MONTHLY METRICS 

Accredited members: 2290 (+6%)
Unique investors: 771 (+6%)
Total Investments: 1837 (+6%)
Total Dollars Invested: $6.9M (+6%) 
New Dollars Invested this month: $405K

% of investors with > 1 Investment: 30% 

Growth in repeat investors: 5% 

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. 

Most months I have a million things I want to write about. Last week I was blank.

I've delivered monthly updates like clockwork for two years. Last week, I wanted a "get out of writing a monthly update free" card.

The founder emotional roller coaster is whacky.

• We went into  April with exciting, actionable insights into the value we deliver. We know how to mint net new investors. And we see a clear path to double investing on the site from our existing member base. 

From a business perspective, 4,500 repeat investors on the platform make us a $10M annual-revenue business. 45,000 delivers a $100M business. There are 24.5M accredited investors in the US. Lots of opportunities to get it right.

• We were pumped to double down on distribution and figure out how to unlock "new pools of capital" (h/t Charles Hudson for that term). Alumni communities, professional communities, and vertical domain interest areas.

Then it felt like everything went to 🗑

• Over the past month, we had to let a few team members go. Startups are hard. It’s not the right job for everyone. Both Wasim and I were drained and working in the weeds to get things back on track. 
• We had a few super high-quality deals in a row that didn't pop.
• We underestimated the tech and process cleanup from our big March product update.
• And it was one month too many of the global chaos and corruption macro.

Thankfully, things started to turn the last week of April

• Two new team members started to make a big impact.
• The macro started to turn (or we helped turn it in our micro space....)
• We doubled our net new DAF-funded personal impact funds (more here if this caught your attention)
• Now we are staring down a potential $1M month.🤞🏽

The swagger is slowly coming back to our Slack channels. …and I hit send on this overdue update. 😉

April WRAP UP

What we said and what we did

I don't think there has ever been a month that we've dropped the ball on all our headline goals. It was one step forward, two steps back, for 6 weeks. Things got done, but it didn't feel like progress.

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

❌ First close on the raise and get all existing SAFE Note holders converted to SeriesSAFE

MAY UP NEXT

• Redo April: Get the April raise stuff done and launch at least 2 "first 90 days" experiments designed to double the number of repeat investors on the site.
  
  If you signed up for an angel investing platform and you aren't angel investing, we could be doing our job better. 
  
  
• Nail the basics: Get all the basic marketing ops blocking and tackling in place and automated so we can go hard on reaching new audiences and activating new pools of capital this summer.

• Backfill the gaps: Get the right resources in place to kick off the distribution tests we have planned for the summer. I want our topline growth back to *at least* 10% M/M so we can grow from there.

Bonus to do: Binge-read Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great, and decide if we are bringing back year 2 of summer book club. 🍉

👉🏼👉🏼HOW TO HELP 

Reply to this email if you want Season 2 of Play Money's Summer Bookclub. I'd also love some reply love in my inbox. 

Grab 20 minutes on my calendar if you are one of the 65% of folks on Play Money who haven't yet written an Angel check. I want to learn how to be better.

-- C2K

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