tells me, it kind of
sounds like an OCD and we like to joke about OCD, but she sends me [00:23:00] this, uh,
there's this, I think it's ocd.org or.

There's this very, if you literally typed dot org you can probably find it. Mmm. But there's
this kind of like public resource for what an OCD looks like in the talk about what the
symptoms feel like. And I think Sandra and I read it and I'm like, it's exactly this, like, it's
exactly how I felt. And I was super thankful.

And the more I read about it, the more it actually called me down. And I've read that it was
very, it's actually a relatively. It takes work, but it's actually, you can cure it. And the vast
majority people do get it. Cure it, completely fine. Live with it. And it's not, and I still have it
today. You would never know unless I told you about it, cause I don't do anything differently
than a normal person.

But in my head, I often still have these little like voices that tell me to jump off the balcony
right here. And I just, and it happened today. It happens every day, but it's not strong
because I know how to suppress it. Yeah. I feel like this,

Alvin Leong: I listen a lot of podcasts and then there's something, then not a lot of people
[00:24:00] mentioned.

So I, I don't think I had it as intention as you, but I did have a taste of it. Well, going through
the eff process. So, yeah, like, yeah. Yeah. I think like more people should talk about this. So
like at what point, uh, was life like at this when you started, uh, you, you mentioned you
pitching in the event, Joseph,

this

Andre Lorenceau: morning.

Yeah, we were pitching, but the MD, nothing happened with AMD ventures. Just like one of
the many, many pitches you'll have to do when you fundraise. A lot of Lake was just, we
were in the prototyping stage. We were just trying to get, we were trying to find a deal to do
a broadcast, a live broadcast with us, with the VR live stream inside the VR headsets.

Um, but we were at the prototyping stage. We were improving the demo while at the same
time trying to raise fund to be able to do live sports broadcasting. And it took us another like
another 10 months before we had anything to broadcast. Like live anyway, we had more
sort of like prerecorded, improved quality [00:25:00] image sessions and et cetera.

Just a, yeah, not that. Mmm. Yeah. And, but I mean, we'll see. The OCD is actually this very
common thing. I think they claim on osi.org that about 25% of people one point in their life
experience and OCD, like, yes, I had a very. Acute, very intense version of it. Oh, she's, they
latch on them to different things.

So the one we all know about this, that the person who cleans everything, you know, like
they're terrified of germs, so they're just like making sure everything's clean. It's
fundamentally, OCD is our, uh, it's basically, your brain is afraid of something. And, uh, it
kind of goes, the alarm system is broken, essentially, it's in the house and the alarm is on
and you can't turn it off.

But then you start wondering like, why is the alarm ringing? You know? So it's kinda like, uh,
for somebody who's like afraid of germs, um, they got to clean everything and they think. If I
don't, if there's one spot that's not seeing, I'm going to die. And for me it's [00:26:00]
basically, it's your sense of fear, overreacting to something.

So for me, my fear was that I could die on any moments. Like at any time I could accidentally
kill myself and I could lose control. And I guess it became, it happened because I have panic
attacks and it was the first time ever I lost control of my brain. My brain was like, sort of like
this runaway process, and it was a new to me and I.

Yeah. I just, I felt like, Oh my God, if I can, you know, have a panic attack and lose control of
my brain like that. What says that I can't become schizophrenic and just like jump off the
balcony and die? And that was a terrifying thoughts to me. And, uh, yeah. And it's like, it's
very, uh, unpleasant, but I went to see a shrink, a specialized therapists, no CDs and uh,
yeah, actually, can we pause for a second?

Alvin Leong: What do you mean.

Andre Lorenceau: Right. Cool. Okay. So, so for the break and just talking about this
[00:27:00] freaked me out a lot because it's still like very emotional energy. So I needed a
second quote down. Um, but, so I went to see this OCD therapy and she made me do these
exercise, which is called cognitive behavioral therapy, where basically you gotta face your
fear.

So when you're afraid of jumping off the balcony, you got literally go to the balcony and
stare and be like. Are we going to do it now? Which is the worst thing because your brain is
telling you you might do it and you have to go, yeah, chicken, like, am I really going to do it?
Which is the worst thing in life, but you have to do it.

And every time you do it, you realize that you're standing at the balcony for a while and then
you started being like, I'm bored of doing this. And you kind of got to bore yourself out of it.
And it's one of those things where you gotta, I don't know how it works for when you clean
and stuff, but basically you got to expose yourself to germs.

You don't expose yourself to it and realize that. You're not going to do it or that it's okay that
there's germs in places, but you need help and guidance for that. And yeah, I, I, I took care of
it and I live a very completely functional, like, it's never gone, [00:28:00] but I live a very
functional life and it doesn't get in the way of much of anything else.

Yeah, of course. When I talk about it in great detail, it still stresses me to out. But,

Alvin Leong: uh, thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah. It was like, uh, you probably didn't
expect become like rushing out. Before you start talking about it?

Andre Lorenceau: No. No, but it's, I usually also don't talk about it in such detail. I mean,
most people would like, I don't.

Yeah. Hello. But, uh, but I've had other, I've had other, uh, you know, mental related issues,
not that, that spun off from that. So like, it's always. I don't know. I've always had a battle. I
mean, since that moment, actually before that I had zero issues with any mental health
whatsoever, and just like basically since then I've had recurring multiple variations of mental
health issues.

Mmm. Yeah. You live with it and. Shrinks are the best thing on earth for that. You got to see
a specialist cause they, they're [00:29:00] trained in helping you with this arm. These things,
they can't get inside your brain and fix it for you, but they can tell you how other people's, or
fixed it. They can, um, give you breathing exercises, which are the dumbest thing, but the
most effective things.

And it's only way as well. Mmm. And uh, yeah. And just talk about, uh, this kind of stuff. Yup.
So we got the money. Uh, live Lank. Uh, we have $800,000 by September, including, we
actually got into Techstars, New York. Oh man. Yeah. And Techstars, New York. We actually
try to get into tech stores, Disney, cause they had a joint accelerator for a minute, but we
didn't get into that.

But one of the people helping to vet tech stars accelerator was a man named Alex this cold,
who's now a VC that I highly recommend. . 2048 DC. Uh, he, uh, he called me and it was like,
Hey, I need you to apply to my accelerator cause I really want want you guys there. And we
[00:30:00] talked business and super quickly I realized this guy knew everything about my
business while having only glanced at it for five minutes, I was like, I can learn a lot from him.

Mentorship is super important for you to get better at your job. And I, uh, yeah. I, I, we went
to, we got into the New York program after applying, so they login, uh, and we, we all went
to New York and we were like, we'll be here in New York for just three to six months and
we'll see if we want to come back to the West coast.

We ended up stay. Yeah. Despise, despise. Sorry. Despite my. Strong hates of New York city.
Not a fan of that city at all, but we decided to stay and we stayed in another three years.

Alvin Leong: The entertainment industry is a lot more prominent in New York compared to
San Francisco.

Andre Lorenceau: Um. Yes. Compared to San Francisco.

Yes. There's also Los Angeles is big entertainment industry wise over there, but yes, the, the
hub of advertisements, the hub of media rights is mostly dealt in [00:31:00] New York. Uh,
but also is just that we had a lot of traction, early, good traction with, uh, Europe. Um, yeah.
A lot of. Success in Europe early on. And so the time difference of nine hours is very difficult
to work with Europe, but six hours of New York is manageable.

Yeah. So we that that was a major, major driver. It's in the U S

Alvin Leong: you're still getting clients from Europe and it's time that you are,

Andre Lorenceau: we were getting, we were getting pilots with a bunch of European clients,
probably, I can't remember which one was the first ones. I remember what the first actual
live broadcast was.

It was, uh, actually, uh, ATP tennis, uh, so tournaments, and it was Indian Wells, which is this
Los Angeles tournament. And we did the whole tournament. Um. We did the whole
tournament, uh, in the, in live broadcast, which brings me to the next crisis, which I'll try to
remain my cool for this is that, um, [00:32:00] so where, uh, we've got $800,000, but at this
point, we're burning quite a bit of money and we, uh.

Uh, we are in like, late February, and we, we tried to build a round and the round collapsed.
Uh, we literally have $3 million committed and they went away. And like one day it was just
a huge gut punch. And then at one point, we're burning. I think we're burning 50 cam
months. And, uh. We, uh, there's like a week or two weeks, uh, before, uh, we run out of
cash and everyone's like, aren't we kinda like low on cash?

I'm very transparent about what's happens in the company. And I was like, yeah, yeah, but
we'll figure it out. I'll make it work. I'll make it work. I'll make it work. And like two weeks
from then, we were gonna like, uh, run out of cash. And I, uh, I basically. We had this
broadcast like a month later or something like that, or three weeks later, I think it was a
month.
And it was our first major public live broadcast in VR. And, uh, I basically, we had talked to all
these [00:33:00] investors for a long time, and I, out of the blue, I just called the one that I
know liked me the most or liked us the most. And I was like, Hey, Mmm. I need to $100,000
right now to order this piece of equipment, which was true.

I needed that cash to do that. Mmm. And uh. If we don't get the money by Thursday, it's
Tuesday. If we don't get them any by Friday, we can't order the hardware in time to be able
to do live broadcast. I'm opening a convertible notes, which is like a small, for those who
don't know, it's like a . Uh, when you do around.

You, you get a bunch of money together and once you have enough, you sort of closed
around and you get the money and you, everybody signs the one piece of paper and notes.
Convertible note basically says that instead of waiting for everybody to get together, you
give the money now, but you get a little bonus on sort of either a better valuation or
whatever.

You get a discount. The price of the shares for having, Mmm. Sort of taking the risks of
[00:34:00] come in before everybody else came in. And so I, I called them and I'm tell them,
uh, my first investor, I'd tell him, we're doing, we need $200,000. I'm opening convertible
note. You'll get 25, Nope, not like 15% off or 20% off or something like that.

And, um, I need you to tell me by tomorrow if you're in, I'm not sure if I'm taking more than
$200,000. I'm not sure. I'm not taking more than $2,000 or $200,000. We'll see. But I might
also close it. Uh, it depends a lot on them who comes in first and that how much and etc. Uh,
and the gold K. okay. We'll, I'll tell you by tomorrow.

Hang up. I called the next one who, same thing called the next one and the same thing,
causing want to do something. And I was like running out of cash for the company by
Thursday. I had $1 million and I cannot tell you like I was like before this happened, like I
didn't plan this. I just did this because I was like, I got to do something before this.

I was like, if people were asking you, okay, and I was like, yeah, I'm fine. We'll figure it out. I
believed it.

[00:35:00] I was annoyed by a lot of people and a lot of things. And then when I got the
money the day after, I remember eating like eating something normal, can't remember what
I ate, but I tasted it and I was like, Oh my God, why does this taste so good? Like flavor, like it
does so much flavor. Flavor is amazing.

And then I was talking to a friend who was just annoying me like crazy three days before.
And I'm talking to her and I'm like, you're not annoying. It was me. I was just dying under a
mountain of stress and discovered that like, I actually, I'm terrible at noticing when I'm
stressed out. And, uh, and yeah, but like, it was like, you know, we, we had $15,000 when
we were burning 50, so we had one five.

When you did five zero every month. So it was, it was, it was tight. But, uh, then after that,
you know, we, we, um, we did the live broadcast. It went really well. Uh, we got, uh, it was a
pilot for a client that was very interested in longterm and ended up becoming a partner
[00:36:00] longterm. We right after that, also won the tech crunch, uh, disrupt for sports.

It was like this thing called the NFL first and future. Which is also, you can actually go to
YouTube on that one and type in live like, uh, at tech crunch. I have a video in there. They
have a video in there that's got the real hustle. Mmm. There's a funny story with this. Is that,
so it's in Stanford at the super famous stage where a lot of stuff have happened and there's
like NFL executives all over the room and there's like Kleiner Perkins, a lot of investors, it's
live streams.

If you win, you win two Superbowl tickets. There's 50 startups. I know there's dirty 30
startups or something like that, and uh, and we're pitching, but the demo we have our demo
onstage is you put on the headset and I had to like look around the room and it was
mirrored on the giant screen, like what was inside that?

The headset was on a giant screen behind me. [00:37:00] Except that our demo was not on
already to be able to do that. So when we mirrored the screen, you could see what I was
doing on the screen. But inside the headset, it's completely black. Like it could only show
one screen at a time. I could control the big screen, but I couldn't see what I was controlling
because I had the headset on my head.

So when I do the demo in that video, if you guys go to the video and you looked at it and
you're seeing

Alvin Leong: to a video, yeah. .

Andre Lorenceau: If you see me do the video, I look at some notes and I go, and now I'm
going to look over here and I'm going to click this button. And I then that by memory,
because I couldn't see anything inside the headset.

Um, yeah, that's it. You gotta you gotta find, yeah. So it's relatively towards the beginning or,
yeah, probably around there. Mmm, yeah, yeah, there's a part, yeah. You were on it. Yeah.
So when I'm doing that right there, what you can see on the big screen. Mmm. That part I
inside the headset actually couldn't see anything.

And I also, if I move too fast, it would crash the big screen [00:38:00] and I wouldn't know
inside the headset. So it'd be still talking about features while it crashed and I would look like
a giant idiot. So I have to do it very, very, very precisely. And thankfully it did not crash.
Thank you, Chris. Thank you. SAS.

What amazing. Jump to hack this together. And we actually won the events. We won
$50,000. Mmm. And I, uh, yeah. And then I, uh, we got two super bowl tickets. I got up to go
to the super bowl. Um, and, but more importantly, that was really a big momentum push
forward for us. And we, uh, we met because of that.

Probably we managed to close our first 5 million seed round and, uh, yeah, like another 14
months or whatever.

Alvin Leong: So this was all on

Alvin Leong: middle of 2016 you, you mentioned

Andre Lorenceau: this is early, early 2016 and the first quarter of 2016 like March, March,
April, 2016

Alvin Leong: yeah. Now. So you just put your first live broadcast, you managed to [00:39:00]
reach the 1 million in convertible notes, and then you pitch the tech garage and like if each
of you, and is it really when you began to take off from, from here?

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, yeah. Where we had a lot of momentum after that. And, uh. I'm not
going to go through every year after that because it's basically just became, it just grew and
grew and grew, and basically, um, you know, long story short is that I ended up having 60
employees. I ended up doing another round series B, raise 10 another $10 million.

And, uh, the, the investors became majority shareholder. And, uh, at some point I just, I
resigned from the company, uh, over, uh, some differences, uh, and the company's still
around, um, and a sole shareholder. And

Alvin Leong: one thing I think I want to ask before we move on. All these are big customers.

Andre Lorenceau: The customers were big. I [00:40:00] mean, we had an exclusive for the
CFR 2018 world cup. We had a, an exclusive deal. So every virtual reality app for the world
cup, and there was 13 countries that ended up having a virtuality app like Fox sports VR. VR
sky VR was, it's tiny. I think it was sky guy in the UK, sky Germany of VR.

But even Malaysia, Astro VR, Japanese, NTT, DoCoMo, all these VR apps were built by us. So
we, we are legit at the biggest stage in the world. We did the super bowl with Fox sports in
VR one time. Mmm. And, uh, we had a longterm, longterm relationship with Fox sports
where we powered their VR app for, for years.

Um. And, and, you know, and we actually am fairly sure that I hold, um, I'm actually sure
that I have. I was, I'm 90% sure that I hold the record for most views in a virtual reality
headset ever, both because of the FIFA world cup where there was a very decent amount of
people streaming. Again, [00:41:00] say the numbers, uh Oh, very large amount of people
streaming and I building anything with VR.

That scales ever happened since or before. And also because we did a major activation with
them. Biggest sports and ESPN are the biggest force channel of India has star and they
actually distributed. Like hundreds of thousands of headsets, a little cardboards for people
to use, and the numbers coming out of that were ridiculous.

So I actually think I have the record for most of using a VR headset ever, but I can't really
prove it. But I don't think anybody's ever done anything on this scale since or before. Even
like New York times and stuff. We did the excavation. It just, I don't think they had those
numbers, but it's at least not a live broadcast.
Alvin Leong: Like was it really like the tech stars being featured on tech crunch gave you
credibility to cause all these big clients are, or like,

Andre Lorenceau: uh, even though the tech, the tech was cool, the tech was. Like there was
a lot of hype in VR, but the tech worked. We were a lot easier and cheaper to deploy than
other people.

Like there was a company called [00:42:00] next VR who had better video quality, but they
had these massive, like digital trucks that were cutting edge technology. They had very
intense stereoscopic 3d like technology and stuff like that. And it was fine and all. But R we,
we didn't think that the video quality, like it's like from two keto fork, it is not that much of
an improvement.

And in VR you needed improvement in video quality. But fundamentally what was more
important was that when you had a VR headset on, you couldn't talk to your friend, you
couldn't look at your phone. And when you go to a sports game, you talked to your friend
and you'd look at your phone. What's a super fun?

But it's not. 24 you're not glued to every moment of the action. It's more true. If you talk
about soccer, maybe there's more, but if you do tennis, if you do American football, if you
do NBA, there's tons of breaks in the game all the time, and you talk to your friends what's
happening. So if you're in a VR headset, you're isolated.

So we wanted to bring back to the people into the VR headset. We wanted to bring back
even come function as your phone does inside of the VRI assets. And [00:43:00] also because
we aren't focused on the screen, we didn't need to have this ridiculously high resolution. We
didn't need to have this ridiculously, we didn't need to have 360 degree video camera.

You could do a normal camera with a wide angle lens and just do a three environment for
the rest of the view around you. And it worked and it was just a better product. Baseline
from which to go on. And we were the only ones doing that for extremely long. At some
point, somebody started copying us, but like it was literally three years in after we had
gotten FIFA and et cetera, that people started copying us.

Um, but we, even when we had talks with VRS for years, nobody was doing anything like us.
I can't explain to you why. Cause usually people copy stuff all the time, but they are, they
just wouldn't, wouldn't do it.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. I have more questions asked by by thing like we are running off time, so
maybe you want to move on.

Yeah, I might if I have more time. I'll ask you more about like how, how you came up with
this idea that you're going to bring this experience in compared to your competitors who
[00:44:00] didn't like think about the experience of watching sports events you talk to your
friends with when you're watching a sports event.

So I, I don't have a you have to someone to go after this. Oh, you okay?

Andre Lorenceau: Okay.

Andre Lorenceau: was the thing that

Alvin Leong: made you think about all these things? Like they use the experience of
watching sports.

Andre Lorenceau: Oh, I mean, I mean, I knew VR well.

Uh, we knew sports pretty well too. Um, we just saw what other people were doing and we
were like, that's not the right thing to do. And then every time we tried something, people
were like, yes, this is the right decision to make. And we don't think about, we did a ton of
stuff wrong. We had terrible tech debt that crippled us and prevented us from building
sufficiently.

Our business model had issues because everyone wanted the customized experience. For
their business. And it says the world big [00:45:00] clients, each of them like could dictate to
some degree, some customization cause they forced broadcasters then when I've all had the
same technology. Mmm. Um, I can't tell you one thing why we did it differently.

I mean, all right. I did have a designer in my cofounding team. It wasn't just like business
people, technical people. It was like a designer. So design was always a major component.
But. Yeah. But I can't tell you. And, and we've made a ton of mistakes, but for some reason
it's just, yeah. You know, and even the next VR who like next year, raised $150 million, like
they outraise the ever living hell out of us.

But we kept ending up winning the contracts that they were bidding for. That's how it
works. Well, we had a different business model to be fair to them, but, but they had way,
way, way, way more money than we did. And people liked our experience better when it
wasn't buggy. Cause we had a ton of bugs. [00:46:00] Yeah.

Alvin Leong: And then what you said about having a designer on your founding team, it
makes them all sense, but you also like design. Okay. I've been guilty of this, uh, myself. Like
I used to think like design just about making stuff ready, but it's not like you have to, it also
involves like understanding user experience, all that.

It's a lot. Yeah.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, okay. So I'm not, this is not a dishonor on my
cofounder, Jeremy, cause he was amazing and he's a super hard worker. Major disclaimer
there. Mmm. But what you're describing is actually more of product person than a designer.
Yeah. And that's fine. And I do think product people make good founders just because they, I
mean, they understand the user, but understanding, you know, the design is, is.

Okay. So it's visuals, it's graphics and etc. It's also a UX or how the user goes through and the
user, uh, designers do design this, but it's a little bit more [00:47:00] a front and EA front
end, even as it's more like which buttons do they click on and, and how much time did they
take to go through this thing?
Whereas product is really the basic rhetoric. Like what is the user. What do they want? What
are they missing? What's making them angry? Fundamentally not, which buttons makes
them angry, not which, but like really more core principles. And I think a product person
who could find him super important.

Designer and cofounding team, I think is maybe because I had too many co-founders. We
were, by the end, we were basically five co-founders. Mmm. And I basically ran over a
parliament, which is very unusual, but, Mmm. I, uh, you know, cofounder seats are
expensive and sort of the figurative terms. Mmm. I'm not sure a designer is necessarily the
right rule for that, unless you're a very design heavy business.

Like if, if you're like a, a consumer brand. Yeah. The designer makes total flux double sets
right. Yeah. That's why I used

Alvin Leong: to play [00:48:00] a lot of games. Did you play games during this period?

Andre Lorenceau: Uh, yes, but less. Yes, but less,

Alvin Leong: yeah. Like you played the Witcher three during this. Okay.

Andre Lorenceau: Maybe I can't remember when I played the Witcher three.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. I did a little bit play the wish for thrilling that time. It was more later in
the company. Yeah. Um, I didn't have a good computer, so I couldn't really I never console
or I didn't have a good computer during the beginning phases of it, so I didn't really play
during, at that time at all.

But yeah, video games is my happy place. Yeah. The only place I can really offload my brain,

Alvin Leong: the Yoko phone was playing as well. It's just a three

Andre Lorenceau: straight though. Not really. Not really. No. None of Michael. Well, my
brother did. No, not even that much, like no, none of them really did. I mean all of them
dabbled, but very lightly so.

And one, I've actually, my CTO actually came from Microsoft game studio. He was actually a
game engineered, like a [00:49:00] technical person from the game studio. Which is relevant
for VR, but he, he, uh, he was not much of a gamer himself. I'll let you know.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. But, but he did have like this game design and development experience.

So I was just thinking like maybe your co-founders brought that through the product design
as well for, for life. Like, so, so, which mean you. Would you like help me differentiate and
treat this customized experience more? Because like the way people design games, that
there's, there's a very good, a presentation by superhuman, the civil human CEO Russell.

He talks about how game design influenced product design. Yeah. It's quite good.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we were definitely in the games industry,
basically VR and the games industry, even though we weren't a video game per se. Uh, the,
the, the, the industry has overlapped a lot. From a technical standpoint, it was completely
run like a video game.

But yes, the design portion is very close to that too. Yeah. So anyway,

Alvin Leong: so at this, uh, by like 2018 you, you left, [00:50:00] you left live light, and then
you are,

Andre Lorenceau: uh, yeah. I did some consulting for a couple of friends at startups, just
building a sales team. I went to India for notice three months to build my, another friend's,
uh.

Uh, the software team in India, cause I used to have a full software team and as I went over
there to India a lot, so I helped a friend build his team there. Mmm. On the ground. And uh,
and yeah. And so I won Indiana. You do a little visa hop just to go in and out of the country.
It's a reset my visa and I decided to go Singapore and that's where I found entrepreneur first.

But this whole time I really wanted to start something, a new business, but I just. I, my ideas
were just not good enough. My ideas were just not, and I couldn't find anybody that had an
idea that I was like, yeah, this is cool. Like, this is good enough. Mmm. Uh, until basically I
came to entrepreneur first and a lot of people have very interesting ideas.

Uh, and I tried to do the security thing, but I kind of realized I didn't want to work in the
security industry. Mmm. Just because it's kind of, this might mix, right? It's sort of like
violence, [00:51:00] adoring industry, like just guns and violence and security. . Anyway, and
uh, and I, I got randomly matched up on a law hackathon with Allie, my current cofounder.

And even though I, well and gas hardware was completely not on my radar, I did a little
hackathon with them. I was like, this is like really that much better. Like this is not like a little
bit good. This is like really good. And I was like, okay, I'll just explore it for a couple of weeks
and just, I was trying to find some clients for it and stuff.

No, was just doing it to do it. Cause I was in the program pretty quickly. I had clients that
were like, Oh my God, this is amazing. This is so much better than anything we've seen, et
cetera. Like basically a LOI almost right away. And uh, yeah. And now we're, we're still
proceed. Um, but we're out of the program.

We got invested by hacks and entrepreneur first trying to raise my pre-seed right now.
Because I've $17 million in from [00:52:00] clients, and I'm trying to build a prototype to
build a pilot too, so that I can do a pilot with them. Because after that, they will convert their
elwise into full on product orders and contracts and a, and I'll build a big factory and I'll
manufacture.

That's my 2020 plan.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. You mentioned me before your, you're quite satisfied by the whole
experience because it's like mainly because you had been wandering around trying to find a
cofounder for, since we're in 18, but you finally, like even our entrepreneur first, like, uh. We
can, I think we can be Frank here on the doesn't have the best terms, but you'll give that
Andre Lorenceau: the terms.

Yes. The terms are not the best, but yes, the, the value. I mean, there's just nothing else. Like
when you start a startup, you don't normally be like, Oh, I want 99 other. Candidates that
are available and each have different expertise and a bunch of different sectors handed to
you and then go and let me pay you a salary while you talk to [00:53:00] them and
brainstorm for three months.

Like that's, nobody gets that deal. Right. So even though at the end of the day, they take
10% of your company, Mmm. Like. For not a ton of money, like in, in sort of a comparatively,
yeah. It's kinda like, it's, it's almost, it's just like a really, really cheap way. No, it's not a cheap
way. It's a really efficient way to find a co founder is not cheap.

The cheaper way is to go out there and find him at meetups and stuff, but that takes forever.
And the quality of people that you meet is way lower introvert versus a really, really, really
good filter for people. . Just, yeah. I'm just like, I was very impressed with a very large
number of just plenty of people I was not impressed with.

But there's plenty of people that I was very impressed with that, that I'm very, that I think
are going to be a, there's decent number of businesses at EMF that came out of our core, or
that'd be like, I wish I was working for that quote for that company as well, because that
company is going to kill it.

Like, I [00:54:00] just know it. Mmm. Yeah. I think it really provides the value. The fact, if you
go, Oh, well, I'm getting $100,000 a basically, and they're taking 10% that's like million dollar
valuation. It's not great, and it's true. It's not great, but that's not. The 10% is not for the a
hundred thousand to 10 the 10% is for de-risking.

The brainstorming part is for handing you a hundred other co-founders, which are qualified
and ready and willing to start a company. It's, it's extremely worth it. W

Alvin Leong: w. w. w. w what do you feel that like F could do more of like you, you went
through hacks for a bit and then you heard from people, Angela as well.

So w we, we both talked about this a bit. They're doing, I think like they're doing a bit more
for the people they go through with them than ETF.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, that's my, that's my impression. But there's a lot of factors here.
Like. W I [00:55:00] feel, and I know that a couple of people feel that, okay. Antlers selection
process for candidates is lay as less.

Um, there's less quality in the people, but they do a better job at managing the program.
They introduced you to Morris, you're like better investors and things like that. Mmm. I still
think that the finding the cofounder portion and having good co-founders is more important
than anything they could do during the program.

Mmm. But. Well, that's my objective. My opinion is very subjective, and it's also that like
antler here has more senior staff. They've got the partners here and they're there. I feel like
they're more like Singapore for eff feels like a pretty satellite office. Mmm. Maybe not feel it.
And maybe, you know, we came when there was a big turnaround, people twice in the staff,
in the two programs that we were there for the program that we were there.

So it's. It's very hard to say that, you know, F is this, isn't that because the London or the
Paris [00:56:00] program could be run differently then what we've been exposed to. So, I
mean, it's totally possible. I don't mean to be

Alvin Leong: mind this. Yeah, but maybe I think it will be like good feedback. We'll give them
back as well and like we put it up on the public channel.

If it goes like, I feel like one thing is that

Andre Lorenceau: I've told this, I've told this to you, like, I've told this to the new managing
director. I, I've, I've been very candid with her, Bernie who is real cool and smart and totally
capable, and I think she'll do a great job. Uh, but, uh, but I, I sort of thing I just said, I told her
directly to her face.

Yeah. She read the portions. She disagrees with portions as is expected then. Yeah. Um, and
she has a strategy to address these things, and you know. You're Buster. Yeah. And I think
like, I'll go home. I'm still happy with the value. Overall. I think it's unbeatable.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. Like I, I'm like quite happy myself. Even go, like, it didn't turn out that
well for me.

I still think I learned a lot. I went off on this whole, just slightly on the [00:57:00] one year
now, you know, so, so at this point . You told me like a few weeks ago that you had to raise
200,000 for DV gas and then, you know we, we, when you said the 100,000 thing for or live
like that now, I was thinking like you're facing like almost the same thing.

You need a hardware.

Andre Lorenceau: It's very different scenario cause I hear, I have no burn. Like we spent no
money right now. Like until we get this money. Like back then I had a team of when I needed
just 200 K I had a team of 15 people and a live deployment to do on the clock. Like here. Yes,
I'm a little bit on the clock because I want to build this things cause I want to do stuff with
Corona.

Virus is slowing everything down. And if it doesn't happen, I'm not like running out of cash.
Like I have a lot of time to be able to just survive until this works out essentially. So I, I'm,
yeah, it's just a different kind of a different, uh, mindset or process. It's definitely less
[00:58:00] stressful right now. But one

Alvin Leong: thing we have, one thing that, uh, I was thinking of is that you all gave Ali, you,
you've known him for a few months at this point.

It's quite a different experience from, uh. Do you mean with your brother and then other
people you know?
Andre Lorenceau: Well, I didn't know the others before I met them. I didn't know the other.
I didn't know them. I found them through various ways. Mmm. But it is very different
because Allie, Allie is a PhD, you know, a chemical engineer.

Very different personalities. The Iranian, as opposed to the other ones being French
American. Um, he. But he's also very nice, which is easier. Um, it's generally been a very easy
relationship with Allie has been, has been the, he's, you know, he's a crazy level, deep of
expertise in this specific subject matter.

Mmm. Again, not the hating on my X team, but my X team [00:59:00] was not as senior as he
is into this topic. Uh, uh, and, and on the flip side, you know, he's really not a business
person being a PhD chemical engineer. And while he has a little bit of business instincts, for
sure. Mmm. Very funnily enough is because he, his families are iron.

They ran and they're a carpet salesman. People, they sell the carpets. Rarely. They do very
well with it. Mmm. But, uh, but so he's always had this little bit of a, like a, uh, like a salesy
sort of a attitude, but still overall, like he didn't know anything about startups. He didn't
know anything about fundraising.

He didn't know anything about a lot of the stuff that we've had to do. Mmm. He's not as
familiar with American or, or sort of maybe, let's say, international culture as . Uh, so we
have a really good, clear delimitation of, of, of skills and tasks that we do. And so it's, it's
actually very easy if you're, if you don't have too much overlap in responsibilities, it's often
actually, if you both do your job, usually don't fight very much.

Where it [01:00:00] becomes a problem is when you overlap on responsibilities. Hmm.

Alvin Leong: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. Based on my own experience, like, yeah, I think
that that played a role as

Andre Lorenceau: well. Yeah. Yeah. If not, if you have two people that act as Celia, two
people that do the administrative, you have two people to do the sales.

Uh, if you have to be able to do things like you, you, you, there's no better way than to get
people to fight, to give him the same job. Like it's just, it's two completely competent and
successful people will kill each other if you give them the same job. It's just, that's how it
works. So, but thankfully Allie and I are extremely different and we get along well.

Personality, I mean, like I drink and. And go out and he does not, I mean, you goes out, but
he doesn't drink. He just hangs up with very different friends than I do and that's okay. Easily
as I am. I am, but that means that we're bringing very different mindsets to the table and we
don't overlap in our responsibilities.

Alvin Leong: At what point are you at? We'd give you guys right now, you feel drank a
wreath, a small round.

[01:01:00] Andre Lorenceau: Yeah. I'm trying to raise a 300 K I'm a to be very transparent
and 125 K short and I am sweating a little bit because coronavirus every VC out there is, you
know, I made a list of 280 VCs hardware that were hardware VCs that were in or angels that
were interesting to me.

Send them to a bunch of different sources and that's where I'm going after them. I went on
LinkedIn, I made a huge list. I found all their LinkedIn and I found who I was linked to them
on LinkedIn. And I asked these people for introduction cause reaching out to cold is a terrible
idea. And uh, I got answers from not a lot of them because VCs right now, they're all telling
me like we're trying to keep our portfolio companies alive right now cause everyone's in a
cash crunch because of coronavirus.

So. We're not investing in new companies. So I, I still have 175, but, um, trying to find a rest.
And then, um, I mean, there, I'm progress, this progress. I'm always, I have conversations
going on. I have people that told me they're interested in that amount and et cetera. But it's,
it's, it's pretty hard in the current climate because I mean, with [01:02:00] $17 million in LOI
would the upside of this market with hydrogen being the future and et cetera, I really feel
like this should actually be much easier.

Yeah. Then but that's okay. That happens. It's crisis time. We'll see how we deal with it.

Alvin Leong: Yeah.

Andre Lorenceau: See, I'm flipping thought about it. I'm like, Oh, it's not a big deal. Y'all
make it work. Maybe inside I'm freaking out and I have no idea. I can't tell you. It's like, it's
like the 200 day thing when after I get the money, I'll be like,

it's like not realize that you're holding your breath. .

Alvin Leong: You mentioned a bit before, like you found the Singaporean investors, like the. I
found them quite different from when you're facing the U S

Andre Lorenceau: yeah. I've not been happy with Singapore and . So far I've, I've been, I've
been generally disappointed. I've been the, the, they've been, uh, yeah.

It's just, it's just . something that's very useful as an entrepreneur is actually to study
[01:03:00] VCs, study how they make their monies, study how their funds are structured,
and studying how they typically dispersed their money. But even the history of VCs. So like
what kind of terms they used to do in the two thousands and in 2000 early 2000 tens there's
just now, it's actually very interesting for a number of reasons and basically what you have
here is a lot of terms that used to be more common around 2010 and basically the VCs in
San Francisco have evolved.

basically the entrepreneurs, I've been like, I don't, I'm not okay with these terms because
they're just bad. They're just prohibitive. They're just not conclusive. And they don't really
give you, even the VC, what you really think. It gives you things like trashing the money, sort
of like when they fund you, they don't give you all the money.

They go, okay, well I'll give you the first half and I'll give you the second half when you reach
these metrics or whatever. Mmm. I really dislike that because it just really puts a Garrett on
your, your neck ended up pivoting. It could, it could screw you out of the money if they don't
like the pivot, even though it could be [01:04:00] the right thing for the business.

It's also just a, not the trusting thing. Um, and if you don't trust the business, then like, why
are you investing in the business in the first place? Mmm. Well, along things like that. Uh,
and so, uh, there's a lot of practices that are done here that used to be done in the 2010. So
that kinda got eliminated in the Silicon Valley, or it's still done, but not by legit AAA.

VCs and I met my, I'm going to say something and it may be totally wrong and I'll get
somebody to slap me, but, you know, I don't think Andreessen Horowitz trenches their
money. Um, I don't think, uh, I don't think Sequoia trenches their money. Um, I don't, I don't
think the real, the people who we look as the rock stars of the VC world that have the best
deal and the best client, et cetera, do any of this stuff.

And in Singapore, most of the people do stuff like this. And I'm like, you guys need to.
Basically educate yourself and also the date, the valuations, the R R quite low, quite low.
[01:05:00] I mean does sometimes they're not, it's kind of, it's inconsistent. But, um, I, I've
just, I've seen a lot of friends now go through rounds and, and VCs are trying to negotiate
them down one day and when they do have traction and really good deal and they're trying
to negotiate like a third or like two thirds of their evaluation down, then it just like.

It's like you're haggling almost over nothing. And, and they go, Oh, but this doesn't like this
in Singapore. This is the price in Singapore. And I'm like, well, then why are we in Singapore?
You know? Like that's just prohibitive for the entire ecosystem. Mmm. And it's not like VCs
actually have that much less, I mean, VC does VC funds here, they have plenty of cash.

I think they just think they can get away with it, and they do a little bit right now, but I don't
think that'll be the case for long. It's just like, it's a newer ecosystem, and I think they're just.
Yeah. They have to go through the motions because it's a newer system and they have to
meet a lot of, you have to lose a lot of good founders who go, I would go with you, but sorry,
you're trenching the money.

These other [01:06:00] people, not in Singapore, not transferring the money because of this
terms. You lost me. They'll lose four or five deals this way, and they'll be like, you know
what, maybe actually we should not, we're losing them. We're losing the best entrepreneurs
over this stuff, and they need to see it have that pain, uh, for them to really feel it.

Alvin Leong: You can give us like a quick, uh. A few quick tips about how to negotiate it. So it
was like one thing you recommend, one thing you just recommend. Nice. Like if they give
like reading back dorms like, Oh, or like DMS out there, they're not advantages to start up
just to say, no. So,

Andre Lorenceau: I mean, every, every negotiation is leverage.

Leverage is negotiation. So the best thing you can do for your business, first of all, is I have a
good business, which is a stupid advice. But like, if you have a bad business, you're going to
get into a term sheet negotiation and then you're going to get screwed. Like it doesn't
matter, cause you're not gonna have a lot of offers.
You're not going to be able to walk away from the table and you're gonna be able to dictate
whatever they want. And it's not like, depending on negotiation [01:07:00] skills quite so
much. Mmm. If you're in a good position, like I'm not a good negotiator. Really? Yeah. No,
I'm actually pretty mad. But the only skill that I have is that I understand the how leverage
works.

And I know that with my 17 million in LOI right now, if I raise a small amount and I get that
into a product order and I show up with $17 million in product order to a VC, I go, Hey, I
need 2 million to build this factory. My position is overwhelmingly better because I know
they don't get a lot of.

Startups that come to them and go like, Hey, I have 17 million books, um, and I need $2
million. And like, they know that a ton of people would do that deal. And because they know
that they will give you better terms for it, and you can be able to dictate whatever you want.
And if it's also about timing year-round, correctly, so.

Basically what you want is to do a lot of research, go after a lot of people. Can I hit them all
at once? Try to keep them all fresh and going at, at a, [01:08:00] at a decent pace. That's like
a regular sales job, I want to say. And, um, and, uh. You know, when you get a term sheet,
you go to your other ones and sometime you can't show them the term sheet, which is fine,
but you tell them like, Hey, I have a term sheet.

I'm assigned it yet. Um, if you want to compete, if you want to get in on this, uh, you're,
you're going to have to do it very soon, basically, because I'm going to have to do this. And
usually when you get a term sheet, there's a lot of other ones that end up falling. And then
you kind of compare your options and you go to the one you like best and you go, okay, well,
I like you best because I think you'll give me the best support and et cetera.

But, um. But, uh, you know, this term in this German term is not good. If I'm going to go with
these other people where I don't have, you know, I'm going to go with this other solution
unless we change this and, and you can do that because you have other options. If you.
Don't have other options. You can do that basically.

And this is the basis of it, right? It's just like basic leverage. It's, it's, it's like not rocket
science. Like,

Alvin Leong: yeah, that makes sense. Like you have [01:09:00] been following the Gramma
virus situation since it began to hit Singapore, like in January. Um,

Andre Lorenceau: it has not hits hit good for, but it has not hit single

Alvin Leong: control.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah. They're not going to be able to do that forever. I don't believe
they're going to be.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. I know it's uncertain for everyone in the world right now, but what are
you doing personally for your business,
Andre Lorenceau: do you, there's not much you can do. I mean, my business is not as. Hey
buy this because it's a heavy industry works and very long sale cycles.

So I'd like this will slow things down, but I got product development. I got to do basically
building these pilots and stuff. My clients are not shying away from their commitments that
they have right now. So these kind of business as usual, the only thing that sucks is that
investors are scared because a lot of the other businesses, other startups are.

Dealing with cashflow issues. Um, and because, you know, consumer businesses, they're, all
of their clients are shutting down and not doing any purchase and et [01:10:00] cetera. But,
um, so how much do you can do? The problem is I want everything slows down. Like you, I
mean, you can, I can do a lot of research on my clients.

I can build better information networks. I can, right now I'm still completely mostly in
fundraising mode. Mmm. But there's not a lot you can do.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. You're

Andre Lorenceau: at the mercy of the market sometimes. . What you can do is lower your
burn. I think less was salary and just wait it out.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. Okay. So, uh, let's, let's wrap up here with like some quick vibe questions
I actually use on some of the podcast.

I want to try it. Obviously if it works for me. Sure. Was one business book that you
recommend or even one book they recommend in general,

Andre Lorenceau: the hard thing about hard things, Ben Horowitz.

Alvin Leong: That's a common one. A lot of farmers recommend.

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah, but it's because the hard thing are, the hard things is a book about
the terrible things that can happen to you in a startup.

And it's like a [01:11:00] list of terrible things and how you survived them. And I've been
through like, like half of the things that happened in that book. I've been in one form of that
or another. There's a form called the struggle that you can even Google, and I've been in the
struggle, but like. So hard, like it just like, like there's a line for them.

The struggle is basically a poem and there's one line that says, Mmm, when, uh, when
everyone around you thinks that you should be fired and you know, there's, and you know,
they are right, but nobody can fire you and there's no one to replace you. And like, I've been
in that situation, I'm like, I should be fired.

I'm not good enough for this job, but nobody can fire me. There's no one to replace me, so
I'm just going to keep doing it. And that's a terrible feeling cause you're there. I'm like, I am
inadequate. I'm not good enough. But anyway, it's a great book because it gets into some
very real stuff like that and it just kind of prepares you and it doesn't sugar coat it literally
just kind of goes like most people are not tough [01:12:00] enough for startups.
They're not tough enough to go through the cycles and the pains and the mental
breakdowns and then get to the other side like.

Alvin Leong: Okay.

Andre Lorenceau: Well, I'll say another one, which is venture deals. If you ever have to
fundraise and to do a term sheet with investors, eventually deals, that's like a, that's not
even like a book. That's a textbook. That's like something, it's almost like you mandatory
reading basically like you have to, as a founder, if you don't read it, you're an idiot.

Alvin Leong: Okay. What was one tool that you found really useful for building a business?
So I know that you use mural.com, uh, you introduce it to a lot of

Andre Lorenceau: mirrors. Good for brainstorming. Um. I, I stupidly enough, I use Trello a
lot. I, I'm, I'm big on Trello. Just task management, organizing. I have 25 Trello's for different
stuff.

[01:13:00] Um, I have two trailers for divvy gas. I have one for the day to day, and I have the
tracking sprints and stuff like this and one for the investor funnel. Mmm. Uh, what else.

WhatsApp is better than email. So like personal. Yeah, like it's not just more Rapids. It's just
say it's more personal when you're in, when you get to somebody what's up, you're one of
their friends. When you're an email, you're one of the many people that send him emails.
Like emails are cold and impersonal, and in fundraising and in startup relationship, if you can
be on one WhatsApp better than email, you learn this from.

I use, I use, I use HubSpot and I like HubSpot a lot. So HubSpot's pretty good. Mmm. Yeah. I, I
like how fun a lot. I even did the LinkedIn, I use the LinkedIn, I use LinkedIn sales navigator a
ton. Sales navigator is amazing. Super worth it. [01:14:00] And you have to learn to use it.
And I even, I used it for a while and then I even got like a kind of a bot for it.

And I just. And I was doing very targeted and it's very, how using LinkedIn depends a lot on
your business, but for me it worked out and I'd know it worked for a lot. Any B2B business
usually, Oh, LinkedIn sales navigator is going to be a major, major part of you getting early
traction, getting involved with people.

Okay.

Alvin Leong: Can you name like three other, uh, founders in Singapore that you think I
should interview.

Andre Lorenceau: When they told you to interview Julian, but he's gone. But you should do
it with him in the U S Julian Carlina because he's got a lot of good stories too. Yeah. Mmm.
Again, not in Singapore. If you want. I got a guy in Germany called Torbin free.

It was a close friend of mine. He's went through similar war stories that I did. Um, and he's,
he might actually do entrepreneur first soon. Um. Sorry, I'm not giving you [01:15:00]
Singapore people. I'll give you at least one thing of corporation. Uh, yeah, you should go. You
should do Natalie.
Alvin Leong: Yeah. Again,

Andre Lorenceau: that only has good stories and she'll be super fun to talk to and, and
British accent is going to sound great, Natalie.

Um, okay.

Alvin Leong: Uh,

Andre Lorenceau: what else?

Alvin Leong: Um, what was one piece of advice you would give to yourself five years ago?

Andre Lorenceau: Listen less to others. Listen to yourself more. Yeah. But I had this big
problem because I had, I was dealing with the parliament too many co-founders and I had to
do consensus a lot, but I really struggled.

Two, I really struggled to, um. To a sort of like, listen to my own voice, like very often I would
just kind of let them decide all things altogether and I should have been like, I'm sorry, but I
disagree and that's it. Like, and I trust myself and, and I have better information than you do.
And [01:16:00] yeah. So like trust your gut, really trusting your gut and not just letting
everybody influence you too much.

The opposite advice is true that depending on who you are and your context, you have to
listen to people all the time and you should listen to people more always. But then coming
to your own decision, trust your gut is a big thing. Okay. Trust me, it was, I needed to
trusting my gut more. Yeah.

Alvin Leong: Okay. Yeah, it makes sense actually.

Like I, I myself, I, I asked for advice from a lot of people, but in the end, I usually do

Andre Lorenceau: asking for advice for a lot of people, asking for advice from a lot of people
is super important. You should do that basically as much as humanly possible. But then.
Don't let them decide for you. Like trust your gut, like gather information.

Decide what you were good.

Alvin Leong: Yeah. Thanks sense. Okay, Andre, thanks a lot for talking to us. I actually have a
bottle of wine. I can go. If you're afraid I can go down to your face later.

Andre Lorenceau: Sure. I'm not going to say no little bottle of wine. You know, I'm down.
Yeah. All right.

Alvin Leong: Thanks. Thanks a lot [01:17:00] for doing this. So we're going to add it, and then
if all goes well, I'm going to put up on YouTube and then

Andre Lorenceau: can you send me, can you, before you one second.

Can you, um,

Andre Lorenceau: Yeah. .