8 days to go: final countdown

A recap of week thirty-one as a full-time Founder.

Jade Buffong-Phillips

May 27, 2024

Hey there 👋🏾,

For those of you who are short on time, here are the sections of the newsletter you can skip ahead to…

Win🏅: Finished the launch plan for Mane Hook-Up 3.0
Loss🤕: 1x Nigerian fund said no for now and 1x Angel has ghosted
Lesson💡: Fundraising is important but building is even more so
Resources 📚 : Create a winning grant application, YC advice and more

🎯 Objective

Focusing on the product & bouncing back from a week-long headache

Thank you for bearing with the delay in getting this newsletter out! I suffered from a hiiddeeoous headache last week (more on this in losses), so I pushed this newsletter back by a week.

That said, I’ve spent the past two weeks focussing more on the product than on fundraising as we’re gearing up for the re-launch of Mane Hook-Up as we focus on building a presence in London and New York.

As exciting as that sounds, I’m also very aware that my 240-day countdown has come to an end. And, I’ll be wrapping up with my final fundraising recap next week! I’ll reveal everything from whether I have been able to raise in the timeline, as well as some of my biggest learnings over the last 8 months.

Until then, you can enjoy this week’s recap and look out for the next episode of The Raise which will be in your inbox tomorrow!

🔋 Progress recap & highlights

Biggest wins

WIN 1️⃣: Finished the launch plan for Mane Hook-Up 3.0 - we’ll be going live in NYC this summer 🗽☀️

Over the past few months, I’ve planned to move Mane Hook-Up to a low-code platform. We’re doing this for a few reasons:

Speed is everything: building something from scratch can take anywhere from 4-6 months and with low code it’ll take us between 4-8 weeks. As some core features are readily available via the low-code solution, we can also roll out updates at lightning speed.
Low code saves a tonne on development fees: hiring developers (even if they’re offshore) can be a huge cost. But now that we’re moving to low-code, we won’t need a technical hire for the next 2 years. We’ll be able to build, monetise and scale our platform without a developer, which is a rarity.

But, what’s even more exciting is we will be launching Mane Hook-Up in the US, starting with New York. We’re now knees deep in the designs (which should be finished by the end of this week) and we’ll start working on the development in June.

A few things I’ve learned along the way:

Low code still requires customisation, make sure the platform you’re using can do what you need it to do
Tempting as it may be to jump into the building, make a plan first
Estimate how much time you think it’ll take to be done and double it (a lesson from our technical advisor, not me!)

Given summer is a busy period for the hair and beauty industry (think holidays, weddings and more), it benefits us to go live at that time of year too. The last thing I’ll consider is how we can get some great PR and coverage for the launch, and what our targets should be in the first 30, 60 and 90 days.

TIP FOR NON TECHNICAL FOUNDERS: Low and no-code are great ways to build a product when you don't have the technical expertise. This also gives you time to find the right technical lead or co-founder (if you need one), which will stop you from making a hasty decision.

WIN 2️⃣: We have a new advisor (official announcement coming soon) 🎉

One of the best benefits of fundraising and building out loud has been, getting some incredible introductions to Founders and start-up operators who genuinely understand the problem that we’re trying to solve.

A few months ago, I was introduced to a Founder who had created and sold a beauty booking platform a few years back and now we’re ironing out the details for them to come on board as our latest advisor.

Having an advisor who has already built and scaled a business similar to ours is a huge win and will give us a major strategic advantage. I’ll make an official announcement on LinkedIn in the next couple of weeks with more details!

TIP FOR SPEAKING TO POTENTIAL ADVISORS: There are plenty of people who have enough experience and skills to add value to your business. But there are probably few who are a great personality fit. Take your time and get to know advisors before you sign the dotted line and part with equity to onboard them. Also, make sure you create a list of responsibilities that they'll take ownership of so it always feels like an equal exchange.

WIN 3️⃣: Our podcasts and newsletters have been well received by the community 🎙️

In 6 weeks, we’ve posted three celebrity textured hair stylist interviews and all of them have gone down a treat with our community.

I launched The Mane Cut to provide customers and stylists with answers to some of the many questions they have about managing their hair or becoming a world-class textured hair stylist. By offering our community quality content that’s of substance, we’ll start to build a more loyal following who will (hopefully) be just as interested in using our product as they are in absorbing our content.

The stats are also saying that we’re heading in the right direction. With 3x episodes out, we have:

An average email open rate of 54% (110% above the average)
One episode with almost 200 downloads (the average is 50)
and 2k newsletter and podcast viewers in the past 30 days.

Combine this with a gradual increase in our social following and engagement rate, and it’s fair to say that, inch by inch, our content is performing as we’d like it to. The priority now is to stay consistent and use this as a springboard to build a sound relationship with our community.

TIPS FOR CONTENT CREATION: Always consider the workflow and the number of people needed to consistently produce the content you need. Podcasts and newsletters may seem like obvious places to start, but they require a level of organisation to be fruitful and useful to your audience. Do the set-up work upfront to prevent yourself or your team from coming to a grinding halt.

WIN 4️⃣: Automations update 🤖

Similarly to last time, our current automations started to pick up once the third email was sent to investors. Here’s how they’re performing so far…

Performance so far

💃🏾 0 people added to automations
📧 384 people have opened my emails (58% open rate)
🖱️ 44 clicks on our pitch deck (11.5% of opens)
↩️ 34 people have replied so far (9% of opens)

The investor lists that I found via LinkedIn weren’t as useful as I hoped they would be. Even with filters (by location, stage and sector), I still found a few investors who let me know that Mane Hook-Up wasn’t the right fit against their investment thesis. I think this goes to show that creating your list (or paying someone with access to platforms like Crunchbase and PitchBook) is far more beneficial than leaving it to the standard lists you come across online.

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Biggest L’s 🤕

LOSS 😩: 1x Nigerian fund said no for now and 1x Angel has ghosted

Fundraising can often feel like a brutal process, especially when you hear no after going through a long back and forth. That’s happened twice over the last 2-3 weeks as a large Nigerian fund said no for now as they’re channelling funds into their existing portfolio instead of looking for new companies to invest in, and one Angel (that I thought I had a pretty good relationship with) has disappeared altogether.

Funnily enough, while this is a loss, I’ve started to react less to these conversations. I’ll feel down for a little while but I’m starting to realise that:

Some ‘no’s’ are not permanent: there are both Angel investors and funds who will consider investing in a start-up when they’ve seen a bit more from them. So, while a no can be disappointing, it’s also another person I can build a long-term relationship with.
Seeing bad behaviour now saves me a tonne of headache later: Ghosting and broken commitments are hard pills to swallow, but I now just see this as my time, energy and sanity being saved from what would inevitably have been a bad founder/investor fit. While I can’t get my time back, I can save myself from experiencing pain in the future.

I also came across a LinkedIn post that highlighted some of the ways that Airbnb had struggled while they were fundraising in 2008…

And it highlighted one of the most important facts about fundraising… great ideas are overlooked all the time. I mean, think about the Airbnb that we all know and love today, and then look at these rejection emails 😭

So for all of the Founders either struggling to fundraise or bounce back from no’s please remember this point from Kevin 👇🏾

Even brilliant minds can overlook significant opportunities. Innovation tends to slip through the cracks of even the brightest investors.

LOSS 😩: Suffered from a migraine/tension headache and that wiped me out for a week

Anyone close to me knows that I value my health above and beyond almost everything else. There is nothing that grates me more than being stuck in bed, feeling sickly and unable to do all of the things I love.

Rewind to last week and that’s exactly what I was suffering from. Locked away in a dark room, glugging down as much water as I possibly could, trying to overcome a headache that felt like two tambourines ringing between my ears.

After a day of not being able to look at computer screens or deal with bright light, I carried myself to the opticians (for the first time in my life — don’t judge me), to be told that a) I have perfect sight, and b) I’m probably suffering from a very bad migraine.

Three days in (and a few Google searches later), I knew that migraines shouldn’t last this long, so off to the Doctors I went. Fortunately, I was diagnosed with a tension headache… which I discovered can last days, weeks or months at a time 😭.

Fortunately, mine seemed to disappear after 6 days. It did, however, drag me to a grinding halt. The thought of not working for a week wasn’t appealing, least of all with deadlines looming, and dealing with a to-do list that was already the length of my arm.

That said, I did very little in those six days and realised that the world didn’t, in fact, end. Another lesson for all of the Founders who are reading this. As painful as it can be to be still, sometimes you have to do it. You are no use to your family, friends, team or even yourself if you’re only 20% there.

Listen to your body and take the breaks that you need.

TIPS FOR FOUNDERS WHO NEED A BREAK: People typically have 25 days of holiday a year. That works out to 2 days of holiday a month. Take your time off and enjoy it. Your mind and body will always thank you for it.

💡 Lessons learned

Quote of the week
“Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.”
— Steve Johnson

LESSON 👩🏾‍🏫: Fundraising is important. But, the building is even more so.

Fundraising is often seen as the peak of success for start-ups. It’s an ambition that many founders have, and few achieve.

But, in the past few years, we’ve seen companies raise funds to grow by any means necessary (often leaving staff as collateral damage with layoffs) and now investors are more focused on traction and sustainability than they ever have been.

While all companies need to be funded in one way or another — bootstrapped, crowdfunded or VC-backed — to achieve the magic goal of raising, the most important thing any founder can focus on is building an incredible product that people love.

Build, prove that a group of people will use your product and then see what investors have to say.

Before I jumped into fundraising there are two things I heard repeatedly that I now wholeheartedly agree with:

Raising is a full-time job: for three months, I focussed on nothing but speaking to investors and for the last 4-5 months, I have tried to find a balance between fundraising and building — which has been far from easy.
The best time to ask for money is when you don’t “need” it: Monique Rodriguez, the Founder of Mielle Organics, said this in an interview that I listened to a few months ago, and I hadn’t really thought of it in this way before. But, you can secure far more from investors when they’re aware that you don’t need their help than you can with an early concept or idea.

Building ultimately leads to securing investment, which means your time is best spent channelling as much energy as possible into creating the best product you can.

It’s important to remember that fundraising is part of the journey, but it doesn’t define or guarantee a start-up’s success. So, while you're thinking about or planning for a fundraise, just don’t forget to prioritise building too (because that’s how you’ll get the money in the end).

💥 Hack of the week

Nothing new to add this week! Feel free to revisit some of the hacks from my previous newsletters:

📚 Resources

If you made it all the way to the end of this newsletter, you deserve a reward. So here’s a list of the best resources I came across last week to help you with your raise.

Fundraising

Innovate UK Women’s grant: A great one for UK founders. Apply before the 10th of July to get access to a £75k grant.
How to win grants: Toby Egbuna, founder of Chezie, shares his advice on how to create a winning grant application.

General advice

Essential YC advice about building a start-up: A very interesting list of advice from YC on how to build faster, better and get a product into the hands of your users.

🧰 Founder’s toolbox

Anyone who knows me knows that I love finding tools, apps and systems to add to my arsenal. Here’s a list of the best tools that I found last week.

Plausible: a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics

What’s it for: Plausible is a website analytics platform that’s GDPR, CCPA and PECR compliant.
How it helped: There have been a lot of major changes with Google Analytics. Whether it’s the shift to GA4 (which seems to have lost all of the great features that Universal had) or the issues with data privacy, it all feels quite messy. Plausible is a great analytics alternative as it has been designed with compliance in mind and allows you to collect/view all of the great data that you need.
Price: Starting from £9/month for 10k monthly page views.

Questions? 🤔

Feel free to drop any questions in the comments below! Until next week,

J x

P.S. Here are some of my other posts:

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