🎉 Feb 28th was our one year anniversary at Play Money, so you would have thought this update would have been out on March 1st to celebrate. It probably should have been. But from a founder point of view, I was like:
"Meh. NBD. Year 1 is the easiest. It hasn't even started to get hard yet."
Plus, I was fixated on February being a 6-figure investing month AND hitting $1.5M AUA (assets under advisement). That all didn't happen until March 1st.
Damn short month!
Yes, we founders are founders precisely because we are unreasonably unreasonable.
I also held off because we were tying up loose ends on announcing that Jill will be moving on from her day-to-day role at Play Money on March 31st.
Startups are hard. They are a 24x7 obsession, with your time and your attention. Jill's family needs more from her than being a co-founder allows. IMO, there is nothing more admirable than knowing your priorities and acting on them.
This is also not new news. She and I first discussed it in early October. Jill was gracious enough to stay on for an additional 6 months to ensure she left us with:
- a rock-solid investing platform
- a successful K1 season under our belts
- backoffice operations that practically run in our sleep.
For that I am deeply thankful because it puts us in perfect position to tackle what's next.
Wasim is the perfect tag-team as we expand to partner sales. We are going from prospect input to live product in record time. For partners, an Android app is a must. He wrestled that beast last week and just submitted to the Google Play store.
Tina is about to hit her 1-year with Play Money. She's integrated herself into the early stage deal flow ecosystem like a kingpin. EVERY deal we've shared as part of the Play Money syndicate in 2025 has had one or more emerging VCs reach out for a direct intro.
If you haven't invested in at least one of them, I don't know what you are waiting for.
In addition to being our founder-whisperer, Tina's proactively expanding her scope, serving up warm leads on the partnership front and picking up last-mile coordination on SPVs. After 3 months in Dubai, I just love having her back on Vancouver time. 🇨🇦
