Welcome back to the Stretch Four Podcast, Today, I am thrilled to have Dan Miller, the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Spora Health, joining us on the show. Dan has an impressive background as a three-time serial entrepreneur and one of the few Black Americans to successfully raise over $1 million in venture capital funds. Dan lives in Oakland and is a Howard alumnus, and his time in Silicon Valley dates back to 2011.
The interview covers a range of topics related to entrepreneurship and venture capital, including Miller's experience raising venture capital for Spore Health and the challenges and biases he faced as a Black founder. Miller also discusses the importance of building relationships with investors and communicating with them regularly, even when things are going well. The episode provides valuable insights for early-stage founders looking to raise capital and build successful businesses.
This episode is brought to you by ModernTax.
ModernTax is a business-to-business insights platform that leverages real-time tax data to help financial institutions make better decisions about individual and small business customers throughout the year. With extensive coverage across seven million US-based businesses and millions of consumers, ModernTax helps you stay compliant and utilize alternative data sets to save time, and money, and increase performance.
As a subscriber to the Stretch Four newsletter, we wanted to let you know that ModernTax 2.0 has already launched! Our updated platform includes even more features to help you streamline your workflow and gain insights into your customers.
By partnering with ModernTax, you'll have access to our cutting-edge technology and real-time tax data, giving you a competitive edge in the industry. We are also excited to announce that we will be adding a self-serve option shortly so that you can get started with ModernTax even faster.
Join now through the link below as we are only onboarding a limited number of new partners. If you are interested in learning more about ModernTax 2.0, complete the form.
Show Notes
Introduction (00:08)
The guest is Dan Miller, CEO and Founder of Spora Health
Spora Health is a unique platform for healthcare and lifestyle management for people of color
Dan is a three-time founder and Howard alumni
Dan's expertise is designing and building products for specific demographics
Spora Health has raised venture capital from 13 Ventures out of LA
Spora Health is building a B2B business and working directly with employers to offer Spora Health as a service to their employees
Interview (01:34)
Dan Miller's experience raising venture capital for Spora Health
Dan recognized the lack of attention and focus on addressing inequities and disparities, specifically race-based
Dan knew he needed help to realize his vision
Dan recognized that he needed to raise venture capital to be competitive in the marketplace and realize his vision
Dan's experience of raising venture capital was that it was easier to get meetings, but it was still challenging to find the right partners to bring on board
Dan recognizes the importance of being discerning with his time and sussing out whether a conversation with potential investors will go anywhere
Dan recognizes that the fundraising process is riddled with bias and that it's critical for early-stage founders to be thoughtful about the folks they accept money from
Dan recommends slowing down and thinking about the skill set of the folks being brought on board and how they view the business generally, how excited they are about it, and how they can help when things inevitably slow down
Dan emphasizes the importance of building integrity toward communication with investors and building value as it relates to integrity and communication with investors
Dan recommends over-communicating with investors in the earlier stages of the business and quarterly updates as the business progresses
Dan urges founding members to try to build a personal relationship with their investors, understand their values, what motivates them, and what excites them about the business so that conversations about support can be more educated
Episode 017: Building a VC-Backed Telehealth Company with Dan Miller, CEO of Spora Health