190 days to go: incremental gains from outreach & bouncing back from no's

A recap of week seven 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🏅: Investor introductions, calls and outreach are picking up

• Loss 🤕: Dealing with my first investor call no-show

• Lessons 💡: How to combat the lows of the no’s

• Hack💥: Using Reddit to start conversations with customers

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

🎯 Objective

Prep for second-stage calls with investors and bounce back from the no’s

Last week, outreach started to snowball — more replies and feedback were coming through, which was great. This also meant:

1. Analysing the results from 3x weeks of outreach to optimise both the personalised emails and automations.

2. Preparing for investor calls even when my energy was low and I was emotionally recovering from the stings of hearing more not now/no.

When I look back on what I managed to achieve, last week was probably one of the most productive weeks I’ve had since working on Mane Hook-Up full-time. But, it didn’t feel that way because of the emotional hits that came with each no.

It was the first week that I had to summon the energy to keep up the pace. Looking back on it, I’m very grateful for the experience as it’s just added to my resilience. Knowing that other Founders are going through the same thing, I’ve shared my method for fighting against these low moments in today’s newsletter.

To anyone who is struggling to bounce back from the many no’s that come with fundraising, keep going.

All it takes is one ‘yes’ to turn things around 🙌🏾

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🔋 Progress recap & highlights

Biggest wins

WIN 1️⃣: Investor introductions, calls and feedback are picking up ✅

Automating my outreach has allowed me to reach more investors faster, and the incremental gains are starting to pay off (which is a big win). In total, I have:

• 🤖 Launched 12x automations (testing subject lines, sending times and days sent)

• 👯🏽 Added 1,900 people to those automations and run them for 3x weeks

• 🏓 Around 300 hard bounces (and removed them from my CRM)

• 📧 900+ people have opened my emails (56.2% of remaining contacts)

• ↩️ 40 or so people have replied so far (4% of those who have opened)

• 🥈 30 people replied after the 2nd email in the series (75% of those who replied)

That’s a lot of really helpful data. All of which has helped me to better understand the people I’m speaking to. For one, I know my subject line is leading to opens (which is great). Two, the majority of people are replying after the second email, which means it often takes more than one to be noticed (to be expected, but always nice to have some data to provide context).

Better than the data I’ve collected, the outreach has started to pay off as it is leading to introductions. Here’s what happened last week:

• 2x cold emails led to 3x referred introductions and 2x phone calls booked

• 1x cold email led to an Angel Syndicate requesting I make a submission via their online portal

Now, don’t get me wrong, even with these replies and calls being booked, I have had about 30 people politely replying to say they’re not interested.

But, I now know, for every 40 replies, 4 people (or 10%) will be interested in learning more and setting up a call.

Just knowing that 10% of replies will probably lead to a call is enough for me to keep at it. This is why having an investor CRM is helpful because you can analyse the results and understand the impact of your outreach, double down on what’s working and bin what isn’t.

As well as email, I’ve started to use LinkedIn for some outreach and that’s also beginning to pay off as LinkedIn outreach and warm introductions have led to:

• 1x Angel Syndicate putting me through to the due diligence round

• 1x Angel Syndicate that I wasn’t quite right for has introduced me to a Founder who built a similar platform

Overall, those are solid results for 3x weeks of outreach!

ANALYSING INVESTOR OUTREACH: I measure the impact of outreach by looking at open rate, reply rate and volume of yes/no responses. Review these numbers each week to make sure your time is being well spent. There may be messages that are falling on deaf ears or worse, not even being read if the subject line isn't interesting enough. Use data to improve your outreach and make it as profitable as it can possibly be. 

WIN 2️⃣: Attended the Angel Investment School’s event on leveraging technical talent ✅

I’ve given myself the challenge of attending 1x event a week until Christmas. Why? Because meeting new people and building up my network (in a meaningful way) will help me to reach the right investors.

Last week, I was fortunate to be invited to the AIS (Angel Investment School) event on leveraging technical talent to scale your business.

The panel was great! Loved the synergy between all of the people on the stage, and they shared some really meaningful advice. I now better understand the different roles that technical talent plays while building a start-up, how those roles can change and where to best find these people when I need to hire them. I spent so much time taking notes on my phone, that I didn’t ask any questions 😅 but, even so, a lot of knowledge was gained.

On the flip side, I’ve realised that attending events alone has forced me to come out of my comfort zone. While I’m not the person to speak to everyone in a room (my social battery can only do so much 🪫 lol), I managed to:

• Speak to 10x people and connect with all of them on LinkedIn

• 1x Founder offered to help me with warm introductions

• 1x Angel investor kindly offered to share my deck with her network

All of these outcomes are wins, because I didn’t have this information or these connections before attending. It can be tough to make time for events (especially when they’re happening during the day). I already have the task of raising and generally running the business at the same time, but I believe committing to an event 1x a week or every two weeks is both manageable and really worthwhile and highly recommend that other Founders build this habit into their routine too.

Some other things I managed to get done this week:

• An Angel investor that I met at an event is reviewing my deck

• Passed the high-level assessment of 2x Angel Syndicate funds (1x US and 1x UK)

• More calls booked with great Founders for introductions (1x offered to help me with warm intros)

TIP FOR EVENTS: the best events often crop up in Founder communities or referrals from other investors/Founders. Try to join as many of these communities as you can and ask other Founders about the event's they're attending.

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Biggest L’s 🤕

LOSS 😩: 1x investor no-show that hasn’t been rebooked

After all of the emails, follow-ups and prep, the last thing you want is to be left hanging on a Zoom call.

But it happened to me for the first time last week 😭.

When you’re putting in the hours, planning, and thinking a few steps ahead, things like this can be really disheartening (it definitely was for me).

On the upside, they got in touch and explained why they had missed the call (which eased my pain lol) but since following up again over email, I haven’t heard anything back.

In that moment, I wondered if I had said or done the wrong thing, if my deck wasn’t enough or if I had communicated the value of our product well enough. Logically, I know these things just happen and it’s nothing personal — there are thousands of reasons they may not have replied — but that doesn’t stop the feeling of heartache when it does. When you’re so close to the work you do, it can be hard to detach and not get swept up in the handful of low moments.

The most important thing to remember is, no-shows will happen, calls will be cancelled and emails will be ignored, but all it takes is one yes to turn everything around.

TIP FOR RESCHEDULING NO-SHOWS: Follow-up with people 3-4 times and then, if you still don't get a response, leave them be for the time being. If they're intrested and have the capacity, they will follow-up and, if not, you can channel your energy into other conversations. When something significant has happened (e.g. you've got a few commitments, or there's a major product development) you'll have a more organic reason to reach out and pick up the conversation with them. 

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💡 Lessons learned

Quote of the week
Every experience is a valuable teacher — Oprah Winfrey

LESSON 👩🏾‍🏫: How to combat the lows of the no’s 

When you’re having conversations with investors, it’s inevitable that you will hear ‘no’ more often than you hear ‘yes’. This fact really hit me last week (especially with more email replies coming through).

You’ll hear ‘no’ 4-5x more often and that can be pretty deflating. Last week, the no’s felt like constant knocks and ate away at me a little bit. At times, it was hard to pick myself up and bring my energy to the next call, conversation or event.

It’s normal, and it’s just one of the many realities of fundraising. But, there was one thing that helped me to shake it off.

I took a moment to reflect on what had happened after people had said no and I quickly recognised that the no’s had still largely led to something positive. For example:

• 2x VCs and 1x Angel Syndicate said no, but they’d like me to get back to them when we’re at seed stage with revenue (more of a not now than a no)

• 1x Angel that isn’t investing at the moment introduced me to 2x people — one with industry experience that relates to my product, and to a VC that invests in underrepresented Founders (a no that came with introductions)

• 1x Angel Syndicate said no and introduced me to a Founder who had created a similar product to Mane Hook-Up years ago

• 22 of the 40 people who have replied to my emails have explained that they can see value in what Mane Hook-Up is trying to achieve and wish me the best of luck with the raise

None of these things are a given and the majority of them have either led to another opportunity or demonstrated that the market I’m trying to serve is recognised and understood.

Reflecting on everything that has happened, allowed to to see that no’s are often redirections and all I have to do is keep going, chipping away at what I’m trying to achieve and, gradually, things will start to fall into place.

I really recommend that everyone who’s raising take some time to reflect on the no’s that they’ve had along the way and how they have benefited from them. It doesn’t feel like a positive or a win at the time, but if a no can lead to a warm introduction then it can fundamentally lead to a yes, and that’s worth remembering.

SELF CARE TIP FOR FOUNDERS: no's can often be redirections to the right people. They can also provide you with the much needed feedback to make your offer more appealing. If you keep hearing the same feedback over and over again (whether this is about traction, team or better communicating the problem) use it and equip yoruself for the next conversation. 

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💥 Hack of the week

Find customers in Reddit groups and speak to them about their problems

Reddit is a very underrated social network (at least in the UK!).

While most people will go there for the funny stories (admittedly, I quickly got sucked into the AITA group), this is also a place where your customers will congregate and it can be used as a quick way to gather research.

The catch is, there’s usually a strict “no advertising” policy in Reddit threads. So, you’ll have to get creative about how you speak to people.

Here’s what I did:

• Follow the groups that are most important to Mane Hook-Up (e.g. anything related to afro and curly hair)

• Posted questions that are also related to the problem I’m trying to solve

This one post got 7-8 comments from people who fit my ideal customer profile and they freely gave me more information than I had hoped for. Five minutes of work for invaluable information, I think that’s a good trade-off.

Remember, the best products put customer problems at the heart of what they do. Using platforms like Reddit to connect with them on a regular basis is helpful — especially when setting up customer interviews is tough.

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📚 Resources

Nothing to share this week! Hopefully, I’ll be back next week with more resources.

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🧰 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…

Meet Alfred: LinkedIn automation

• What’s it for: Automating key LinkedIn actions (following, unfollowing, messaging)

• How it helped: I haven’t used Meet Alfred. It was recommended by a panellist during a Fireside chat that I took part in, and it’s worth Founders giving it a try. You can automate a lot of the time-consuming actions that happen on LinkedIn, like looking for new people to connect with, removing disengaged connections and more.

• Price: Starts at $49 a month (plus there’s a 2x week free trial)

• Rating: haven’t used them yet!

Dex: LinkedIn CRM

• What’s it for: Managing all of your connections on LinkedIn

• How it helped: Again, I haven’t used Dex — it’s another tool that was recommended by a Founder. But if you’re doing a lot of outreach via LinkedIn (which most of us do), I suggest using Dex or another LinkedIn CRM tool.

• Price: $12 a month

• Rating: Haven’t used it yet!

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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:

• Recap: How I prepared to work on Mane Hook-Up full-time

• 232 days to go: building meaningful relationships in the founder and investor community

• 225 days to go: Kick-starting investor outreach

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