Why I’ve finally realised that money is at the centre of everything for startups

There are many days when I sit and reflect on the past six years of being a startup founder and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. The biggest lesson has been coming to understand what my relationship with money is.

The journey of raising capital for me has been at the center of some of my darkest days and deepest pain to date. So much of that, I now realise, is because I didn’t understand that we all have a relationship with money that plays a powerful role in the stories we tell ourselves, how we show up, and who we are when it’s on the table. This is particularly true in business, as money really is at the centre of everything.

What I thought I was negotiating was often not what I was negotiating, and if you don’t truly understand what’s really at stake, things can go south very quickly for everyone.

One of the things that I am most proud of in my personal journey as a startup founder is staying true to myself throughout all of my successful and unsuccessful capital raise efforts. Staying true to myself in these moments caused some of my deepest soul-wrenching pain because of what I had to give up. Multiple times on my journey, it felt like I lost everything in those moments. The truth was, each time I made the decision to walk away or hold the line, I gained a little bit more of myself back. I just could not give up what was being asked of me, often right at the end, in the final moments when the terms seemed to change once again.

Despite all of it, I kept getting out of bed and I kept going because I really believed what I was doing mattered. I do want to highlight that in all of my personal capital-raising journey, I don’t see myself as a victim of any of what unfolded, as I was a fully engaged participant. I just didn’t understand myself enough and my history and relationship with money, and that lack of awareness left me very vulnerable.

The funny thing is my startup has finally come to a place of sustainability, and we have no desperate need to raise capital to survive. Right at this point, I finally understand enough about who I am and how this works, and I am in a much better position to go into a capital raise.

Capital raising isn’t something that I’m interested in doing again anytime soon, as it’s been such a gift to be able to slow down, do the work I love, and enjoy my business without feeling like everything is on the line unless I find more money to extend the runway and take over the world.

I also don’t have anyone on my back about a financial return, and though sustainability is critical in my decision-making as a founder, 10xing my business is not the driving force behind how decisions get made. Our mission continues to be our driving force. Somehow I managed to get here without giving myself or the company up on terms that did not align with me. I am most proud of this to date.

I do have one key investor who has made three separate investments in my company, ParentTV, over the past six years, and each time it was a respectful and supportive process with fair and reasonable terms for both of us. I wish some investors would understand what happens to a founder when it’s respectful and supportive and how much it leaves you as the founder wanting to honour that support and trust. This investor and his belief in me and our mission has been one of my driving factors on the days getting out of bed to keep going seemed too much. Whenever things went really south over the years, he would call me with his first question being, “Are you okay?” He never asked or brought up if his investment was okay.

It’s such a motivating factor to want to do your best for both yourself and those who have backed and cared about you and your vision.

I was a sole woman founder with the added responsibility of raising three kids while trying to build a global business and process, understand and heal a lot of my childhood trauma that imprinted a story in me that was playing out again, right in front of my eyes.

Going on the journey of raising capital brought that to light for me in a way I didn’t see coming until it hit me in the face over and over, and the only way I could survive it was to get curious enough to start asking myself why do I keep ending up here. For the last three years, I have been seeing a psychologist every month without fail who has been there with me every step of the way as I worked to unpack what was behind all of what kept unfolding. The best decision I ever made.

Without going into the detailed story (we’ll leave that for another day) of unpacking the impact of financial trauma I experienced growing up and how that was playing out in how I was showing up as an unconscious part of my capital-raising efforts, I do want to share about a movement I recently got involved with which, at its core, exists to try and address some of these challenges often experienced by women founders starting out.

As I sat with all I had experienced, one thing I knew was I needed connection and a community I felt safe with to keep going. What a startup asks of you is beyond human some days, and it’s something you cannot do alone. Without the support of a very small group of people who have been there in my darkest days, I would not have made it through the past six years.

I had known of a movement called Coralus (formerly SHEeo) and had touched in and out of it over the years, but I never fully explored what it was about and the people involved as I was so busy surviving; it just felt like another too good to be true idea.

Earlier this year, I received an invitation to an event in Adelaide where the founder, Vicki Saunders, was flying over from Canada for a 2-day retreat. Something about the invite said, “Sam (that’s me, by the way), I think these are your people.” I deliberated for weeks as to whether I should go or not, as I hate wasting my time, but I decided to take a risk and show up.

I sometimes think I was accidentally invited because I was on some old email list I should not have been on as I wasn’t an active member of the community, but things have a way of working themselves out.

To cut a long story short, I found myself in the middle of a group of women who had been working for years to create a new way of supporting women with funding, particularly in the early stage of business. This emerged from what seemed to be a shared experience and shared trauma not so different from mine.

As I showed up to this rather intimate event, only seeing one familiar face, it felt like trusting anyone new in business was a lot for me at the time. It was a very emotional decision for me to go as I had nearly given up all hope to ever attempt or recommend to anyone to go down a capital raising path due to what I had experienced.

For two days, I sat with a group of women I did not know, and they softly and gently allowed me the space to share some pieces of my story when I was ready. I found safety in the business world, which I had never known before, with incredibly intelligent and experienced women from the business, government, and corporate worlds all coming together to say, ‘We know, we see you, and we’re working on it.’ There were moments where words didn’t even need to be spoken. There was a shared understanding of what was happening, and at the same time, a vision and plan for a different way.

Coralus has created a unique and respectful way to support women (and non-binary individuals) with funding to help their businesses grow. Having been through every different capital raising scenario available to businesses to date, I can say that I believe the Coralus way is a really safe, ‘dip your toe in the water’ way for women to begin their journey into raising capital. They are supported by an extraordinary group of women who are invested in nothing but their success and making sure they have a safe place to go when things go a bit sideways in business because when money is involved, at some point, it always does.

I get nothing out of being involved in this community except a safe place to land in the moments I need it with a group of women who just know, without a word needing to be spoken. The power of having someone to sit with, in the knowledge of what it takes to bring something into the world from nothing is a powerful gift.

Right now, Coralus has opened its doors for 2023 to invite a new cohort of founders seeking financial support for the next stage of their business growth. If this is you, what I can tell you from my experience is that dipping your toe into the Coralus way to explore what financing your business could look like will be the most respectful and supportive process you can begin with on this journey, whether you are successful or not.

I believe the key to raising capital (without the trauma) is firstly understanding your own personal relationship with money and the imprint of your family of origin’s relationship with money and how that is impacting you in ways you may not be conscious of. Interestingly, one of the members of Coralus who I have come to really respect, Gail Wong, ACC, originally came from investment banking and is now a financial trauma coach for women to help them understand their relationship with money and work towards creating the future they want.

With Coralus, you engage on your own terms.

To give you an idea of the scale of impact Coralus has had to date, there is over 11 million dollars funding women-led ventures in a regenerative cycle, creating expansive spillover benefits that could have never been imagined. This support has gone to over 120+ ventures making real progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

One way to look at Coralus is as a trauma-informed capital-raising process.

To qualify, you need:

• $50k-$2M in revenue in the past financial year
• To be majority-owned and led by women or nonbinary individuals
• To address at least one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

If getting access to capital is something you need right now, and this sounds interesting, the first step in the process is jumping on an info call to ask all the questions you like and find out how it works. This link is where you can sign up to join a call to find out more.

You can find out more about Coralus here.

I believe that what Coralus is doing is nothing short of inspiring. Not for a moment have I felt disrespected or unsafe, and for that reason, I support this incredible movement that is changing the game of business.

This post was first published on LinkedIn.