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The bar for building your personal brand? One founder got started by posting about eating a bagel.
Haley Bryant, partner at Hustle Fund, joins Borzou and Amanda to break down how a pre-seed fund writes $150,000 checks into "hilariously early" startups — sometimes investing in the person before there's even a product — and why founders who build in public raise faster, hire better, and carry their audience with them wherever they go.
They get into why lengthy diligence at pre-seed is a fool's errand (Haley aims for yes within a week), when brand actually matters at the napkin stage, and how the agentic economy is rewriting what's investable.
Topics covered:
- Hustle Fund's thesis: hustle = great execution meets high velocity
- Why non-consensus check-writing beats investment committees
- When brand is make-or-break at pre-seed (consumer and crowded categories)
- How Rork went from sleeping on floors to a $2.5M round led by A16Z — off a tweet
- The "1,000 coffees at once" case for personal branding
- Why consistent posting is proof to investors that you can execute
- The Hustle Commons rebrand and building a media-first fund
- How to market when AI agents are doing the buying
This episode is brought to you by NickelBronx — brand strategy, websites, and content for companies that want a real edge. nickelbronx.com
Thanks for tuning in to Where Brands Get Their Edge. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and leave us a review — it helps other brand builders like you discover the show. Want more insights? Visit nickelbronx.com
Creators and Guests
Host
Borzou Azabdaftari
Alabama-born, Virginia-raised, and Iranian-made, Borzou isn't just another CEO; he's a college dropout turned serial entrepreneur, speaker, and the brains behind the award-winning digital agency NickelBronx. Known for his prowess in branding and digital marketing, Borzou's work has garnered Hermes Creative, Clutch, and Marcom Awards. Beyond the boardroom, he's a connoisseur of design and anything aesthetically driven, embodying style with substance. Borzou's philosophy? Embrace what makes you unique; that's how you find your tribe. When priorities with his family, health, business, and community are satisfied - you can find Borzou chasing once-in-a-lifetime experiences. His favorite things are amazing people and making memories, and he’s always adding to his collection of both.
What is Where Brands Get Their Edge?
Cutting-edge marketing news and advice for (and from) brands, founders, and marketing executives.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (00:00)
so I used to run a marketing agency too
Borzou Azabdaftari (00:02)
Who didn't
Haley? Yeah,
Amanda (00:03)
I'm sorry.
Borzou Azabdaftari (00:04)
I always joke that the only happy agency owner is a former agency owner.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (00:08)
We should have like a debrief on that.
Borzou Azabdaftari (00:21)
Hey everyone, welcome to where brands get their ads. If you are a founder, we've got the truth. If you're a marketer, we've got the tools. Today, as always, I'm joined by Amanda, my co-host, and Haley with Hustle Fund. What's up, Haley?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (00:33)
Hey, Forzuna Amanda, so great to be here with you. Thanks for having me.
Borzou Azabdaftari (00:36)
Thank you for coming. In everyone's best interest, we decided to let Haley introduce herself today because Hostile Fun has also gone through a bit of a rebrand, but Haley, give us the rundown.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (00:46)
Yeah, sure. So I'm Hailey Bryant. a partner at Hustle Fund. Hustle Fund is a pre-seed fund investing in hilariously early startups.
We're the first check in 50 % of the time investing in lots of different software categories, including B2B, fintech health, of course, critical industries and having so much fun in this moment of swift
Borzou Azabdaftari (01:07)
You
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (01:07)
change. We write $150,000 checks at the earliest stages. We do not need a lead to commit to investing. And we love bringing in our friends, other VCs, angels into rounds to help founders close rounds faster. around for eight years, started by three friends who went to school
together 25 years ago and then I you know kind of jumped in three and a half years ago and and here we are we're actively deploying out of fun for.
Borzou Azabdaftari (01:33)
If you are a founder who is trying to raise money, you know how big a deal it is that they invest that early, which means they must have a lot of trust in who you are and what you're doing. Hailey, how do you guys make these decisions about which funds you're go into?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (01:47)
Yeah, well, I mean, there are several things, right? Maybe first, like our thesis at Hustle Fund is that what matters most in building a great business is this idea of hustle, which we define as great execution meets high velocity. So we care a lot, of course, about the size of the market, how quickly it's growing, and then how unique the idea is. That is a really big one, especially now, right? We see so many companies that want to make maybe an incremental change in an already very crowded space, but there's so much
opportunity in brand new spaces. If you're plugged in, you're thinking probably about the rise of the agentic economy, which opens up market categories and all kinds of new things. we love seeing.
Borzou Azabdaftari (02:28)
What? This is the first I'm hearing about this.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (02:31)
thinking about it for years, but we love new ideas, weird ideas. I've definitely backed companies that are building in weird spaces before that now maybe seem obvious. But it comes down to the team. So at the earliest stages, know teams are going to pivot a lot. So we want to know why are you building what you're building? What have you done before that's been hard? Does not mean building another startup or working at the hottest startup or going to Ivy league school. It's really about your curiosity, your grit.
your ability to execute. So we look for very data-driven founders, which is actually part of why I think people who've been in marketing and in product have such an edge right now as early builders, because you're used to thinking in A-B tests and running experiments to figure out how you're going to grow. If it's so easy to build products, then what becomes more important is distribution and then of course driving adoption. So these are things we look for, but I just like getting to know great people and
getting to follow their journeys.
Amanda (03:30)
You said you guys invest hilariously early. What is the earliest you've ever invested and how has that worked out for you?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (03:40)
That's a really good question, Amanda. So we have four partners in the team, and everyone anchors on something slightly different. We are one of those maybe kind of weird non-consensus-driven firms, which means we don't go through this lengthy investment committee process. Every investor has check writing ability, which means I might hate a deal that another partner loves and vice versa, and we can still invest. And often, it's those bets that end up working out really well.
earliest companies we've invested in have been where one of our partners has built a relationship with someone over some period of time, met them at an event, maybe a hustle fund event, and just thought they were really interesting, great builders, and we invested literally in the person, not even in a company, a product. That said, it is so much easier to get started now, and we wanna make sure you can actually execute and go beyond this kind of napkin stage.
I would say we at least like to see something Vive coded before we'll write a check.
Borzou Azabdaftari (04:39)
which is still very early.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (04:40)
Very early. I can Bob
Amanda (04:40)
Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (04:41)
code things like, you like, I don't walk away from this with a chat. Like maybe who knows? That would be great.
Amanda (04:46)
You guys,
what kind of due diligence do you do? Because you said you invest people, the person, the team. Do you think that you go about this differently than other funds in that way?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (04:57)
Yeah.
So
I posted recently about really lengthy due diligence processes that precede. I have pretty strong feelings because at the early stages, there just is not that much to go off of. So when founders are being asked for series A level diligence on what's your forecast, let's do a discounted cash flow analysis over your numbers for the next five years, when you haven't even fully validated the market yet, it feels like kind of a fool's errand and a waste of founder's time.
So I really get frustrated when I hear about processes like that, especially for smaller checks. So we are $150,000 check, which hopefully is meaningful in the context of a fairly small and scrappy pre-seed round. But it's not that big. So I'm trying to get to yes within a week of a first call, which means the diligence is often looking at the product, giving the founder feedback, seeing how quickly they iterate on that feedback, really seeing what it's like to work with them, maybe talking to people they've worked with or
or
previously, although I think we've all had those coworkers where we're like, I hate that guy, or they were really frustrating. But sometimes it's the people who are hard to work with who are actually really great founders. They just weren't great at being managed by someone else. So I do think that part's hard. I will, of course, make sure there are no red flags. Look on the internet and see, has this person come up in anything salacious previously that we should know about?
And then we do the standard KYC know your customer, just to make sure we're not, you I won't make jokes in this geopolitical environment. So I'll just put my name
Borzou Azabdaftari (06:33)
You
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (06:34)
up there, but you get me. Anyway, fairly fast diligence, really trying to understand as much as we can about the founder and working with them. And then we do go into things like the market based on publicly available information and primary research with experts.
Borzou Azabdaftari (06:48)
So we have a lot of alignment in a couple of things here. One, I don't know if I told you, but hustle is also one of our core values. Two, I'm also a big believer in different is better than better, right? Even when it comes to like branding and positioning, it's like,
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (07:00)
Hmm.
Borzou Azabdaftari (07:01)
if you're trying to be cheaper than Kmart, right? That's never gonna work, right? can position themselves a little differently. I'm not selling the same shit, you know what I mean? But like, it really is making a space for yourself and kind of making it your own.
How much do you guys factor in, let's talk about brand for the initial company, right? Because when you're that early, when you're in the napkin phase, like there's not much, right? And we see, the two biggest times we see people, I'll say three, three biggest times people invest in brand. One is like they validated their concept, they wanted their gas on the fire. One is right before they sell. The other is right after, right? VC always seems to wanna do a big rebrand after. So with all that, like where do you think is...
the importance of it, and when do you think founders should start thinking about it?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (07:42)
Yeah. is a tough one. as with all things in life.
Borzou Azabdaftari (07:45)
You don't, listen, you
don't have to say it's the most important thing just because you're on our show. Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (07:49)
No, not at all. It really depends, right? So
like what category are you building in and what type of product are you building? So for example, backed a company a few years ago called Debbie, which
It's sort of like new for financial wellness for Gen Z's. So the idea is to help people get out of that buy now, pay later trap, pay off their debt,
Borzou Azabdaftari (08:11)
Mm-hmm.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (08:11)
better financial habits through education and savings. When they pitched, they were still a consumer product and their vision was to go B2B2C. But often to do that, you have to validate on the consumer side first. And when you're trying to attract consumers, especially in FinTech, it's so competitive. I believe you have to have an insanely good brand to attract consumers.
consumers, which then attracts investors, right?
are definitely consumer investors out there, but a lot of people are worried about consumer because the unit economics are so tough. It's really expensive to acquire customers, to retain customers. So in general, when I backed consumer companies, brand matters immensely. And in fact, I backed companies literally based on an idea in consumer because the brand was so strong and I felt like they had a strong perspective on the flywheel they could build to
grow fairly organically. think like consumer super important in a really crowded space to your point, Borzou, you have to be counter positioned in some way. So if everyone is sort of in this like incumbent legacy space, like can you be the fun, exciting, newer, interesting brand? So there are certain categories where I think brand makes a ton of sense from the company perspective. Then there's from the founder perspective and having a personal brand. And again, I
think this matters a lot in competitive spaces. were really lucky to get to invest in this company called Rourke, which is a company that allows you to generate apps from natural language, R-O-R-K. They famously were down to their last dollars, like sleeping on floors before a tweet on X. Can we still say tweet on X? It feels like weird.
Amanda (09:51)
Yes, we do. We still do.
Borzou Azabdaftari (09:53)
know why we do either, but yes.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (09:55)
Yeah.
I'm just correcting myself. Before Tweet on X went viral, and they raised a $2.5 million round led by A16Z. And that was because they were building in public and consistently shipping updates. So that was not even just from the company perspective, but from the founder profile. And in general, I would say having this build in public profile is only helpful for you to attract talent, to attract investors, to learn, PR features, like that kind of
So brand matters a lot. Again, I think it just depends on the category. But I'm curious for your experience. What do you see? What do you recommend? And what do you hear from founders?
Borzou Azabdaftari (10:34)
So on the personal brand side, I think it's becoming more important than ever. think everything you said, and particularly like Millennials, Gen Z and below, they want to spend money and work with people they know and believe in, right? And they share common values and they even want to work for those people, right? So whether it's attracting employees, attracting customers, you know, the most dramatic example of it is Elon's whole.
kind of rise and fall, right? He built a brand of personality and people were buying Teslas because they believed in him. And then, you know, he went in direction that alienated a lot of his customer base trying to be as chill about this as possible. And he paid the price, right? I think founders get so caught up in this idea that we're like, if they're the face of the brand, it like either makes them look smaller
or
they're going to only want to talk to them. But it's like no one gets on a Virgin flight and expects to see Richard Branson, you know, but they, but they get on, they want to be associated with him and his values and everything else.
Amanda (11:31)
Well, think even, you you were breaking it down by generation. And I think that people in general really just resonate more with other humans. So they want to see what the leadership is doing. And those leaders, I mean, it's really important for as many leaders in a company to be active in their personal brand as possible. it's like strength in numbers. And it's also just brings that that human component, that authenticity nobody wants
more corporate. Everybody wants more sincere, more transparent, more authentic.
Borzou Azabdaftari (12:01)
Yeah. Well, and I
call them homegrown influencers, right? If you have people on your team or building their personal brand, even if they're, just doing, whether it's podcasts, just regular posting this and that, right? That's, that's a tide that raises all ships. Everyone's going to benefit from that. And it's also, I think the best way to cut through like the AI marketing slot, right? Like
Amanda (12:18)
Right.
Borzou Azabdaftari (12:18)
you want to stand out, you want people to know who you are and care. It's, it's the number one way to do it.
Amanda (12:24)
Yeah, I was
gonna say the same thing because it's not even that obviously not all influencers are authentic, but it's still better than corporate. just works. If you have a post that goes out from your company and the same post goes out from the leadership of the company, the post from the leader of the company is going to do better every time, exponentially
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (12:45)
Totally. No, we completely agree with that. You know, we have really tried to build Hustle Fund in a brand first way, in part because our mission is to democratize wealth creation via startups by providing capital knowledge and networks, which means that we want to make
Everything that we're doing what we're seeing what we're learning from portfolio companies super accessible and this is a nice flywheel right it helps us attract more founders even people who end up investing in us and Angels so it kind of keeps our ecosystem alive But we've done that not by you know sharing updates from to Amanda's point like the company linkedin profile, but Elizabeth posting about her obsession with hippos and Eric talking about how much he loves f1 and posting like
selfies from his garage. well, she has a very, very cute and adorable like little chubby baby that I wish she would post pictures of, but we probably can't convince. know, like I've I've posted about like, teaching soul cycle classes, like we try to be very human versus overly focused on the the slop and kind of the the the stuff you see every day when you log into LinkedIn.
Amanda (13:53)
I really like the message. There's a main message on your site. It's for people who are obsessed with startups and hippocorns. And I was just like, I've never even heard of one, but then you have an image of one right there. And I'm like, that's the cutest thing ever. So that's great. I mean, that's because it's very original and it's very, it's people can relate to it. So I think it's really cool.
Borzou Azabdaftari (14:13)
Well, and I think a lot of founders get caught up because they think something they post has to be so profound.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (14:18)
Totally.
Borzou Azabdaftari (14:19)
And it's like, they just want to get to know you. And even all the missteps,
even all the falling down, it's like reality TV. It's part of the story. And it's
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (14:27)
So.
Borzou Azabdaftari (14:27)
fascinating to people who aren't living the life.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (14:30)
It's so true. So we host a founder summit for our portfolio companies a couple of times a year. And after our first one or one of our first ones last year, one of the founders I'd backed, texted me and said, Elizabeth is so awesome. She hadn't gotten to meet her in person before. And I think she finally convinced me to start posting because Elizabeth had told me, that like, you
Borzou Azabdaftari (14:51)
Yeah
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (14:51)
you just need to start, just like get started. It doesn't really matter where it doesn't matter how often, you know, you do it or how good it is. Just, just start somewhere.
And she used the example, like, didn't know where to get started. One day I just posted about, like, eating a bagel, and that was her post of the day. And so the founder who texted me was like, that's the bar. Like, I can post about eating a bagel, and that will get me started. And now this founder actually posts very thoughtful content that probably takes a lot more time than eating a bagel would. you know, it's like,
lower the barrier to entry. Just start somewhere.
Borzou Azabdaftari (15:22)
Well, it's like everything else. You've got to be bad at it before you get good at it. Right? Like
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (15:25)
Totally.
Borzou Azabdaftari (15:25)
you just have to start doing it. Otherwise you're never going to make the jump.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (15:29)
do you recommend
for founders? Like, do you have a cadence or how do you kind of think about the advice on building a personal brand?
Amanda (15:39)
I'll start important to be consistent.
And so, you don't wanna, you're just starting out, it's better not to overextend yourself to try to like do too much and then not do anything at all and burn out. So people that are very hesitant, I mean, we just say start with once a week. Is that best practice? No, but it's something that will get them in the habit of doing it, get them used to it, and then they can build from that. And then I'll let Borzoo take this, because there's so much more.
Borzou Azabdaftari (16:06)
There is so much more, but that's also 100 % right. And I think founders in particular, they just way overthink everything. You know what I mean? They feel like it has to be perfect or polished.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (16:14)
We all do, right? But I'm sure founders especially, yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (16:17)
Yeah, well, we all do, but it's one thing where you're like, are they gonna like my outfit? And another thing where you're like, is this gonna lose me a customer? they just get so in their head about it and they feel like it has to be perfect and polished and this and that. And it's like, don't know, people wanna see the warts.
You
know what
Amanda (16:29)
Mm-hmm.
Borzou Azabdaftari (16:30)
mean? They want to see that you're like a normal human being that they can relate to. They say that your brain doesn't recognize the difference between screen time and like actually hanging out with someone. That's why people cry when celebrities die. You know, like I genuinely feel like Ryan Reynolds would really like me if we met in person. You know what I mean?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (16:46)
I'm too. To
Borzou Azabdaftari (16:47)
And I mean, you really you're having like hundreds or thousands of like coffees at once, you know, and it really is just Amanda's right.
algorithmically, like consistent, they reward consistency. So if you're two posts a week, right, that's better than doing eight posts one week and zero
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (17:02)
Yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (17:02)
the rest of the week. But I think, I think just focusing on getting content out to start, you know, and then seeing what people respond to, seeing what performs well, seeing what you end up liking to do is the most important thing,
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (17:13)
I love
the 100,000 coffees at once analogy. I'm going to take that and repeat that. That's so good.
Borzou Azabdaftari (17:20)
Thank you. I'm gonna go trademark it real quick.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (17:23)
And then
the performance piece, because this is something that's come up a lot. I think AI has made it easier for teams to produce content or at least get started with production of content. But then it's like, wait, nothing's happening. So how much content do you need to put out there before your results should start to be meaningful or you should start thinking about shifting tact?
Amanda (17:45)
Well, it's better to be good
and meaningful content in order for it to have meaningful results. So just having a process with AI where it writes you a certain number of and then you do it because it's easy is absolutely awful.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (17:59)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (18:00)
Yeah,
it is chicken and egg consistency versus quality, right? Because the more you post, the more you grow, if the content is good, you know? And if it's good, it doesn't have to be highly produced, but you have to like find the cadence and rhythm of things that people are interested in. And I always say, and there are million tricks and hacks for the algorithm, and we know them all and hit us up if you have questions.
But nothing is more important than being interesting. You know,
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (18:27)
Yeah, totally.
Borzou Azabdaftari (18:28)
you can break all the rules if you can keep people's attention. That's the only thing that actually matters. And it's why some people on LinkedIn are crushing it with two or three line funny posts all day, right? Some people are crushing it with really long form, like articles that they're writing. You know what I mean? Some are crushing it with short form video, right? I you know, I post the same shit on LinkedIn that I do on Instagram, not all of it, but like most of it.
but you also don't really find what is going to be interesting to people until you start putting stuff out there, right? So like on my personal side, I try to do some business, some creative, some what I call consider lifestyle and some like parenting, right? Like I think balance is kind of like the key to happiness. my parenting content murders all my other content. And I would never, never have thought until
I'm talking like hundreds of thousands of views
compared to like, you know what I mean? And I never would have thought that would be the thing, right? But like some of it, you just gotta keep putting stuff out until you see kind of what your audience responds to.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (19:25)
It seems like often,
like what we've seen, so I used to run a marketing agency too and we would work with usually startups starting around.
Borzou Azabdaftari (19:32)
Who didn't
Haley? Yeah, I'm just kidding. I always
Amanda (19:34)
I'm sorry.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (19:36)
who didn't? We've, like,
Borzou Azabdaftari (19:38)
joke that the only happy agency owner is a former agency owner.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (19:41)
We should have like a debrief on that. Yeah, yeah. We'll just put it that rabbit
hole.
would work with starting stage companies all the way through to much later stage private companies and a few public as well. But often companies that were just getting started would go way to bottom of the funnel with their content on social media. So almost
Borzou Azabdaftari (20:00)
That.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (20:01)
like, and this is like the old school SEO days, right? But like the how-to article doesn't belong on LinkedIn or the various product posts versus to your point, these more
I don't know, things that get you in your feels on parenting, interesting, funny, and there is definitely a place for that. It seems like there's more B2C style marketing coming to business in a really
kind fun and humanizing way.
Borzou Azabdaftari (20:27)
Yeah, because it's still a person making the choice.
Amanda (20:29)
yeah, that's something that, I mean, we always say that probably, I think originally did come from Boar Zoo, where it's like, even if a sale is B2B, there's still a person making the decision. You have to appeal to that person and that person is a consumer.
Borzou Azabdaftari (20:40)
and what you're building is trust, right? People think it's, you you're putting out content for this and that and da da da, but no, you're building a relationship. It is really the thousand coffees, right? You're building a relationship and knowing that like, they know what you do day to day. They feel like they can trust you. And I don't think it works if it's inauthentic, right? I've seen people try to put out, like if I was doing videos and like a blue blazer with brass buttons and a Hascot, right? Like I think it would.
immediately read like, you know, fuck this guy, everyone's gonna unsubscribe, right? It's gotta be real to you. And I think, you know, when we coach people on this, that's really what it is. It's not we're trying to get you to sound, look, feel like someone else, I want you to be able to be on LinkedIn the way you are with me on FaceTime,
I grab you, Haley, the two second FaceTime check in on like what's going on with Hustle Fund, right? Like that's how I want.
you to deliver the update on LinkedIn.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (21:30)
Totally,
So it kind of comes back, like for me, to how we evaluate companies and this idea of execution. One of the things that consistent posting shows is your ability to execute, right? So when you think about building your funnel for your next fund raise,
Investors having visibility and being able to see like this person can show up consistently. they can market like that matters a lot, especially the further along you get, right? Think about one of our portfolio companies, Haven, which focuses on helping startups manage their bookkeeping. They did like $9.5 million last year. They've raised not a ton of money, like very, very scrappy team profitable. Cyrus Shirazi is like the classic example of building in public.
He talks about how he runs his team. It's literally just like, you feel like he was at the water cooler if people still have those. Do you guys have one in your office? I like work remote. I don't know if water coolers are still a thing, but
Borzou Azabdaftari (22:25)
Yeah,
I mean, it's like it's like the new ones with the filter and the you don't have to change the bottle anymore. But yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (22:28)
Okay, you love this notice too.
you're just having like this casual conversation to your point, Bozoo, about it being just informal, human, and you're just sharing a quick update. And he posts these, you know, once a week or something. And I think it's a great drum beat and a great way to build momentum and relationships ahead of your upcoming fundraising rounds.
Borzou Azabdaftari (22:50)
Well, and then A low key advantage that people don't like talk about because it implies an amount of failure, which happens sometimes. right? Is your personal brand follows you, right? So if this thing doesn't work out and you're raising for something new, you still have that audience, If you switch funds, if
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (23:06)
Am I fired?
Is that what you're trying to tell me? Like, did I get fired and nobody told me before this? That's... Yeah, all right, I figured. That's
Borzou Azabdaftari (23:11)
I'm sorry, I got a note that I was going to deliver you a message at the end.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (23:14)
fine. That's fine.
Borzou Azabdaftari (23:16)
But they are appreciative of your service and you were a great app.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (23:18)
No, that's exactly it.
And that's actually why I say it's so important for founders to write as themselves before they focus too much on the company, because the product will probably change a lot. We see it change a lot at Precede. So they can talk more about things they're doing, the broader market they're interested in, what they're seeing. That is a very portable audience for the next.
Borzou Azabdaftari (23:40)
Well, and you guys just had a big shift, right? Because we talk about purpose-based branding a lot, and it's the whole Simon Sinek start with why. Because mission, vision, the way you do things can change, feel like for Hustle Fun you guys have gone through this little restructure rebrand thing, but the purpose has not changed at all,
but I feel like you've adjusted the branding to reflect the purpose that you guys were always after.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (24:01)
Yes, totally. So
Hustle Fund has been around since 2017 and we've been committed to the mission since then. And it's really just evolved over time and given us the opportunity to do more and more. So we started as a fund and then in 2021 we launched Angel Squad, which is an angel investor community that now has over 2500 investors all over the world. We have more and more of a media brand, which includes things like our YouTube channel, our newsletters,
our social media profiles. We also have a very active events program. We're going to host over 50 events all over the world this year. We did over 30 last year, after doing maybe 10 the year before that. And we have a couple more projects you'll see later this month that we're about to launch. So we really needed a place to house all of those things. And what's a little bit tough is we'll meet with founders or LPs, and they'll be like, you're a fund. But wait, are you a fund? Because you're all these other things too.
So we launched Hustle Commons a few weeks ago to bring all of our various entities under one larger umbrella where everything can live kind of like a college campus or something, right? With your school of engineering, of medicine, all these different.
areas and I'm excited to see how it grows from here, but hopefully that helps as sort of a welcome mat to the hustle verse that people can explore and learn from. And what's cool is right, like you're saying, Burzu, brands, visions evolve over time. think ambition can evolve over time too. So that's what we often see with founders. You have an idea, you want to solve one problem and then it becomes a platform, a movement, a much bigger thing. So it's, it's an exciting moment to be, to be in.
and yeah, more to come soon.
Borzou Azabdaftari (25:47)
Yeah, and I don't like giving generally compliments to branding and websites I didn't do, but you guys did a good job.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (25:56)
It means a lot, means a lot coming from you.
Amanda (25:58)
And so you guys are heavily focused on SaaS products. so do you guys manage or how did you or do you because the SaaS apocalypse that seems to be never ending. What do you do? What are you guys doing? And then we can talk about what we're doing.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (26:16)
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess it kind of back to something I said earlier. So at Hustle Fun, we of course focus on just great founders, first and foremost. But we really like unique ideas. And what's happened?
in the last few years is many categories have become more more crowded. And now as the barrier to entry to build products has significantly dropped, that amount of competition is just exploding. And as we see these large horizontal platforms launch new features almost every week that are...
Making companies maybe less relevant or making moats disappear. It's a it's a conversation. having constantly Where we see a lot of opportunity still is in areas that are going to be harder to disrupt So think like regulated industries a lot of critical industries are going to be tough So everything from energy to aerospace dual use Pharmaceuticals, so we're spending more time there thinking about the
emerging markets as well. So with quad bot or now I guess open claw coming out, it's really accelerated the growth of the agentic economy. Maybe six months ago, so many investors said it was way too early to start placing bets because the behavior isn't there. If you think about like,
me or you, like you want to buy something online, like are you ready to give an agent your wallet and to let it go and make decisions? Six months ago, probably not, but with OpenClob, we're seeing people do that, which is crazy. And it creates all this new opportunity. So we're really trying to spend time in the areas that we think are going to be a lot harder for these horizontal platforms to disrupt. And in these new markets that just are desperately in need of infrastructure, like
going to sell to agents, who's going to market to agents, police agent interactions. It's a really exciting time. but I'm curious what you're doing, Amanda.
Amanda (28:16)
Well, I mean, there's so many different areas that you can look at this like, like how is it, does it affect our customer base? How does it affect how we market for ourselves and for our clients? so I'm not even sure which angle to take with this. I don't, definitely, doesn't affect us the same way it affects you. It's very different. let's go with the marketing first. so we, yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (28:34)
That's the big one.
Amanda (28:37)
So we make sure that our clients and our company are findable through AI because any kind of AI program tool is going to be scanning the web for.
information markers, reviews, third recommendations, whatever. just need, needs, the more proof you have on the web, the more those agents and those AI programs are going to find your company and refer your company to whoever is looking for it, whether it's the agent or the person behind using the AI. So it's just, it's more of a content play and more of a brand play, if that's what you're asking, than it was with traditional SEO.
SEO still comes into play very heavily, like all those same tactics that you would use in order to get your brand findable, like having good reviews for your company and having like created articles that you've written where you're sourced and then they find your name or your company. so that all still happens. The difference is now when you're searching, you want to pay, I think, more attention to the sources that AI is coming up with. So if you see that you asked AI buying question,
and then you see all these sources come up, you want, and it referenced like different things that they would persuade you to buy as choices, you wanna be placed there. You wanna see what they're sourcing so that you can put your company in those sources so that it's gonna recommend you. in addition to all the other things that we have to do, you find them on the web.
Borzou Azabdaftari (30:02)
Yeah, the
the AEOGEO side is lending itself to kind of what we do, right? Brand mention, social, all that stuff is becoming very heavy in play. it's like mostly local SEO, overall brand presence. the one thing we don't do that affects it a lot now is PR. On the on the internal side, right? So I'm I'm for now strongly in the camp that like, you know, we're not going to be replaced.
By AI, we're gonna get replaced by someone who's better at using AI than we are. And so we are A, like just trying to really stay on top of, use everything. I got like my fucking Mac mini set up with open cloud right here, you know? And I'm messing with that and I'm kind of like semi-competing it with cloud work and that's a whole separate conversation.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (30:47)
desktop too
Borzou Azabdaftari (30:49)
I trust CloudWork more, Open Cloud is
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (30:51)
Yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (30:53)
pretty silly. Then on the production side, we're just trying to automate as much of our process as possible. At the moment, we've built this whole agentic flow for like
content topics, it like scrapes all the stuff that we use in our process to find this things people are looking for and like the most stuff. But, and we're still testing everything all the time. I don't think anything competes with real personal brand style video and even the graphics, right? Like, I think for now AI created content is dope when it's designed to be AI content.
Right? Like I like that use case where like it's look what we made with AI, not as a replacement for like the real thing. And so far it's gone pretty well. If it goes too well, maybe we'll have a SaaS conversation.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (31:35)
Right,
Borzou Azabdaftari (31:36)
kind of where we're at right now. But I think marketing and development only because you know, I don't think most people are aware that's in the crossfire yet. think we're the two things people think of as.
kind of first to go, but it's coming for everyone. I saw a post the other day about how if your attorney is not an AI cloud-based firm, like you're wasting your money. Did you? Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (31:57)
I that. Yeah, I bookmarked it. still
have it. Because there's like every day, it's like the end of this job, you know, and then you have to bookmark it and come back to it later.
Amanda (32:07)
know what's silly is I know that like some of the largest consultancy firms are not using AI. They're looked to as, you must be, you guys must be, you know, on the front lines of this, like figuring, they are not, they are behind.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (32:19)
Although
I think I saw that Accenture is aligning promotions to AI adoption, which is in my opinion, so smart to like
Borzou Azabdaftari (32:28)
Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (32:28)
almost force people to use it. I agree with you, Borzy though, like it's coming for all of us. We joke about it a lot at Hustle Fun. I
Borzou Azabdaftari (32:36)
Mm-hmm.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (32:37)
I joked about it for too long. People are like, okay, you you're like the boy who cried wolf, but now it's for real. So we're getting pretty serious about.
building more things ourselves and trying to figure out what are the things we should be outsourcing completely to AI? What should we still be on the loop on? And then what are the things that only we can do, which is part of why
Borzou Azabdaftari (32:55)
Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (32:56)
I think this focus on in real life is so important. then also the stage that we invest, right? Like coming in very early where it's maybe harder to source just using tools is still for now a special place, but we'll see. It's changing quickly.
Borzou Azabdaftari (33:12)
Yeah, I mean, we are not that far away from agent to agent selling and buying in the whole kit and caboodle.
and I do think we're gonna, and maybe I'm just being like optimistic, because like this will be more fun for me. I think, think, I think, because like AI is amazing at doing the best of everything that everyone knows about, right?
So it gives everyone the same tips, advice, Maybe a little tailor to your bias, but otherwise think it's gonna really like push the importance of creativity and trying new things and going outside the box to get noise, which is something I'm excited about. Cause there's a lot of dumb shit I want to do that I've never gotten permission to do. So maybe this'll be the time. Yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (33:50)
Oh my God, totally. People can lean into
creativity, but it does seem like, yeah, a moment for a massive mindset shift. And I agree, it seems like everyone's fully embraced how quickly this is coming because it's accelerating very fast. But it's cool to hear how you're embracing it at your work, with your work and for your clients. someone compared it to,
like sand surfing and dune and how quickly the sand shifts
Borzou Azabdaftari (34:19)
I mean, it's literally it's a different game every week.
Amanda (34:21)
Yes.
Borzou Azabdaftari (34:21)
I mean, actually, yeah.
Amanda (34:23)
Yeah,
we had we had trashy BT and then all of a sudden, you know, then there's Claude and perplexity, blah, blah, blah. Then there's Claude bot and then there, you know, and now it's like, as of two weeks ago, everything is totally different from when it was totally different six months ago. yeah.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (34:36)
Lovely.
Exciting times.
Amanda (34:38)
Yeah.
Borzou Azabdaftari (34:38)
All
last question, Haley. For anyone who has an idea like this, and whether it's SaaS specific and something you guys are interested in, or kind any founder or entrepreneur, what's your one piece of advice about where to start and getting started?
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (34:52)
fall in love with your customers, like build for your customers, whether that's, you know, someone in a regulated industry or an agent, just know your customers better than, than anyone else and be able to tell that story if you can. And you can build a basic MVP and you want to raise money. You probably will be able to.
Borzou Azabdaftari (35:11)
to add onto that, because people think they have to like secretly figure that out, you can just ask them. It is
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (35:18)
yeah, totally.
Borzou Azabdaftari (35:19)
unbelievable to me how many people don't seem to think they can not only ask their existing customers why they picked them, what they're happy with, blah, blah, which is like a super important thing to do, but you can go to the market and just be like, hey, is this a problem you have? If I built something like this, would you be interested in
That's the smartest,
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (35:36)
Totally.
Borzou Azabdaftari (35:37)
easiest way to do it. People feel like they have to do it all behind the scenes and I just don't think that's true.
Amanda (35:41)
Yeah,
to ask people that are not afraid to hurt your feelings because that is something people might just ask their friends and then their friends are like, you know, this is great. So you should.
Borzou Azabdaftari (35:51)
Maybe
it's just my friends. My friends shit on my ideas. More than anyone else. My friends fuckin...
Amanda (35:53)
Yeah, it's your friends. That's your friends. Other people have friends that are
stiff to their feelings.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (36:00)
One of our portfolio companies, Lotus Labs, they make it easy for anyone to control devices, lights, with a very simple ring. Before they pitched what they were gonna build, they did nine hours of customer discovery interviews with each customer just to understand the problem. think, like, fall in love with your customers and fall in love with their problems, like, before even getting to solution. That's really important.
Amanda (36:25)
That's
cute.
Haley, Partner @ Hustle Fund (36:28)
Thank you all for having me. It's so great to connect and excited to hear how things play out with other guests on your podcast.
Borzou Azabdaftari (36:35)
Likewise, and I hope I see you soon. Bye, guys.
Amanda (36:38)
Sorry.