107 days to go: to fundraise or not, that is the question

A recap of week eighteen 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🏅: Pivoting our content and community strategy

• Loss 🤕: Development team pulled out of the project & I hit another low

• Lessons💡: Asking for advice can provide you with a much needed sanity check

• Tool 💥: Ask the republic, find the questions your customers are asking

As always, I appreciate feedback, so feel free to leave comments or reply to this email with your thoughts.

🎯 Objective

Continue with outreach & interviews
Just recover 🫠

It’s been three back-to-back weeks of rollercoaster emotions, and last week felt like I reached the very top before that sudden drop to the bottom.

My feelings were as confused as the British weather and let’s just say I experienced several seasons in a day 😂. Fortunately, I can laugh about it now. At the time… it was stress, stress and more stress.

This week, you’ll find my wins are shorter (and fewer) while the losses/lessons are more detailed and raw. That in itself is a reflection of how the week felt, and you all need to see that this is just the reality of a) being a founder and b) fundraising.

As the subject line suggests, last week made me contemplate many things — including whether I should be doing this at all. Which was a first, but I now realise that this is very normal and just part of the journey. Spoiler alert; I’m still fundraising. Head to losses if you want to find out why 👇🏾

---

🔋 Progress recap & highlights

Biggest wins

WIN 1️⃣: Started to pivot our content & community strategy (& planning monetisation)

For the past two months, I’ve been working with my team on video content to build engagement and a community across several social platforms. While it started pretty well, we’ve faced some challenges with creating content that consistently sends the same message (plus, I can be a bit of a production bottleneck 😅).

So, we’ve decided to change our strategy and focus on 1x major form of content (e.g. newsletter) and use that to trickle into other distribution channels (e.g. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube).

Not only will this streamline the teams’ efforts — and hopefully remove me as the bottleneck — but we also plan to start monetising our content by keeping all of the core information on one platform and giving our audience exclusive access to things like interviews, product recommendations and more.

Making this decision has lifted a weight off my shoulders and helped align the entire team. Whether it will work or not is another question so I’ll keep you posted!

TIPS FOR CONTENT & COMMUNITY GROWTH: Great content answers the questions that your community are constantly asking. Producing that regulalry and in a format that they are likley to digest is the magic formula for accelerating the engagement and growth of your audience. 

WIN 2️⃣: A 240 Days newsletter subscriber put me forward for a Podcast/newsletter interview 🥹

Last week was actually pretty rough — in fact, it’s been a rough three weeks.

So, when Creator Spotlight got in touch and said they wanted to interview me for their next newsletter, my week became somewhat brighter. Given I started this newsletter to help as many Founders as possible, I’m always incredibly grateful for the support that all of you offer me in return.

Whether you reply to one of these emails, leave a comment or offer your expertise in any way, I really do appreciate it.

So, a huge thank you to the person who put me forward for this interview — you made my week!

TIP FOR TAKING PART IN INTERVIEWS: Preparation is key to feeling comfortable when you're being interviewed by anyone. Ask for some of the questions ahead of time so you're able to think some of your answers through and don't be afraid to pause. A moment of silence is often all you ned to bring an answer to the surface.   

WIN 3️⃣: Automations update 🤖

The automations have started to perform consistently week on week. As I haven’t added any new people in a while, we’re just seeing a steady 3-4% increase in opens and a 10-15% increase in replies. Here’s a quick snapshot of what happened:

• 💃🏾 0 people added to automations

• 📧 964 people have opened my emails (34% of the total - up 3% WoW)

• 🖱️ 219 clicks on our pitch deck (22% of those who opened - up 8% WoW)

• ↩️ 47 people have replied so far (4% of opens - up 17.5% WoW)

Other things that happened this week:

• Spoke to potential event sponsors and speakers

• Got some great advice on the Head of Product and & Head of Engineering final stage interview prep

---

Is this helpful? Share the 240 Days newsletter with your community.

---

Biggest L’s 🤕

LOSS 😩: Development team pulled out of the V2 project & I hit another low

The past three weeks have been a bit of an ongoing battle.

Having been sick, recovered, felt burnout, and recovered, I was then knocked again when a Dev team we wanted to work with pulled out of the project just as we were getting started.

Now for context, I had spent a few weeks vetting the team and making sure the i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed (like many of you, I’ve had my fair share of developer woes and wanted to avoid that again at all costs). Just as it felt like we had passed the finish line, I got an email from the team saying they had taken on another project and wouldn’t be able to do both simultaneously.

Maybe it’s because the message was delivered via email instead of a quick phone call, maybe it’s because I was excited to finally get started, maybe it’s the pressure of fundraising and everything else, but this was a mid-week kick in the gut that drained me for a good few days.

It also made me ask A LOT of questions (some of which I’m sure you’ve all asked yourselves):

• Can I really do this job?

• What if I can’t find the right people?

• Will anyone believe in what I’m doing?

• Do I have what it takes to actually close this round?

• Should I even be raising?

• Should I be running this business?

And so on, and on and on. I spiralled.

After taking some emotional and physical hits for a few weeks, my capacity to manage it all just reached its peak and suddenly overflowed (tears and all).

At that moment, I wanted to stop.

Even with all of my optimism, everything felt very out of reach. So I decided that the next day, I would just take phone calls and decide what to do next.

And something really interesting happened. After waking up in a very doom and gloom state, I spent my day talking to people and every conversation chipped away at my mood, giving me the clarity that I didn’t really know I needed:

• 10am call with one of my mentees: She’s been having a tough time with job hunting. I reminded her that she’s doing all of the right things, the job she needs will come along in time and, while I can’t tell her exactly when there are clearly good opportunities cropping up around her. This reminded me that my fundraising journey is similar and, while it’s hard, now is not the time to stop.

• 11am interview for Head of Engineering: Spoke to a great candidate who was very skilled and seemed like a good personality fit. Which made me realise losing the development agency wasn’t the end of the world.

• 12pm call with a potential event partner: Our missions and visions are so well aligned that this conversation picked me all the way up. We spoke about what we want from the Black Hair industry going forward and how we can support each other. Making me realise that what Mane Hook-Up is doing is necessary and others are in it for the long run too.

• 2pm investor call: they seemed to like me, the business concept and the product so far but didn’t have the capital to deploy. A shame, but we move. This was a bit draining, but it’s also made me realise that we have moved along in the conversations with investors compared to when everything started in October.

• 3pm Head of Engineering interview: One of the best interviews that we’ve had so far. As before, great personality and skills fit. Again, making the development agency seem like a much smaller problem…

• 6.30pm call with my advisors: Perfectly timed. I had a chance to vent and get a fair chunk of my feelings over the past 24 hours off my chest. They all understood, let me know that it’s OK to feel that way and they were glad I had taken some much-needed time off. Leaving me feeling very grateful to have such wonderful advisors.

• 8pm Creator Spotlight interview: One hour of sharing a tonne about my journey, offering advice where I could and reflecting on how far we’ve come. Finally, the penny drops that I should probably count this as a bad couple of days, not a bad life decision.

It was incredible to go through so much in one day but, even better, all of the anxieties that cropped up just melted away with each conversation. Before I knew it, I felt good to go again.

Someone recently shared this slide with me — it’s a reflection of the typical Founder’s journey (thank you to The Portfolio Collective for illustrating it so well!).

There are so many ebbs and flows when you’re on this path. There are days that you will feel on top of the world, and others where you’ll feel like absolute garbage. Last week was a garbage week for me 😂 and that’s OK.

What’s important is taking the time to a) feel whatever you’re feeling - good or bad, b) give yourself time to make a decision so it’s well grounded and not reactive and c) recognise that bad days will also come and go.

After a few rocky weeks, I’d like to help any other Founders who are going through something similar. So, if you’re reading this after having a hard time, just hit reply to this email and we can have a chat. Even if I’m not the best person to help, I’ll happily point you in the direction of anyone I know who can.

TIP FOR BOUNCING BACK FROM LOWS: Spend some time doing the things that you love (e.g. speaking to customers, partners) and find someone to vent to. They will be a good reminder that your product or service is helping people and there are others who are just as passionate as you are about fixing these issues. Sometimes that's all you need. 

---

💡 Lessons learned

Quote of the week
Growth and comfort do not coexist.
— Virginia Rometty

LESSON 👩🏾‍🏫: Advice can provide you with a much-needed sanity check

Fundraising while you’re a pre-seed start-up in this climate can make you feel crazy.

I’ve been feeling like that for a looonnggg time and, last week, I finally got the sanity check I needed from a very kind VC investor.

At the time, I asked for advice about presenting traction. Mainly, there has been a huge shift in expecting pre-seed companies to produce revenue (which wasn’t necessarily an expectation 2-3 years ago).

After asking my question, he confirmed what I have been thinking for a while - expecting pre-seed technology companies to produce revenue is nuts 🤯.

As the conversation went on, it was clear that unless you’re already wealthy and can pump money into it yourself, it’s highly highly unlikely to generate revenue. But, unfortunately, because of all the chaos that has happened over the past year or so — overinflated valuations, overspending, and the thousands of lay-offs — the pendulum has now swung too far in the other direction and investors are now trying to minimise the chances of history repeating itself so much that early stage start-ups are taking a hit.

I felt a sign of relief. That was all I needed to hear.

Now, does that mean I won’t look for opportunities to generate revenue? No, because I can’t change the fact that it’s an expectation that most investors have at the moment. So I’d be silly to fight against it. But, it does mean that I can channel more energy into building my business instead of questioning my judgment.

I kid you not, this one question has been irking me since I started speaking to investors a few months ago. I’ve often thought expecting revenue at our stage isn’t reasonable. But with very little knowledge of fundraising under my belt, I also didn’t feel well equipped to challenge this notion and that meant conversations could feel uncomfortable.

Now that I know I’m not crazy 🥳, I’m in a much better position to either ask the right questions or just accept that this investor may not be right for us at the moment.

Either way, it’s a huge relief for me — feel free to leave any comments if you’ve felt the same way! I’d love to hear some of your stories.

---

💥 Hack of the week

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

• What to consider when paying someone to build an investor outreach list

• How to find investors’ email addresses on LinkedIn

• How to find investors details on Crunchbase (without paying a penny)

---

📚 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 lists

• 20x free investor lists: 20x lists of investors that you can you can make use of . Enjoy!

---

🧰 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.

Answer the public: discover questions you customers are asking

• What’s it for: A discovery tool to help you understand what questions people are asking online.

• How it helped: Great content starts with answering your audience’s questions. Answer the public does a great job of gathering and grouping a lot of the questions people typically ask online. This has helped us to decide on topics for videos, blogs and even people to interview.

• Price: There’s a free version (with limited functionality) or you can use the paid version, starting at £9/month.

---

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:

• 2023 in review: lessons, hacks and tools for founders who are fundraising

• 162 days to go: the final push before Christmas

• 169 days to go: making angel syndicate applications

P.P.S. Enjoy this newsletter? Subscribe and please share with a friend who could benefit from reading it!