Let Go and Haul: closing out our insiders round
Week 6, 2018 – Brooklyn
Note there will be no email next weekend! More on that in a sec :)
Journey: where we’re at
News: Our Creator in Residence Kofi had a feature in Vogue this week! 👀 those beautiful pics and moving story. Wow.
Remember last week when I said the end of January left me feeling pretty wiped out? Well, besides juggling hiring, working towards our product launch goals, putting on our first creator event, and doing a talk at the Internet Archive for our first partnership, there’s another reason January was a lot:
Right before the December break, we made the strategic decision to do a small-ish insiders round based on market factors. It didn’t feel right to talk about it while it was happening due to the nature of it (and I had to keep it tightly focused to manage all these January commitments and knew I didn’t have much time for inbound).
I essentially closed it out this week (f yea!) which puts us around 2.5M raised total to date, an “unofficial” seed in two parts (more on the merits of doing it that way in moment). For those of you wondering what this does to our fundraising timeline, we’ll be doing a priced round in the fall.
Even though it was an extreme January for me, I’m really glad we made this decision!
Journal: what I learned
Since we’re on the topic of fundraising and I haven’t talked about money in this email for a minute, and I had so many people email back last time I shared out learnings on fundraising, here’s a big one:
When I was considering whether to do this strategic round, the best advice I got was from one of our investors who said: this totally makes sense, but only if you can make some phone calls and do this in a super focused way – not if you have to run around pitching tons of firms.
100%. There would have been no time for that.
That’s exactly what I did, it was awesome that three of our existing investors were able to (with their own fundraising – that’s a thing too, remember!) and wanted to come back in so the process was pretty swift (a bit over one month). It’s definitely still work though. Here’s what it looked like the other week when I was in SF late at night like whyyyy.
I only have a sample size of us, but what I can say is having done this “seed” in two parts, it might actually be a better way to fundraise for the new class of company we are: ML + consumer. Typically, in consumer you raise money, you launch, it succeeds or fails. It’s pretty binary. In computer vision, you raise money and then sell to a Google or an Apple. The thing is, most consumer vision companies to date have been “pick axe and shovel” type companies. This place that we’re at now, the ability to actually apply computer vision to the application layer is new, it’s different, and it most definitely does not fit into the typical style of “consumer fundraising” in my opinion. ML takes time, it takes research. So, what we ended up doing was proving we were doing this by hitting all our milestones over the last 6 months, and it created a lot more confidence we can do this. Talking to people the second time was a lot different than the first time when I could only talk about what we were going to do.
I don’t think there’s any “right” way to do this stuff. People find success through a million different paths, they raise money all different kinds of ways. What I noticed is that for our category of company which is genuinely new and doesn’t fit into a “pattern” yet, this might be a helpful way to think about raising money (for anyone out there thinking of doing this bonkers thing!)
Okay enough about that! I’m ready to take a lil break from thinking so much about money non-stop!
I’m taking a vacation! I know! Crazy! I’m not bringing my computer! Also crazy! I’VE NEVER ACTUALLY DONE THAT BEFORE. So that’s why there will be no email next Sunday. If I’ve sounded like I’ve been on the edge of burnout these past few weeks in this email it’s because I am, so time to take care of that before it becomes a problem. Nobody needs that! Definitely not us :)
Jams: what I’m into
This track that I discovered wafting through the courtyard of one of the buildings on my block. I love my 🇩🇴 neighborhood. This Punto A dude only has 12,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. WHY ONLY? He also has this adorable video of this kid dancing on his IG, which is pure joy.
If you haven’t watched A$AP Rocky’s latest ode to acid (which is not really a… song? Like not in the way you could hum after and I’m totally okay with that?) you definitely need to get in that vid immediately. There is a lot going on and I love it.
These two links from Anton of deep learning AR hand puppets (aieeee!) and volumetric video are pretty dope too. Volumetric is where it’s at, it’s going to be way more revolutionary than VR :D
Side note: I'm not one to follow the Grammys too hard, but if you've been reading these for a mo, you know what I'm gonna say next because you know who I love: f yea Cardi B! Making history yet again being the first solo woman artist to win best rap album. (It’s obviously a crime this didn't go to Missy Elliot when she was nominated FOUR TIMES for albums between 1998 – 2006), but hey here we finally are! Women make rap albums and get recognized for it!