MONTHLY METRICS 

Accredited members: 1628 (+13%)
Unique investors: 512 (+9%)
Total Investments: 1202 (+10%)
Total Dollars Invested: $4.13M (+10%) 
New Dollars Invested this month: $383K

% of investors with > 1 Investment: 29% (steady from last month)

Growth in repeat investors: 10% (we like this number closer to 15%)

Our numbers were exactly what you'd expect based on our historical M/M growth. We didn't do anything this month that would have boosted them.

Instead we focused our energy on onboarding the team members that are owning the boostification going forward. It was a slow-down to move faster kind of month.

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. 

And just like that our tiny founding team of 3 is a team of 7 (one not pictured) with 1 more likely coming later this month. It feels amazing because we did it under our own momentum.

We just doubled-and-a-halfed our team and are still default alive! (for those of you newer to startups, this means we are making enough money and growing fast enough that we control our own destiny with infinite runway if we want. )

The expanded team is doing exactly what we had hoped when we first started thinking about our next stage of growth and raising capital for that growth.

The only difference? We didn't have to raise outside capital to get started.

Goals: Hit $5M AUA by the end of the year and 10X by this time next year.

Both are within reach. 

• Dennis is on board to use content and digital marketing to boost our 12% M/M growth to 20% (<=the magic monthly growth number for 10X)
  
  
• Malika is focused on the next level of fund admin, compliance and tax automation (she's a CPA!) and takes a ton of work off my plate in the process.
  
  
• Adding Jesse to Wasim's team lets us pick up the pace on forward facing features to increase virality AND post-investment engagement/value creation while also tackling that next level of back office automation. 
  
  
• Christie, Tina, person #8 and I are running experiments across different groups and capital pools to find our next best target for scalable growth. aka: expanding our surface area of experimentation. 

🫶🏽 None of this captures the optimism and giddiness on our team or the feeling of "TEAM" we have right now. I love startups at this stage.

We haven't figured it all out yet and I don't think I'll ever say "Product Market Fit", but the business feels inevitable. And we have enough inertia to both make our own luck and accelerate our learning while small early wins compound.  

RAISE UPDATE
In September Anna Barber planted an idea in my head about doing a small strategic raise. The more progress we make, the more I am sold on it.

• A priced round gets the clock ticking on QSBS for all our SAFE holders.
• Upfront capital allows us to accelerate experiments while staying a step ahead of our scale.

On that note, we will be closing the Play Money SAFE on the platform in December. With $30K in monthly revenue and 12% M/M growth, the $5M cap on that note has been ridiculous for awhile now. 🤑

We've got something fun and creative in mind for the SAFE conversion too. Being here first is going to have advantages beyond just a low valuation cap. 😈 

OCTOBER WRAP UP

What we said and what we did

⚠️ DAF INVESTING
We processed our first DAF investment but we still have so much to figure out and we are behind where i wanted to be by about a month. 

This is pure resource constraint. So we are 🤞 brining on someone to help lead the customer discovery, biz dev, and gtm around the initiative. 

✅ ✅  ✅ HIRING: NAILED IT.

✅ NEW SHARING FEATURES
Referral codes, badges and custom landing pages (beta). All of this product work becomes more impactful with better marketing, and a few end of the year surprises to ratchet up the sharing. 

If you missed badges, see yours here.

⚠️ High value post-investment experience

We bit off more than we could chew. Jesse's on the job though.

⚠️ Move our partner experiments forward.

We all did so much work on this front. We also learned magic happens when I am on the road. I hit Bend OR, Chicago 2x, SF, DC.

But we fell short because we didn't turn IRL content to social media traction. And while we signed 6 new partner contracts it feels like we spent more time wrestling with BoxSign than anything else. 

NOVEMBER ON TAP

We are in a 7 weeks sprint for "more of the same" until the end of the year.  There are end-of-year surprises in the works!

The big rock will be to get our partner framework and contracts locked down so I can put all my December cycles into IRL events and prepping for a Q1 raise. 

THANK YOU

On that partnerships note, big props to: Elizabeth, KK, April, Kelly, Emma, Porter, Serena, Pam, Josh, Elles, Amber, and Ann Marie!!!

Your insight, feedback, trust, and patience while we iterate on our ambassador and partnership framework and win/win economics has been amazing. 🙏

This is a place where it's great to be seed strapped. We have the freedom to figure out how we want to anchor a long term ecosystem and new layer of the capital stack without the pressure to maximize short term gains. 

👋 HOW TO HELP

Do you have a DAF (Donor Advised Fund) and 20 minutes to chat with us? 

Hit reply to this email. It's customer discovery time!

-- C2K & the Play Money Team

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