Illuminati Round Table Call Notes:
Introducing Eric Zhu - 15-year-old Co-Founder of Aviato and Investor with Bachmanity Capital
At Aviato - they build infrastructure in the backend for VC funds and have had success with many funds; they conduct funding rounds - 1 round successfully raising $550K and are in the process of raising $1M - all from his high school toilet.
Bachmanity Capital - backed by the J&J and Ford Families.
Twitter: @ericzhu105
The origin story of Aviato and Eric’s starts:
During Covid, he began looking into tech and familiarizing himself with the industry.
Started as a VC scout, taking calls from founders and filtering through the noise to find the diamonds for the funds. Used a system where companies would submit videos for the funds to see and decide if they want to talk to them.
Key things Eric looked at when filtering companies:
The Founders and the teams first ideas are usually the worst, but the founders who work to improve and innovate are the best.
How did the founder and co-founder meet? - the dynamic works best when both have known each other for a while and are good friends, so they understand each other more.
What type of data do you gather about the companies to make a decision?
The platform gives the applicant a choice of VCs to apply for funding.
The applicants input a short video and materials (pitch decks etc.) they want to show the VC, and it goes straight to them.
They are adding a new sourcing feature that collates all their public data, puts it into a database, and filters it for the funds to look at and conclude if that's what they want.
Where do you see the future of Venture capitalism going after the past year?
Eric states there is roughly $539B in the VC industry that is ‘dry powder’ (raised capital but hasn’t yet deployed it)
This is an all-time high for capital in hand, and January may be a significant time when heavy capital is deployed into start-ups.
Early VCs are doing fewer deals, but these deals will mostly be solid as the recession wipes out companies with no true potential.
In 2021, VCs didn’t really focus on making money and went for hype-based investment, and now this has died down, the quality companies will shine.
What's the roadmap for Aviato? And what milestones are following?
They’re planning on testing what works and doesn’t work so they can proceed and expand into the following year.
Aviato’s Team and how they work (- from the bathroom)
Found his fellow co-founder after running a hackathon with one of Elon Musk’s sons, and they began working with him on projects.
He has hired a hacker from his school and a photographer for the team’s content.
What have you learned so far?
Being more low-key and being willing to open your mind to new things to aid your growth
Be less egotistical and more open to talking to people to gain knowledge.
Thoughts on web3 and future growth?
The focus was (2021) tokenization and decentralization on everything, but now this recession refines the pool down to the projects with real value.
Kadeem (Host) stated he’s looking for more sustainable DeFi, insurance protocols to establish a customer safety element. Also looking at;
Web2.5 - companies building products with web3 elements integrated into the web2 platform - supports ease of use for new users and invites people to a simple way to access web3.
Polygon $MATIC also concerns Web2.5.
Final thoughts
Find a way to leave a lasting impression that’ll boost your word-of-mouth notoriety - Eric did this with his unique office space - the bathroom, and this was his ‘stain,’ and it got him more and more VCs to onboard onto his platform.
Gen Z Capital Raising & Toilets with Eric Zhu