Money Does Grow On Trees, Planting The Seed, Growing Fruit, Time is Trust, Neewz.ai Spotlight

At LionRun, we work with brilliant founders.

We’re not the experts in their industries, they are. But what we do bring is a deep instinct for pattern recognition. For listening hard. For asking the right questions and distilling the complexity into clarity, so investors aren’t left guessing later.

When you’re building something from scratch, you’re often too close to it. You’re emotionally invested.

Our job is to help founders surface the signal in all that noise. To distill the essence. To build something rooted, but scalable. Grounded, but expressive. Something that can ‘bear fruit’.

That’s where this month's newsletter theme comes in.

And we’ve been thinking a lot about trees.

Mia: Planting the Seed 🌱

At our Run the Raise event, Mia dropped one of our favorite metaphors for founder storytelling, and we keep coming back to it.

She talked about the moment before anything grows: the seed.

That seed is the problem your company exists to solve.

It’s not always flashy. It’s often quiet, personal, messy. But it’s the one tension that sparks everything else.

From that seed grows your why: your personal reason for tackling the problem in the first place. That’s your root system. The emotional foundation that keeps you upright, even when things get rocky.

When you’ve got that clarity, everything else can grow in the right direction.

Money Does Grow On Trees 🌳

Once you’ve got your seed and your roots—your problem and your why—you grow the trunk: your what. The core solution that addresses the need.

It needs to grow straight from the seed. If it doesn’t, your story won’t hold.

Founders often jump ahead to showing fruit, but remember, fruit grows from the branches. Not the trunk.

Meaning: traction, users, revenue, investor excitement—all of that happens after your foundation is strong.

Investors are looking to fund companies with real roots, a strong trunk, and the promise of fruit.

So yes, in this metaphor, money does grow on trees. But only if the rest of the system is healthy.

Client Spotlight: Neewz.ai 🗺️

Rodrigo Gonzales is building Neewz.ai, the world’s first verified UGC marketplace that helps creators and media channels discover, license, and publish authentic, on-the-ground content.

It’s AI-powered, built on trust, and tackling real challenges caused by misinformation and fragmented supply chains in news media.

We worked with Rodrigo to take the complexity of his platform and translate it into a clear, compelling investor story. Together, we built a full suite of investor collateral and positioning narrative rooted in trust, clarity, and growth as he expands into an U.S. market.

Rodrigo on Working with LionRun

Here’s where we bring Mia’s tree analogy full circle.

Rodrigo said something that stuck with us: “Time is the most important asset. You all took the time to really understand us.”

We take that seriously. At LionRun, our job is to learn—about your product, your pain points, and your vision—so we can build the ‘face’ of your raise in a way that builds trust and lands with clarity to investors.

Rodrigo is the expert in digital media, AI-driven content, and the creator economy.

Our job was to help him communicate that expertise in a way investors could grasp, without losing the depth behind it.

This one was special. We’re proud of how it turned out, and even more excited to see where Rodrigo takes Neewz.ai next.

If you’re interested in connecting with Rodrigo or learning more about Neewz.ai, you can reach him directly at [email protected].

Thanks for reading, here's a 10% discount on any project—use it yourself or share it with a fellow founder who could benefit from our services. Download the PNG and send it to us upon outreach!

P.S. Email replies are on! If there are any topics you'd like to explore or questions you have, feel free to reply to this email.

Until next time— we’ll be on the lookout!

Interested in working with LionRun?