93 days to go: ironing out product priorities
A recap of week twenty 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🏅: We have our new Head of Product!! 🥳
Loss 🤕: None for this week!
Lesson💡: Unpopular opinion… cold investor outreach works
HackOffer 💥: Personal brand support for Founders (only 5x spots!)Resources 📚: Targeting funds, investor updates advice and more
As always, I appreciate feedback, so feel free to leave comments or reply to this email with your thoughts.
🎯 Objective
Ironing out product priortisation✨
This year, I’ve made it my mission to find a balance between fundraising and growth. Given we’ve just gained a new team member (more in the wins!), I spent a lot of time thinking about what we need to do next to make sure Mane Hook-Up is solving the most pressing issues our users have in the best way possible. This meant:
Assessing where we are now vs. where we want to be product-wise 🤔
Combing through feature requests and prioritising what’s now, next and for the future ✅
Understanding how these decisions have an impact on who we hire 👩🏾💻
That isn’t to say I paused everything to do with fundraising (I still had investor calls and worked on outreach) but about 60% of my time was spent focussing on product. Not only did this allow the team to take some major steps forward with our thoughts on how Mane Hook-Up should be built, but I also enjoyed spending more time thinking about and speaking to our users.
Here’s how the week went 👇🏾
🔋 Progress recap & highlights
Biggest wins
WIN 1️⃣: We have our new Head of Product!! 🥳
After 6x weeks of reviewing CVs and running interviews, we finally have our new Head of Product!
Choosing your first team members (especially when they’re leading areas of the business), is a huge step that has a serious impact on the trajectory of a start-up. While this was far from easy, it has been an incredibly rewarding process as I believe that we have someone who is exactly what we need right now.
Here are the lessons I’ve learned from this recruitment process:
Have a very clear recruitment process in mind BEFORE you post a job 🔍: good candidates get snapped up quickly so speed is your greatest asset when it comes to recruitment. You are better off having a very clear three-step process (e.g. screening call, 1st stage, final stage) than having a convoluted six-step process that leaves you and the candidates feeling exhausted. I had 2x stages across three weeks — which is a pretty quick turnaround — and 2x people dropped out because of other offers. It just goes to show that longer processes run the risk of missing out on great people. Not to mention, there’s the risk of damaging your brand. People talk and Glassdoor exists for a reason, so don’t give candidates a reason to share anything negative.
Write a stellar job spec and outline your mission, vision and values 🦸🏾♀️: if you want to speak to people who care about the problem your start-up is solving, it all starts with the job spec. Clearly outlining your company’s purpose and explaining the impact that you’re trying to have on the world will help you get applications from the right people. We had 45x applications, 8x candidates through to the interviews and 1x offer made. Of all the candidates I spoke to, 4x of them mentioned having a personal connection with our purpose and 1x sent me a personal note on LinkedIn explaining how much they believe in our mission. I question whether that would have happened if I had just listed the responsibilities of the role.
Be prepared to pivot with the market ↩️: I originally wanted to hire a Head of Product and Engineering, but quickly realised that I either had CVs from people with very product OR engineering backgrounds (rarely did I come across one person with both skill sets). That made me realise that I was better off splitting the roles and looking for two people, with one taking the lead for each department. I was very transparent about this during the interview process and none of the candidates involved seemed to mind. This also allowed me to work on better-quality questions for the interviews and task stages.
Have upfront conversations about salary and equity 💸: while a mission and vision will get candidates to apply, that won’t change their compensation expectations. And, from my experience, it’s always better to have these conversations upfront. In last week’s newsletter, I explained that misalignment on equity and salary caused two people to drop out of the recruitment process (which was a bit of a bummer) BUT this happened after 1x call, which isn’t the end of the world. It’s far worse for a candidate to make it to a final stage interview, be made an offer and then reject it because of misaligned expectations. I highly recommend having this conversation during the first call — it saves everyone’s time.
Give candidates a task for the final stage 🧮: having recruited people from various teams (e.g. marketing, sales product, design) in my career, I’m a huge fan of final stage tasks. As much as people can talk through their experiences and, in theory, understand your product, a task allows you to get an insight into how they think and problem-solve. It doesn’t have to be anything too long and complex (because you don’t want to take liberties with a candidate’s time), but it is worthwhile. I have, for example, had strong contenders at a stage one interview completely bomb a task or vice versa.
Have an advisor, colleague or friend join you for final stages 👥: I was very fortunate to have 4x advisors to choose from when going through the interview process for our Head of Product — and one of them joined me for final stage calls. This allowed me to lean into their expertise and gain a second opinion on each candidate’s personality, skills and enthusiasm for the role.
I’ll be sharing more about our new team member on LinkedIn later this week so unfortunately there won’t be any spoilers in the newsletter!
TIPS FOR GETTING GREAT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: Reach out to VPs, Directors and Senior Managers in the area you're hiring (e.g. sales) and ask for some of their best interview questions / what they look for in a great candidate. That will give you a good sense of direction ahead of any conversations with candidates. WIN 2️⃣: We made it through to the selection process of a start-up program 🔥
A couple of months ago, I applied for the Braze Tech for an Equitable Future program. The objective is to remove the barriers for underrepresented Founders by providing their companies with 12 months of free access to the Braze platform.
Given the volume and scale of what Braze can do, it would be an incredible tool to add to our platform’s toolkit. With emails and text messages in particular being some of our strongest communication channels, we would be in a great position to maximise using Braze.
That said, we’re through to the next stage of the application process which involves an interview and more questions about our product.
I’ll keep you posted on our progress, wish me luck!
TIP FOR PROGRAM APPLICATION FORMS: Accelerator programs, product programs and Angel syndicates have the tendency of asking similar questions in their application forms. Save yourself some time by creating boilerplate answers to the questions you see time and time again. WIN 3️⃣: Awesome product kick-off call that’s influenced our GTM plan ✨
Towards the end of last week, we had a few breakthrough moments during our product calls.
Over two and a half hours, we spoke about feature and problem prioritisation, what we need to solve for now vs. the future and who we may need to hire to bring that vision to life. It was tiring, but really promising as we’re now strategically in a much stronger position.
And, even better, our new Head of Product was able to steer us towards the outcome. There’s something special about having someone new on the team who offers a fresh perspective and provides so much value immediately.
As well as ironing out an early view of the product roadmap, this conversation also had an impact on our go-to-market strategy, which was a bonus. All of this came at the perfect time as I have investor calls lined up, where questions about our product and marketing strategy will come up.
TIP FOR REMOTE PRODUCT & GTM BRAINSTORMING: Use a recording and transcription tool like Fathom to capture everything that was said during meeting. That way, you don't miss any nuggets of gold and can be completely present during the call.WIN 4️⃣: Started speaking to potential technical advisors 🙌🏾
Having spoken to several senior technical leaders about hiring a Head of Engineering/Lead Engineer, I’ve decided to start looking for a Technical Advisor to help steer the decisions that we make about building Mane Hook-Up.
This person will help us in several ways:
Providing much-needed steer for any junior developers: when we are ready to hire permanent or contract developers, we’ll have someone internally to provide support and assess the quality of their work.
Choosing what technical talent to hire at the right time: choosing the right person is one thing, but making sure you hire them at the right time is also crucial to reducing turnover and costs. While we won’t be hiring for a little while, better to have an Advisor onboard long before that happens.
I was also very fortunate to be introduced to 2x potential technical advisors who I’ll be speaking to later this week. I’ll keep you posted on the next steps!
TIP FOR FINDING ADVISORS: Speak to other founders, investors and leaders to get recommendations and introductions to potential advisors. That way, you can trust that the conversation is worth your time, while also having the benefit of a positive impression from the person that has introduced you to each other. WIN 5️⃣: Automations update 🤖
Similarly to last week, I haven’t made any changes to my automations - here’s the performance update:
💃🏾 0 people added to automations
📧 991 people have opened my emails (34.3% of the total - up 2% WoW)
🖱️ 235 clicks on our pitch deck (23.7% of those who opened - up 4% WoW)
↩️ 60 people have replied so far (6% of opens - up 17% WoW)
📞 2x calls booked
Despite performance has consistently been on the up, I did notice a few emails landing in junk mail. This led to me reaching out to a friend for some much-needed advice and setting up my DMARC (more about this in an old newsletter). I’ll be keeping a close eye on the performance to see if this has an impact on open rates.
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Biggest L’s 🤕
None to report! For the first time in at least a month, I have kept the losses at bay. But, still learned plenty so take a look at the lesson of the week 👇🏾
💡 Lessons learned
Quote of the week
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
— Harper Lee
LESSON 👩🏾🏫: Cold investor outreach works…
I keep hearing (founders and investors alike) say that cold investor outreach doesn’t work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it is MUCH harder to get a reply from cold outreach. Even though my emails have a 50%+ open rate, I have a reply rate of 4% (and many of those are polite no’s).
But, from my experience, cold outreach still works very well in many ways, including:
Initial introductions to investors: whether you’re asking for investment or advice, most relationships start cold. Email outreach at least allows you to start building a rapport with potential investors who could be a great fit for future rounds.
Getting onto an investor’s radar: that said, many investors pass at the pre-seed/seed stage of funding and are more interested once a company reaches Series A or B. Cold outreach now, has the potential to lead to funding later, plus you’ve already done the hard job of introducing yourself, the business and the market opportunity.
Building your monthly investor updates list: every investor that agrees to have a call with you, or isn’t ready, should be added to your investor updates list. I’ve 4x the size of my investor update list since I started doing cold outreach last November, and that’s a powerful way to keep people engaged with your mission, vision and growth story.
Getting warm introductions: One of the best outcomes is having investors who may not invest themselves but are willing to introduce you to others in their network. I’ve experienced this a few times off the back of cold outreach and (regardless of the end result), the fact that they have the confidence to make an intro without having met me, is a huge win.
While these outcomes don’t always translate to money now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. Sometimes, you have to lay the foundations for the future by doing the heavy lifting now.
💥 Hack Offer of the week
Personal brand support for Founders
The more Founders I speak to, the more I realise how many struggle to build their brand. And it’s hardly surprising… building a business is challenging enough without having to promote yourself at the same time 😅.
However, there’s plenty of upside to doing it. From gaining additional PR and investor conversations to finding customers, you can organically benefit so much from putting some time and energy into building your personal brand.
Since channelling a reasonable amount of energy into my brand 6x months ago, I’ve gone from next to no engagement to increasing my connections by 36%, engagement by 123% and gaining multiple interview/panellist opportunities.
That said, I’m offering 3-5x founders some support to define, establish and build their personal brand. With 11+ years in marketing, and plenty of re-brands and proposition workshops under my belt, I’d like to help others who want more from their brand but aren’t 100% sure how to get there.
If you’re interested, just complete this Google form and I’ll be in touch this week to set up a call!
Looking for some hacks for your funding round? Here are some that I’ve written in the past:
What to consider when paying someone to build an investor outreach list
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.
Fundraising
Figuring out how many funds to target: Toby Egbuna, founder of Chezie, explains how he figured out how many investors he needed to target and speak to to close their pre-seed round.
Monthly investor updates advice: with 20% of start-ups writing a monthly update, you will already stand out from the crowd by putting one together. Siddhi Mittal, Co-Founder of yhangry, shares ten tips to get started.
Questions for investors: fundraising is a two-way street, so make sure you’re also asking investors some good questions like these.
Book recommendations
Growth Levers by Matt Lerner: I met Matt very briefly at the Female Founder Rise event at Google a few months back and his talk about growth was by far the best of the day. Amazing book with actionable advice that you can apply straight away.
🧰 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.
Warmy: avoid spam and improve your open rates
What’s it for: An email deliverability tool that monitors your teams’ deliverability from one place.
How it helped: Warmy provides a great free deliverability report that allows you to see the % of emails that are landing in the inbox vs junk across all email providers. It also gradually warms emails to improve sending too.
Price: There’s a free trial, but paid plans start from $49/month
Firstbase: set-up a US company entity
What’s it for: Setting up and managing taxes/filings for a US company.
How it helped: I used Firstbase to set up the US entity of Mane Hook-Up over a year ago. It helps keep all of our paperwork and filings in one place, managing the tax run for the year and having a mailroom for any essential post.
Price: Setting up a company costs $399 (on-off fee), plus you can get a US business address for $35/month and a registered agent (for tax purposes) for $149 a year.
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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