218 days to go: Maximising events and continuing investor outreach

A recap of week three as a full-time Founder

Oct 23, 2023

Hey there 👋🏾,

With another week down and more lessons under my belt, there’s plenty in this week’s newsletter. For those of you who are short on time, here are the sections of the newsletter you may want to skip ahead to…

Win🏅: Attending the Bag Drop event and viewing 7x live pitches
Loss 🤕: Why it was a slow week for investor outreach
Hack💥: How to find investors email addresses on LinkedIn
Resources 📚: Email templates for warm intro requests

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

🎯 Objective

Maximise any time spent at events and increase my investor outreach list to 150+ people

As my fundraising countdown continues (my to-do list keeps growing), last week’s objectives were:

To use the live pitch event as a learning opportunity (and connect with as many people as I could).
Keep building on investor outreach by gathering information about potential investors and upping the number of people on the list.

But I found that, even with the best intentions, not everything went as planned. Even with plenty of wins, I found myself far from hitting my 10+ weekly call target, I felt less productive and time felt like it kept slipping away. So writing this week’s newsletter has been a great opportunity for me to unpick why and create a greater sense of focus 🧘🏾‍♀️

🔋 Progress recap & highlights

Biggest wins

WIN 1️⃣: Attended the Bag Drop event, saw 7x live pitches, and connected with some incredible people ✅

One of the things that fellow Founders and investors keep telling me is to go to more events and, last week, I finally understood why.

I managed to get a Founder ticket to the Bag Drop — a live pitch and networking event run by Sebuh Mesfin and Bejay Mulenga MBE — that helps Founders and investors connect. Events like this can feel quite stuffy and corporate and they’re trying to change that.

Spoil alert, they didn’t disappoint. Here’s a play-by-play of how my night went.

Arrival

When I arrived, there were maybe 60 or so people there, an open bar, and a live DJ (zero complaints from me). Another Founder sparked a conversation with me — she was super friendly and that eased me into the night ahead. But I quickly realised how important it is to know my elevator pitch by heart. In all of a minute, this Founder had me pulled into her product, mission, and vision. And there I was, fumbling out a response 😅. Even though my first attempt was messy, it was good practice for the rest of the night as my pitch got sharper with each conversation.

The pitches

Next, 7x lucky Founders had a chance to pitch to a live audience — a mix of fellow Founders, investors, and suppliers. Investors had paddles they could raise at the end of each pitch to show their interest. It was a bit like an auction room, which I loved because you could see in real-time what Founders and products had gained the most attention.

There were some incredible companies on display, some that I knew of (e.g. Raphael Babaola of TMPL skincare) and many I encountered for the very first time (Dr. Dupe Burgess of Bloomful). Bloomful’s pitch was my favourite of the night and, I’m guessing plenty of people felt the same way as Dupe wracked up the most interest (five or so people raised a paddle after her pitch). The most important lesson I took from the pitch session is investors care about market potential, team and results. This probably sounds like a no-brainer, but seeing investor responses in real time has helped me to understand what levers tend to pull them into the fold. As someone looking from the outside in, this was a great learning experience and I recommend Founders attend a couple of pitching events (if they can) before jumping into one.

The networking

Once the pitches had finished, the upstairs area opened up and Founders had a chance to mingle with potential investors and build up their network. I stayed downstairs for a bit longer to speak to more Founders.

Some of the best relationships I’ve forged have been with Founders and they have largely been my support system since I started raising. So, it was just as important for me to connect with the people building incredible businesses as it was to speak to anyone interested in investing. I connected with a few people, added them on LinkedIn and made my way upstairs.

Upstairs, I spoke to a bunch of people from the event organisers to more Founders. Luckily, I stuck around for long enough to be interviewed by some of the people producing content for the event. Another reminder that events can provide visibility in more ways than one!

The finale — the last conversations of the night

Finally, I headed back downstairs where the room had cleared a fair bit (they did well to keep people around until long after 10.30 pm on a Tuesday), and I decided to spark conversation with the handful of people I hadn’t spoken to. I spent most of my time speaking to Angels or people who worked for syndicates and VCs. Staying until the event ended, allowed me to have longer conversations with people and get to know them a bit better. This also gave me more space to speak about Mane Hook-Up and leave a positive lasting impression — when you’re the last person someone speaks to, they’re more likely to remember you. Afterwards, I found the people who organised Bag Drop, thanked them for a great night, and headed home.

As someone who can be introverted, I find events more draining than energising. My biggest struggle is summoning the energy to introduce myself to new people. But the environment at Bag Drop was so chill that I found myself floating around the room and starting conversations one by one.

Overall, this was one of the best events I have been to in a while. Not only did it allow me to connect with some incredible people, but it was a huge learning curve. Another big thank you to the team who set this up!

HOW TO FIND EVENTS: All of the events I've attended this year have come through connections and communities. If you're not sure what you should be attending, ask other people. This is also a great way of going to events as a duo or small group, but it all starts with a recommendation.

WIN 2️⃣: More people have agreed to help me with warm intros✅

One of the most challenging things about raising a round is getting yourself in front of investors who are a good fit for you and your business. Warm intros are a great way to work around this (for several reasons):

The person introducing you wants to leave a good impression on both the Founder and potential investor, so they’re more likely to think it through before making a formal introduction.
As a Founder, you save time and are likely to at least get some good feedback on your deck.
Even if an investor isn’t interested, they may introduce you to some of their connections that are a better fit.

To make my ask more helpful, I had a flick through each person’s LinkedIn connections and made a list of 3-5 people that I felt were a great fit. This made the conversations more productive and allowed me to demonstrate that I had done some thinking before reaching out.

PREPPING FOR WARM INTROS: There are a couple of things you can do to help the person that's introducing you to an investor. First, give them access to your pitch deck. I have 3x versions of my deck. One for email introductions, one for a first meeting/call and one for a final/second call. Share the deck (or decks) and ask if there's anything else that could be added/improved before they share one of them. Second, write a forwardable email that your intro'er can send to their contacts. This saves them a bit of time, and gives you more control over how your product/business is presented.

WIN 3️⃣: Harvested a lot of great advice from LinkedIn & a free list of investors ✅

LinkedIn is a dream when it comes to getting snippets of advice from people who have been there, done it and worn the t-shirt as far as fundraising goes.

I gathered so much information from LinkedIn last week, that there’s not enough space to share all of them in one newsletter 😅.

Here’s a snapshot of my favourite post — Jake Huber shares what he learned from failing at building his first start-up. In a world where people are usually shouting from the hills about their successes, we rarely hear about the failures, let alone have a chance to learn from the mistakes that other people have made.

I’ve already started to feel the effects of number 2 on Jake’s list (neglecting my health) as sleep has taken a back burner. But his post helped me to understand just how important it is to make it a priority (which led to me having a healthier rhythm this week, and much more energy).

This is just one of many posts I found valuable, here are the links to a few more:

FINDING GREAT PEOPLE TO FOLLOW ON LINKEDIN: Take some time to look at the posts your LinkedIn connections are liking and commenting on. This is where I tend to find the best advice and great people to follow. It's also worth sending connection requests to content creators that have a load of experience in advising start-up Founders or fundraising.

WIN 4️⃣: SEIS application approved ✅

After much chaos (check out my first post from a few weeks ago), not only did I complete the SEIS application form, but it has now been approved 🥳

With it, UK investors who put money into Mane Hook-Up can get a tax break. Here’s an article that explains what this means in more detail, but in layman's terms, it makes a start-up more appealing and can help with conversations with investors (pretty much every UK Angel I’ve spoken to has asked if I’m SEIS approved).

Some companies (like SeedLegals) will complete an SEIS application for a fee, but I’m pretty convinced that most Founders can do this themselves. It may take you 1-2 days to complete, but it’s doable. Here’s a list of the key documents you have to pull together:

Pitch deck or prospectus, with an outline of how the SEIS funding will be used
Details of your most recent accounts
Shareholder agreement template
Articles of association template
List of existing shareholders

The most time-consuming document I worked on was the Prospectus. Luckily, I had some help from a Founder who had already gained SEIS approval, and they gave me a lot of guidance. My advice to Founders; find someone who has successfully completed an SEIS or EIS application before, learn from them and have a go yourself before parting with any money. It’s well worth trying and you can learn a lot along the way.

Some other things I managed to get done this week:

Added 300+ investors to my outreach list
Completed 2x applications for Angel Syndicates
3x really helpful calls with connections and investors

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Biggest L’s 🤕

LOSS 1 😩: It was a slow week for investor outreach

After creating a system that helped me to collect investor information and manage outreach, I thought I was set to power through and book in calls.

Oh, how wrong I was.

As thorough and helpful as my system is, what I hadn’t banked on was the amount of time I needed to research each investor. My list, now about 300+ people long, needed everything from LinkedIn or Crunchbase profile links, to email addresses and info on past investments.

I hadn’t considered how I would balance gathering data with starting the outreach. And I made the mistake of focusing 100% of my time on data/info hoarding.

By Thursday evening, the reality finally hit me — I had very few calls booked for next week. Why? Because zero outreach had been done. With my blinkers finally off, I decided to fix this by putting aside 1x hour a day for compiling investor info and 1x hour for outreach.

While I eventually created a sense of balance, I lost a week in the process, which is far from ideal when I’m against the clock. Lesson learned (even if this was the hard way).

LOSS 2 😩: I struggled to prioritise my work

About 3-4 weeks ago, I started using the Intelligent Productivity planner to keep me well organised. And, it was working… until last week 😭, when I came up against two problems:

Making time for the unexpected
1. Problem: I didn’t know when to make time for admin tasks, action items for calls and random things that would crop up (because these were all unplanned and didn’t fit into the schedule I had created at the beginning of the week).
2. Impact: I came across a LinkedIn post from an investor who was offering Founders a chance to get feedback on their pitch (all I had to do was complete a form — probably 30 to 60 mins). But, because this was unplanned, I didn’t schedule any time to get it done and missed out on a huge opportunity to connect with someone who’s actively helping Founders to close deals.
Spending the right amount of time on the sub-tasks within a task
1. Problem: When a multi-step task came up, I had no idea how much time I should spend on each one. This led to some areas having far too much of my attention.
2. Impact: This was largely why investor outreach was so slow this week. I got so caught up in gathering info, that I didn’t send enough emails or reach out to enough people. The result? I have fewer calls booked in this week.

After speaking to a few Founders about this, I sense the prioritisation problem is a universal one, especially with smaller teams that are working remotely. But, left unchecked, this could cause me to waste time and miss out on valuable opportunities.

TIP FOR PRIORITSATION: Give yourself at least 1-1.5 hours a day for admin and unexpected tasks cropping up. Anything can happen and it's better to have the time bookmarked (and not need it), than to not have any time for admin at all.

💡 Lessons learned

Quote of the week
Do one thing every day that scares you — Eleanor Roosevelt

LESSON 1 👩🏾‍🏫: Attend as many events as you possibly can

I mentioned this at the beginning of this newsletter, but I cannot stress it enough — go to events and meet new people. Maybe aim for one a week at the bare minimum, as it helps you to build a network of people who are more engaged with what you do (especially as you’ve had some face time with them).

If you’re not sure where to look, ask other Founders and scour through Eventbrite and Meet-Up. Look for a mix of industry-specific events (e.g. I’d go to anything related to Beauty Tech or Black Hair), Founder events or places that investors are likely to meet.

LESSON 2 👩🏾‍🏫: Knowing your 30s elevator pitch and communicating with confidence is an absolute must

It was lucky that the first person I spoke to at the Bag Drop event was a Founder (not to mention, that she introduced herself and her business first). My first pitch was rough, not 100% thought through and said with little confidence. In another setting, I may not be in a position where I can afford to make these mistakes, so it taught me the necessity of being ready to pitch.

Once that was out of my system, the event gave me a chance to test run my elevator pitch to see what people resonated with and how quickly they understood what Mane Hook-Up does and its value. That experience was really valuable as conversations with facial expressions, tone of voice and repeat questions, have given me more feedback than practising by myself ever could.

The most valuable lesson learned was how important it is to confidently communicate who you are, what you do and why you/your idea is valuable. Without this skill, you will have a massive battle ahead when it comes to fundraising.

Here are a few things to remember:

Introduce yourself — I’m, [name], Founder of X
Explain what your company does — We fix [Y problem] for [Z people]
If the problem you’re solving is complex, use a well-known product as a comparison — Think of us as [popular product], except [key differentiation].
Grab their attention with a hook — It takes [Z people] 100 days to find a solution, with us they can do it in 15 minutes.
Finish with your mission — We’re trying to create a world where [_____]

TIPS FOR WRITING AN ELEVATOR PITCH: Have a 10s and 30s pitch that you can jump in between. You will be speaking to investors under different circumstances and some will have more time than others. A 10s pitch should explain what you do and the problem you solve. Save everything else for 30s when you'll have more time to go into the detail.

LESSON 3 👩🏾‍🏫: Have your LinkedIn profile ready

The final lesson of the week was also a key takeaway from the Bag Drop event.

I arrived with 30 business cards and left with the same 30 still in my purse.

Why? Because people don’t ask for them anymore, they just look you up online. Fortunately, I’ve given my LinkedIn profile a makeover that communicates who I am and what I’m most interested in.

This isn’t to say that people won’t connect with you if your LinkedIn profile isn’t all singing and dancing, but first impressions count. As a Founder, I have to think about what my online footprint looks like, and how that can have an impact on my conversations with my support network and potential investors.

If you need to revamp your LinkedIn profile, here are some things to think about:

Headline: This can be used in several ways. I’ve tried to explain who I help, how I help them, and what I want to achieve in the long run. Great place to share any accolades as well (e.g. winner of X award, helped 1k clients fix X problem)
Hashtags: Adding hashtags to your profile will help you to be found in specific search results. You can add a max of five so use them wisely.
CTA: I think this feature is only available for LinkedIn premium members, but it’s worth using as you can prompt people to take a specific action and link to a website. For example, created a CTA for the investors’ website that I created for the funding round. It gives people a chance to learn more about the round (and the product) before we speak, which is a win/win.
About you: Consider this a snapshot of your personality. It should be written for the kind of people you want to interact with and include key info that they will find interesting.
Featured content: Use this to add links to interviews or PR coverage that you’ve gained for your start-up. It sits at the top of your profile and can help with social proof.
Work history: It would be a mistake to think that investors aren’t interested in your work history. If you’ve worked in start-ups/scale-ups, led teams, managed serious budgets and (most importantly) produced some impressive results along the way, this is the chance to mention them. It all plays a role in presenting yourself as the right person to solve a particular problem, so share as much detail as you can.

💥 Hack of the week

How to find investor emails on LinkedIn in seconds

Last week’s hack was about how to gather investor details from Crunchbase (without paying a penny), but what happens when your free trial runs out and you still have investor contact details to collect?

Head to LinkedIn.

There are two ways you can do this, either:

Check the ‘contact information’ section of each investor profile to see if they’ve shared an email address (which is rare)
Or, use a scraping tool to collect their email address

If you opt for number two, you can use a great tool called Skrapp to gather as many emails as you can. Here’s how it works:

Sign up for Skrapp and download their Chrome extension tool
Head to LinkedIn and search for one of the investors you’re interested in speaking to
Using the Skrapp extension, see if there’s a valid email address for that person and save it to your email list
BONUS: Skrapp also gives you a bit of info about the company the investor works for. Plus you can get access to 50 emails free of charge before signing up for a paid plan.

This is an easy win for anyone who doesn’t want to spend their budget on gathering info. Test it out and let me know how it goes!

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📚 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.

Warm intro advice

Email templates for warm intro requests

Angel investor lists

🧰 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…

Skrapp email scraper

What’s it for: Gathering email addresses of people you want to contact via LinkedIn
How it helped: Skrapp has been a huge help in gathering investor email addresses when I’m keen to speak to them directly. You can create lists, gather info about their companies and get 50 emails for free before committing to a plan.
Price: Starts from £49 a month for 2x users
Rating: 4.5/5*

Fathom video call note-taker

What’s it for: Automated meeting notes and to-do lists from online calls (e.g. Zoom and Google Hangout).
How it helped: A few weeks ago, I started using another AI meeting note-taker called Fireflies but my transcription credits quickly ran out on the free version (leaving it pretty useless unless I upgraded). So, I started looking for a note system that has no limits and came across Fathom. Now I can do the same things (collect meeting notes, summaries and action lists), but 100% for free. Fathom also video records all of your calls so you have something to refer back to, you can send summaries to all of the meeting attendees after running over the call notes yourself.
Price: FREE for individuals, paid version for teams.
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:

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240 Days to Raise