MONTHLY METRICS 

Accredited members: 2161 (+4%)
Unique investors: 728 (+5%)
Total Investments: 1730 (+5%)
Total Dollars Invested: $6.5M (+5%) 
New Dollars Invested this month: $322K

% of investors with > 1 Investment: 31% 

Growth in repeat investors: 4% 

If you are new and don't understand this chart and why I am still obsessed with it, the backstory is in April's update. 

There is always monthly variability to our business, but I am not liking our first stretch of three below-average months in a row.

We know what's going on. What to do about it sits at the uncomfortable crosshairs of where we want to spend our time: a tactical reaction or investing in something bigger. 6 months ago, we would have made the tactical choice. Right now, we are going to stay focused on the 'something bigger', but while watching things closely. 

Oof. We knew this quarter was going to be a challenge. But it was a triple whammy with a cherry on top.

• We started the quarter knowing we were biting off the 1-to-10 transition, which puts everything that's been working at risk as we build toward something bigger.
  
  
• Then AI acceleration hit, which has been a HUGE win for us (more on that in a minute), but one that added a third shift to everyone's plate and pushed us all into this new, exhausted-yet-supercharged version of ourselves that no Japanese or German word properly captures. We need one.
  
  
• That AI tailwind is what prompted us to raise outside capital. While exciting, it has pulled me out of the day-to-day, compounding the challenges of #1. 
  
  

The global 😢🤮🤬😞😰 is what pushed it all over the top.

You can see it in our numbers.

I feel it in the emotional load the team is carrying. And that I am carrying.

I know we are not alone.  

Some days, "the macro" makes what we are building feel silly. 

And on other days, it reminds me that shifting capital might be one of the most powerful controllable things we can do.

What would the world look like now if capital had been distributed differently decades ago? 

Probably pretty different. 

So let's have at it! 

MARCH WRAP UP

What we said and what we did

✅ HUGE new product release. Here's the TLDR. Behind the scenes, it's the infrastructure that takes us to $100M.

✅ Raise officially kicked off. Our first fund commitment is in!!. 🎉

A big wave of outreach went out yesterday. It's 2 weeks later than I intended, but the new insights on the business we gained in March have us SUPER bullish about what we have built and how it can grow. (take a peek)

⚠️ We are running a few weeks behind on the SAFE => SeriesSAFE conversion for our angels because of the extra prep time I spent on the raise. The updated goal is to have the next steps in your inboxes next week.

⚠️ The Alabama rollout is slower than expected due to factors outside our control. Right now, something moving a bit slower feels like a feature, not a bug. 

💚 Gee is moments away from shipping our partner dashboard (it does not disappoint), and Juliette started today, bringing a media and growth-forward approach to our work with founders.

PLUS, we brought on Wasim's former product designer - something we didn't plan but could not have happened at a better time! 

Here's the cherry I promised. 🍒🍒🍒

A year ago, I received some 3rd-party feedback from someone I respect about not running a more scientific test-and-learn process.

It made me question myself. But in my gut, I knew it wasn't the best use of our time. It would have been an exercise in false precision that didn't align with the shape of our business or the way data actually flows. 

So we kept making our style of intuition-based bets and "experiments": rough cuts of what worked and what didn't. And we let the data compound.

In the last few weeks, it paid off. 

Oh baby, did it pay off!!

We had enough data from those "sloppy" experiments to deliver a signal. AI and scores of hours spent wrestling with the data let us pull the signal from the noise.

We've been building a powerful data set. Some of it by design. Some of it by luck. But all of it from experiments no one else would have run, stemming from our most contrarian and often dismissed views on this market. 

Turns out we know how to turn 'curiosity into capital allocation' in a way that's repeatable, multiplies our existing growth, and massively expands our market.

Now we have what we need to get scientific. And structured. And start having some fun.

Just seeing the team rally around these new customer insights has been invigorating. One of my casual "Hey, I noticed this thing" comments turned into a robust team brainstorm, with everyone contributing to a "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" outcome (which we can now execute on brilliantly).

---

Your gut isn't a guess.

It's a million data points that defy simple summarization.

When patience and trusting your gut pay off in spades, it shouldn't be a surprise.

But that doesn't make it any less exciting. LFG! 🚀

APRIL UP NEXT

• Get a quarter's worth of experiments aligned and kicked off behind our new customer insights and "The First 90 Days".

• First close on the raise

• Get all existing SAFE Note holders converted to SeriesSAFE

BIG THANKS  to everyone who beat the crap out of me on our pitch deck (Haley, Anna, Andrew, Elizabeth) and who offered warm intros to investors!

80% of our very tightly curated target list was covered, and I already have a handful of 1st calls set up for this week. 🙏

-- C2K

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