211 days to go: figuring out what to outsource + recovering from self-doubt
A recap of week four as a full-time Founder
Hey there 👋🏾,
For those of you who are short on time, here are the sections of the newsletter you may want to skip ahead to…
Win🏅: Shortlisted as a finalist for the #RukaMakingHistory grant
Loss 🤕: Recovering from self-doubt and uncertainty
Hack💥: What to consider when paying someone to build an investor list
Resources 📚: Email templates for investor outreach
As always, I appreciate feedback, so feel free to leave comments or reply to this email with your thoughts.
🎯 Objective
Figure out what to outsource, self-assign and hand over to the team
Delegation is one of the trickiest skills to master, but it can be the most valuable in your arsenal. As I had struggled with prioritising tasks, I decided to spend this week better understanding what I needed to:
Outsource to people outside of my team (e.g. freelancers, Fiverr, Upwork teams)
Handover to our intern so she can have a great learning experience and take a weight off my shoulders
Handle myself as it requires more product/market knowledge or is significant to the raise.
I also started to battle with self-doubt and a cold 🤒 which threw me off-balance. On the upside, it didn’t stop me from getting plenty done this week, but it did leave me thinking about how I can keep myself grounded in the long run.
🔋 Progress recap & highlights
Biggest wins
WIN 1️⃣: We’re a finalist for the #RukaMakingHistory grant ✅
A couple of weeks ago, I entered Ruka Hair’s pitch competition (here’s my 90s TikTok entry to jog your memory). And, on Friday evening, I found out that we’ve been shortlisted. So, I’ll be pitching live at the end of this week with 9x other Founders 🥳.
Three people will be offered the grants (between £5k and £2k), so my priority this week is sharpening my pitch and prepping for the showdown. Whether or not I win a grant, this is a great opportunity to get some first-hand experience of what pitching really looks and feels like. Wish me luck!
FINDING INDUSTRY SPECIFIC GRANTS: there are more companies paying it forward by supporting smaller businesses with grants and sponorships (think PayPal, Google etc). Follow established brands and scale-ups that are industry adjacent to your business, and look out for grants, mentorship programs and other opportunities that they offer up-and-coming start-ups for support. WIN 2️⃣: The investor outreach list has 700+ contacts (with the help of another Founder & Fiverr) ✅
For the past three weeks, I’ve been building a list of investors to contact. I found 100 or so myself and then gathered 200+ from other sources online (links to the sources are in this newsletter).
But, over time, I’ve realised this is a huge time suck and building the investor list takes away from time that I could spend on calls, getting advice from Founders or balancing other general business needs (like building our US waitlist).
This got me thinking, how can I get the data we need but get my time back? Should this be something I work on myself, hand over to my team or a freelancer? And I narrowed it down to two options:
Option 1 🕵🏾: Get access to an existing database of investors that I can filter through and export data from
Option 2 🤑: Pay someone else to build the list! (an idea from another Founder)
In true start-up fashion, I started with option one as it’s more cost-effective (even if some of my time is still spent on gathering data). Ironically, someone from Pitchbook landed in my inbox and offered to run a 15-to 20-minute demo. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pitchbook, they are a data platform that collects information about companies worldwide. Including; how much businesses have raised, their evaluations at each funding round, who has invested in them and more.
And the demo didn’t disappoint. Pitchbook collects some really powerful information and can help people find the most appropriate investors. On the demo, they showed me how to discover people by sector and location they typically invest in, as well as sifting through investors that have put money into products that are industry adjacent to my own. Data like ‘dry powder’ also gave an insight into how much capital each investor currently has in the bank. I was sold on the product but could also tell it would come with a hefty price tag.
The price was to the tune of $6,000 😭 and gone were my dreams of using Pitchbook.
However, seeing the platform up close jogged my memory as a Founder I spoke to a few weeks ago mentioned paying someone who has access to Pitchbook (and a few other platforms), to build a list for them.
With this, option two started to look much more appealing. So, off I went to Fiverr to find a reliable Pro to help. Now, Fiverr can be a bit of a minefield because there are so many people offering the same services for around the same price. Here’s what I found when it came to searching for list-building support:
Terms like ‘Pitchbook’, ‘Crunchbase’ and ‘Angel’ helped me find more relevant Pros
Costs range between $20 to $90, depending on the size of the list
Pros will typically offer list sizes between 100-300 people
Fortunately, I found someone who could build a list based on my criteria, verify the emails and get the information back to me in 2 days, and it only cost $70.
Considering they managed to gather more information in 2 days than I could in 2 weeks, it was worthwhile.
TIP FOR BUYING INVESTOR LISTS: Anyone you're buying from may find it easier to gather email addresses of VCs and Family Offices. They may be able to gather lists of Angels and their LinkedIn profiles (leaving you to gather email addresses with looks like Skrapp and Hunter), but even then having someone scour LinkedIn for a list of Angels is more productive than you doing the entire thing yourself. WIN 3️⃣: I wrote 15x investor outreach email templates ✅
With list building handed over to a freelancer, I started channelling my energy into writing emails to introduce myself and Mane Hook-Up to potential investors.
I aimed to create 6-10 templates to test and see which emails produce a better response rate. Rather than guess what makes investors tick, I looked for templates people had shared online to use as a base.
To my surprise, there are plenty of examples of successful investor outreach online (Twitter is a gold mine for this). Here’s some great advice I stumbled across:
Sahil Bloom also has a few templates to follow (this thread is full of tips).
After compiling all of this advice, I created 15x outreach email templates and will start using these to reach out to investors this week. Here’s one example I’ve drafted for anyone who needs some help:
Introduce yourself and the round: Hope you’re well. I'm [name], Founder of [company], a niche beauty tech startup raising a [amount] pre-seed round.
Unique connection: I've been following your content for some time and sense that your experience with [company x] and [company y] would make us a great fit for each other.
Problem/market: Afro and curly hairstylists are predominantly offline and in spaces that make it difficult for millions of women to book appointments with them. This is a [amount] market opportunity and is not yet served by platforms like [company a] or [company b] just don’t cater to their needs.
Calendar link/deck: Here’s a link to our deck with more information, and if this opportunity sounds interesting, feel free to grab a slot for an intro call.
If you need more help with outreach emails, head to the resources section for more templates!
Some other things I managed to get done this week:
I had calls with some very supportive Founders and received help with 3x warm intros
Grabbed a free ticket to an investor/founder event that was recommended
Is this helpful? Share the 240 Days newsletter with your community.
Biggest L’s 🤕
LOSS 1 😩: I suddenly started to feel lost and uncertain
I was filled with mixed emotions last week. On one hand, I felt like I was making better decisions (and faster), which is a bonus. But uncertainty kept creeping in on me and I found myself asking: am I doing enough? Will this work out? What if this, that and the other?
It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way (and probably won’t be the last), but it was one of the most intense bouts of self-doubt I’ve had in a long time. Usually, something has happened to bring this on, but not this time. It was just a fluctuating feeling that took a few days to shake off.
On the upside, I’ve accepted this is just part of the journey. I know there will be a constant tension between feeling confident that I can raise this money and questioning whether I’m mad to even try.
What’s key is that I keep chipping away at my plan, even on the days when I’m not sure if it’s working. This LinkedIn post by Brett Erik also helped me put a few things into perspective and hopefully, it will help anyone else fighting against doubt:
TIP FOR FIGHTING UNCERTAINTY: Doubt, frustrating as it is, can often lead to decision paralysis. In those moments just keep working on your plan. Don't turn simple daily decisions into rubix cube calculations. All you need to do is put one foot infront of the other and keep going until your confidence kicks back in. That way, you're more likely to make balanced and informed decisions instead of ones stimulated by fear.LOSS 2 😩: I caught a cold and it wiped me out for 2x days
From tickly throat to full-blown head cold, I was wiped out by a cold last week — it made me realise two things:
I can’t bring the best version of myself to the table if I don’t look after myself: Sleep, food and exercise all play a part in keeping myself healthy and ready to work. Of those three things, sleep is the one that I need to be most mindful of as (lack of it) often leads to me coming down with a bug. The last thing I want is to be taken down by the flu every 4-5 months, so I must be proactive and prioritise looking after myself. Plus, I need to be sharp for pitching sessions.
The world won’t end if I pause for a moment: Being sick felt like a major inconvenience and, instead of wrapping up and resting, I kept worrying about the 101 things that needed to be done (and probably drained myself some more in the process). After one day of being still, I quickly realised that a short pause wouldn’t bring my world crashing down.
Planning time off as a solo Founder is a way to prevent sickness: I have a terrible habit of pausing when my body forces me to. I keep telling myself one more week won’t hurt until it literally does. So, I’ll plan my time off a month or so ahead of time to create the moments of calm that my mind and body need to keep going.
TIP FOR GETTING ENOUGH REST: Whether you have an Android, iPhone or fitness tracker, all of them now have some kind of sleep target setting. You can choose how much sleep you want to get a night (e.g. 7 hours) and, by connecting to your morning alarm, these apps will start to tell you should start heading to bed. This has started to help me gain a few extra hours of sleep and gain much needed rest. 💡 Lessons learned
Quote of the week
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose — Lyndon B. Johnson
LESSON 1 👩🏾🏫: Data collection is not a good use of my time
After weeks of pulling an investor list together, I finally handed the job over to another person. Why? Mainly because I realised that my time was better spent on other things that would move the needle with fundraising (e.g. completing Angel Syndicate application forms).
Collecting investor information is still a really important task — without it, I can’t do any outreach — but it isn’t a task for me. Considering the freelancer I worked with managed to gather 300+ emails in 2x days, they achieved as much as I had in 1/5 of the time.
As a Founder, it can be a challenge to figure out what tasks I should handle personally, what should be outsourced or even dropped from the agenda altogether. To be expected when I’m a one-woman band, but I can’t help but think of how far ahead I could have been had I handed this task over sooner.
To better manage this, I’ve started to categorise my tasks into groups:
Nice to have, but quick: assigned to our marketing intern
Necessary, but quick: assigned to me
Nice to have, but time-consuming: pushed back or dropped from the list
Necessary, but time-consuming (up to 1 day): assigned to me
Necessary, but time-consuming (2+ days): assigned to a freelancer
Now this isn’t set in stone, but it is a good rule of thumb that helps me make quick decisions on the fly so my and my team’s time is well spent.
💥 Hack of the week
What to consider when paying someone to build an investor list
The PitchBook demo opened my eyes to all the data that can be collected on investors and how that can be used to inform who you prioritise reaching out to.
For example, ‘dry-powder’ data can help you prioritise the investors who have money in the bank and are actively investing. But, when you’re paying someone to collect this data for you, there’s so much information they can get hold of, that it’s often down to you to specify exactly what you need.
To help, here’s the information you should consider adding to your brief:
Type of investor (e.g. Angel, Family Offices, VCs)
Regions investors work in (e.g. USA, Europe)
Industries they invest in (e.g. SaaS, Future of Work)
Here’s some data/information you should be asking for:
Do they lead funding rounds? helpful for anyone who hasn’t found a lead yet.
Number of investments in your market: gives you a rough idea of how experienced/interested they are.
Number of exits
Dry powder: this will help you to prioritise investors that have capital at the moment.
Finally, here are some questions you should ask your freelance about the process:
Ask for a custom package: this is especially helpful for Fiverr as packages on seller profiles can still be lacking. Asking for a custom package is often better value for money as well.
How do they verify email addresses: the last thing you want is a list with a bunch of old, unused or invalid email addresses. So, ask sellers what their process is for checking email validity.
What’s their policy for emails that hard bounce or people who no longer work for that VC/office: even with a system in place, a few emails can still slide through the net and lead to hard bounces. A good seller will give you more emails free of charge to replace them, so double-check before parting with any money.
📚 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.
Investor outreach email templates
🧰 Founder’s toolbox
Anyone who knows me knows that I love finding tools, apps and systems to add to my arsenal. Each week, I’ll share 1-3 tools that I’ve added (or removed) from my toolkit and, hopefully, they’ll serve you well too. Here’s a list of the best tools that I found last week…
DaVinci Video Editing Software
What’s it for: Free video editing software for people of all experience levels. Available for both PCs and Macs.
How it helped: DaVinci saved me when I had to edit my Ruka Grant video application. It allowed me to quickly cut my video down to 90 seconds. Although I haven’t used DaVinci for a year or so, it was still very intuitive and easy to use. Highly recommend it to anyone who has to edit videos for social media.
Price: Free to £245
Rating: 5/5*
Hunter.io for email validation
What’s it for: A bunch of things. Hunter can be used for finding contact information, validating emails and sending short email series.
How it helped: Hunter has been the bedrock of my investor outreach — I’ve used it to gather email addresses, validate/check that emails are working and set some investor outreach email journeys. You can get a lot out of the free version of their product, and it is also super easy to use.
Price: Starts from £49 a month for 2x users
Rating: 4.5/5*
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:
P.P.S. Enjoy this newsletter? Subscribe and please share with a friend who could benefit from reading it!