152. Founders Add Value - Have Them On Your Cap Table eat. Abby Mercado, CEO @ Rescripted

If any founder wants to get in your round, let'em in. The founders who are on our cap table have been some of the most helpful, smartest investors that we have had. Even if it's a 1K check and your min is 10 or 25, let'em in, figure out how to get'em in. That has been something that has just been amazing for me. And now I write checks like that because I just wanna help. You wanna pay it forward. It's so hard. We all know that. It's so valuable to have fellow founders on your cap table especially if they're about a stage ahead of you. After we graduated from Techstars, we ended up raising a smaller round and I ended up connecting with Rachel Soper Sanders, who was also a Techstars alum and she was a friend of mine from college. We went to Vanderbilt together. She was a couple years younger than me and we were friends, we were sorority sisters, believe it or not. and she is the CEO and co-founder of Rootine which is a really exciting business in the health and wellness space, which is the space that we play in. She came to me and she said, Hey, I would love to invest. And I said, absolutely. She actually introduced me into a couple of other founders who liked to invest. After kind of going through a stage and a cycle in the business and realizing how helpful Rachel was and how helpful a lot of her founder friends were, I decided to get more founders on our cap table. Which was fun and exciting, and I also started investing myself, which has been fun and exciting. It's not about the check size, it's about the value add. I find that VCs, they don't always add value. Founders are always going to add value no matter how big or small the check size is. I would definitely encourage folks to open up their rounds to other founders. This is support that is just, it's such a hack, just do it.

This is great. I'm so glad we had Abby on. I love how she found over 60 angels. I love her advice about having founders on your cap table. And the fact that she calls him to question whether or not you even need venture capital funding at all. These are all incredibly important things that you need to consider as a founder. Thank you Abby, for sharing your wisdom with us. Have a great weekend everyone.