We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christian Durfee a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christian, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I grew up in Duluth, the last major “city” before the Canadian border in Minnesota. Duluth metro accounts for around 290,000 people spread across a 12,000 sq mi area – meaning that we had pockets of small communities which is an important way of life. Since you lived down the street from the shop owner or knew the family, it was always important to shop at the local store rather than the big corporate chain. Each neighbor watched out for one another and provided help when someone was in need. Family, friendship, and community are my core values, supporting loved ones to excel in their goals and well-being. During my teenage years, I went through the 08 market crash and saw many of my loved ones in my community struggle to make ends meet. Through resilience, people I loved still gave in a time of need, and from that day forward, I made it a personal mission that rather than using resources from the community, I wanted to be able to give to the community to strengthen it. Throughout the years, the place where I get my work ethic from stayed the same, there’s a lot of people in this world who are put in horrible situations and struggles for little to no rhyme or reason – I was able to find mentors and make connections that propelled my success forward but many don’t get that opportunity. On days when I dread opening the laptop or am getting jitters before an event, I remember the reason I’m doing this, to put myself in a position to give back and supply opportunities to that local community member who has a dream of opening a local bakery, the family who are trying to make ends meet who just lost their job, or that young entrepreneur who JUST needs that one connection that can change the trajectory of their live. It’s about giving back to your loved ones and being the change in the World that you want to see.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My name is Christian Durfee and I am the Co-Founder & CEO of InvestLink Social. I grew up in a small town in a household of teachers – education and community is very important to me. I was always taught to give first and receive later and concluded that entrepreneurship was the path where I could succeed in being able to give back.
During high school, I decided to jump into entrepreneurship and start my first business, Port Bow Ties. I always wanted to create something with my hands and noticed a lot of my friends were overspending for bow ties that they would wear once for a school dance. I purchased a bow tie pattern and started sewing. Through a few connections at my high school, I was introduced to a few local men’s fashion businesses and had my first contract supplying them with bow ties. After a year, Port Bow Ties had taken off and was sold in stores across the state of Minnesota, shipping international orders, and was even featured in the news, newspaper, and publications. It was a really cool experience, taught me how to operate a business, grew my network of other business owners and mentors, and allowed me to participate in a creative outlet.
In college, I noticed a lot of college students with little disposable income and an issue with nutritional intake. A partner and I started a health & wellness brand that sold vitamins and other supplements to students with their best interests in mind. Through the learnings of my bow tie business, we were able to scale it to over 40 college campuses, create partnerships with different on-campuses organizations, and partner up with travel companies – I successfully sold my shares and created my first exit. Before that exit, however, my partner and I tried raising money. If I had no idea what I was doing with the business side of the bow ties, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with raising money. We got a few investor meetings through our networking but struggled with the fundraising process. This sparked an idea: there were likely other entrepreneurs in the same situation as myself where a small investment would help them grow and they have a good business model, revenue, and traction, but, had little knowledge of the fundraising process, didn’t have the correct network, and had minimal resources. Diving into this further, I found that 82% of entrepreneurs identified access to capital as a significant challenge, less than 20% are successful on their raise, and even worse, less than 2% of women and minority-owned startups even raise a single dollar. Working with and interviewing investors, I found that they have so much noise in their inboxes, use a lot of resources to vet connections, and many times, get low-quality leads that don’t fit their criteria and/or thesis. AKA, there are a lot of marketplace inefficiencies that help contribute to the high, small business failure rate.
So, a few partners and I who all had the same struggles from the fundraising and investing side created InvestLink Social, a social networking platform that connects entrepreneurs and investors to assist in the fundraising process. Our goal is to help entrepreneurs grow their network and enhance their business knowledge and resources through our recommended network connections, engaging social communities, and real-time peer-to-peer messaging. We act as a vetting system for investors of all types and sizes with our smart-matching system, in-depth & accurate verified profiles, and level system to stop spam and low quality from hitting their inboxes. We started InvestLink Social in August 2021, and over the past few years, focused on building up a large and strong global network of entrepreneurs in this situation and all different types of investors including Angel Investors, Venture Capital Firms, Private Equity Firms, Family Offices, and more. With nurturing and creating relationships in our network, we’ve had successful deals including an entrepreneur group acquiring a local business, and a first-time woman entrepreneur launching her animal-focused app through our funding and development connections. We’ve also helped first-time and experienced angels find co-investing partnerships + countless other connections that turned into major opportunities for all parties involved. We are setting our sights on lowering the small business failure rate, turning founders into funders, and having funders invest into their local and global communities.
We are launching to the public at the end of October as a free-to-sign-up service with the goal of helping entrepreneurs secure funding and create business partnerships alongside of working with investors hand-in-hand to provide quality deal flow with qualified & accurate data.
Entrepreneurs and investors can sign up for free at investlinksocial.com
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three most important tools you can equip yourself with are passion, patience, and persistence.
When doing anything professionally or personally, you need to have a passion for what you’re doing. If you’re in it for any other reason than passion, you’re going to hit burnout quickly and dread is going to set in. This is the #1 most important thing in life.
We’ve all heard the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Take a minute to think of all the incredible things that have happened in your life, did it happen overnight? Not likely. You need to have patience for all good things in life, especially aspirations and dreams. Nothing is as quick as it seems, are you able to stick with it and have the passion (hint hint).
No. People hate getting told no but I bet you’ve been told NO plenty of times in your life and will continue to. No is such a hard word to hear, especially in entrepreneurship when you’re putting yourself and your dream out there. This is the difference between a successful person versus someone who isn’t. Can you get told no, shake it off, and continue on? Can you keep going until those no’s turn to yes?
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
With the nature of InvestLink Social and connecting investors with deal flow, you can think of us as a networking event – however, we’re not the event, we’re the room where the event is hosted. This means that we have a lot of synergies with so many different groups including angel syndicates, accelerates, incubators, and others. If you’re interested in vetted deal flow and a way to cut down on message noise, please reach out to growth@investlinksocial.com or sign up for free at investlinksocial.com
Entrepreneurs, if you’re looking to grow your business and connect with likeminded individuals from similar businesses to your local Angel Investor group, send us a message at growth@investlinksocial.com or sign up for free at investlinksocial.com
Let’s go change the world together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://investlinksocial.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-durfee/
Image Credits
Max Avery, Ray Smithson, Mike Haynes
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
