Two Tough Learnings
We had two missteps this month that have us focused on upleveling our deal intake processes and tools.
1. We had our first case of "deal lead without a firm handle on their allocation." AKA: we needed to refund investments to people.
Our whole system of how we stage SPVs is designed to prevent us from EVER pulling capital until we know an SPV will happen. Luckily only 3 folks were effected.
2. We also had a miss where we skipped a step on a partner-led deal and put something on the platform without our normal level of transparency.
The dynamic duo of Paul S. and Casey AI caught it and we were able to fix it fast.
We were actually really proud of how we dealt with both situations.
Hiring
Our lean team is officially too lean and it's starting to slow our own growth and experimentation. We've felt it coming all summer and we need to fix it. We have enough room in our "default alive" budget to grow the team smartly.
🥳 On that note, we brought on Christie Lennox, former Head of Community at All Raise. She'll be:
- leading biz dev and community activation in our more active inbound markets
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noodle with us on a stealth side project
- and maybe even building her own syndicate in "an area of mutual passion".
Yes this is a total score!!!
We've got a few more "fractional folks" on tap for special projects that we'll talk about later this Fall after we hammer out our more "bread and butter" hiring needs in Denver this week.
Big Things Brewing
I had an amazing morning with Anna Barber of M13 Ventures brainstorming our path to a broader base of "storytelling" assets with different payback periods.
Some of you have already asked about this. Liquid Death and Edited Capital were not entirely coincidental.
She also got me thinking fresh about raising a small strategic round, to help us hire ahead of what is now inevitable growth AND get the priced round we need to convert our SAFEs to QSBS Eligible Equity.
🌻 I spent an amazing morning with Jennie M. in NYC. I won't use the right words to express how awesome the customer => angel => friend pipeline is. So I'll just leave it at, she convinced me that an IRL Play Money AGM* this spring is a "must do".
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The BIG big thing came from two of our most ride-or-die angels: A DAF investment to help build a robust DAF investing experience on Play Money!
🎁 They told me on my birthday, so the story line has been, "my angels got me a new product for my birthday!!"
DAF stands for Donor Advised Fund. Tax-deducted philanthropic dollars can be used to invest in startups. It's a *big* but hidden pool of capital and a big physcological unlock for a large segment of would-be Angels.
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Our DAF webinar in Q1 had the highest signup and replay rate of any content we've ever run.
- Inbound "charitable investing" threads have been popping up all summer.
- This is key => We secured a non-profit partner that enables DAF dollars to be invested into any Play Money SPV without extra overhead. 🤯
I'll have customer discovery asks after our team planning this week.
(Tori H. stay tuned!)
It's another one of those times that gives me all the feels.
💎 Thank you all for believing in us and having fun on Play Money.
We are just getting started!
