Erica Wassinger is a venture capitalist at Proven Ventures, a $10 million Nebraska-only seed fund that invests through "debt equity": the founder buys the shares back out of a slice of monthly revenue, capped at 3x. She went from a journalism degree at Kansas State to Wharton, Berkeley, and the Silicon Prairie, and she thinks the billion-or-bust model is the wrong bet for most businesses. Stu and Erica get into how she decides who gets her attention, why she cuts every forecast in half, and how Stu's $25,000 friends-and-family check turned into $967,000.

What she covers:

→ A $75,000 investment where the founder confessed before the wire that a Ukraine-based dev consultant was holding her code base hostage

→ Buying back equity at 3x ($225K) out of roughly 5% of monthly gross revenue, then watching the shares become worth $2.5M in a multi-million dollar round a month later

→ Why Erica hates pitch decks and won't let founders use one on a call: send her the demo you give your customers instead

→ "My love language is a CRM": how her website contact form feeds her CRM, and why it beats a warm intro

→ Her Founders Field Guide to being capital ready: your customer, their problem, and how $1 of capital creates $3 in revenue

→ Why Proven Ventures cuts every founder's forecast by 50-60%

→ Why a founder who pays themselves nothing is a red flag, and the math on what a buyer subtracts when you pay yourself $100K but replacing you costs $300K

→ Why profitability and EBITDA, once "dirty words" in Silicon Valley, are what acquirers use to set the price now

→ A fund that wants to be "obsolete" on your cap table, and says it's beating the top-quartile fund on cash returned (per Carta's Q2 analysis)

→ Stu's $25,000 friends-and-family investment in 2013 that came back as a $967,000 check in 2021

→ A bad executive hire, burned cash, and why "figure it out" founders are the ones she never loses sleep over

→ The pretend cowgirl pitch: Silver Spur Ranch in Idaho, Dax and Bodie, and a possible Startups with Stu retreat with horses

🔗 CONNECT WITH STU

Instagram: @stu

Website: https://startupswithstu.com

📌 CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro: Silicon Prairie, Lincoln, and summers in the Sandhills

03:00 – Journalism degree to venture capital: Kansas State, Wharton, and Berkeley

06:00 – Why founders must pay themselves and what buyers do with that math

10:00 – Proven Ventures: a $10M Nebraska fund and the last $1M of Fund One

12:00 – Profitability and EBITDA: the "dirty words" that are saving portfolios

14:00 – Why Erica does podcasts and the shows founders learn from

17:00 – How to get her attention: the personalized LinkedIn invite and the website form

19:00 – Why she hates pitch decks and wants your customer demo instead

23:00 – "My love language is a CRM" and the Founders Field Guide to being capital ready

27:00 – The Ukraine dev consultant holding a code base hostage

30:00 – Debt equity explained: $75K in, $225K back, 5% of gross revenue

34:00 – $225K of shares worth $2.5M, and a fund that wants to be obsolete

37:00 – Cutting every forecast 50-60% and capping returns at 3x

40:00 – Stu's $25K friends-and-family check that became $967K

42:00 – Founders who figure it out, follow-on checks, and a bad executive hire

45:00 – Silver Spur Ranch, cowgirl grit, and why you can't bet the farm every time

48:00 – Closing: think about your capital stack differently

⚠️ Note: Timestamps are estimated from transcript flow. Swap to actual timecodes before publishing.

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