Open letter to Listium investors #6: Just to report that I don’t have a lot to report

It’s been a while since my last open letter, so here’s a quick update

Marc Harrison
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

I’ve been delaying my next update as I wait for the perfect story to share. It appears that elusive perfect story isn’t coming, so here is an imperfect one instead.

Tip: For anyone reading these updates for the first time, you might like to start with one of the earlier posts!

Cofounder search

I have had a good number of discussions with potential cofounders, both in the Slack channel mentioned in this post and one-on-one conversations outside of that group. A couple of discussions were quite advanced.

However, as we all know, finding a cofounder really is a lot like trying to find a spouse, and hoping to be married within a few months of joining an online dating app really is wishful thinking. So I will continue to be patient as I search for a really good match, even though there is some temptation to settle and get started with a few things right away.

In the meantime…

My time

I’ve been a director of another Melbourne startup, Venuemob, for several years. We have just started the search for a new CEO. I am spending a couple of days a week helping with that search, along with providing some day-to-day support for the founders.

Along with being a great chance to help some friends, I thought that spending some time thinking about a different startup would be good for me. I’m far from burned-out, but I openly admit I haven’t been anywhere near as productive as I would have liked for a while now. Rather than doing the same thing and hoping for different results, I figured that some outside work would give me a bit of structure. It’s already helping me look at Listium in a new light.

For anyone reading this and wondering about my commitment to Listium, there’s no need to fear — I’m keen as ever to find a great cofounder or two so we can have a good go at realising the full potential of Listium.

Interns

I currently have one intern working with me, a second starting soon, and I continue to get multiple applications every week. I have conversations with the most promising applicants and I always try hard to talk them out of an internship with Listium because, for most people, they would be much better off with a structured internship in a larger team. But every now and then someone comes along who really wants to learn what it’s like to work in a very early stage startup, with all of the uncertainty that entails.

I love working with smart, young people who are keen to learn, and there is stuff that they can do which relies more on curiosity and self-motivation than years of experience. And the chance to be treated like a cofounder during an internship isn’t all bad, for the right type of person.

It’s not going to completely change the course of Listium, but we’re having fun and it’s giving me some focus, so we’ll keep at it for a while.

Cash

We’ve got money in the bank to take us well into next year. If the right marketing person comes along we can give them a good budget to work with and a lot of interesting experiments to run. If the right developer wants to join we have a good list of things we’d like to do, and we can pay with a combination of cash and equity.

New investors

I have started reaching out to a couple of investors for advice and feedback. I’m not at the point where I want to start blasting emails out to dozens of investors (which is not really my style anyway), but I do want to test whether the rough plan I have in mind for Listium might attract some interest.

I’m very open to suggestions/introductions if you have someone in mind who I should talk to, particularly people with a bit of publishing experience given the ideas I am most interested in exploring.


I’ll leave it there for now. I know this is not the exciting progress update that any of us would really like, (most of all me), but that’s startups for you. We still have plenty of options.

Listium Investor Updates

Open letters to the investors in Listium.com, and anyone else who wants to read along

Marc Harrison

Written by

Founder of @listium, startup director/adviser/mentor, and very proud Dad.

Listium Investor Updates

Open letters to the investors in Listium.com, and anyone else who wants to read along

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade