【Lesson #3 - Talk to your investors】
Many founders spend countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears fundraising. Endless Zoom calls, perpetual follow-ups, coffee chats, check-ins, dinners, networking events, are all examples of this "always be fundraising" mentality commonly held among bootstrapping entrepreneurs. It's a lot of effort, that oftentimes does not carry over post-fundraising. Once they get money in, the communications falter—a grave mistake and wasted resource, according to Hai Ho, the founder/CEO of Triip (AW#18), a blockchain powered travel platform based in VN.

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What I’ve come to learn is that the strength of your company is very closely tied to the strength of your relationship with your investors and how frequently you interact with them. Oftentimes in the early days of your startup, you tend to shrug off any need for external help. You managed to build up promising initial traction, raise a round or two of financing, hire top notch talent—things are good, why trouble yourself with managing investor relations. “I’ll reach out when there’s a problem” you might think to yourself.

Before, I would probably hold a board meeting once, maybe twice a year depending on everyone’s schedule, strictly for the purposes of corporate governance. I’ve since changed how I communicate with my investors. No matter how busy it gets, I make it an effort to send email updates once a month and have meetings with them twice a quarter.

Looking back on my 13 years of entrepreneurship, I wish I could’ve done this a lot sooner. Your investors collectively boast a wealth of experience, wisdom, and connections. Make sure you take advantage of that. Talk to them, in good times and bad. You’re on a long-term journey together, so the least you can do is put some trust in each other. They can help illuminate your blind spots, while leveling the playing field against competition, but only if you let them.

We often forget that founder-investor relations are still a type of human relationship at the end of the day, which can only be developed through consistent face-to-face interactions (virtual or physical), not just from a couple of WhatsApp messages here and there. Doing so has created a stronger bond and mutual understanding between my board and I, and ultimately allowed for more information flow, both ways. Most of my problems now have become much easier to solve than before.

Right when COVID first hit in early 2020, I was still somewhat optimistic about the fundraising climate and overall travel landscape, in my naivete. But one of our very early investors that I had recently rekindled with through my renewed IR efforts thankfully stepped in with a precautionary outlook, shepherding us through some scenario planning and advising us to cut costs to zero and assume we wouldn’t be able to get new funds in until 2024. His guidance was instrumental in helping us weather this storm so far. It’s been an incredibly tough time for travel companies this year, to say the least. But building this communication flow with my investors and advisors has made it 10x easier, for both tactical and moral support.

Applications for AW#22 are now open to founders targeting SEA, AI/IoT, or Blockchain/Defi -> https://bit.ly/2VQaEg9

Mỗi năm khi bão về miền Trung , các cán bộ chiến sĩ lại lên đường làm nhiệm vụ canh gác , túc trực cứu hộ cứu nạn người dân vùng lũ . Trong quá trình đi làm nhiệm vụ cứu hộ , 13 chiến sĩ tại Rào Trăng 3 và 22 cán bộ chiến sĩ Đoàn Kinh Tế Quốc Phòng 337 đã ngã xuống để lại nhiều ước mơ còn dang dở , để lại cha mẹ già , vợ hiền và con thơ , họ đều là trụ cột của gia đình.

Hôm nay thay mặt nhưng người bạn của mình tới thắp hương động viên cũng như gửi gắm tình cảm tới các gia đình liệt sĩ đã hy sinh trong trận lũ vừa rồi , xin được gửi số tiền 220 triệu đồng tới 13 gia đình chiến sĩ hy sinh tại Rào Trăng 3 và 22 gia đình cán bộ chiến sĩ hy sinh tại Quảng Trị và 56 triệu 850 ngàn cho BIỆT ĐỘI CANO 0 ĐỒNG để tiếp tục cứu hộ cứu nạn cho cơn bão số 8 sắp tới .

Trong đó :

Chị Ngọc Trinh 50 triệu đồng
Anh Jayden 100 triệu đồng
Hương Giang và em Nam ( nhãn hàng Naivete) 70 triệu đồng
Thingo group 56 triệu 850 ngàn đồng

Xin chân thành cảm ơn các anh trong Bộ chỉ huy quân sự tỉnh Thừa Thiên Huế đã dành thời gian dẫn đoàn tới từng nhà các liệt sĩ , giúp cung cấp địa chỉ số điện thoại của từng gia đình
Cảm ơn chị Hà đại diện Thingo group đã liên lạc sắp xếp lịch trình cho đoàn , cảm ơn 2 trợ lý Thảo Đặng và Phú Mai
Cảm ơn Matt tuy là người nước ngoài nhưng khi biết Giang lên đường đã quyết định đi cùng để hỗ trợ cho đoàn

Các gia đình liệt sĩ không thể đến tận nơi thì bên Giang sẽ liên lạc theo địa chỉ và số điện thoại trong danh sách để gửi số tiền ủng hộ!
Mong những người ở lại sẽ mạnh mẽ và viết tiếp ước mơ của các liệt sĩ !

Do Giang đang tập trung chuẩn bị cho Đại Sứ Hoàn Mỹ nên không thể kêu gọi quyên góp vì không có đủ thời gian để tiếp nhận và chịu trách nhiệm với số tiền của mọi người nên Giang sẽ up thông tin và danh sách dưới đây nếu ai muốn hỗ trợ giúp đỡ thân nhân liệt sĩ có thể liên hệ trực tiếp!

Cầu mong thiên tai sớm đi qua để lại cuộc sống yên bình cho mọi người .

Don’t Be Naive! Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is Standing on the Side Against Human Civilization
　
Peaceful world order after WWII had been established upon the philosophy worshiping multilateralism. The cultural basis supporting such multilateralism contained an imagination believing in the ultimate good of the respect for diversity.
　
The Rise of China and the Naivete of EU
　
However, as time progressed into the Post-Cold War era of the 90's, globalization in trade became the dominant trend. Following the global embrace of multilateralism and respect for diversity, it was believed that China would have been influenced by open and positive values once she had participated in this big family of global trade. Indeed, China took advantage of its role as the "world factory" and gained a huge economic leap forward. After China joined the WTO in 2000, within seventeen to eighteen years, China had grown nine-fold compared in terms of its aggregate economic volume. Furthermore, it surpassed Germany in 2005 and Japan between 2009 and 2010, becoming the second-largest economy in the world.
　
In particular, due to the global financial crisis derived from the subprime mortgage in 2007 and Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in 2008 in the United States, the PIGGS countries turned into victims in Europe. China thus took advantage of this crisis to expand its power, bridging China’s role as depicted in Hu JinTao's "China's peaceful rise" to that in Xi JinPing's "China dream." Finally, China has revealed its ambition to compete for the position as a world leader and a planner of a new world order. The United States has finally, recently woken up to this nightmare of Xi, who has long intended to use China's almighty economic power to achieve his political agenda and hegemony. Unfortunately, many EU countries who consider themselves as advanced, civilized, pro-human rights and respectful to diversification, such as Germany and France, still fail, or refuse, to see the CCP regime’s true color and remain extremely naive towards it.
　
Repulsion towards Vulgarity, Tolerance towards Violence
　
Ironically, the two leading EU countries, Germany and France, prefer a dictatorial emperor, Xi, over Trump elected by the Americans with their ballots. The two countries do not shy away from showing them disgusted by Trump’s vulgar behaviors, but reluctantly show intolerance towards Xi’s cruelty and dictatorship. As a result, the EU countries develop inconceivable and mysterious stubbornness: they loudly criticize countries practicing death penalty based on their own judicial system; however, they are generous and subdued when it comes to the violence happening in HongKong where the HongKong police and Chinese GongAn basically bypass all applicable, or reasonable, laws. We should find this contrast deeply disturbing.
　
Seeing CCP through the eyes of Mao
　
In fact, these european countries and the western world are deluded by the so-called “respect for diversity.” Let’s use the wisdom of the CCP’s spiritual leader, Mao Ze Dong, as a framework to rethink this diversity concept in civilization. In his work “Correct Handling of Contradictions Between People,” published in 1957, Mao clearly classified social contradictions into “contradictions of two different natures”: “contradictions between ourselves and the enemy” and “internal contradictions among the people”. Contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic, for example the contradictions between the exploiting and the exploited classes; but contradictions among people is non-antagonistic. Therefore, the former can not be mediated and resolved, but the latter one can be. Mao further advocated that contradictions between ourselves and the enemy should be resolved by dictatorship, but contradictions between the people should be resolved by a method of “cooperation-criticism-cooperation.” In other words, incompatible contradictions between ourselves and the enemy can only be solved by suppression, but internal contradictions can be softened by cooperation.
　
Civilization and CCP - Two Incompatible Conflicting Systems
　
It is time for us to recognize that CCP, a sovereign of authoritarianism and digital dictatorship, should not have been regarded as a representation of the diversity of human civilization. Diversity should be defined based on a founded premise, i.e., a premise confined with certain agreements and consensus, necessary and beneficial for composing diversity. In fact, the value CCP stands for is against the universally accepted values of the world, just like the “incompatible contradictions between ourselves and the enemy”, as Mao said. As long as the existence of the CCP regime continues, human civilization will continue to be persecuted. It can be seen in the current situation of Hong Kong, where China approved the new bill of national security, thereby destroying the remaining freedom guaranteed to Hong Kongers, and assigned the “secret” police gangs to enforce the so-called “justice”.
　
To see the contracting natures of civilization and the CCP regime, we make an analogy with food. Normally, we respect other people’s choice for food. For instance, Ann prefers rice, Bob prefers noodles, John is a meat lover, Mary only eats seafood, etc. Although those four people have different choices of what they like to eat, they respect each other’s choices of food. However, when Daniel comes over and tells the group that he prefers to eat faeces and needs to be respected for his preference, we can start to see the ridiculousness in it. At first, the four people think eating faeces is a personal choice for Daniel, and Daniel can do whatever he/she wants as long as he/she does it at his/her home. The problem rises when Daniel starts to force other people to eat faeces, while the other four people think faeces is inedible, and should never be served on a plate.
　
The food analogy tells us that the CCP regime is inherently against human civilization. As a reasonable human being could not categorize feces as food, we should not be tricked to believe that the authoritarian regime of China can blend in and contribute to human civilization. The CCP regime is incompatible to human civilization just like we should not consider to eat a meal with feces in it. As the master of CCP, Mao, admitted, one can never resolve the contradiction between the authoritarian regime of China and human civilization. The existence of Chinese authoritarian regime is a symbol for deprivation of human civilization. For us to maintain and preserve human civilization, Chinese authoritarian regime must be eradicated. There is no room for the coexistence of the CCP regime and human civilization.
　　
Draw a Bottom Line to the Respect for Diversity
　
Therefore, among western countries, the United States have started or should start to realize that although diversity needs to be respected and tolerated, a reasonable bottom line should be drawn to such respect. Like what I have mentioned above, rice, noodles, meat, seafood and so on should be viewed as food; however, as we can all reasonably agree, feces should not be a part of the league. The United States is now acting to exclude “feces” from the democratic league and draw a bottom line for respect-worthy diversity. However, leading EU countries are still trapped in their fancy, unconditional acceptance to “respect for diversity.” Such respect is hypocritical, empty and baseless. Now, you should be able to understand why leftards in the EU would vigorously criticize death sentences executed under a legitimate judicial system but remain indifferent to the CCP regime’s merciless, relentless and oppressive killings. Namely, they simply set a wrong premise, including feces as an eligible option for “diversity.” As for those who embrace the CCP regime because of economic benefits, they do not even deserve to be viewed as EU leftards, but merely gold diggers in the EU.
　
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Special Thanks to our supporters in North America for translation🙏