Let Go an Haul: fundraising by the numbers & celebrating progress
Week 21, 2018 – San Francisco / Brooklyn
Two quick announcements:
1. No email next week, I’m taking some time off 😄
2. If you’re one of my friends who lives in Europe then I guess hit reply to confirm you want me to keep emailing you cuz GDPR (also it would be lovely to hear from you)!
Journey: where we’re at
Our pre-seed round is done! It was over-subscribed and we cut it off just north of a million last Friday. This week has been about finalizing all the paperwork and getting the dollars in the bank!
It came together remarkably quickly once I finally figured out how to fundraise (that definitely took some time), and focused all my attention on that process. From that point, got over that hurdle in just a bit over a month (6 weeks since the end of Betacamp). It’s a big accomplishment and a privilege that allows us to keep going and make this thing!
Thank you to the many, many people who helped out with introductions, advice, support, especially the friends that opened up your homes to me on the West Coast: May-Li & Federico, Tantek, Renn & Mel, Samia. 🙏💖
What else!? Gen is back from Mexico, Anton’s been on what looks like a stunning vacation in Norway, and I’m about to do something similar.
Journal: what I learned
I don’t think I hate fundraising! I expected I would, because so many people are like “ughhhh it is the worst thing ever”.There are parts of it I don’t like. I don’t like the sexism in the industry and how much it affects our ability to move quickly, but there are a lot of parts of it I do enjoy. I like meeting people. I love presenting. I enjoy negotiation and definitely get a thrill out of closing a deal.
It’s true that it is hard, and it is true that you face a lot of rejection. There was definitely a moment this winter after two particularly bad weeks of bros up in my shit when I was in the “trough of disillusionment” about ever being able to do this. What I can say now with my first tiny bit of perspective (I’m still a relative novice at this), is that I think it’s such a tough art to learn because you only learn by doing, and unlike learning a craft where you get encouragement along the way, this one is not like that, you have to keep doing to learn and keep hearing no for (probably) some time. After a few of these rejections, I decided I had to figure out how to make it a a bit of “a game” for myself, or I was going to lose my mind.
In video game design, players are guided through learning the game by a series of challenges and rewards. What I felt early on in the fundraising process was that it was all challenge no reward. I mean, who wants to learn to play a game and be told you’re failing over and over again? That game wouldn’t get that far on the consumer market, it would be deemed “too hard, not fun”.
So, I decided to make rejections my rewards. If I was being rejected, that meant I was making progress. I had come across this article on setting rejection goals for writers pitching to publications, and put a post-it on my monitor that said “Rejection goal: 150”. Turns out that goal was more than 2x what I needed in the end. Here’s how the numbers played out:
Total VC firms in our funnel: 124
Introductions made: 90
Not a fit / passed / on hold: 71
Investing: 4
Here’s another interesting stat: excluding the original accelerator money from Betaworks, number of white dudes who decided to come in on this round: 0. Surprising, right!? Certainly not intentional, it just happened that way. Maybe this is a total fluke and outlier, but whatever it is, I think it deserves to be celebrated as progress for both sides of the table.
~~~
Roughly one year ago May 31, 2017, I had my last day at Twitter. I took the majority of my severance and put it towards enabling this dream. 12 months later we have a company, a team, the beginnings of a product in TestFlight, investors committed, and a visa for me to stay in the country. Friends, we’re in position!
Want to know the weirdest thing about this week though? I actually felt kind of... empty inside after getting here (!) Post-achievement depression after finishing a major project is so real, folks. That feeling of getting off the Autobahn you’ve been speeding on for weeks to return to “normal life” is straaaaange. Look, it me:
“When we think about achieving a major goal, we picture the exhilaration of reaching new heights. What we often fail to anticipate, however, is that once we’ve scaled that mountain, it can be surprisingly chilly on the other side. After a period of massive productivity we have to revert back to life as usual and settle back into an established workplace routine. It’s a lot harder than it looks.” says this article from HBR. Strong agree.
I had a good chat about this with my friend Kelsey yesterday. We went to the beach to celebrate one year of her company incorporation (happy birthday Paloma!) Her feedback to me was how important it is to pause and celebrate success like this, not only because it’s important for our minds, but also because it’s a signal to others an achievement was made. I think I previously have been pretty bad at celebrating my successes, and unintentionally downplayed them to others. The consequence of this is other people are like, hm I guess that was nbd when it wasn’t, which is very unhelpful in business and life. Yep.
On that note, I’m seizing this opportunity to celebrate and taking a much-needed mini vacation next week, so no email from me next Sunday. See you in two weeks, friends! ✌️
Jams: what I’m into
It’s the end of the month, which means it’s playlist time! Here’s May (If you’re new to this and are into the general zone of hip hop / RnB, you can follow me on Spotify for the back catalog of these monthly playlists.
Also bonus ad-hoc party playlist from Friday night I threw together if you need like, party music for the Memorial Day long weekend ;-)