When you combine mobile gaming, mindfulness, and memories, you can vastly improve your mental wellness like never before. In this episode of Success Unleash’d, Zack Ellison and Shawne Merriman are joined by twin sisters Kitty Bogle-Sherman and Coco Harmon, co-founders of Endora. They talk about their mobile gaming app that allows users to play with their memories and take a more exciting approach to elevating their well-being. The sisters also share their experiences navigating the challenges of being non-traditional founders and the joy of being trailblazers in the digital space. This conversation is packed with insights on resilience, innovation, and nostalgic reflection you do not want to miss.

Success Unleash’d Principles From This Episode

1. Embracing and Being Open to Evolution

Kitty and Coco managed to survive the ever-evolving digital world by letting their business ideas change and always being open to pivots whenever necessary.

2. Find Power in Reflection

Setbacks are always a good opportunity to experience personal and business growth. Kitty and Coco did not let these learning moments go to waste.

3. Building Resilience through Rejection

Kitty and Coco handled different investors well over the years by detaching emotions from their deals. By not taking everything personally, rejection became much easier to deal with.

4. Building Business with Intentionality

Kitty and Coco take time to understand their audience and gather feedback to refine their product. They are never in a rush to scale.

5. Creating Mission-Driven Alignment

For Kitty and Coco, the importance of surrounding themselves with people aligned with their vision cannot be set aside. It is an essential recipe for success.

6. Network for Connection, Not Just Capital

The goal of networking is not just to find investors. Kitty and Coco stresses that it is also about building meaningful relationships that lead to great opportunities down the line.

7. Success Is a Long Game

Kitty and Coco remained patient and persistent with their craft even when results are not immediate. They understand that real progress comes from sustained effort over time.

8. Building Lean And Flexible Teams

Kitty and Coco made good use of outsourced and specialized teams to stay agile and avoid heavy overhead costs, especially in the early stages of their business.

9. Incentives Drive Behavior

Kitty and Coco continuously motivates potential partners and investors by offering them incentives.

10. Authenticity Wins

Kitty and Coco attracts people and investors by staying authentic and likeable. By letting people see their passion and dedication, they gain everyone’s love and trust.

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Kitty Bogle-Sherman & Coco Harmon, Co-Founders, Endora

In this episode, we have with us two sisters who are entrepreneurs and very successful, Kitty Bogle-Sherman and Coco Harmon, who founded Endora Technologies. Thanks for joining.

Thank you for having us. We’re so excited.

This is the first time we’ve had two guests on at the same time, let alone sisters in the same room. Let’s chat about it. Maybe we’ll have more but you’re the trendsetters. Probably many things, this being one of them.

I bet the floodgates will be open after this, I would assume.

New trend.

Endora Technologies And The Concept Of Nostalgic Reflection

This is even more fun than the ones we did before. I like this. It’s like a party. Let’s learn about what you guys are doing, what Endora Technologies is, and how you got there.

Endora is a suite of mobile games. Each of the games is personalized with the memories saved on your phone. That’s the technical definition. It’s built on the science of nostalgic reflection. I hope we can get more into that. Nostalgic reflection is a unique wellness tool. Combining this nostalgic reflection with games, which is something that our target demographic is doing every day, we’re hoping to get people to reflect more. That’s the big picture.

Talk a little bit about the games and what nostalgic reflection is.

To back up a little bit, I’m the product lady on the team. To get there, we have to tell you where we started. We started several years ago with a much different product, idea, and name of our business as well. That product was a little more scrapbooking and legacy-focused. It still dealt with what we do with our memories. At that point, we knew we had collected thousands of memories, but what were we doing with them? Some people post them on social media, but you’re not posting as many as you think you are relative to how many you’re collecting.

As we started digging into that, we realized the power of nostalgic reflection held within these memories and that all you need to do to experience those wellness benefits is see the photo. We set out to say, “How can we make it easy and fun for someone to look through all their old photos?” That’s where the gaming came in. We said, “How can we look at games people already like to play or want to play every day? How can we incorporate your memories into them in a way that’s unique, fun, and exciting and makes you want to do it every day?” We’re turning casual gaming habits that 80% of our target demographic already participate in into an easy wellness ritual.

Give me an example of one of the games that you have.

The first few games we came out with were very nostalgic and simple. It was a play on memory games. We have a Simon Says type of game where you have four of your photos, follow the repeating pattern, and see how many you can get up to. Apparently, for the brain, it’s hard to remember past 7 numbers or 7 things in a pattern, which is why there were only 7 numbers in a phone number back when we used to have to remember those. That’s interesting.

The first set of games, to prove the concept, were simple and nostalgic. We released Solitaire, a classic that people play every day. We also have a trivia game that quizzes you on some of the metadata associated with your photos. It asks, “Do you remember what date this memory was?” It quizzes you on the day, month, and year. We also have a breathing meditation experience.

We’re playing around with classic games people love, like Solitaire, something new like trivia that gets into the details of some of your memories, and something more on the wellness side, which is breathing meditation. As your photos fade in and out, you breathe in and out to the pace of that. It’s an overall relaxing experience.

How did you go from that to being in the tech space? You took this idea. I always find it fascinating. We are into so much tech in what I do but I come nowhere near the tech world. I didn’t know anything about tech. I knew everybody else who was in tech. When I knew what I wanted to do, I brought these guys in and they helped me build it. How did you go from what you were doing to getting into the tech side of it?

I’ll jump into that first. My background is in tech. I was a product manager at a fintech company based in Atlanta for a few years. That’s where I cut my teeth in the startup and technology world. When we first set out, we were more startup tech traditional, trying to fit that mold. We’ve since found ourselves getting into gaming, and then we’re getting even more than we thought we would be into entertainment with the Endora character. We see her building her IP and using her as a way to educate our target demographic on what nostalgic reflection is, how it can be harnessed as a wellness tool, and how to bring all of that to life.

Shawne, I was in your boat. Coco and I went to the University of Tennessee, and then I stayed for law school. I ended up living in Washington, DC, and Coco was in Atlanta. I know you’re a DC guy.

That’s right.

I was in the political world, nonprofit, and small business consulting. We always knew we wanted to do something together and had different ideas over the years. Endora is the manifestation of the seed of an idea that Coco had a long time ago. There’s a whole story to that. For me, getting into the tech world, I had zero context. We were at the other UT campus in Austin and had an event with one of the student organizations. You want to tell these kids, or at least I do, which is probably major projecting, I wasn’t even thinking about that in 2010. I had no idea. I hadn’t even considered entrepreneurship seriously.

The other thing is that COVID changed everything and made so many opportunities available to housewives in small towns, if you want to play with that narrative. During COVID, Coco moved back to our hometown in Texas from Florida. We were able to explore these industries in ways that never would have been possible to us prior to COVID.

We go back to 2020, learning about the startup and gaming industry. We’re jumping into the entertainment industry. It’s been a whirlwind but very fun.

I knew somebody had to come from tech. You have these ideas, but somebody has to have a background to make your ideas come around. That’s awesome.

It’s hard speaking as someone who isn’t from the tech side. Coco is amazing in that role. People underestimate the role of a product manager. They are the ones who help figure out your strategy. If you don’t have someone who can think through things like that and they’re just doing what you ask and you don’t know what to ask, it’s a disaster.

Getting A World Championship Belt

Kitty, I wanted to ask you. What’s that championship belt? I can’t quite see it. That looks like something Shawne would wear.

This is our CodeLaunch World Championship belt, our only hardware. We were in an Accelerator competition in November 2024. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the CodeLaunch Accelerator, but they are out of Frisco and have been a part of our story since 2020. We were involved with them over the years. We made it to their event in Houston in February 2024. We pitched on stage but did not win.

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They had a world championships event in November and invited startups from each of the locations where they’d already hosted an event in 2024. We were lucky enough to take the judges’ and investors’ awards home. That came with $25,000. That was exciting because we were able to use that money to get the new feature that we were about to build and get it ready. We think this might have the potential to be the viral feature that we need and are building for, so we are very pumped about that.

That was a full-circle moment because CodeLaunch was the first thing we ever applied to back in 2020. They’ve been a great resource to us from the beginning. It was great.

They’re big-time champions of the underrepresented or underestimated founder, if you will.

We like those kinds of founders.

We’re all the most fun.

Founders who are underestimated and have to fight through more difficulty wind up being better in the long run because they’re stronger, more resilient, and more resourceful. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of super-talented people in some of the main areas where a lot of startups are born, whether it’s Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston. The reality is I’ve always favored the out-of-favor, those that aren’t necessarily chased around with a checkbook, because they are easier to work with. They’re hungrier, tougher, and less entitled. That’s what I had to go through and Shawne as well. Many of the best founders, in my mind, are those who are maybe a little misunderstood for various reasons.

In a lot of ways, we’re not following the traditional playbook. Since we aren’t surrounded by that, it frees us up to do that.

Going Beyond The Traditional And Creating Something New

That was one of the things I was going to ask because what you guys are doing is not traditional. How much pushback do you guys get or will somebody not get? When you told me, I understood it. When you stand in front of these other people, whether it’s investors or someone in the market, you are bringing something to market that’s not there. How much pushback do you get because of that?

On one hand, if we’re talking to one group, we have people who are immediately in tears. They love it. Talking to another group that is more investor-oriented, it’s on the founders to be communicating. We know that so much of investing, especially traditionally, is pattern-matching for people. We know that we simply don’t fit the pattern. That’s fine. We’re not making any real commentary on that. The fact of the matter is that we don’t. We get some pushback. In the past, we have heard things like, “Drop the mission,” or, “You should be a nonprofit.” Coming from the nonprofit world, I’m like, “We should talk about that.”

Does anyone tell Candy Crush they should be a nonprofit? They seem to be doing pretty well. I’m going to try to go for that.

We strongly feel that the companies defining the future are unfolding. People are so fed up with companies and industry leaders not looking out for them. With technology, we are all getting together and being like, “You’ve been doing what? Your outcomes are what?” You get to keep operating with impunity. Rather than thinking, “Let’s regulate them out of business,” it’s a real opportunity for consumers to say, “We want something better. Here are some companies that believe you can make a ridiculous amount of money but do good things in the world and treat your customers right. It’s all possible.” We hope to be part of a new era of industry.

Set a new model or standard.

You guys are onto something. The way I think about it is that real innovators are never understood. If investors or corporations could understand it, they would have already done it. It’s a unique situation. On one hand, it’s super frustrating to be a founder and have an awesome product that you know will be a game changer. It’s so hard to get it adopted because you’re pitching it to people who have no innovative bone in their bodies. They’re just sitting there waiting for something to be fully developed and plopped on their lap so they can say, “This is great.”

The reality is that frustration is what creates the opportunity. Everybody doesn’t want to go through that. They know how hard it is. Potential founders are going to go through with it. When you do finally break through, you are the leader. You are the one that brought it to market. There’s nobody else in many cases, or there are just imitators. You’re going to get paid for your frustration in the long run.

It will be amazing if you can hang in there. We keep seeing these signs. You all know how the journey is where you have those periods of frustration, and then you get some validation that makes you think, “We are onto something.” That sustains you to the next one. This is one area where we are super lucky to have each other and have a sister relationship because we can pretty much express any feeling, process it, and keep rolling.

Nothing is off the table. Nothing will shake or rattle us, honestly. It’s helpful to have that dynamic. I feel lucky to have it. It’s one of the reasons why we’re still here because it’s fun. You all know that you can make things look great, but there’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice going on at the other end. I am very grateful to have my sister.

Off of that, do you guys ever have a time where you separate being sisters from the business? When you get coffee or a meal, is it family talk or is it always about business?

Everything. We’re always plotting and scheming like wild, mad scientists.

It’s constant collaboration and strategizing.

Overcoming The Challenges Of Becoming Founders

As you moved from traditional jobs to being founders, what have you found to be the biggest challenges? How have you overcome them?

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Moving away from structure toward this life, one of the big challenges is stepping back and understanding that it is a roller coaster. There are ups and downs. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. You need to be seeking and contemplating the feedback that you receive. Even if you get resistance or someone doesn’t understand your idea, you don’t have to automatically think it’s because it’s not a good one or you’re not doing something right. That mentality of, “We’ve done this for a few years and are dead set on this mission. Argue with us about it. We would love that,” makes it a lot easier to be confident and say, “This is our perspective that we’re putting into the world. Even if it’s not for everyone, that’s not a deterrent.”

For me, the hard part was that in a traditional job, you get a lot more opportunities for positive feedback, finishing projects, and moving on to the next thing. There are rewarding cycles. With the founder journey, it takes so much longer. You’re not necessarily getting nice validation when you’re early and trying to get from 0 to 1. That’s an adjustment.

We still participate in other groups like the Rotary or the Women’s Center. I help the Women’s Center of East Texas. I helped them with the website for an event that they held, a little conference in 2024. Even helping with a little project on the side that did have a start and a finish and everyone was happy and moved on was rewarding for me because I’m not getting that in the founder startup role.

If someone asks you to do something easy, you’re like, “Yes.”

I’m like, “I can do that.”

Building And Maintaining A Well-Rounded Team

I want to ask you about the structure because it seems like both of you guys are doing a lot yourselves. How big is your team? At what point did you guys feel like you had to bring on the team because it was maybe too much for you to do on your own?

We collected our team along the way. It’s technically just us, but then we have a team of vendors who have been with us for a couple of years and have contributed significantly. We have a tech team. Coco, I’ll let you speak more about that. They are terrific. We’ve got a creative team that is local to us. We have a local artist who created Endora herself. We’ve worked with them to create that brand. We’ve got your typical legal tax accounting and that sort of thing.

We are going to begin fundraising. We’re working on our hard launch event that’s going to happen at South by Southwest on March 7th, 2025. Part of that is getting our fundraising off the ground, our next feature released, and our new commercial out there. We are working with everyone. It’s a lot, but if we could get funded, we’d probably be able to pour more fuel on those team members. That’s our plan.

They were referrals through advisors. When we pivoted into gaming, an advisor connected us with a gaming development company. They’ve helped us learn the industry and taught us some of the very basic things about gaming. Prior to that, I had tried to manage an offshore team myself, doing the requirements, documents, and all of that. When we pivoted into gaming, we knew that was out of our league, so we brought someone who knew what to do in that space.

There are a couple of things you guys touched on that are relevant. It’s this idea of getting comfortable with rejection, first of all. That’s the first piece of advice that I give to would-be founders, “I hope you’re ready to get told no or not even hear back 99.9% of the time for quite a while. You might think your idea is great, but it’s going to get on relentlessly. If you can’t handle that, you might as well not even start.” The fact that you guys can handle that and have handled it well is one of the keys.

Another thing I wanted to talk about was the idea of finding things outside of work that you enjoy. Being a founder, about 99% of the time, you’re miserable because you’re dealing with frustration constantly. Everybody on this show knows that. Every founder I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with hundreds, knows this. It’s miserable all the time seemingly until you finally have that breakthrough. What do you do to get through that? A lot of it is finding things outside of work that you can gain enjoyment from, whether it’s friends, family, activities, or pets. If you want a friend, get a dog. I didn’t relate to that until I became a founder myself. I was like, “That’s a great idea. Every founder should have a dog.”

The last thing I’ll mention to wrap up this segment is what you mentioned about the teams. It makes a lot of sense. The hardest thing for me and most startups is building a good team. You can have a rock star founder, but ultimately, they’re going to have to hire somebody to work with them. You can have 2 founders like you, or 4, but no matter what, you’re going to have gaps. You’re going to need to fill that.

A lot of people build their teams in the wrong way and build them too fast. That’s the way I’ve been thinking about this. I did that. I built a great team on paper. It cost a lot of money. To be honest, they didn’t produce. I got rid of most of them and rebuilt it in a more methodical fashion and it’s been super successful.

One of the things I learned from that is the idea of building your team in a very step-wise fashion, not spending too much bringing in outsiders. The reality is that the founder is going to bring 95% to 99% of the value. Some people might fight me on that. I don’t care. I 100% believe that. If it’s their idea, they’re executing it. They’ve got the relationships, drive, and technical skills, but they’ve got to bring in people because it becomes too big for a small team. What I’m thinking is you start small and then add methodically.

Also, there is this idea of an outsource team. You guys don’t have a full-time team that you’re dumping a lot of fixed costs into with salary and benefits. If you fire them, they’re going to sue you because they’re pissed off that they sucked and couldn’t produce. They’re going to put it on you. That’s how it is. Nobody wants to take accountability for being mediocre.

This idea of having good outsourced providers, to me, is the key. It is when you combine technology, like what you can do with your AI and data, with good trusted service providers that are all contract workers. If they don’t produce, you get rid of them. You find somebody who can do it. To me, that is the new model. Keep the team super lean. Stick with the core people and leverage technology. Outsource experts that are all contractual and that you can dial up or down as you need them. If you don’t need them, they’re not there. If they suck, they’re gone.

It’s a way less complicated way of building a team. I can see how some people who aren’t familiar with it or haven’t had to do it this way might not initially see it like that. They might see a lot of risk in that. You significantly de-risk it when A) You know what people’s work product is and B) You are ensuring that everyone is mission-aligned. We’ve been lucky that we’ve connected with people who’ve ended up being great, technically speaking, at what they do but also mission-aligned. They’re all about what we’re trying to do and getting that into the world. That’s helpful. Having contractors doesn’t mean that we can’t all share the same cultural core values.

They might not be formal employees, but they feel as bought in as a full-time employee might be and as excited about the company, the mission, and everything. We’ve been lucky in that regard.

Anyone who’s been slugging along with us this long, thank you. It does seem like the winds have picked up.

To your point, it has allowed us this structure to be flexible. We have had periods where we turn off development for a few months and get user feedback. Since we are bootstrapping and going from 0 to 1, it’s been nice because we’ve been a little constrained. We’ve had to be more intentional and have a little more time to not build too fast, which has worked in our favor at the end of the day.

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It’s almost a way of being more efficient because you don’t want the extra baggage and the heavy weight. When you get off the glass, the last thing you want is a huge overhead and more stuff to deal with. It’s not going to the actual product or maybe having the data looked at and feedback. You’re paying this overhead.

When I got into tech space, I had people overseas and other places where their fees were much lower per hour. The only difference was I was on the phone at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, depending on what time it was there. I was paying a fraction of the cost. People said, “Why don’t you hire somebody here?” I say, “They are five times as much as the person I’m using overseas. At least let us build the model and get something set.”

That’s how we did it, too. With that being said, once we fundraise, we’re ready to turn all our teams on full blast. We know exactly what we want to do. We’re ready.

Dealing With Rejections The Right Way

Everyone’s chomping at the bit. It has benefited us so far, but we’ve got a plan to execute. I want to go back to something you said, Zack, way back about handling rejection. There are so many elements of the startup world and so many little facts that I’m like, “If you said that on day one, I would have gotten it.” They seem like common knowledge, but apparently, not yet.

It could be something as simple as you’re going to be getting rejected but it’s not because someone thinks your idea is bad or even because you don’t fit their thesis. There are a million reasons why someone might respond to your idea in the way that they do. You’ve got to be able to not take it personally so that you can objectively evaluate what you’re hearing. Some of it is not relevant, depending on who it’s coming from, and some of it is. Don’t lie to yourself, but don’t take it too personally. Truly, that’s got to be number one. You can’t take it personally. You’ve got to keep going.

It is understanding more of the VC side of it or the investor side of the coin that they’re only investing in a handful of companies every year at best anyway. They’re seeing hundreds or thousands of companies a year.

If you understand that, then you’re going to have different expectations going into a networking situation or meeting someone early on and you’re like, “That’s an investor.” A lot of times, people who are saying they’re investors either aren’t or they make two deals a year. It’s cool and fine. Once you understand those things, it’s much easier not to take certain things personally. Truly understand the playbook.

Appreciate whatever feedback you can get out of the process.

As the saying goes, “When you don’t get what you want, you get experience.” Oftentimes, all this rejection leads to you knowing the game better. One of the things I’ve learned is to get to know people quickly. To your point, Kitty, there are a lot of people who proclaim to be investors, and then you realize they’re not investing. They’re out there for some other reason, whether they want to be in the mix or go to a conference for free.

At the party, they have to introduce themselves somehow.

One of my pet peeves is what I call the fake family offices. FFO is what I call them because people often talk about Family Offices and abbreviate it as FO when they’re writing the email.

I love that.

I found that probably 2/3 or more of folks who proclaim themselves to be family offices are not investing any capital. It’s disingenuous. Once you learn that, it’s okay because then you don’t waste any time on them at all. You’re like, “That’s that person I’ve seen around. They’re completely useless.”

They might be looking for this one thing. If you’re not it, don’t even worry about it.

The best-case scenario is they might not even have anything they’re looking for. They’re there to use somebody else’s money for them to have a good time. Zack, I want to give a funny example. When we go to these things, people come up to us and ask, “What do you do? What’s going on?” They have no intention of investing. You might be in a room full of real investors or people who are interested. That’s five minutes you take away from my life that I can’t go over there and talk to the person who may be serious. That FFO hits home with us because there are more time-wasters out there.

I would imagine that with your background in football, I bet it is off the chain sometimes with that element.

The only thing that helped me is that I’m almost 6’5″ and 270 pounds, so they don’t waste too much of my time. Other than that, they are good time-wasters.

We’re about 6’5″, too. You can’t tell.

People don’t mess with us, either.

It’s great.

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How Founders Should Create Alignment

You guys implicitly brought up this idea of creating alignment when we’re talking about building teams. I wanted to hit on that because, to me, that’s one of the most important things in building a business or doing any partnership. It’s creating alignment. There are a lot of ways to do that. Shawne has been good at it in terms of the folks that he works with.

There are a lot of ways to do it. There’s the mission where you could be aligned with the mission, but then there’s also a lot of economic alignment, especially with startups. The reality is that most startups don’t have much to offer in terms of cash. They’re cash-poor and idea-rich. They had a lot of potential but they’ve got very little now. I found that it’s helpful if people are pushing themselves on you as potential advisors or partners.

As a founder myself, I’ve had hundreds of people want to “partner” with me. I found that as soon as you force them to be aligned with you in real economic terms, they disappear almost instantly. That’s a piece of advice I give to all founders and myself. “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.” Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s old partner, used to say that, which is brilliant advice. I always remind myself of that.

Kitty, as an ex-lawyer, you probably thought a lot about this. Everybody here does, but lawyers especially. When you go into every single meeting, you’re thinking, “What’s the outcome that they’re seeking? What’s in it for them? They’re not doing this because they’re nice. They want something. What do they want?” Once you know that, it’s a whole different game.

We are talking about incentives all the time. Another thing that you don’t have to waste your time taking personally is understanding the lay of the land and understanding how this person is incentivized. We were talking about this. If you feel like there are adjustments that need to be made, think about whether this person could be incentivized better.

Most people working at a startup are not making money at all. Most people aren’t even paying themselves. The data on that, especially for women, is bad. Thinking about your employees or vendors who are putting themselves out there for you and doing a lot for you with very little in return, technically speaking, what can you do to reward them or show your appreciation for that? Think about how you set up their incentives. Not everyone’s like, “I’ll take some equity in twenty years.” That’s not realistic. It’s not always the best thing for anyone.

I’ve found that revenue-sharing agreements with various structures are effective. That way, they’re still all linked to the upside but it’s a lot more cash upfront, in a sense. You could bring somebody a potential project and say, “If you help me with this project and you’re doing the tech or the marketing, we think it’s going to make X amount of money. If you are able to help us get it to market, we’re going to give you some percentage of that.” Everybody wins. If it doesn’t make any money, then they’re not getting paid.

Thank you, Zack. We’re feeling very good about our plan.

We’ve been talking about this exact topic.

It’s more of a win-win. There’s always a win-win opportunity in any type of situation. We’re all collectively shifting our mindsets around that because this is how it’s always been done. Why wouldn’t someone who’s putting blood, sweat, and tears into a project that would take the founders to the moon see some of the upside, too?

Also, be creative in how you can do that.

Lightning Round About Success Principles

In the interest of time, we’re going to do a lightning round of questions about success principles. I’ll kick it off. It’s to help people learn from what you’ve achieved. The first question is, when you’ve experienced disappointment, how have you overcome that? What mental or physical things have you done to get through that?

Reflection is important, the more we’ve gotten into this and the more we intentionally leverage that as a practice. One of our favorite quotes is by Ray Dalio. “Pain plus reflection equals progress.” We heard that a couple of years ago. It hit home, not just because of what we’re doing but because it seems like the absolute law. If you want to grow personally, then something painful is going to be required, and then some reflection will be required. What can happen when those things come together? That’s where you grow. Without it, I don’t think it’s possible. Every time there’s disappointment or when we’re dealing with something, our instinct is to reflect on it and then, if needed, pivot and make a new plan. There’s no reason to drag your feet on that.

If you could go back and change anything, such as time wasted working with individuals or spending your time somewhere, what would that be? It is not necessarily regretting, but if you could go back and change something that would fast-track to where you are, what would that thing be?

Is it like there was a shortcut somewhere along the way?

Exactly.

Without having gone through every single pivot that we’ve been through, I’m not sure it would have been possible to find ourselves where we are.

Maybe if I was telling someone else, “What could you do differently to speed this up?” This sounds so basic, and maybe it’s just me, but it is understanding the incentives of all the players in the industry and the different people you’re going to meet. Here’s an example, networking. Early on, I always thought you went into these events hoping to meet an investor. I thought that was the whole point of being there. That’s why we’re on a trip away from our families. That’s not a realistic expectation if you understand the industry. Something I would do differently is say, “When you’re networking, your goal is not to find an investor. Your goal is to find the people you vibe with the most and become friends with them. See where the universe takes things.”

That’s great advice. Ultimately, if you’re looking for investors, they can feel it. It’s like pushing on a string.

With what we’re trying to build, it’s so unique. Consumers are hard. We’re non-traditional founders. It’s going to take an investor who sees our mission and what we’ve already put together. It’s going to be a heck yes or a no. Either somebody is like, “I’m all about this. Let’s take this to the moon,” or they’re questioning it. If they don’t get it at all, it’s like, “Don’t worry about it.”

If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. Share on X

I have to add one thing here, which is super important for founders looking to raise money. One of the best ways to raise money is to be likable and have people want to say good things about you. This is how investing works. It’s not that you meet somebody and be like, “I’ve got this idea. Here’s my pitch deck,” and they write a check. It doesn’t work like that at all.

This is how it works. You get to know people that they know, and they hear about you. The end investor hears about you. They see what you’re doing. Once they’ve seen it five, six, seven, ten, or fifteen times and they’re hearing the same good things from all different types of people in their network, that’s when they come to you and say, “I’ve heard about you. I’ve seen you. I’m impressed. Let’s talk.” You’re in a position of power because you’ve positioned the board exactly how you want it.

That’s what people don’t get. This is a long-term sales cycle. Most investors are investing in founders they’ve already known for years. I’m meeting you now. In five years, you might be coming to me saying, “We’re doing tens of millions in revenue. We want to do a deal.” I’ll be like, “They’re great. I’ve known them for a long time. I love the way they think. They’ve executed everything they’ve said. Fifty other people in my network love them.” That’s how you get the tens of millions of dollars.

That’s a more succinct way of saying what I was trying to say. The other thing is accepting that fact. People say, “If you knew how hard it was going to be, you wouldn’t have even tried.” We’re crazy enough that I’m not sure that’s true. By understanding what you’re talking about, you can bypass the awkward stuff. Be who you are and work hard. If you have a good idea, listen to people, and make the next right decision, hang in there for a long time as long as you can.

I heard once about fundraising, “If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money.” If you ask for money, you’re probably only going to get advice. If you ask for advice, they might be like, “That’s interesting.”

One final thought on this is being likable. I know I’ve mentioned this before but I can’t emphasize it enough, especially in the early stage. This is different at an institutional level. I’ve worked at 5 firms that are publicly traded, 3 of which have over $1 trillion in assets. I worked at the biggest bank in the world at the time on Wall Street, Deutsche Bank.

In those deals, it doesn’t matter what you think about the person on the other side. Quite frankly, a lot of people are people you would never want to be around, but the deals are going to get done because they’re for hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. It doesn’t matter if they like you in that case. In fact, they’re usually trying to screw you. It’s like, “They’re going to screw me one way or another. I need to figure out how they’re trying to screw me and mitigate that.” In the early stage, it’s 100% different. This is where people get it wrong. They’re pitching the business when they should be pitching themselves.

You guys are going to do very well because you’re smart, very strong in business, and also likable. That’s how you get Angel checks and seed checks. Once you get to the institutional rounds and you’re doing a $10 million raise, it’s less important, though, but for your first couple of rounds, it’s all about, “Do I like this person? Am I willing to put $50,000 into their business? I have a hunch that because they’re smart, hardworking, and good people, they’re going to probably do something good with it. They might fail but they’re not going to intentionally screw me.” You guys are great. You’re going to be successful because you’ve got the right mindset. That’s what it’s all about.

Thanks for saying that. We saw somebody on a panel in Austin. He was like, “I don’t get the deal flow anymore because I’ll invest in everyone.” I get that because I feel like that would be a real problem for me, in a way. For all the reasons you mentioned, I have empathy for people who are getting into the game. Maybe they don’t come off as likable as they could or come off as too desperate to an investor when they’re trying to figure it out and are probably like, “How am I going to pay for my next thing?” Their expectations around the ecosystem aren’t well-informed yet. I have a soft spot for that because early on, I was wrecking shop.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. This is so cool. Thank you for inviting us. I hope that we can be friends moving forward. If you all plan to be in Texas anytime soon or at South by Southwest, you can be on our party list. It’s going to be fun.

I’m not going to be there but I know a bunch of people who are going. I’d be happy to introduce you to them in advance.

It’d be awesome. Thank you.

Thanks. We appreciate it.

It’s great having you. See you soon.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Important Links

• Zack Ellison on LinkedIn
• Zack Ellison on Instagram
• The 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison (podcast)
• Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) Website
• Shawne Merriman on LinkedIn
• Shawne Merriman on Instagram
• Lights Out Sports TV Website
• Lights Out Xtreme Fighting Website
• Endora Technologies
• Kitty Bogle Sherman on LinkedIn
• Coco Harmon on LinkedIn

About Kitty Bogle-Sherman & Coco Harmon

Kitty Bogle-Sherman and Coco Harmon, are two Millennial sisters and the Co-Founders of Endora, the mobile gaming app that lets users “play with their memories.”

Using a combination of mindfulness, memories and mobile gaming, Endora is setting out to improve mental wellness amongst Millennial women – the first generation of women since the Great Depression to experience an active decline in their well-being.

Rooted in a modality that psychologists refer to as “nostalgic reflection”, Kitty and Coco are self-proclaimed “accidental tech founders” whose ground-breaking innovation is turning heads in the startup community.

In November of 2024, Kitty and Coco made waves at the prestigious CodeLaunch World Championship in Dallas, Texas placing first in both the judge’s choice and investor’s choice categories.

With their groundbreaking vision, Kitty and Coco are not just creating an app – they’re sparking a movement to empower Millennial women and revolutionize the intersection of mental wellness and gaming technology.