MONTHLY METRICS

Accredited members: 1318 (+11%)
Unique investors: 392 (+7%)
Total Investments: 898 (+12%)
Total Dollars Invested: $3.16M (+12%) ‼️
New Dollars Invested this month: $334K

% of investors with > 1 Investment: 26%

Growth in repeat investors: 16% (+1% from last month)

Repeat investing is our magic in the market. I'm still working out how to track it in a way that gives us actionable feedback on the experiments we are running. Until then, I'll take 16% M/M. 😁

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. 

STORY TIME

🎉 We hit a HUGE milestone this month, and there is a story behind it.

At then end of last year I sent a "year in review" update to our extensive network of early stage VC fund managers. 

I got one particularly detailed reply (I love feedback!) from a fund manager i knew personally and whose investments I respected: legit first-check, big markets, problems that mattered, diverse founders. 

He told me he wouldn't forward founders to Play Money because we were a waste of founders' time until we were deploying capital at the rate of a $15M fund.

• I can understand someone entrenched in the status quo not seeing my vision of how VC was broken and where early stage funding was heading.
• I can understand someone who hasn't been in the founder trenches dismissing the impact of having highly aligned angels with unique expertise on the cap table.
• I can understand someone not believing the math on small checks turning into big change.

Being dismissed is tablestakes as a founder.
What tweaked me off was his $15M mark.

• This guys was managing a <$10M fund 1,
• He was at the end of his runway with no traction on Fund 2
• He was staring the 60%+ failure rate for new fund managers in the eye.

One the flip, Play Money had barely cracked $1M in AUA (assets under advisement) and 40% of it was off of Series X, a potentially once in an lifetime deal for us.  And to say things were bumpy with the team and the product would have been an understatement. 

Yet, I remember loudly key-banging off some fired up profanities on Slack and declaring Play Money would hit $3M AUA and be deploying at the rate of a $15M fund by my birthday. 

I had ZERO idea of how we were going to make that happen.

Last week we hit that $3M mark. 🤑

This week we downright blew through it. 💥

And we still have one more week until that birthday milestone. 🎂

Always bet on a team with a chip on their shoulder and compounding growth. Both are 🚀 rocket fuel.

----

I don't feel we have product market fit yet, but we have fanatical repeat customers, endless energy to die trying, and zero doubt we are going to change an industry. Thank you for being part of that.

AUGUST WRAP UP

Here is what we said we were going to do:

• ⚠️ Ship IRS XML efile (you won't see this, but we will feel it and it will save us tens of thousands of dollars each year) => Ooof this one was fuglier than we thought. Wasim is working miracles but we're not there yet.
  
  
• ✅ Pretty up onboarding and roll it out to existing members. => Nailed it. 80% of new users are completing the full onboarding process! Next step is putting the insights we are collecting to work. 
  
  
• ✅ Get 5 great candidates w/a stretch goal of getting someone hired. => We have 3 strong candidates in process. Hiring is my #1 priority in September.
  
  
• ✅  Jump on the ✈️ and head to Rome for Tina's wedding => 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

What doesn't show up in this list in the inbound. It's as if someone flipped a switch this month. Our inbound activity ratcheded up significantly, including:

4 regional startup ecosystems

3 New Angel groups

2 "strategic partners" 

A handful of "live event" ambassadors

Maybe my failed fund manager friend was right and $15M is a magic number.

SEPTEMBER LOOK AHEAD

• Wasim is back in the "shipping zone" with achievement badges & very cool AI experiment on tap. If you have any feature requests....send them our way! 

• Lock in next steps for all the inbound interest we had in August.
• Run 3 "first time investor" conversion experiments.

Our biggest goal is to convert this inbound into actual launches and events - and having a digital marketer in place to help turn the Angel interest from these launches into investments.

It's also worth mentioning we are about to launch a huge September of deals...all in the theme of "What if Traditional VC is not the Only Way."

If the combo of Liquid Death & Dyme were not enough to nudge you to invite a few friends to Play Money, September's deals will seal the deal. 

I am in the mood to brag this month. Feedback on on our new onboarding has been across the board positive, but this was my favorite: 

"I do new angel onboarding for [fancy $$ Angel group that you have all heard of], and it's kind of crazy that our high-touch process feels less personalized than your digital user experience. 🙃"

Now that you've heard how awesome our onboarding is, take a minute to give it a spin. It will help us learn how to convert new members to repeat investors faster. 

I feel like I am forgetting something, but it could be the jet lag.

Thanks for all your ongoing support.

-- C2K

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