Female Founder Office Hours Edition V: Meet the Founders Part I
Learn how past attendees ‘hacked’ the VC pathway to make the most out of Office Hours
Playfair Capital has launched Female Founder Office Hours Edition V in collaboration with Tech Nation and Google for Startups, and with 90 investors signed up, this is our biggest event to date.
In advance of Office Hours, we want founders to be as prepared as possible to maximise the value of the 1:1 meetings. Therefore, we have created a public Notion page collating useful information for this event and for those approaching their fundraising journey overall.
In this new ‘Meet the Founders’ series, we’ll be speaking to eight incredible founders and previous attendees of Office Hours.
For Part I, we’re getting their advice on how to ensure you are best prepared before the event. We found three clear tricks of the trade, told by the founders themselves: know your story; research, research, research; and ask the right questions. Read on for more!
Knowing your Story
Ran Janda attended Female Founder Office Hours in June 2020, and is the Founder of Holistic Room, a platform promoting natural health practitioners in the UK. When asked about her top tips for startups preparing for meetings with investors, she emphasised the importance of articulating a clear founder story.
“Ensure you are able to articulate “your story” clearly. Your story represents why you are tackling the problem and why you are the best person to do it. This is the first thing investors need to know.”
Noshua Watson, a November 2020 attendee and Founder of Kintro, a smart introductions platform for communities, elaborated on this. She pointed out that your startup is one of many each investor sees in a given day so articulating your value proposition is crucial. When she prepared for FFOH, she focused on practicing a short introduction to herself, her company, and its value proposition to ensure she was communicating her story in a way that was authentic and memorable.
Ran and Noshua’s advice applies to any founders deciding where to start in the lead up to any sort of pitch event or investor meeting: nailing down an effective, genuine story of who you are and what you do before anything else.
Research, Research, Research
According to our conversations, this next part is where the grunt work comes in. Candice Hampson, CEO and co-founder of Liminal Health, a social enterprise providing health coaching for people affected by chronic conditions, highlighted researching investors in her top tips for founders.
There are a few ways to qualify investors — namely by size of round, sector-focus, and ethos. In doing your prep, you can find out exactly which investors you are scheduled to speak to are in your sweet spot in terms of these characteristics.
Most events have a clear list of investors and funds available to founders well before the day, so it is possible to research each investor and their fund thoroughly in the way Candice has suggested.
This was reinforced by Dash Tabor, a founder we interviewed from the June 2020 batch who is the CEO and founder at TUBR, a startup building real-time predictions to navigate crowds. Dash described exploring an investor’s past interests and investments, as well as anything from their LinkedIn profile to blog posts they might have written, to build a good understanding of what to expect when walking into each meeting.
Both Dash and Candice, as well as the other founders we interviewed, described the research process as crucial because it allows a founder to understand how each investor fits with their company and needs, in addition to building confidence thanks to that armour of knowledge you walk into the event with.
Asking the Right Questions
As Sheena Pirbhai — Founder of Stress Point Health, a digital platform focused on treating emotional responses to triggers — pointed out in our conversation, it is crucial to go into any such event with a clear idea of what exactly you want to achieve. Without doing so, it is difficult to make the most of the time and receive the advice you need.
As Sheena described, having goals in mind allows a founder to understand exactly how they would want to direct the conversation with each investor — namely, what questions to ask after their own story has been told.
The reason why planning out the right questions requires founders to undergo research beforehand is that personalising the questions for each investor and fund is important. A top tip from Sarah Werner — CEO and Founder of Husmus, a property tech startup that aims to make renting more convenient and accessible — here:
Know what your ask is. This is super important. It should change for each person because it should be personalised. You may ask one person for a pitch meeting while for another you ask for an introduction.
In order to know which investor to ask what questions to, it’s important to understand both your goals and the investor’s background.
These conversations have helped bring clarity around what goes on before an event like FFOH. We now know that, for a founder, knowing their story, conducting thorough research, and identifying the right questions to ask are key to preparing for any future interactions with investors.
For any entrepreneurs looking to “hack” the startup capital raising market through building relationships with investors, understanding these key strategies can be incredibly helpful!
In the next edition of Meet the Founders, we’ll be taking a look at where the action is: how to navigate the office hours themselves, and effective follow up strategies to help build investor relationships.
If you either are or know a female founder who would like to join us for Edition V, please register here.
You can follow the Playfair team on LinkedIn, Twitter, Forbes, Vimeo and here on Medium. If you’re a male founder and would still like to pitch us, please submit your application on our open-to-anyone pitch page.
You can find out more about Tech Nation’s Founders’ Network here and Google for Startups’ Immersion: Women Founders programme here.
