We were lucky to catch up with Christian Durfee recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christian, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

When we started building InvestLink Social, the social networking platform that connects entrepreneurs and investors to assist in business growth and success, we built out our network of industry experts, leading us to a few interesting contacts who were struggling. One in particular was a first-time woman entrepreneur. She had a lifelong passion for animals and would volunteer her time at the local animal shelters. She noticed that many animal shelters were underfunded and lacked the technical abilities to have functioning, up-to-date websites displaying the pets for adoption. She sat on this problem for a while and a light bulb went off, a Tinder-like app for animal shelters. Families who were looking to adopt could download her app and start swiping on pets until they found their furry match.

She gathered feedback from the shelters where she volunteered and received very positive signals. Excited about this new venture and being a first-time entrepreneur, she hopped on Google, looked up “How to create an app from code”, and clicked on the first Google ad result. She landed on a dev shop website based out of New York and quickly started talks with them to help her develop the app. They wanted $10,000 upfront and promised a fully functional, Tinder-like app with her vision. With her dad recently passing and giving her extra money in his will, she used that cash to start the dev contract. Months had passed by and she never heard anything from the dev shop despite constant reach out from her side. She started to get worried and wasn’t sure what to do. After a while, the dev shop responded back and asked for another $10,000. They had mentioned that if she didn’t send it, they would hold the code hostage and not launch the product.

Feeling defeated and not sure where to turn, she reached out to one of our mutual contacts and they referred her to us [InvestLink Social]. We got on a call with her the same day to assess the situation and help guide her in the right direction. After hours on the phone, we realized that she didn’t have the proper network to go after this dev shop, get her money back, and launch an app into the marketplace, so, our first plan of attack was to connect her with our top legal and development partners. We also acted as a springboard to build her network of potential users and funders while our partners helped fight with her to retain the code and cash. After tireless months of back and forth with the fraudulent development shop, she was able to obtain her code and not pay anything extra from the help of our network partners who we had facilitated the connection with. They also gave her discounts and built her app from scratch. During the build, we helped her raise money to pay for development costs + a little extra for marketing efforts. We are happy to announce that she was able to successfully launch and scale her app so animals in shelters can find their forever homes.

This was a massive and close-to-the-heart success for us since we have all been in the position of this entrepreneur. She wanted to solve a problem that was near and dear to her, and with her little experience, found someone who was and tried to take advantage of her. Business is not about what you do, many times, it’s about who you know.

If you would like to check out her app and download it, you can find it on the App Store or Google Play Store: Pawndr.

If we can help Pawndr launch from scratch with the power of our community, imagine what we can do for you!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Christian Durfee and I am the CEO & Co-Founder of InvestLink Social, a social networking platform that connects founders and investors together to assist in business growth. We provide tools to help entrepreneurs grow their networks and enhance their businesses through our active social communities, partner match-making, and in-depth educational resources. We also act as a vetting system for investors of all types and sizes with our AI smart-matching, accurate data profiles, and ways to track entrepreneurs from start to finish and beyond. We’re the exclusive LinkedIn.

I have been an entrepreneur all my life, dedicated to building solutions that solve other’s problems. I’ve always cared about the human touch in a business and how that business can help make the customer’s life better. I got my start in high school by manufacturing and selling bow ties at a cheap price to my peers. Taking the success and lessons learned from that, a partner and I started a health & wellness company in college where in 3 years, we scaled it to over 40 college campuses, had large partnerships, and distributed the products in different shops across the country. I had a successful exit in that startup but right before that happened, we tried raising money. We were profitable, had great traction, and even had a few network connections to investors. We set up some meetings but quickly after a few NOs, we realized we had NO idea what we were doing. Diving into the problem further, we found that many entrepreneurs were in the same situation as us and just needed a little extra capital to get to the next level but were unsure how to receive that capital, didn’t have the right network, and struggled with resources. We found that 82% of startups identified capital as a significant challenge, less than 20% are successful with raising capital, and even worse, less than 2% of underrepresented startups even raise a single dollar. adding onto these numbers, over 60% of Americans are employed by small businesses, and if the failure rate is close to 50% due to issues similar to fundraising, many families are losing jobs on something that could be so easy to solve.

That’s why we started InvestLink Social, to give every entrepreneur a level playing field to grow and scale their dream. To help economies flourish and employers give employees decent, livable wages. To help the next generation cure disease and give humanity the tools needed to prosper. To give that one, struggling, entrepreneur the shot they deserve.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When we started InvestLink Social, we followed the method that we advise a majority of our users on: bootstrap with minimal cash and heavy human capital, build a minimal viable product, gain traction, and then raise from Angel Investors/high net-worth individuals.

Every business is vastly different in the funding they need to start. With us [InvestLink Social] being experts in fundraising and startup capital, this is an avenue we help with daily. Our advice:

Most entrepreneurs move with the notion that they HAVE to raise money to start and be successful – everyone is interested in making a million dollars in the first year and believes they need to scale asap. While some of that can be true with a grain of salt, that likely is never the correct first option. A very typical and respected way to start is to bootstrap with monetary and human capital which might turn out to be all the runway you need to become cash-flow positive. At the beginning of your business, you should keep as much of it in-house as possible. It’s time to grind and prove that your idea has legs before you even begin to think about raising your first $1,000,000. Before raising money, traction is the name of the game. Traction doesn’t always have to be about paying customers, it could be social media followers, a waitlist, letters of intent, free users, or surveys – basically anything that shows that a portion of the general public would use/purchase your product. Once you get that down and IF you need to raise some capital, we usually recommend going the Angel Investor route versus Venture Capital. VC is going to look for quick and fast winners with a lot of traction (meaning they usually invest in later rounds) whereas Angel Investors are more open to initial risk and are okay with slower starts (meaning they are usually the first checks in). The last thing you want to do is put yourself in a position where things are taking longer than expected and the VC is expecting you to do 10x growth in your first year. VCs also usually have a large portfolio and are caught up with their daily tasks of managing countless companies whereas Angel Investors might only have a few investments and want to be there as support/advisory. Of course, each case is different and there are a lot of great Pre-Seed Venture Capital Firms out there, the path is going to be determined based on your growth and market fit. How do you find Angel Investors though? First, you can sign up for free at https://www.investlinksocial.com, then get paired up. Another way to find Angel Investors is to look for high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) who you are connected to. Most of these HNWI could be doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, friends with extra cash in the bank, etc. Get creative on who you might think have the means to put $5,000 or $25,000 in your business. You also likely have a relationship with them or they are close with people who know you well. Trust goes a long way to receive an investment check, it’s better to go to someone who has known you for years versus a cold message to someone online. This is how we funded our business, through our personal network of successful entrepreneurs.

Also to note: for your first check from an investor, it’s about who you are as an entrepreneur, not necessarily the idea. Ideas are cheap, but entrepreneurs aren’t. Are you going to be the one who struggles in chaos, or will you lead the ship right and get back on track? Are you trustworthy and willing to work long days and nights to launch your product? Are you the one to build this to $1,000,000,000? Remember, you can always pivot an idea, you can’t pivot an entrepreneur

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Co-founders are vital to taking an idea and bringing it to life. They are far more important than the initial idea and many times, bring expertise and perspective that makes the initial idea wildly more successful than what you had planned. Choosing co-founders can make or break your business and will likely be the hardest thing you do. You need to find someone who you trust, can have hard conversations with, respect, and act as a teammate. There will be a lot of disagreements and discussions that might be difficult to have, but you need to know that they will stick with you through thick and thin and have the best interest of the business in mind at all times. Think of them as your spouse, it follows a very similar concept.

I was very fortunate to find my co-founders through previous business partnerships. When I was operating my college startup, they had their own successful startups and we found synergies through working together. After years of this and getting to know them on a personal scale, we found that we all had similar pain points with fundraising and business, and we worked very well together.

Anyone who I do business with or ask to be on my team has to be a personal friend of mine first. Character is such an important factor that builds trust and respect.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.investlinksocial.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-durfee/
• Other: Connect with me on InvestLink Social: https://www.investlinksocial.com

Image Credits

Ray Smithson
Max Avery
Founders Club International