Watch the full video of our conversation on the Spread Great Ideas YouTube channel.

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Full Transcript of Our Conversation

Introduction to Demian Voorhagen

00:01.10 – Brian David Crane

Please welcome Demian Vorhagen. I’m sure I’m saying that wrong apologies in advance. Not a native Dutch speaker. He is the Dutch guy which profitable growing tech companies call when they want to speed up their growth.

He’s the consigliere or the fractional head of growth behind the scenes advising them on what to do and not to do when it comes to improving their p and ls so he’s had thousands of phone calls with everybody from small businesses to B2B to B2C, from mobile apps to fast-moving consumer goods and he gets it asked. To come in behind the scenes and tell them how to unpack problems. fix what’s broken or better yet. How to improve what’s already working for him. He’s got a pretty interesting background. He’s served a lot of different things. We’re going to get in on the call. In terms of his like different skill sets I’ve known him since last year when we met in the Netherlands. He’s interested in Ai finance crypto and a lot of things that I’m interested in as well. So I’m looking forward to chatting with him. Damien thanks for making time cool.

The Journey to Becoming a Fractional Head of Growth

01:08.11 – Demian Voorhagen

Thanks for having me Brian.

01:12.48 – Brian David Crane

All right? So you want to just give a quick background, quick summary in terms of how you got to this part of being this fractional head of growth.

01:23.61 – Demian Voorhagen

Sure, I was born and raised in and around Amsterdam, the Netherlands. My past essentially started studying management economics and law. I did a minor in entrepreneurship. I thought that was a pretty cool thing so I ended up working in the start and scale up scene. So I worked at a couple of starting scale lobs that were growing with funding typically and it was always kind of tech marketplace, Software as a Service related businesses, and I started more in kind of sales roles.

01:59.28 – Demian Voorhagen

And from there on, I really got a hang off of data. I was really interested in the data kind of things analytics. So I moved more to sort of marketing analytics roles and from there more into a product owner role at another startup.
I project myself so I had a marketing agency. I’ve rented out virtual assistants that were located offshore. I’ve done forex trading and algorithmic crypto trading and in the end I thought well. I’ve got a bit of sales experience marketing. I’ve seen a couple of companies and I felt that I was still lacking technical knowledge. So I thought about how to get more technical knowledge as well and I ended up choosing artificial intelligence.

So I also did a bachelor’s and a Master’s in AI, which says it makes a lot of sense but I started this like 8 years ago and so back then when I did AI a lot of people were like AI. Okay, what is that and you know how that is going to be useful, and now looking back it. Yeah, everybody’s like oh of course you did AI. That makes a lot of sense. AI is the new thing you know and currently I run a software company where we make trading infrastructure for crypto funds and crypto ETFs.

Expanding Skill Set and Embracing AI

03:25.77 – Demian Voorhagen

Very niche thing to do and I do that a part of my time and a part of my time I spent, basically. Yeah, let’s call it a fractional Co-founder, Head of Growth, Advisor, Right Hand. The person you call when you’re in panic mode and the person that helps you, and growth mode as well.

03:45.16 – Brian David Crane

I think it’s interesting in your recounting of your story there that it sounded to me like you started in Data Analytics. So you’re looking at from a Math-based or let’s say from a numbers-based perspective. What’s working or what’s not working and then that led into like a product ownership role where you’re then able to basically say okay, cool like I know what we should do because the data tells us to do this and instead of me serving as a consultant or an advisor, I’m actually going to own the product and make sure it gets implemented.

04:04.67 – Demian Voorhagen

Me.

Approach to Consulting and Growth Strategy

04:20.40 – Brian David Crane

Is that right?

04:22.67 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, it so happened to work out that way..

04:26.13 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, so when somebody calls you up or you’re involved in sharing. I don’t know but when somebody says I need your help and we need it, we need you to come in as this Head of Growth. What’s the first thing you do or what do you like sitting down looking at? Their traffic from an organic standpoint are you looking at their sales like what do you want to see.

The Discovery Process and Identifying Business Needs

04:50.66 – Demian Voorhagen

I mean so it always starts with a conversation right? So We have an introduction call or that’s called a discovery call and we basically look at okay, do you actively experience any problems because typically and that’s the interesting part is that, kind of my best clients are the ones that are not really experiencing problems. So everything is fine and they just so happen to run into me through one way or the other. And they think oh well, it might actually be interesting to give this guy a go. And then we just start tweaking things based on things that I find and it really increases the growth rate of the company. But typically where I start is okay, what are you currently doing? Are you experiencing any problems or is there a certain direction where you want to go, where you see problems occurring? Or what do you feel is currently holding you back. That’s typically kind of the starting point and then I really started looking at the company in a holistic way. So what the website says, what the copy says, and what is the funnel that someone goes through? How was sales done? How is marketing done? What are operations doing like what is the go-to market strategy? Some of my clients, some people even hire me as a pre-company entity like okay I have this idea.

06:18.10 – Demian Voorhagen

And I know you have a lot of relevant experience like can you help me out a couple of hours a week? Like a paid co-founder so that I make sure that I do the right things. Some already have everything started but are kind of in the looking for product market fit phase, so they have some revenue and one of the other clients that I also have a case study on my website very briefly. I’ve been working there for about 7 months now and we went from 21k to 55k monthly recurring revenue so they were really already quite established I would say.

06:49.68 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

06:54.26 – Demian Voorhagen

And me coming in making a lot of tweaks kind of just kick started more growth for them.

07:01.00 – Brian David Crane

Do you come in and do you have to sign an NDA and non-disclosure agreement or something to be able for these, like let’s say the B2C mobile app company for them to open the kimono for them to open up and say this is all that we’re doing like how do you?

07:18.93 – Brian David Crane

Yeah I mean, I can imagine. Let me say this in a different way. So I’m sitting there. I meet you. We had a chat. I look at this and I say I’d love for Demian to come in and take a look. I have 2 concerns. One is what’s confidential in terms of what’s shared? And then also, if It’s a personnel problem, so like I’m not necessarily looking for a consultant. I’m actually looking for somebody who’s going to like to implement, and I think you also do implement as far as personnel like if you balance the privacy element over here, in terms of what they’re willing to share with you and then also balance them, like you actually get involved in the trenches. You’re not just handing them a PDF or recommendations, is that right?

07:54.29 – Demian Voorhagen

Anything.

Customized Consulting and Implementation

08:05.22 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, so I usually do it and it usually ends up being one of the 2 packages I would say. The most purchased one or most used one is where we basically have a call every other week, and we basically discuss the progress. The current issues. What are we going to do? Are we going to do anything that you run into? You get a couple of hours for me doing research on strategies things that are relevant for me to give proper advice introductions networking. Kind of things and you get unlimited texting access through Whatsapp, Telegram, whatever you want and for a lot of people that’s good enough because most value is found in the kind of the ideas that I have in the ways that I challenge their thought process.

But there’s a small percentage of clients where I also work a couple of hours a week. I would say, more in management and strategy. So I help them essentially get the basics up and running. Typically I would prefer at least for them to have a budget that I can use as well. So I can get some basic things going and from there on get a freelancer or get someone into a position that really has time in hours to spend on it and they would simply report to me, or to me and the founder or director. So really to move in the men’s hours and get things going faster.

09:37.15 – Brian David Crane

And so in the second scenario are you coming in? Are you primarily interfacing with these companies through texting through Whatsapp? Or are you actually in there? Let’s say they’re using a project management software ClickUp, Trello, Asana. Are you in there with them like how deep are you going in that in that scenario where yes, you’re bringing in somebody to report to both you and let’s say the CEO .

10:11.33 – Demian Voorhagen

And you..

Balancing Consultancy with Technical Expertise

10:12.53 – Brian David Crane

But how like how? what does it look like? Are like are you in the weeds with them.

10:16.78 – Demian Voorhagen

I would say it depends, and I think that’s also kind of the power of what I do. I don’t really have a template which makes my work very shitty on one hand and very powerful on one hand. So there’s not really one answer I have there. It’s kind of, for example I could..

10:28.60 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

10:35.14 – Demian Voorhagen

Go into a project management tool. But if it takes me like a couple of hours a week to just keep up-to-date reading everything that’s probably not going to make much sense. It would be easier for me to have like 1 to 3 people that are running things that I can just have a brief chat or update from. But for example, one of my client, it was a solo founder that hired me and I said well okay, you know it makes sense to have some project management tool. We went for asana because I’ve more experience there. I got some things going, I got a budget and then I got a couple of freelancers that I also onboarded into Asana and I’m just checking their work and they’re essentially reporting to me. And that’s kind of the management strategy work that I do so I look at what we should be doing. How are things going. I check the data, I check the revenue, I check the churn metrics and a lot of other metrics that we divine as most relevant and then I make sure that the people get to work do the right work, and influence those metrics in the way that we want them.

11:48.49 – Brian David Crane

And what do you do? What do you charge for both of these things if you give both scenarios a ballpark? Whether it’s the biweekly calls or the more in-depth.

11:59.28 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, so the subscription with essentially, the biweekly call, a couple of hours a month on me researching things and unlimited texting. Currently it’s just like a fixed monthly rate of a thousand euros a month that’s currently fixed and it essentially just goes up every couple of clients that I get and, if I have and a couple of clients going. And I’m really overbooked and the more experienced I get the price you’d get, so I started at a lower price and put it at because for most clients, they have that paid back very fast as well. So it’s usually a very good deal and.

12:29.49 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, it makes sense.

12:44.66 – Demian Voorhagen

Unless you’re of course pre-revenue, because then the value add is a bit different. For the fixed amount of hours a week that comes with it, it’s typically more of a custom made deal. So usually it’s a fixed rate and a variable rate as well. And that depends on the kind of the company stage the incentives that I have it could be you know a percentage of revenue a percentage of the margin made. We could watermark at the current revenue and if we know that for example, there’s no commercial activities happening. We know that increases in revenue are definitely from my side.

So that typically requires a bit more of custom deal I would say, but I like having some sort of variable in there if possible because it also kind of gives me a skin in the game. It gives me a bit of upside as well. But usually there’s at least a fixed rate to to cover my expenses because, I get a lot of requests like hey, can you do this work one day a week? And we just give you equity which is typically nice but I mean if you have like a lot of people offering that at some point, I’m like yeah, well that’s really cool, but I also want to pay my rent or mortgage. I have food to pay so at some point the average didn’t charge and yeah, live.

14:08.34 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, cash is the best equity sometimes.

14:16.92 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, or at least a hybrid form of that, if possible yeah or..

14:19.22 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, so when people are coming to you in my business experience. Ah, we have a similar skill set.

14:36.11 – Brian David Crane

And I would just say that like a lot of times when I look at this, I want to have skin in the game and I want to basically say, I don’t want to trade time for let’s say hours for money, I would like to have upside and especially because I think there’s an information, asymmetry and then what I mean by that is when you look at a project you go,okay, cool I know if we do one 2 3 it’s going to probably result in this amount of growth. And if I don’t know like you, you would say I think I can bring you this amount of growth and it’s probably worth 50% of that if I can double your.. Let’s say in the next twelve months and so, yeah. I think you wind up in an interesting dynamic where you’re both friendly with.

15:15.31 – Demian Voorhagen

You what?

15:23.93 – Brian David Crane

The brand of the company. The person that you’re talking with and then also you don’t want to necessarily give away all of the secret sauce. I don’t want to call it that but like you don’t want to basically sit down and go here’s everything I would do and in order to justify, getting the deal done. That’s part of the reason I think why you want the soft sell. You want people to come to you rather than you’re trying to reach out and convince people of your value is that right.

15:48.24 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah I would say that’s that’s partially right? I don’t think I have that kind of secret sauce thing so much because I don’t really have templated work, right? So for example, the the 1k month subscription

15:59.81 – Brian David Crane

Ah..

16:05.65 – Demian Voorhagen

A lot of coaches or consultants offer like a 6 month track or a 1 year track where you just do one payment right? So you pay 15k to 20k and then you have someone for 6 months, I just offer a subscription on a monthly basis. If you feel that I’m not delivering value on an ongoing basis. We don’t need to work together anymore because I feel that I can provide ongoing value, and I don’t have one secret sauce. You can just throw me in any kind of situation.

16:30.86 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

16:41.52 – Demian Voorhagen

And I can be innovative in a way that a lot of people wouldn’t think of or at least be very efficient in some way so in that sense, I think that I see that a little bit differently and I like working that way. But I think this in terms of a business model, it’s usually a bit of a worse deal on my side but this is a way that I like working.

17:03.93 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, these people become friends of yours as well, right?

17:07.45 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, usually as I said, a lot of people really like that they have me basically on Whatsapp so a lot of these people I talk to them daily or every couple of days and they just send me like what do you think of? Should I do this or that or? Also just small questions right? Because you’re really kind of a fractional cofounder in that sense. So you really become kind of closely integrated in the business and you’re the first guy that they typically send a message to if they’re thinking about something. I’m looking for this tool. Do you know something useful there? Or do you know anyone there? Or do you know someone that does this? I’m looking for that. You just have a lot of brief contact through Whatsapp.

17:57.46 – Brian David Crane

So let’s talk about tools for a minute. So what? What are some of the times when I met you, you were keen on a variety of different AI tools. Do you want to share some of those? That you’re using..

The Role of AI and Tools in Consultancy

18:14.20 – Brian David Crane

In your work.

18:14.52 – Demian Voorhagen

I mean, I think one of the most used is still ChatGPT because it just offers a lot of different functionalities and it is. Basically, it’s able to take multiple roles. So for example, the last couple of weeks I’ve been trialing a Linkedin tool. That helps you with your personal branding through AI and yes, everything is with AI nowadays or AI is the core functionality, but it was really not that impressive because when you recognize how creativity works and how it does things. Typically it’s quite easy to see when another tool is basically just a ChatGPT extension. So for a lot of things I know that there’s a tool out there but it’s typically based on ChatGPT anyway, and then I think like well, I can prompt the tool better myself and just work with the core functionality right?

So it could be for writing content but also to find other tools or to find specific websites competitors a go-to-mark plan. Typically ChatGPT is able to offer a lot of inspiration but at the same time, I wouldn’t base all my work on it and I consider it more of a kind of a sparring partner than that I would literally copy paste. Whatever it spits out so I would never post a blog on my website or any of my client’s websites. That is generated by ChatGPT and not edited by a content writer. For example, I see it as kind of a way of extension but not really a replacement.

19:52.26 – Brian David Crane

Makes sense. Yeah.

19:58.38 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, so I like that analogy of it being a sparring partner. for the B2C mobile app. Do you want to go through a little bit of what you did there and what you’ve done over the past 8months? To help them basically double their MRR like what? On your website, you talk about – I think a content strategy, pricing strategy, AB testing, a couple of their funnels you want to share. But what you’ve done there or what you’ve helped lead. Let’s say.

Achieving Growth for B2C Mobile App

20:29.31 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, sure so when I came in it. It was a solo founder. They did 21k and more a month which is very impressive. I would say for a solo founder doing most of or basically every work on his own and so. I came in contact with him basically kind of to kind of a lucky hit and referral and I said, well, I think the app is already growing nicely and you’re not doing so much, and I think we can really kick start that so we said, if you say so, I’d be interested and considering the revenue that he was generating already, working with me should be returned. Investment quite fast right? because with a couple of improvements. You should be able to have a profitable payback on what I cost so we started and essentially I Just do a whole holistic review of the business, right?

As I said before, what is happening in terms of sales marketing operations? But in this case because it’s an app and it’s very user-centered, more than a lot of other tools, I would say you really look at okay. So what are the flaws of the app? It’s a freemium as well. So that kind of changes the dynamics as well. Instead of people cannot use it, but they can use a trial, but people can also use this app for free. So we looked at things like okay, how is the pricing currently in the market? Whether the trial offers trial benefits, there wasn’t much of a content strategy. So I got someone on board to work on that. I got someone on board to do the actual content as well.

We set up a community for people to connect with each other, and I got other conversion rate optimization gurus to take a look at the app. I looked into strategic partnerships, and we basically did a lot of different tweaks at the same time. And you really saw that the growth trajectory went from kind of going upward but it really went like it curved upwards like one to two months after I started. I’m not sure if it’s a mirror but maybe that way or that way.

22:55.62 – Brian David Crane

We’d say a hockey stick.

22:56.28 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, hockey stacked a lot a lot more for sure. Yeah.

23:02.88 – Brian David Crane

Congratulations. Yeah, and this is also one of the this is also one of the clients or one of the projects where their business was okay, already right? They weren’t necessarily looking for you or someone like you and..

23:15.11 – Demian Voorhagen

Real. Yeah..

23:17.65 – Brian David Crane

And it happens organically and they’re cool like, I like the man. I like what he seems to and let’s say under promise and over deliver and I imagine, I don’t know if this is true. So tell me if I’m wrong that your funnel.

23:30.56 – Demian Voorhagen

Sure.

23:34.53 – Brian David Crane

For your work looks something like you want to start people at maybe this every other week call and then as you get to know them their business, their problems, you potentially say okay, cool I can help you more in depth or actually, I’m just happy keeping it at a biweekly call level. Like I don’t know if you actually bring somebody in and go right to? Yeah, the fractional, so the fractional Head of Growth.

24:04.33 – Demian Voorhagen

So in this case I started with, I believe it was 4 hours a week and then we did that for a while because like he was a bit nervous right? Which makes sense because I was essentially the first person ever for him to cost any money. And I wasn’t very cheap, either. Not even for 4 hours and I said well I’m not cheap, but you will know very soon if it’s going to make a return or not and if at any point you feel like it’s not worth it.

You know we can just cancel it. I don’t want to work if it doesn’t provide any value anyway, so it either has to work from both ends or doesn’t work and we just accept that, and then I think two months in, he saw the first of the first things kicking in. We essentially already made profit on what I cost and he was like okay well, can we increase hours because it was going quite well and then we increased you to one day a week which is very cool, but at the same time, I’m also thinking about the amount of limitations that I have right?

Because I cannot do a lot of clients which is also something I would kind of like to solve at some point. But then again, you come back to the point of it’s not really templated work and it really requires a strategic inside as well. So that makes it a tough cookie.

25:29.60 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, and how do you think about this work relative to demo trading? And what I mean by that, are you looking at projects and people who come in and say this would be..

25:30.13 – Demian Voorhagen

To do so..

25:49.49 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, this would be something I would love to get involved with and maybe go full time on if the opportunity was right. Or like are you done or in other words, are you done with demo trading? Or is this like a creative endeavor? Or is it like an actual career transition into something else.

26:10.62 – Demian Voorhagen

I’m not sure yet so far I really like doing both things. So initially I was doing demo trading pretty much full-time and at some point I got into contact with some people, and. it kind of naturally started rolling, where I just did you know a couple of these calls every month to help out some people, and then it was like okay, well maybe I should tie this kind of to a personal brand and just offer it more as kind of a service. Because I can do it on the site anyway. And I noticed that it really made me a better entrepreneur in my own company as well, because you see different problems from different companies. It kind of challenges your mind. You also network a lot, right? So that also gives you kind of a leverage on your learning. And I call it a kind of cross learning earning, right? So I noticed that if I have more clients, I’m typically better able to help each individual client as well because I learn from every client at the same time and I really like building something myself as well. So in this way I kind of have. Yeah, a big baby that I partially built myself and a couple of a bit smaller babies. So to say where I’m very involved in their growth and they matter personally to me as well.

27:38.33 – Demian Voorhagen

But I’m not the key person building it, but more facilitating the building and the growth there, and doing those two together has been really nicer than I expected initially.

27:52.60 – Brian David Crane

That’s cool. Okay, yeah, so inside of demo, then you’re more hands-on? I take it. I don’t know for lack of a better way to put it but are you actually doing it? Are you coding? What does that look like if 50% of your time is over there like what does that look like? That you’re actually doing on a day-to-day basis.

28:13.81 – Demian Voorhagen

So I’m more of the commercial guy and so I actually met my co-founder, and at the study of AI. So we can actually both code and I can also code, right? So if you do AI, you’re pretty much assumed to learn Python, and I think most people having done a mastery in AI have a solid base of Python themselves, but my cofounder was really more interested in developing the technical side.

And I was never interested that much in being a developer. It was more interesting to learn about. Okay so how does a developer work? What do they think? How do I communicate with them? And I can jump pretty much in a sales call. Someone can tell me. What their technical requirements are for a project and I can pretty much estimate quite well if this is very easy to do. It’s going to be a medium sized project or okay, well this is going to require serious funding a big team and quite some years, and having that skill in a call makes a lot of sense, and has been quite useful to date. And on a technical level help. a lot of my clients were typically the commercial guy and isn’t really able to do that much. But yeah, so to answer your question I’m more of the commercial side, which is literally everything from sales, marketing operations, sales calls, these kinds of things. Yep exactly.

29:50.80 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, the money coming in the door. Let’s say yeah so then with your if you have crypto and demo trading over here. Although it’s demo trading AI that would be clear for those listening, and then you have also in crypto at a meta level, a tremendous amount of projects that are launching have tokens that are nominally associated with AI. Are you dabbling at all in that world in terms of what’s happening on chain? I don’t know let’s call it Fetch AI, AI Tao Bittensor. I don’t know if you’re familiar with some of these projects. But yeah, like are you also are you watching this? You got a masters, you got a masters in AI. You have a background in crypto. You’re working with like institutional funds. In terms of demo trading. But like are you watching what’s going on as well over here with what’s going onchain with these AI tokens.

30:57.98 – Demian Voorhagen

I mean slightly but not as much as most people think I’m so the old crypto thing that we do for funds. It’s more about buying and selling assets and delivering an efficient infrastructure.

31:00.94 – Brian David Crane

Okay.

31:14.18 – Demian Voorhagen

Then it is really about specific crypto knowledge. So I personally liked crypto space, and mostly because I think these kinds of things really push adoption and innovation also in other markets. So I’m equally a fan of for example, Tesla especially in the beginning stage, not because it’s tesla. But rather because I think that the world has to move to a place where electric driving is becoming more of the core functionality. And a company like Tesla is really pushing that forward on a global level. So I think crypto on a global level is really going to level up the whole financial industry and the way that we work with blockchains, and with money and immutable databases, and there’s a lot of different things.

Push there that I think is good but on the individual level I don’t care that much about this specific project or that specific project. And I’m not following that much because there’s just so many projects to follow. I’ve done day trading before in the Forex space, and I’m kind of the person that if I do something, I really really do it. and I kind of lost the rest of my life doing these things right?

I just remember going to the cinema and actually having trading positions open. Then during the movie like every 30 minutes I check because there was a market opening or an event happening. I wanted to check my positions and after the movie you have to check your positions and adjust your stop loss, takes profits.

And it kind of starts really become something that you just breathe, and that’s not something that I want to keep doing. When I’m working on projects, I can work and make an impact and if I don’t work, I can just think about it if I like to, so typically a lot of times I’m taking a shower walking somewhere, I’m thinking about one of my clients which is also one of the reasons why I can’t have 30 clients at the same time.

Because each and everyone requires a minimum amount of brain space. But if I’m out on a day with friends or doing something with family, and I can also let go of things, and that’s something that I kind of watched and that’s kind of what I lost trading and.

33:48.80 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, be present.

33:56.60 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, it’s essentially the same with crypto and these new projects because you’re chasing this new project there. You have to read the news there, and then there’s kind of a pump and dump there, and it’s just a forever flow of information and things happening and it’s just not something that I want to prioritize in my life, at this point..

34:15.44 – Brian David Crane

Yeah I get it. I’ve gone through a similar dynamic I understand what you said very very well. and I do like that I think that crypto is a forcing function. Let’s say smooth out the rough edges of the global financial system or..

34:19.62 – Demian Voorhagen

Now.

34:32.53 – Brian David Crane

At least deal with the rent seeking that takes place and in the financial system in terms of the amount of money that is taken. Whether it’s money transmission, whether it’s credit card fees, these kinds of things like crypto have an ability to kind of attack those at a global level I think.

34:54.25 – Demian Voorhagen

Absolutely and it’s actually interesting because every bank in the Netherlands or this every bank that is quite big has dedicated people working on blockchains. So a lot of people think that the banks are kind of getting rid of crypto, and getting rid of you know trying to do everything but they see what the innovation can do there as well, and there’s still a big difference between crypto and blockchain right? Because blockchain is not necessarily a currency that you can do something with, but the whole idea of blockchain which is fostered by crypto is something that all the banks are working with right now.

So that’s still kind of an innovation pushed through and making an impact and a lot of people are okay, kill the banks and everything is bad. And they’re not doing anything in terms of innovation but you see, that they are doing a lot there and a lot of banks. They want to actually offer crypto for their clients as well. But it’s just simply the regulations that don’t allow them to and so. Is not something that it’s necessarily their choice but more kind of a result of an overlaying institute in Europe yeah, kind of derailing here. We could talk about this specific topic for hours as well. I guess.

36:11.59 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, so..

36:18.32 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, we don’t. I mean yeah, it’s going to go where the conversation isn’t going to go, but I think on the topic of blockchain like when you say the banks are adopting it, you’re talking about a distributed ledger, that’s the core technology that they’re quite interested in, and then when it comes to offering crypto to their customers or clients they run into regulatory issues in terms of not being able to comply either. They can’t comply with the regulations, or the regulations aren’t clear so therefore they don’t want to touch it. And then they don’t want to custody the funds or custody the assets and then don’t offer it to mirror you. Let’s say is that right? Yeah, so what is it like when you think about new businesses?

37:01.46 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, exactly.

37:11.17 – Brian David Crane

That you do businesses that you would like to work with in terms of being a fractional Head of Growth is it predominantly like B2C? Is it predominantly B2B? Is it SaaS? Is it E-Comm like who’s kind of in your sweet spot?

37:30.29 – Demian Voorhagen

I’m open to talk with a lot of companies and typically after the first call we know if there’s going to be something that we can do together or not but so far most of the work. Has been in the more the B2B space I would say, although as we said the mobile app that got most of the revenue increase or at least more than doubled in half a year, that’s actually B2C, but yeah I would say that the companies at least should be able to push some sort of innovation or kind of a strategy. So typically, it ends up being kind of a tech company, a marketplace software as a surface, writing something involving software or coding because there’s a lot of different choices that you can make. And the more choices you can make the better you need to make these choices as well, right? So the exact opposite would kind of be starting a bakery down the street. I mean there’s a very limited amount of things you can do from an innovating perspective or a proper strategy. It usually ends up being kind of in tech space at least and so far most of my experience has been early stage so pre-founding just after founding and the B2C app is currently the..

38:50.33 – Brian David Crane

Makes sense.

39:02.94 – Demian Voorhagen

The biggest one in terms of revenue I think that’s true approximately, right? So typically there’s less innovation done if you get close to the 100k MRR point and beyond. I still think it would be interesting to work in that space, but my expertise has really been below that.

39:24.25 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, and when some of these people book a call with you are they also possibly looking for funding or money and why I say that is because I think it’d be pretty easy for you to transition. I mean coming from the states having worked in Silicon Valley, transitioning into like an entrepreneur in residence, position inside of a fund where the fund says, okay, cool. We have deployed 100 million across these different portfolio companies. We want Demian to look at all. All the portfolio companies come in and, possibly help them. So yeah, when is the transition? Or maybe there is no transition to you managing money or working for a fund. Let’s say..

Exploring Funding Options for Startups

40:16.69 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, yeah, yeah,so I raised funding myself as well and through multiple methods. So I also experienced there I would say that considering the current clients that I have it makes most sense. To work with companies that are Pre-Seed or Seed stage because I just have less experience working with Series A and B beyond, and I would still be interested to see what I can do there but obviously the whole game changes from there. But yeah I mean there’s a lot of funds in the Pre-Seed, Seed stage, a lot of Fintech AI related companies. Where yeah so I definitely think that would be interesting.

41:02.79 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, but it’s not your sweet spots, Pre-seed, Seed. Let’s say and just cut me a cheque or let’s come up with a compensation structure that is aligned and..

41:10.86 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah.

41:21.81 – Brian David Crane

I don’t really want to put money into your Pre-Seed or your Seed round right? I’m going to put sweat equity in and you’re going to pay me for it. In some way or another.

41:29.27 – Demian Voorhagen

Like yeah, so far..

41:34.82 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, is your expertise more in paid marketing? Is it more on SEO? I came to you and I said, what are you good at marketing? Because I think partially what I hear in your story is, an interest in psychology and an interest in like humans, let’s say choice and why people pick to do certain things. It’s partially when you were describing AI, where you wanted to learn.

41:59.92 – Demian Voorhagen

Picture sort described.

42:06.35 – Brian David Crane

You wanted to learn why people.. How do you phrase it, something like it’s useful to learn, how to write in Python but you didn’t necessarily want to be a Python Developer, and also like how these tools could be used to kind of better people’s lives or or used in a more intelligent way so.

42:14.57 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, and also.

42:22.25 – Demian Voorhagen

Used gift. So..

42:26.29 – Brian David Crane

I’m circling around the question. I think the question is one of you? Got to talk to myself into a circle on this..

42:27.62 – Demian Voorhagen

I think the question.

Finding the Right Growth Strategy

42:41.76 – Brian David Crane

If you want to take it go ahead. I don’t know if you got a question out of there but that was a word salad. Sorry yes, please? Thank you.

42:43.42 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, so expertise more on organic or paid for example? So my answer typically is going to annoy half of the people and other half is really going to love it. But..

42:53.91 – Brian David Crane

And..

43:02.31 – Demian Voorhagen

I really try to be on top of everything there. So I want to make sure that I have a basic to slightly advanced understanding of each and every one of those things. So I know a little bit about SEO right? So I can check what the ranking is of a website. I could do a rough analysis if your website is really shitty in terms of keyword strategy. Does it make sense like are you outcompeting with people at the moment? Where do people come from? Is it from keywords and should we focus on that? But I also have experience with bait ads also because I’ve had my own marketing agency.

So I’ve actually set up Google ads myself. I have built Facebook campaigns and retargeting campaigns and Linkedin campaigns and so I’ve experienced there as well and I think that that is very valuable because I can go through everything on a basic level and look at okay, what can we do from an organic point of view and what can we do from a paid point of view because typically both are important if I get going with a client. We want to look at organic. But improving your organic game, is typically like a mid to long game strategy. So that’s something that’s really nice to do. We typically at least do it on the side or make it really a priority, but especially, the bait marketing is.

Typically a better way to to grow if possible because you can very easily determine. Okay, what is it going to cost to acquire a user? How much do I need to spend to get that user in and very fast, you’ll be able to find out if it is profitable to do. Or typically rather the question is how long is it going to take for that customer to bring back its own ad spend and then we want to minimize that time, so that we can roll over the same funds again right? So we want to spend money, get a customer and get them to pay. Get that money back as soon as possible, so we can use that to get another customer and the better you can do that for example as well. Funds will definitely look at this and they even have KPIs where if it takes you too long for a customer to get paid back.

They will really not invest in your business, so that I put ties in your question with do you work with companies with funding. Some of my clients come to me and say well hey, should I raise funding? And what are the implications of that because it’s not only what you need as a minimum requirement.

45:48.50 – Demian Voorhagen

But it also changes the way that you run your company right? Because typically the moment you raise funding from a VC, at least if we’re talking about a VC in that case, you’re really building a company ready to exit, and a lot of people like building a company where they really just prefer, growing organically, having a profit, having a cash cow or a lifestyle business. I spoke to people that think well, okay, I can use funding to faster get to the lifestyle or cash cow business that I want, and in the end they get disputes with investors and.

46:13.33 – Brian David Crane

Yep.

46:24.56 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

46:26.25 – Demian Voorhagen

It really becomes once Joe and really because it’s just a different way of working and it’s something you need to account for as well.

46:33.41 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, I think you’re I think you’re right. When you take on somebody else’s Money, there is like implicit in that agreement if they want to return on capital and they are not super interested in you. Building a lifestyle business from that point forward, right? They’re not super interested in you having a life. You can have a cash cow of a business. They can be on board with that, but they look at it and they go okay, cool like I would. I think at some point you would like to sell this cash cow for business, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken on funding to grow it and so we need to kind of again gear for an exit and you look at this and go. Well, I make X amount of money per year and I get to do whatever I want to on my own time limit, and I don’t really care about about exiting and needing to deal with that right? like it’s like a divergence in a way.

47:26.94 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah,it might be kind of a hybrid or different scenario. If you do like a friend’s family full or a potential angel around, right? Because some companies just need funding to get going because they need to develop a minimum amount of software to get going so they might need to raise like 200k. Once they just get the software going and from there they can pretty much grow organically and then, friends and family or these specific angels. Okay, with just having dividend payouts or they even have an agreement, I’ve seen that multiple times where the Angels just bought out a couple of times later right? So they put up an investment they raised 200k.

48:18.10 – Demian Voorhagen

And then a couple of years later they just get bought out with a multiplier and but typically that’s not really what a FC is interested in. So it also really depends where you raise I guess another example would be with a strategic partner. Where you can really enhance each other’s offer for example or do a combined offering. There’s also a very different way of raising than simply with a VC that is just on. Okay, we need to get money money money. go go go and typically FC have a higher risk profile as well. So. It’s more okay for them to try and maximize growth and fail in the process and we’re typically an angel or your friends and family. They’re okay with you taking less risk as long as you make it and FC, they just assume that like 90 – 95% is going out of business anyway. So we might want to push the gas on every one of them so that most die. But if they make it they’re going to make it big and that’s what they usually go for.

49:19.37 – Brian David Crane

It makes sense. Yeah, so if somebody’s interested in finding an Angel. They don’t have friends and family to raise the 200k they’re in the Netherlands. They’re in Europe. What’s the Angel network to you? You also had said previously in the podcast. You’ve done a couple of different fundraising rounds and done it in different forms and fashion. So like yeah, how does somebody do an Angel round if they’re Dutch?

49:49.20 – Demian Voorhagen

I mean it really depends on what exactly you want to raise and everything, but I would say generally there’s the niche that you’re working in. There’s typically like community websites or investors. Websites or communities that you can go to a lot of them allow you to pitch as well. Sometimes free, sometimes you have to pay a fee because they simply get too many applications or they have some sort of a selection process. But there’s a lot of lists of Angels around and a lot of people have Angel investors or something like that in their profile, so you can just find them on Linkedin and yet at least getting the basic list of a couple of investors is typically quite easy, I would say if possible.

It would always be nice if you can get a referral to get someone in your network, because those are usually closer. The fact that you can find an Angel quite easily, by definition means that they are quite easy to find so you’re not going to be the only person sending them a message.

51:00.20 – Brian David Crane

Pitching them.

51:01.28 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, and a lot of people tend to forget that they’re thinking like okay, Wow I have this really unique thing I found this person so they must be willing to invest. But yeah, the easier you find a person, the more approachable they are. So by definition the more approachable they are because there’s a lot of people looking for funding. Always.

51:10.51 – Brian David Crane

Are.

51:20.77 – Demian Voorhagen

So yeah, if possible look for a bit of a harder way to to get to someone. Maybe it could be an introduction from someone, and there’s a lot of different ways to to go about it. I would say depending on the scenario where it’s definitely something I’ve talked with with some clients that we looked at.

51:34.34 – Brian David Crane

Makes sense.

51:40.25 – Demian Voorhagen

Also for example, if it makes sense. You could go for a crowdfunding route, but typically I would only recommend that if you have a product that your users actually want to fund, so crowdfunding typically doesn’t, For example to make it concrete if you’re an enterprise focused ah b two b business ah crowdfunding typically makes less sense because crowdfunding is used to get your first kind of inner group of users or your power users. Whereas if you have B2C concepts and or B2B in a Saas fashion, where you can just get a lot of entrepreneurs that you reach those are all investors that also use your product.

So the metrics are typically better from these user groups as well. Not necessary in terms of revenue but rather in terms of churn customer happiness. They tend to provide feedback easier. They’re more open for customer interviews because they’re both a user typically who wants or needs your product at the same time. They’re investors. So you want your product to improve for multiple reasons which is a very interesting proposition for a business that is able to raise that way.

52:59.54 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, and I think I like what you said there because I also think there’s something having been on both sides and when I say I’ve been on both sides at what I mean is you know I have a product that I love, let’s say it’s a coffee maker and somehow I’m on their email list and they do a crowdfunding campaign. I don’t care so much about that as a consumer. Let’s say I’m using an example versus I have a tool that I use in my business. And I know that tool if it was improved. It would make it so that I could do better in the business and I’m also much more willing to invest at a B2B level to help that business or help provide feedback that would like to share that business with my network.

And there’s some psychological concept there I don’t remember what the name of it is, but it’s like I know people who would happily spend hundreds thousands of dollars in their business honestly because I think there’s a clear ROI, or at least they conceptualize that they can make an ROI on it, versus being the thousand raving fans for the B2C. Coffee maker or the product that shows up on a kickstarter or go find me right.

54:14.29 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, exactly. and this is one of the things where I say that the work that I do is not so templated because for some businesses the crowdfunding makes sense for some. It doesn’t for some it could but it wouldn’t necessarily be the best way. It’s kind of you’re able to label it in a step like a function tree, where okay, do your users need the product as well? And you go yes, okay, interesting for crowdfunding but in the end making all these kind of decisions require just some kind of insight and that’s also why I think it’s like I probably have one of the best jobs ever that is never going to be automated by any kind of AI, because it requires you to cross so many things together and think outside the box often.

54:51.46 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

Demian’s Future in Consultancy and AI

55:07.14 – Demian Voorhagen

I feel pretty confident that I’m going to have a job for the next 50 years

55:10.71 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, problem solver I mean that’s really like because somebody comes to you with a problem and what I hear you say is okay, cool like I don’t, maybe how I said the problem to you is not the right problem, there problem is actually another one in this decision tree or in this as I’m as I’m starting with.

55:25.68 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, and I think AI is typically a very good solution if you have a very specific one.

55:28.20 – Brian David Crane

And yeah, you’re helping them think clearer in a way or at least think about it in a different way.

55:41.97 – Demian Voorhagen

Problem that you know the problem that you want an answer to. But for example, say that you’re asking an AI. Well, I want to increase my revenue so I want to run a Linkedin campaign help me think of content to run that campaign. But at the same time, you’re going to drive people to your website which is just a shitty copy and is not going to convert at all or your whole signup flow is just one big mess. It’s a conversion killer the AI is never going to think about. Okay I’m not going to say never.

56:16.10 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

56:16.56 – Demian Voorhagen

At this point the AI is not able to kind of make those kinds of inductions and deductions both ways, and it’s not going to be able to help you in such a generic broadway. Where a person is actually able to think okay, well what does this imply? Okay, well this question comes with assumptions. Okay, so what are the assumptions? and when the assumptions are there, and in the end you find out that your campaigns haven’t been working because your sales rep is just completely off with whatever he does, or something else is broken on the website or you’re just targeting the wrong group of people anyway.

Those are all things that you want to check and it just requires a person at this point and I know maybe at some point AI will be able to do all of these things but in the end I don’t see AI becoming a replacer rather than an extension anytime soon.

57:10.19 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, I think that’s well said. So as we cut like we’re coming up on an hour here, I think what would you like people to take from this and what I mean by that is so okay, cool. Like when I listen to you. As you’re trying to acquire more customers or clients or lead calls. Whatever the metric is that we’re going to use. Partially why we’re doing this podcast is you’re practicing. You’re practicing your messaging.

57:35.28 – Demian Voorhagen

I’m going to drink. Yeah.

57:45.61 – Brian David Crane

And I’d say at a higher level networking and Linkedin as you alluded to hasn’t necessarily worked as far as getting more of these calls or at least getting more of the types of calls that you want. So what is it that you think if you used your experience? And looked at this as a business problem. How do you grow your business if it’s not through Linkedin or how do you grow through it ? Let me give you an example. Is it through going on more podcasts? Is it on the speaker circuit? Is it writing a book? Yeah, what? What are you contemplating?

58:18.99 – Demian Voorhagen

Like yeah, it’s a good question. So I’ve done this service for quite a long time but I’ve never actually actively promoted it. So typically I did it for half a day to a day a week, essentially. Looking to scale it up to two days a week but I don’t have to at the same time. It’s just because I like doing it and so for me, it’s also figuring out a little bit. What works how do I get clients for this? As I think we also discussed privately.

58:44.00 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

58:55.45 – Demian Voorhagen

What do I even call this in one line right? I mean so we’ve covered an hour and a lot of things that I do and I basically call it a fractional cofounder fractional Head of Growth but before that it was actually kind of a startup consultant. The title is going to switch multiple times so I’m still also looking for the proper angle that covers exactly what it is that I do which is kind of hard because it’s so generic. I’ve done a lot of podcasts before but never about this topic specifically or about my own business in this way but I like doing podcasts so. It’s definitely something I would like to do a bit more as you said it’s also nice for networking and just chatting to people as well.

So yeah podcast is one thing I’ve thought about a book as well as you mentioned but coming back to the whole, I don’t know exactly how to template this or how to make a blueprint out of this I think a book is going to be very hard.

59:57.61 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

59:59.91 – Demian Voorhagen

Or you would really need to cover kind of what you do in a business and then doing a chapter on sales chapter on organic marketing, paid marketing is not really something I feel like doing right now, but yeah I think just doing a couple of podcasts and improving my Linkedin.

01:00:16.60 – Brian David Crane

Ohh..

01:00:19.61 – Demian Voorhagen

And potentially the website copy a bit further is very likely to be enough already for the goals that I have because the website. Yeah, to get like a couple of additional clients that I can really help with growth with something that I think is cool as well.

01:00:26.69 – Brian David Crane

To get to 2 days a week where you’re booked up.

01:00:39.28 – Demian Voorhagen

Because to be fair, the website that I have right now looks all right? and I built it myself in a couple of hours. I haven’t really spent a lot of time on a lot of these things because it hasn’t been so important and I always did it passively on the side.

01:00:57.96 – Brian David Crane

Waltz let me add one thing there. But also I think that there’s a contradiction and I don’t mean this in a negative way. But you don’t want the website to sell too much in the sense of you want somebody who.

01:00:58.52 – Demian Voorhagen

So it..

01:01:13.58 – Brian David Crane

Has listened to you, heard about you, been referred to you who is more keen to talk with you than they looked at the website and they were like, this is the guy that I want because like it’s almost through the phone call and the discovery process that both of you figure out, if you’re going to work together so you don’t want the website to promise on the moon because that’s honestly, not what you do and you’re kind of like you want to go through the discovery process, and see if there’s actually value to be added before you agree to to work with them.

01:01:34.17 – Demian Voorhagen

None and it was prepared.

01:01:42.78 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, no absolutely, I can say never in this guy. I never promise results because it’s not something that I believe in, so I don’t say well. Double your revenue in 3 months time.

01:01:54.17 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

01:01:57.17 – Demian Voorhagen

With this secret trick that would even be more marketing but people can just go to my website which is just my first name lastname.com right? So damienforhagan.com and then you can just book a discovery call. Right now, it’s free because I do a couple of these a week because I also like them. I like doing them and meeting new people. It’s a nice way to network. Some people I can just help in one call and in that sense, I see it as paying it forward. I just help them in one call. And at some point they might return a favor and if not that’s also fine. Maybe they can return it to someone else and for some of them.

It actually ends up like wow I got so much value out of this call. We need to make this a regular thing and then we look at what makes sense for them. So it could be like the monthly subscription thing. Maybe a couple of hours is needed for me to really be on top of things as well. And we just figured that out as we talk. I don’t really see the talks that I have as much as a sales conversation but more about an open talk. You know what are you running into?

Conclusion and How to Connect

01:03:00.27 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

01:03:06.71 – Demian Voorhagen

Do I think I can help you and if I don’t I would just tell you and maybe I know someone else that is able to help you or there’s something else that I can do for you?But yeah I don’t see us as salesy as most people do I would say as well. Yeah.

01:03:20.83 – Brian David Crane

Yeah, like they coffee dates in a way. Let’s say you know yeah their coffee date is a digital coffee date. Okay, so let’s end on that point. If you would like a digital coffee date, if you would like a non-sale sales call with Damien you should go to his website.

01:03:26.26 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, exactly what? no.

01:03:40.83 – Brian David Crane

You can for right now at least get a chance to chat with him without charge, and you’re going to see if it’s going to work for you and I think out of that. Where should people go if you want to spell your website so they know how to write your name? What do you also follow on Linkedin? Or reach out to on Linkedin like what do you prefer?

01:04:02.60 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, like I reached out to Linkedin. If you want to have the call for sure. The easiest way is to go to the website and book it right? So damienforhagen.com if you want to have a chat first or just add me on Linkedin. The moment you add me on Linkedin I will also check your profile. So I know what you’re doing as well. I’m the only Demian Voorhagen on Linkedin and typically a lot of people that are entrepreneurs have a lot of mutual connections as well because I’ve quit. A big Linkedin network already so I’m quite easy to find. I would say, just book the call if you want to or ask me a question on Linkedin and just add me there and yeah, we’ll figure it out.

01:04:49.70 – Brian David Crane

Take it from there. Yeah cool and you’re cross jurisdictional doesn’t like they don’t need to be in the Netherlands they can be as long as they speak English and can get online. I think they can talk with you is that right.

01:05:01.50 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah I mean, so currently most of the clients are from Europe and that’s simply because as I said everything right now is from network and referrals so because I’m in the Netherlands. And a lot of my friend entrepreneurs are there as well.

01:05:04.90 – Brian David Crane

Down..

01:05:18.40 – Demian Voorhagen

They have some connections in close countries and it just ends up being mostly Europe, but I have no problem working in any kind of country as long as the person I’m working with, and the idea of the company are cool and I mean ideally, I’m not doing calls during the night or something.

01:05:29.42 – Brian David Crane

Yeah.

01:05:35.49 – Brian David Crane

I get it.

01:05:36.35 – Demian Voorhagen

So if there’s a big time zone different needs to figure that out, but that’s never been an issue also now for more infrequent work.

01:05:43.93 – Brian David Crane

Yeah I think you always have the ability to say no to the call as well, right? It’s like yeah this just isn’t going to be a good fit. Somebody wants to talk to you about my toenail clippers that’s what I want to get on the GoFundMe. I think maybe you really care about toenail clippers, I don’t know, cool Damien. Thanks so much for the time.

01:05:47.60 – Demian Voorhagen

Yeah, but..

01:06:03.62 – Brian David Crane

And if you’re listening and you want to do this, check him out on Linkedin or check out his website. I will link to both in the show notes and we’ll see you on the next podcast. Thanks.

01:06:13.28 – Demian Voorhagen

Awesome! Thanks Brian.