Inside The Garage SF and Founder Led Sales with Amit Bakshi

On Friday, September 20, my AI coaching startup SelfActualize.AI threw our first event, a MasterClass on Founder Led Sales by our sales coach, Bonnie Petrich, at Northwestern’s The Garage San Francisco (TGSF). Our goal was to get at least 10 participants to sign for her AI coaching, to give us feedback on our MVP product and help us decide what to build next. The event coincided with TGSF’s monthly “Co-working Friday” event. Leading up to the event, I was getting nervous. As a founder, throwing an event can feel like a referendum on your entire startup - “Does anyone care? Will anyone come?” are examples of insecure thoughts that can race through your mind. The rational way to look at an event though, is that it’s just another marketing experiment.

We tried a few new things with this event. Whereas “Co-working Friday” was typically for Northwestern alums, we marketed this lunch event to a wider audience on Linkedin. We used the Luma platform to collect RSVPs. We gave out a copy of “Future Skills,” a book recommended by Bonnie, to any attendees that signed up for our 30 day pilot.

In the end, 25 people showed up including several members of the TGSF community, and we exceeded our goal with 11 pilot signups!

How did I get here, throwing an event for my brand new startup that, just a few months ago was really just me and an idea with a few part-time helpers? Here’s the backstory.

I left my job, having spent 7 years in corporate innovation at Ford Motor Company, to go all-in to this startup idea to help coaches scale themselves using AI, at the end of May. I did this without having a co-founder lined up. I felt I needed to do 3 things in order to strengthen my case to raise a seed round:

1. Build an MVP product
2. Recruit a team, including a technical co-founder
3. Show early signs of traction

I decided to take a gamble and hire some summer interns to help me get some momentum going. In time for the summer, I posted jobs to local schools including my alma mater, UC Berkeley. After interviewing 22 candidates, I decided to extend offers to 3, from UC Davis, UCLA, and App Academy. Then I had my next problem to solve - where would we work?

I discovered TGSF by attending one of its monthly “Co-Working Friday” events on May 31. What a beautiful facility! Upon hiring my interns, I decided to visit Keyaira, the director, and make a bold ask - would it be ok for us to work out of the TGSF for the summer? She was hesitant at first but then decided to help.

Working out of TGSF was the perfect environment for our young team. The location is right downtown, public transit accessible, and beautiful! Having a place to collaborate in-person is especially important for junior talent like interns. They got to network with other founders during TGSF events. Importantly, for me, as I was searching for my technical co-founder, working out of TGSF and having a team of interns buzzing with activity, made my job of selling the opportunity of joining me that much more compelling. Rather than just having co-founder dating calls end with unclear next steps, I was able to invite candidates to visit us and collaborate with the team, making everything more tangible & exciting.

As I reflect on the summer, we achieved so much - we built our product, I ended up recruiting my co-founder Will, and we are now piloting it with real coaches & customers. The September 20 event to showcase one of our coaches and recruit our pilot participants was an ideal ending to a successful summer at TGSF.

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