Serial Founder Raises $7M for Next Company in a Completely New Industry: Fundraising Demystified: Episode 28
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quick, Non-Dilutive Capital for Entrepreneurs
The cost of equity capital is getting expensive; debt or working capital might be a better option if you're already generating revenue, and it's non-dilutive.
We've made it easier than ever to get matched with private capital providers and receive offers in minutes, not weeks or months.
You'd be surprised to learn what you qualify for.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nami Baral, Founder of Niural, Emphasizes Her Strategy For Raising VC Money for 2 Companies
Buckle up for this episode – Nami Baral shares her journey from the inner workings of Twitter, to founding Niural. The episode unfolds the drama at Twitter that fueled her decision to chart a new path, exploring the nuances of fundraising, from a million-dollar pre-seed round to a $7 million investment for Niural.
Whether you're a startup rookie or a seasoned pro, Nami's insights on dealing with investors, differentiating investment rounds, and building an enterprise-focused product serve as a gold mine. Tune in to gain invaluable perspectives on the challenges, triumphs, and tough decisions in the startup funding world.
In this episode, we talk about:
Nami Baral is the genius behind Niural, a game-changer in payroll, contractor management, and Employer of Record services across 150+ countries. She's no stranger to startups, kicking off her journey in a company that later teamed up with Twitter, witnessing the rollercoaster of a startup getting acquired and Twitter going public.
Prior to Niural, Nami founded Harvest, a fintech company that leveraged AI to reduce debt for American consumers. Now, as Niural's CEO, Nami's on her third startup, reshaping the tech scene and making waves in global employment infrastructure.
Where to Find Nami Baral
Social media links
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Free Fundraising Resources
🤓 - Free pitch deck reviews - Submit your deck
💸 - Access working capital fast - Explore options for free
😍 - Free list of AI Recommended VCs - Apply for free
👨💻 - Free fundraising coaching session - Schedule 15 minutes with us
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Premium Resources
🗓️ - Book a one-hour private capital strategy call - Book Now
💫 - Pitch deck design services for founders by VCs - Decko
💼 - Startup Legal Services - Bowery Legal
📚 - Startup Friendly Accounting Services - Chelsea Capital
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Upgrade to Thunder Premium to Unlock:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's Connect:
▶ Watch the episode on YouTube
{
"series": "Fundraising Demystified",
"episode_title": "Nami Baral on Raising $11M and Building Neural’s Payroll Platform",
"publish_date": "2024-02-08",
"page_url": "https://blog.thunder.vc/fd-ep.-28-nami-baral",
"video_url": "https://youtu.be/yzfiZPIPRvc",
"participants": [
{"name": "Jason Kirby", "role": "Host"},
{"name": "Nami Baral", "role": "Guest, Founder & CEO of Neural"},
{"name": "Kaustav Das", "role": "Guest arrival cameo"}
],
"entities": ["Neural", "Harvest", "Acorns", "Twitter", "Payroll", "EOR", "Contractor Management", "Global Payments"],
"topics": [
"Pre-seed vs seed fundraising",
"Creating momentum with investors",
"Enterprise-first product strategy",
"Global payroll and EOR across 150+ countries",
"Acquisition decision vs Series A"
],
"key_takeaways": [
"Target stage-appropriate investors; avoid time-sinks with misaligned stages.",
"Fundraising is momentum-driven; show business progress between meetings.",
"Build enterprise scalability from day one if you intend to serve the enterprise.",
"Global payroll requires payments, legal, and compliance infrastructure—not just payroll logic.",
"Repeat founders can often raise faster on team strength before product."
],
"keywords": [
"Nami Baral", "Neural", "Harvest", "Acorns", "global payroll", "EOR", "contractor management", "US payroll", "enterprise HR", "fundraising", "pre-seed", "seed", "Series A", "momentum", "exit"
]
}
Jason Kirby: Conclude and then we'll get started.
Nami Baral: Sounds good.
Jason Kirby: Hi everyone, welcome back to Fundraising Demystified, your host Jason Kirby. And today we are hosting Nami Baral with us, the founder and CEO of Neural. Thanks for joining us, Nami.
Nami Baral: Thank you for having me, Jason. It's so great to be here.
Jason Kirby: Now I'm excited to hear your story and have the founders that are listening today kind of learn what you did to kind of raise 4 million for your previous venture that led to an exit and 7 million for your current venture. So if you can go ahead and just kind of give us the background story, you know, how did you get started and where are you at today?
Nami Baral: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I'm Naomi, I'm founder and CEO of Neural. Neural is an all-in-one platform for modern US payroll and contractor management in EOR and 150 plus countries. So really, you know, the motivation behind building Neural is this is my third startup, right? The first one was as a non-founder, but as an early member of the team. And that startup we sold to Twitter in the early days of Twitter, even before Twitter had its IPO. So... a really interesting journey there from being an early member of a startup to going through a really kind of acquisition with a really iconic company and going through the eps and flows of everything that entailed. And then after spending several years at Twitter, I decided to kind of get back into the building game again with my last startup, which was Harvest.
Nami Baral: Harvest was one of the original AI super agents that leveraged AI way before chat GPT. We built our own, we kind of built from scratch models to do AI led negotiations for American consumers with their financial institutions so that we could reduce their debt and improve their credit and just get them into a proper financial wellness path. So it was a very exciting use case of AI in FinTech. And, you know, really had a ton of fun building it, as well as the product became really, really popular. And we really scaled up very, very quickly. And that led to a very successful exit in towards the end of 2020 when we sold the company to Acorns. And then once a founder, always a founder, right? Like, you know, I, after selling the last company, I was really looking at how you know, how you can leverage all of the learnings from, you know, the things that I'd built in the past to build a generational company in something that, you know, I think only repeat founders can build things of this level of complexity. And to me, that was really global payroll and HR, right? Like traditionally known to be a very boring and antiquated industry, not a lot of innovation happening, kind of dominated by dinosaurs, you know, who had built, who had been built in a completely different era.
Nami Baral: But the landscape of how modern workforce works has changed drastically in the past 20 years and especially post pandemic, right? So I saw the need, the really strong need for a company to come which can help businesses of all shapes and sizes, but especially growing companies, mid-market and enterprise with enterprise level scalability, reliability, but the feature set that is needed, that is very nimble. You have to be very nimble to provide that kind of feature set for this ever evolving kind of state of the workforce, right? So if you think about what has happened to companies post pandemic, right? A lot of companies that were enterprise companies used to have a global workforce before, but small to mid-market companies didn't really have a global workforce pre-pandemic.
Nami Baral: Post pandemic, that entire landscape has shifted. Even the smallest of companies could have employees in multiple states, right? And then they could have contractors in multiple states as well as multiple countries. And as that workforce grows, you have the need to kind of shift them from contractor status to employees. And then you have a lot of legal and compliance burden that you have to take care of. Now for enterprises, that problem has just grown like a hundredfold, right? So, they need to have presence in more countries. They need to be able to understand the intricacies of international kind of money transfers, cross-border money transfers to be able to pay properly to their global workforce. They need to align with local labor laws and misclassification risks, things like that, right? So the need for an all-in-one platform that can handle all of these things without the company having to use six to 10 different tools and different vendors has become much greater. And that is truly what Neuro solves, right? We replace many, many tools and vendors that companies are using today with our all-in-one platform. We have built our US payroll from scratch. We have built international money movement tools from scratch, bypassing all intermediaries and building net new payment infrastructure to be able to provide same day and real-time money movement across the globe.
Nami Baral: So it has been really a labor of love in kind of building Neural because building a payroll company is not just about payroll anymore, right? It's about financial technology, it's about legal, compliance, and plus everything that is associated with payroll. So I never hesitate to say that we have built the most powerful payroll and HR workforce management solution that exists in the market today, and I'm very proud of it.
Jason Kirby: I could see why you raise the money. You did a great job presenting the case there. And I could speak to the pain personally. I've always, I've never built a company without talent abroad. And in particular, a company we sold to Walmart back in 2018, our first couple of hires were Russian engineers, like top tier, amazing engineers, you know, a very affordable price. When we sold the Walmart, they're like, you got to fire them. I was like, they're like.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Jason Kirby: Crucial to the entire technology. What do you mean fire them? We don't have a means to pay. We can't pay people in Russia. We have rules against that, blah, blah. And they ended up negotiating. Deals doesn't happen unless you keep them. They ended up paying two separate agencies, like an agency in the US to then pay an agency in India to then pay an agency in Russia to then pay our team.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Yeah.
Nami Baral: Yep.
Jason Kirby: And we were only paying them like, I think 40 grand a year, 50 grand a year. It ended up costing them close to about 120 grand per person. And they were getting paid like three months later, like, because of all the net parity, I was just like, it's atrocious. Yeah. So we took care of them and got them taken care of, but it was, you know, pretty, pretty just sad seeing that, you know, here we were able to pay them through, you know, directly as a startup, but we couldn't.
Nami Baral: Yes.
Nami Baral: Yes.
Nami Baral: Yes, yes.
Jason Kirby: Couldn't do that with a big company. So hopefully you guys scale and continue to service the market and those problems no longer exist, making it much easier.
Nami Baral: Yes, absolutely. We're doing that today. We serve companies of all sizes. It was important for me as I was building it out. When you think about what you are building, especially as a repeat founder, you think about what is the dent that you're going to make in the market and in the universe in general. It is important to have... this idea of building a generational company in your mind if you're building for enterprise, because there's lots and lots of different complexities that are involved from the build from the very beginning. If you're building something for, let's say SMBs, you could just like kind of get away with building an MVP, just like iterating very, very quickly, and then just like kind of going with the flow, right? But to build anything for enterprise level kind of infrastructure and architecture under liability, you're gonna have to know that you're building for enterprise from the very beginning. Right. And you know that if you can build for 20,000 employees, like supporting two employees, supporting 20 employees is a breeze, right? So, uh, you know, we have been very, very conscious about how we build and how we structure the product for enterprise from the get-go, and that is something that I found, uh, you know, not. that many even very successful companies in the market today, very highly valued companies, startups in the payroll and HR space have not had that foresight or that attention to enterprise level kind of support in the beginning. Most people tend to kind of move up market only after they have kind of gone through the SMB scale and all of that. For us, it has been very different. We built it with enterprise design partners to begin with. So we can support companies from two to like... 50,000 company employees today.
Jason Kirby: No, I appreciate you sharing the more context there. So let's kind of jump into the, the fundraise. So, you know, you, you came off as, uh, you know, you started in the startup world, you know, as an early member to a startup that sold the Twitter. I have all kinds of questions about Twitter, but we'll get to that towards the end if we have time. Uh, but for, for you going into your, your first independent venture as a founder, you know, what was that journey like on deciding when to make that leap? What did you do in terms of timing? Of.
Nami Baral: Yeah.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Jason Kirby: Leaving Twitter and going and doing this. And then what was that journey like when it came to raising the $4 million?
Nami Baral: Yeah, so it's always interesting when you have not had a lot of exposure to the venture market to begin with, if you are not in those positions, if you were truly operational, or in an operating role before, there's a lot of lessons to be learned in how to navigate the market when it comes to... just understanding venture and then like an understanding how investors work, their mentality, understanding just who is into what in terms of pieces and things like that, right? So initially I think as I came off of Twitter, I had obviously been in an operational role for a long time. Around the time I left Twitter, I was... you know, my team was responsible for more than a billion dollars of revenue every year. So that was what like, you know, kind of took my focus away, right? Revenue, product, partnerships, things like that. I'd never been in the fundraising game up until that time. And then immediately after I left Twitter, obviously, I wanted this to be a venture scale business. So I got to, you know, kind of starting to leverage my network to have those initial conversations with investors. And I think a lot I made. the same mistake at that time that I think a lot of founders, new founders make today, which is not really understanding the difference between the stages of investors, right? Like, you know, oh, you know, you have a friend who has, you know, some sort of VC that, you know, they can connect you to, like understanding.
Nami Baral: What is series A versus pre-seed versus seed? All three are early stages. Everybody is like, okay, we are an early stage investment firm, right? You go to their website, you see that. But what a series A investor looks for is completely different from what a pre-seed investor looks for, right? And initially, I think it took a little bit of time for me to really understand who is truly investing at what stages and what are the things that they're looking for.
Nami Baral: Right. And then second, there is a lot of focus on, there's a lot of focus on like, you know, just materials. Oh, I'm going to build these like financial models and I want to, you know, really accurately forecast my future kind of revenue for the next 10 years. And then I'll kind of backtrack the valuation from there, like, you know, kind of thinking like an investment banker at the time of like, you know, fundraising. A lot of founders do that. I did that initially in the beginning. But what I realized is at the initial stages, Right? It is super important for you to truly understand what is the foundational problem that you are going to try to solve. How are you going to, really, with a data-driven methodology, going to solve those things initially with very little resources and just time in your hands, right? And then being able to communicate properly. that vision and that thesis and how you're going to attract and hire and retain great talent when they don't have a lot of resources at your disposal. I think those are the more critical pieces than plugging numbers into a financial model, right? Especially at pre-seed and seed stage because nobody is going to really go row by row into your financial model. That is not the most important thing, but how you tell the story. how you talk about the future metrics that are going to be important for you, how you're going to do go to market, how are you going to monetize, having a very comprehensive understanding of the metrics that you are going to face in your startup and having a story about how you'll succeed in this business despite the lack of resources as a startup, I think that is the much more critical piece that I think founders should work on.
Jason Kirby: And I think you're a hundred percent right and I you know, but you're speaking from a place that you know now because you've done it What was your position back then when you were doing it? Did you have to did you consult other successful founders? Did you kind of fail a couple times and figure it out or did you just kind of get lucky? Like what was that experience like at least for harvest when you were first kind of going out for that round? You know, what was your strategy? What did you learn? What? what didn't work, that kind of stuff.
Nami Baral: Yes, yes. So I think getting lucky is you only get lucky when you work hard, right? So you have enough conversations, you build enough momentum, you build the right relationships. I think they start panning out after a while. But initially, I think the community that I really got a lot of help from was other founders.
Nami Baral: Right. Because once again, you always want to have some sort of mentor who is at least one or two steps ahead of you, not too far, but at least a couple of steps ahead of you so that they can tell you and help you with the mistakes that you're about to make and help you avoid them. Right. So, you know, after obviously beginning the journey with Harvest, initially, the focus was really on getting the right team on board. Right.
Nami Baral: So for that, obviously, really leveraging the network and making sure that there were people building the product while I was out there fundraising was super, super critical. But then second, I really leaned on, kind of getting advice from this, kind of other founders who were a couple of stages ahead of me and really learning from their experiences and not being afraid to ask questions, right? making an entire investor list and going to them and saying, okay, truly is this person going to waste my time because they are not at the stage where they will be investing, right? This is just a relationship building conversation versus a true investment lead. I think those are the kinds of things that other founders can help you just filter quickly and help you kind of reduce the wasting of time you'll do from some of these non-important conversations.
Jason Kirby: Well, I have to do a quick plug for Thunder because that's exactly what our tools do is tell you who's actually deploying capital into what you're building at this given time and where, you know, it's scored, you know, inappropriate, uh, appropriately to that scale. Um, so we do save founders a lot of time in terms of going back and forth on figuring that out, but, uh, so thanks for the opportunity to plug there. But, um, so are you going and did you raise 4 million all at once? Did you raise it over a period of time for harvest? You know, uh, and I guess from what time did you decide, at what point in the business did you decide that now's the time to raise and what was that journey raising?
Nami Baral: Yeah, so I raised that over two rounds. The first was a million dollar pre-seed, and then the rest was a seed for those $4 million with Harvest. And I was out to do the Series A at the time when we decided to actually go through the acquisition opportunity, because the economics just was unbeatable. But you know, the initial thing is a lot of people, once again, do not understand the difference between pre-seed and seed, right, or series A. So initially it's just like, okay, I'm going to raise two and a half million dollars when, you know, like, you know, you have not built out anything or there are no proof points for you to be able to raise those things. I think it's like a mistake, right?
Nami Baral: If you are a first time founder who is just out to raise and you were thinking about, okay, I'm going to need to kind of figure all of these different kinds of data points out to be able to truly take the next step in the business. I think those are the things that you need to figure out at the pre-seed stage. So I always suggest like, you know, if you're raising before you have a product or, you know, before you have had some sort of milestones figured out, go for a pre-seed rather than a seed because you're going to have. at least like, you know, a little bit of a bandwidth to show the progress and show that momentum to investors after you've raised that initial pre-seed and then go to the seed round, right? Do not try to raise a large sum of money from the get-go without you having something to show for it, because then you'll have a lot of issues with like, you know, trying to find the lead and like, you know, going through a price round and just a lot of things that will waste your time.
Nami Baral: For Harvest, what happened was, I initially started just doing, before I even did fundraising, I leveraged my network to get these investor conversations and I really kind of understood the market for who are the right investors and who are the ones that we should be building relationships with. Right? And I knew that I wanted to raise a pre-seed, so I really focused on just pre-seed investors. And pre-seed investors, obviously there are funds whose thesis is...
Nami Baral: to invest at pre-seed and seed stages, as well as really amazing angels out there who could actually help you get the network or open up a network that has not previously existed for you before. So focused on that during the pre-seed stage and then, you know, raise that pre-seed round. And from the momentum that had built from the pre-seed round. we actually converted that into the seed round several months later. So I didn't really wait like, you know, the 18 months that everybody thinks is, you know, between all of these different stages, you know, fundraising is really a momentum game, right? Like, you have to leverage the momentum whenever it exists. And as much as possible, your job is to create momentum as a founder, right? Because as much as we like to think that VCs have, you know, They always are very rational or invest based on their pure thesis or thinking alone. A lot of it is driven by just pattern matching and collective herd activity. They hear from somebody else that hears from somebody else that they're super excited about this particular founder or this particular startup, that somebody else is leading the round and then there's this formal that is created and you have to be able to leverage that moment. whenever you are doing fundraising. If there is no momentum, then I don't think you can have a successful fundraise. So try to create that momentum in whatever mechanism you can.
Jason Kirby: And so for you, was it more about drumming up momentum and conversations? Or was it momentum in the business? What was it?
Nami Baral: Yeah. Oh, there has to be momentum in the business for sure. Right. Because I don't think unless, once again, right, like, you know, when, when Elon goes and, you know, says that he wants to start a new company, there's going to be a billion dollars in the first round itself. Right. But unless you have had like, you know, a lot of founder, a lot of investors who have backed you before, and, you know, you have these pre-built relationships in the industry, everybody's going to be looking at two things. One, How are you as a founder? Do they believe in you, your ability to really build this company, to do future fundraisers, things like that? So they're gonna be looking at you. And then the second thing they're gonna be looking at is, what have you done so far with the resources you have today? You need to be able to show, obviously, the progress that you're making. And that progress you have to make with or without fundraise. So the business has to have momentum in some way.
Nami Baral: It could be that you have done certain kinds of experimentations and there are certain, I guess, good results that you've gotten from the experimentation and you need additional funds to get to the next level of just scaling whatever you have found has worked. Have you signed a new partnership? Have you had a really interesting conversation and gotten to... really generating your pipeline for certain kinds of sales processes? Is it that you have gotten an external validation through, maybe you got into YC, maybe you got into Techstars, like there are other kind of validating factors that have come into play, right? It's not one particular dot, right? It's how those dots form the line and you have to show that momentum in the business itself. But then also... It doesn't happen in vacuum. You have to continue to have these conversations with investors who can follow along your progress from the initial time they had a conversation. If you met with an investor three months ago and you meet that investor today, they're going to ask you, what has changed in the last three months? You better have a really, really good story about what you have been able to do in those last three months, because then that gives them the confidence to really, really back you as a founder. If you have done... use those months and resources.
Jason Kirby: So I'm pausing real quick. We'll edit this part out. One thing that, this is just like feedback for the podcast for you. You're projecting a lot of advice on the listener, which I think all the advice is valid and I'm gonna keep it all in there. But I think people really wanna connect with you and they wanna hear your story and you kind of, rather than kind of going into what actually happened with you, you're sharing advice.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jason Kirby: What they should be doing. And I think it'd be, are you comfortable sharing more of your personal story? Yeah, so it would be really great for you to kind of switch from like, you should do this to I did this and really brag about your accomplishments. Like this is, you want to talk about what you did, right? What you did wrong and speak from that place just because it's gonna make the listener connect a lot more because the advice that they're hearing, albeit valid.
Nami Baral: Sure, sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Nami Baral: Yeah.
Nami Baral: Yeah.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Jason Kirby: They want to learn about you. They want to learn about what made you special, what made you different. So I'd like to kind of switch, you know, answer, you know, kind of start answering more from the perspective of, you know, this is what I did. This is what I learned. This is what worked for me kind of thing. Does that make sense? Okay, cool.
Nami Baral: Cool, cool, sounds good. Yeah, yeah, cool. All right, so where do I start? So...
Jason Kirby: So I'll start with a fresh question so that the editors know to cut from here. So you kind of shared an amazing background in terms of what you did and what could work for other founders. But I would say, what was like a mistake that you made in your fundraising process? And we've been mostly talking about Harvest at this point, but you're welcome to talk about Neural. What were some mistakes that you made in the fundraising process that you, looking back, wish you could have done differently?
Nami Baral: Yeah, initially I definitely went and had conversations with investors who were in different stages than the one that would be investing at the stage. For example, at the time when I started the fundraisers, at this point, now, looking back in hindsight, I know that was the pre-seed stage. But then at that time, I didn't really know who was a true pre-seed investor versus a seed investor versus a series A investor.
Nami Baral: I just looked them up, they would mention early stage investing. So you just take conversations with series A investors. That was my number one mistake. Why have conversations with series A investors? Series A investors look for completely different milestones than what pre-season investors look for. So after doing that a few times, I talked about it with another founder mentor of mine. And he was like, you know what? stop doing all of those things because they're not going to invest in a company that is yours. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how amazing or how excited they are about your company. They're going to just be interested in learning more about you and they're going to keep the relationship open. They're not going to write a check right now. So then immediately just started focusing on figuring out who are the true pre-seed investors out there. So pre-seed VCs.
Nami Baral: When have they invested what check sizes, right? So 500K checks from a pre-seed focused VC, 100K checks from an angel, right? Those are the ones that are going to be relevant for you at the pre-seed stage, right? So after realizing that mistake, I obviously focused my efforts on having conversations with the right stage investors, and that obviously led to a lot more conversions than I had previously.
Jason Kirby: No, that's fantastic to hear. And now you have an interesting situation. You figured out the pre-seed game. You built momentum for your business. You got a seed round and then you had this choice. You need to grow and scale the business and raise a series A or sell. And tell me in the audience about why, you know, what was that kind of decision? Like, what were you dealing with at that time with the business that, you know, ultimately led you to, to selling as opposed to, to growing.
Nami Baral: Yeah, so, you know, it's a very interesting kind of movement in time that comes for a founder, where you have to decide between these two things, right? Because, you know, you build a company with a lot of kind of just kind of blood, sweat and tears over a period of time. You never want to sell that company.
Nami Baral: But at the same time, I think the opportunity that comes in front of a founder, especially if you're succeeding, right? I mean, many founders may not have options. My, the good thing that happened with me and Harvest was I had a lot of options ahead of me. We were very close to profitability. We had grown our ERR drastically, especially during the pandemic when most other companies were, you know, kind of. kind of struggling at that time, right? But we were really had amazing growth at that time. And then we didn't need the money to even go out and do a series A raise. But then once again, when you think about building venture scale businesses, you're like, okay, let me just fuel this growth more. And since we were able to do it capital efficiently, we were able to, we were very, very close to profitability as well. We had 12 years of runway at the time we sold, right?
Nami Baral: So because of all of those things, like I had a lot of options ahead of me. And I was not actively thinking about selling the company either, right? It came naturally as part of actually a series A conversation. There was, you know, I had basically written to my investors that, hey, you know, we have got really amazing metrics lined up. I think it's the right time to go do a series A. And I gave them a heads up that, you know, like let's start those conversations.
Nami Baral: And one of the investors on my cap table happened to be the founder of Acorns. And he was like, hey, before you do any of these conversations, can we have a call? Can we have a separate discussion? One thing led to another. And obviously, everything made sense for everybody involved. And that's when we decided to really, I think I was faced with that choice of, do I continue to build?
Nami Baral: and do this for the next five, six years alone, given that we have a lot of metrics to back this up and this can be an independent successful company on its own, versus partnering it up with somebody else, obviously early liquidity and exit for the team and investors and good economics for everybody involved. But more importantly, can we do this in a much shorter timeframe than going at
Nami Baral: While making that choice, obviously, the selling conversation became just a lot more interesting and attractive. That's what led to the sale. That said, the day I sold the company, honestly, a flood of emotions. It's not an easy choice to honestly sell a company, especially when the company is doing it.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting for you to share that perspective and just kind of a lot of founders dream of that moment, but as you said, it could be very emotional. It could be very, you know, either concerning about what do you do next or, you know, very liberating, you know, after the fact or just confused because now you got to figure out what's going on. So for you, was it a deal where you had to stay on and you stayed on for a while or was it kind of like a cash deal and you were out the door?
Nami Baral: Yes.
Jason Kirby: You know, kind of what happened after the exit for you. And, you know, it seemed like you quickly turned around into your next venture.
Nami Baral: So it was a mixed deal. And there were a lot of incentives built in for me to stay at the Quirer for some time. And at that time, at the time when I sold the company, I thought that I had negotiated a really great exit package as well. Typically, you're supposed to stay there for four or five years, things like that. I had a shorter... window in which I had to stay at the acquirer, but then I had every intent of staying there because I truly believed in the mission and value of the company and I really loved the executive team of the company that acquired Harvest. And so, when that happened, I had every intention of staying there for the next at least two years. But then after I started kind of
Nami Baral: You're doing that for a couple of months. So you have this building mentality that comes very strongly. And I was eking to build again, because building products versus building a company are two different things. When you sell your company to another larger company, you're mostly building new products, but not necessarily building a new company.
Nami Baral: And to me, I was really thinking about, I had a lot of different ideas in mind and I obviously wanted to make sure that my team and the product that we had built at Harvest has longevity and finds a home, a proper home at the new company and then that the new company is successful. But then at the same time, there were so many things that were going on in my head about like, okay, do I truly enjoy what I'm doing today versus do I go out and build? And going out and building another company, starting all over again, that was just such a strong force that even those two years, I didn't stay there for the 14 years. I was like, a year was done and I was like, you know what, I got to go and build this other thing because I was literally waking up all night thinking about this new product. And I was getting really, really passionate about building a new role and why waste time. Everything is an opportunity cost at the end of the day.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, I think it's a challenge for founders to kind of stay put post acquisition. I was guilty of that when Walmart acquired us. I was really excited about the opportunity, lived and breathed it, thought it was going to be amazing, and then they shifted directions and basically shut us down, which was just heart crushing. You know, just crush your soul situation. But quickly got back into it and started building a new company with...
Jason Kirby: you know, some people and it was just gave such a greater sense of purpose than, you know, kind of sitting around and being another cog in the wheel. Like it could have paid me great. It would have been great, safe, reliable income, but it was just, no, I got to, got to get back into it. So I can totally relate to you on that front. Um, so now, you know, you, you decided to, to leave acorns at this point, you know, leave your, your baby behind and start a new baby. Um, you know, Tell us about that journey and kind of give us some insights of the timing of kind of when you conceptualized to when you kind of made the decision to leave Acorns and when you raised money and at what point.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm. So I mean, the idea behind Neural, I had been thinking about this for a long time, like even before I started Harvest, because, you know, once again, you know, as a founder, there are so many things that you think that you can, you know, really build things to change, and you're excited about a lot of different things. You're passionate about a lot of different things. So this idea had been something that I was excited about from a while ago. But, you know, at that time, I chose to build. you know, build an AI and with, you know, with that negotiations idea in mind, rather than focusing on P.O. and HR, but it had been kind of building up in terms of the relationships that I had built over the years. And like, you know, the thought had evolved in my head about like, you know, how I truly build a generational P.O. and HR company, right? Like it's crazy when you think about like, how can people be so excited about P.O. and HR? I'm one of those really weird people who gets excited about P.O. and HR because
Nami Baral: I really like building things that can reduce complexity, building complex products while abstracting away the complexity. So it was something that I was thinking all the time. After I had sold Harvest, I felt like I should truly, truly be working on neural and not wasting time on other things. So it happened slowly and then it happened suddenly. There were a moment... there was a moment, almost around the year mark after I sold the company that I was like, you know what, I've already spent a year, I'd sold my company a year ago, there is a lot of reflection you do. And then suddenly you feel this very, very strong desire, just like, you know what, time for a change, right? So that's what happened in terms of how, I guess the decision to now begin working for... begin working on neural full-time versus just it being something that I work on the side, right? Now thinking about fundraising for neural was a completely different process Than you know how I was doing fundraising for harvest The good thing about being a repeat founder is that there you have already had Investors who have backed you and they've made money and you have, you know, obviously especially after a successful kind of exit event liquidated event investors want to support you and want to back you again. So it was a much easier conversation this time around because not just from the investors who had backed me before, but a lot of other investors had also seen that what I had built with Harvest, I had that kind of existing network, a lot of people who wanted to back me, put money into my next venture.
Nami Baral: So from the day I sold Harvest, I had been getting all of these investors reaching out to me. My own investors from the past were asking me when I was going to start a new thing because they know founders, right? They knew that I'd be starting something soon. And then other investors that I had not worked with before, but had relationships with had also, kind of just been following up and whatnot. So it was a much, much faster process in terms of raising with Neural I had a lot of that background already built and there was not a lot of kind of proof points I had to provide. Um, so I could raise a large round very, very quickly. Like, you know, the, the round for Neural came together in like less than two weeks. It was super easy this time around.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, that's the thing. As two weeks, it's like a dream come true for so many founders, but it's a reality for the repeat founders that have had success, have had an exit. And as long as you're working on something interesting and big enough, it becomes a much easier check for VCs or investors to write because historically repeat founders are more likely to succeed. So probability wise, it's a smarter bet from an investor perspective.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Jason Kirby: And at this point, did you raise the full 7 million in that two weeks or did you go out and raise in different tranches?
Nami Baral: I raised five in those first two weeks, and then there was still a lot of momentum that was kind of built up from that race, so I raised Ritushala.
Jason Kirby: Gotcha, on the same terms or did you change terms?
Nami Baral: Obviously, change terms. Yeah, you know, more progress, more momentum, different terms, right?
Jason Kirby: Yeah, that's something that founders should know. I think when you have momentum and people are like, I wish I could have got in, what can I do? It's a very good problem to have. And the market that we're currently in where it's a little ambiguous as to what future holds for us, I think more cash on hand is always a better choice. At this point with Neuro, were you guys already generating revenue at this point or were you pretty early?
Nami Baral: Oh, no, we raised our first round like, you know, before we even had a product. So like it was a truly like, you know, I think, you know, a true case of investor backing founders and the team, rather than really thinking about what product they're going to build because of their faith in the founder and the founding team.
Jason Kirby: And that's, you know, I'm so glad we got up to this point where we had to go through your whole history. And then, you know, this is what people need to realize. A lot of founders go, how do they just raise money overnight? It's like, well, because they put in the hard work and deliver resilience already.
Nami Baral: Hahaha
Nami Baral: Yeah. I mean, the investors have known me for the last five years to be able to invest in neural in like a split second. Right. Like, you know, I think that is the more important piece. Once again, it's not a dot, it's a line. They saw the trend line that I was able to create for.
Jason Kirby: It's a good way to put it. It's like, yeah, if you're a first time founder, like you, you just got your one dot, you don't know where that dot really ends, whereas, you know, you kind of built that trajectory, so it's a lot easier to bet on. So I know we spent a lot of time talking about the fundraiser history and I'm really excited about that, but like, come on, we can't, can't ignore the Twitter drama, you know, just for fun here. You know, I just like, what's your take on it? You don't have to give me the whole, you know, history or anything, but just like, you know, what was your experience like when you were there and kind of what's your take on it now that Twitter is X.
Nami Baral: I'm going to go to bed.
Nami Baral: Yeah. So, you know, Twitter has never been out of drama, right? It's just that I think after Elon came, everybody was more fixated on Twitter's drama than the rest because there was, you know, this like celebrity who has now come and, you know, is kind of getting all of that tension. You know, Twitter is a really, really iconic company. And I think it has...
Nami Baral: It is such a unique company. It's not truly like, you know, a social media platform, just like, you know, Facebook or Instagram. Like it's slightly different because it's truly a public square, right? And, you know, initially Twitter when in the early days, especially when we had the IPO and around that time, it was very, very close to that thesis and that mission. Over time, once again, you know. became a public company, focus on different things. The world's political dynamics were very different at that time. And I think it fell into something, that show of disillusionment that most companies go through. I feel like that is something that also happened to Twitter. And there was a lot of stagnation. I personally could feel it. And that's one of the reasons I left Twitter because I felt like I was not that excited about kind of furthering the Twitter mission anymore. And I wanted to build something of my own.
Nami Baral: And I just didn't feel very intellectually stimulated at Twitter after a while, right? And a lot of people stayed there, obviously even after I left and everything, but I could feel when Elon came in and he was bringing into light all of these different issues that were happening at Twitter, I was like, oh, I'm not surprised. I'm glad that somebody is kind of doing something about it and truly trying to revive Twitter to like kind of its. early kind of thesis of what it could be, right? Versus just like a failing social media company, right? So it was very exciting to see, but then once again, Elon is interesting and eccentric in his methods. I think some of his methods are interesting and some of his methods may not be that interesting or obviously depends on how you hold things up to a court of public opinion based on who you are.
Jason Kirby: harsh
Nami Baral: But I do think that the changes that has happened to Twitter, that many of the changes that he's doing are changes that should have happened a long time ago. And I think these are in general net new positive changes. He's also bringing a lot of attention to Twitter, right? Like, you know, there's just a lot more activity to Twitter just because it is Elon. You know, he is definitely a very unique, eccentric guy. So it's always going to have his quirks and depends on how you deal with it. I guess.
Jason Kirby: I'm in your camp, I completely agree. And I appreciate you sharing that story and that insight. And Nami, it was amazing you having me on the show. Where can founders find out more about you and Neural?
Nami Baral: Yes. So, you can reach out to me at nami at Neural.com. Neural.com, N-I-U-R-A-L.com. Once again, your all-in-one platform for modern US payroll, contractor management, EOR in 150 plus countries. Obviously, as a founder myself, we love founders, would love to just assist more founders as they scale up their businesses as well. So, write to me if you come to Neural or we can give you some friends and family discount if you come from this podcast. So, Neural.com, N-I-U-O-R-L.com.
Jason Kirby: Awesome. Well, we'll make sure to include those notes in the show notes. And I really appreciate you joining us today. And our next guest just hopped on, but we'll cut that part out.
Nami Baral: Mm-hmm.
Nami Baral: Hi, nice to meet you, Kostov.
Kaustav Das: Sorry, I'm like a minute ahead. Sorry about that. I did not.
Nami Baral: No, no, that's great. Jason, thank you for every... Connect me with your wife. I'd love to meet her.
Jason Kirby: Yeah, now you guys are just down the street, so happy to connect. And I'm going to go ahead and we'll sign off right now. So thanks for joining on the show. We'll go ahead and end, but stay on because I need you to.
Nami Baral: Yeah.