Good Advice I’ve Gotten Lately
“In fundraising and sales, keep going until you get an explicit “no.””
We’ve been raising money for Maply since March. We’ve pitched over 100 investors and have raised money from three. We’ve also recently began selling our product with some success.
In both fundraising and sales, I’ve found the pitch can go one of three ways. 1. “Yes, I’m interested.” 2. “No thanks.” 3. *An excuse to avoid an explicit answer or conveniently forgetting to return a call/email.*
You can’t always get a yes…but you should always go until you get a no. Once you get a no, figure out what went wrong and what you could improve next time. For an investor, ask what they would need to see in order to invest? What turned them off from investing now? For a customer, how could we better solve your problems so that you’d buy our product?
Anything other than a yes or a no (with reasoning) is wasting your time and leaving valuable feedback on the table.
“You’ll be genuinely happier and more successful if you take off the mask.”
I recently had drinks with a fellow-founder and friend. I told him that since moving to Austin, I had sometimes found myself portraying different versions of myself depending on my surroundings. This was especially happening when pitching to investors.
He told me that by taking off the mask, I can more quickly filter out those who are clearly unaligned with me at a core level. On the flip side, I can more quickly identify the people that I truly vibe with.
I like who I am. And if living mask off is going to result in being surrounded by good people, then I’m all for it. If it means that it’s going to attract investors that are truly backing our vision, then it’s essential.
Product-market fit + Sales strategy — “try everything and then double down on what works.”
As previously mentioned, we’ve began selling the Maply platform to customers. We came up with a long list of potential clients and started pounding the pavement (and email inboxes). We‘re going after customers ranging from hot air balloon festivals to micro-breweries to 5Ks.
We get a whole lot of “noes” but when we start getting a few “yeses” from a certain industry, we know we’re onto something. We know it’s time to hit the “yes” industries hard.
This same strategy applies to sales strategy. We’ve tried email marketing, cold calling, online ads. We’ve highlighted different features of our product in our sales calls (measuring which lead to a close). We’ve experimented with different pricing models.
We try everything, measure what’s effective, then double down on what works.
