https://www.businessinsider.com/video-pitching-platform-scroobious-women-people-color-funding-gap-investors2020-5
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A new video-pitching platform aims to help
women and people of color entrepreneurs
shrink the funding gap and reach eager
investors. Its cofounders explain how they'rerolling it out.
Mary Kearl 6 hours ago

Female-founded Scroobious aims to close the gender and race gap in venture capital funding. Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

Female founders only receive 3% of all venture capital funding,even though teams led by at least one female founder perform 63%
better than companies with all-male leaders.
To bolster female founders and entrepreneurs of color, Allison
Byers and Ann Sublett developed Scroobious: a video-pitch
platform that connects startup founders to interested investors.
Byers and Sublett are bootstrapping their business and working on
a prototype which they hope to complete in May.
They said others hoping to kickstart a business during thepandemic should hold o on raising funds and instead focus onbuilding relationships with investors.
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3% — that's the share of venture capital startups led by all female
founders receive, according to a 2019 report by Pitchbook and theNational Venture Capital Association. Meanwhile, black female
entrepreneurs have received just .0006% of VC funds since 2009.

When investors fail to place their money in diverse companies, notonly do these founders end up at a disadvantage, but investors
themselves lose out, too. Consider that teams led by at least one
female founder perform 63% better than companies with all-maleleaders. That's according to research highlighted in the 2019 "Beyond
the VC Funding Gap" report from Morgan Stanley, which refers to thegender gap in funding as the "trillion-dollar opportunity" investors
are missing out on.
A new startup from two female co-CEOs aims to shrink this fundinggap.
When Allison Byers advanced
from rst founding employee toco-president and director at
Digital Cognition Technologies(DCT), a digital health company
spino from MIT that's
developed a test of cognitive
function by applying arti cial

Allison Byers. Allison Byersintelligence toneuropsychological testing, she spent four years fundraising,
successfully bringing in $9.6 million for the company — all while
witnessing rst hand "the extra challenges faced by women andminorities" when trying to seek outside investment, she told Business
Insider.

Byers, based in Boston, started to develop a theory: Just as singles
bene t from expanding their pool of potential matches by tapping
into online dating, both founders and funders could bene t greatly
from expanding their pool of contacts through an online platform.

"I envisioned a platform solution for the investing industry itself thatutilizes video and data science to create a humanized and e cient
way to connect underrepresented founders and the investors looking
to reach them," she shared.
Meanwhile, in New York City,Ann Sublett, after gaining 20
years of management
experience at companies likeForbes, Central Park
Conservancy, the New York
Botanical Garden, and Sandow
and founding the Pallas

Ann Sublett. Ann Sublett

Network, a networking groupwith more than 700 female members around the world, decided toturn to angel investing. Her priority was to put her money behindcompanies created by women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals,
and those from geographically diverse backgrounds, but she quickly
discovered that tools to nd these kinds of founders were "extremely
lacking," something she heard repeated among other angel investors
as well, she shared with Business Insider.
"That got me thinking: How could I use my experiences — andfrustrations — to create a tool to broaden the pool of potential
investments not just for me, but for any investor with a strong
investment thesis and a commitment to diversity?" she said.

It's only tting that an online platform for women in tech, Elpha,brought these two (and their ideas) together. Teaming up as
cofounders and co-CEOs, Byers and Sublett are launching alightweight version of the platform that combines their shared vision
this summer.

Dubbed Scroobious — in a nod to a poem by Edward Lear, "TheScroobious Pip," that celebrates being unique — the technology will
enable founders to showcase their startups through four-minutevideo pitches. By leveraging predictive algorithms, similar totechnology used by companies like Net ix and YouTube, the idea isthat investors will be shown video pitches that are a best match fortheir interests.
"Scroobious' mission is to shrink the funding gap for female anddiverse founders by creating an e cient way for investors to source
outside their own networks and for underrepresented founders toconnect with funders they otherwise couldn't access," explained
Byers.
Byers and Sublett, who are currently bootstrapping Scroobious andworking with an outside tech team to build the initial prototype,which they hope will be complete in May, shared with Business
Insider how the platform works, what the company's launch strategy
looks like amid the coronavirus pandemic, and their advice forfemale founders and founders of color trying to navigate securing
funding at this time.

Launching a startup in a pandemic
The cofounders hope to onboard their rst cohort of founder andinvestor beta testers over the summer to gather feedback on theplatform, with about 40 to 50 of each group to start — something
they're well on their way to reaching, Byers shared.
They're building a list of beta testers through their network (anyone
who is interested can sign up for a spot on their website), and plan togrow their audience through relationships with university
entrepreneurship programs, accelerators, incubators, angel investinggroups, and networking groups and organizations like the Capital
Network, Springboard Enterprises, HeyMama, The Wing, Elpha, The
Riveter, and Founder Institute Female Founders.

Scroobious' beta site. Mary Kearl

The need for the platform feels more urgent than ever to the co-CEOs,
both for founders and investors they hope to attract, because limited
movement resulting from sheltering in place is restricting
networking.
"We have been talking to a lot of [angel investors], and … many ofthem would like to keep investing, despite the pandemic," said
Sublett. "How do you network when all the events are cancelled? Wefeel strongly that Scroobious can help ll that need."

Building relationships with investors
when you can't meet in person
Byers and Sublett plan to self-fund Scroobious through the beta-testtime period and leverage usage data and feedback from this initialcohort to then expand upon the platform o erings and raise funds.
"That way we will be informed and have a wealth of knowledge todraw on when talking about product strategy and use of funds,"
shared Byers.
With the pandemic, Byers has seen founders who were planning toraise funds pause their e orts and investors slowing their pace. Her
advice to entrepreneurs navigating the pandemic: Hold o on raisingfunds if at all possible and instead focus on cultivating relationships
with investors. That way, when investors "are more freely deploying
capital, the rapport and comfort levels will have been built and you
will already be in the pipeline," she explained.
Sublett said that one ine ective strategy that she's heard is on the riseis a "spray and pray" approach. That is, investors in her network arereceiving spam messages on channels like LinkedIn fromentrepreneurs who haven't done their homework rst.

"There's real frustration there on the part of the investors because
they're receiving requests for Zoom meetings and phone calls withfounders that aren't even in their area of investment focus," said
Sublett.
"A well-crafted cold email," on the other hand, can lead to a rst
connection, said Sublett.
Her advice: Learn about the investor's portfolio. Find out the answers
to questions like:
What types of companies do they invest in? At what stage?

Has the investor invested in a business like yours before? Is yourcompany relevant to their portfolio?
If so, why should they invest a second time in a direct competitor?
If they haven't invested in companies like yours, why would they
now be interested?
Do they know someone you would like an introduction to?

There are two key components to a solid cold email, according toSublett.
For your warm intro, build on the research you've done and explain
how you found the investor and why you're interested in connecting.
Then, for the heart of the pitch, be clear and speci c about what
you're asking, but also have something to o er. For instance, you cansay something like: "I would like to speak with you for 15 minutes to
ask you about X, Y, and Z." And then include an o er like, "I am an
alumni of/used to work at/have connections through X and would be
happy to connect you if a need ever arises."Including an o er shows you're willing to reciprocate and give backyour own "social and emotional capital," and it lets the person know
you have the savvy to make connections, a critical part of successful
fundraising and business development, explained Sublett.

It's more important now than ever for startups to recognize the valueof investors' time, "especially now that people are working from
home, sometimes with extended families around," Sublett noted. "Itcan be incredibly exhausting just to get through a day let alone pickup the phone or hop on a Zoom call to ask a friend or colleague tospeak with someone they just met."
And developing relationships and securing meetings will take longer
than they did before the start of the coronavirus outbreak, she added.
"Be patient … Do everything you can to preserve cash. This is anultramarathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself," she said.

Leveraging video and predictive
analytics to eliminate barriers tofunding
Driven by data, Byers and Sublett both conducted market research,
informational interviews, and online surveys to inform their strategy
and product design.

"We have a huge shared le where we store cited statistics and quotes
about the investing landscape as it pertains to women and minorities
and the opportunity diverse founders present to smart investors,"
shared Byers, which includes the Morgan Stanley report.
Byers and Sublett turned to video for the power of visual content,
again sharing data they found that indicates visuals are processed
60,000 faster than the written word, and because it o ers
entrepreneurs a platform for demonstrating traits like passion,
something that's harder to convey over a traditional pitch deck. They

landed on a four-minute pitch based on ndings that investors lookat pitch decks for an average of three minutes and 44 seconds.
"Our original plan was to lm founder pitches in person to
standardize the process and provide in-the-moment coaching andencouragement," said Byers, noting that due to the pandemic, theirstrategy had to be adapted. "We have changed our process so thatfounders can lm at home." The founders will still o er remote pitch
development guidance and support, based on Byers' 20 years ofpitching experience.
In addition, entrepreneurs who participate will receive "aggregate
data about how investors are interacting with their video" andmessages from interested investors, explained Byers.

Scroobious will also o er community forums for both founders andangel investors, and a vendor marketplace for companies that o er
services for early-stage companies — think payroll, bookkeeping,legal services. Members will be able to rate vendors, just like people
can rate businesses on Yelp or hosts on Airbnb.
The long-term plan is to monetize the platform through a basic SaaSsubscription with tiered monthly fees — with the speci c pricing to
be determined for both founders and funders, explained Byers. "Apercentage of referred revenue from vendors on the marketplace will
be a secondary stream," she added.
"I have thought a lot about what success for Scroobious looks like,and in the end that success will be de ned by how far we can help
move the needle on increasing the amount of private market moneythat goes to founders outside of the 'norm,'" said Sublett. "I hope that
Scroobious makes it easier for investors to invest in their beliefs,

whether that's to support founders like them — for instance, afounder from a rural state or a disadvantaged socioeconomic
background, or an LGBTQ+ founder, or founders of color — orfounders who are very di erent from them."

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