To build wealth, put your money at risk. To build character, put yourself at risk.
First, thank you to all of our supporters, backers, and investors! We’ve done it with your help!
By The Numbers – 60 Days of Meetings
- 1407 meetings set up
- 589 “accepted”
- 241 showed up for the meeting
- 6.5 meetings per day
- 84 YoutTube videos created for marketing
- 24 Newsletter/Posts spread over 4 different fundraising platforms
While I am very much a ‘seasoned’ entrepreneur and fully understand the fine print of raising money, history is always fuzzy when it comes to [how much work you must actually do] to get money in the door. It’s simply HARD WORK. Even my ChatGPT and AI would tell you that raising money for any type of project is a full-time role. This is to be expected.
I am always reminded of stoic ideas whenever I raise money: You can never control outcome, only what you put into your work. This is absolutely the case when it comes to fundraising.
What Did We Learn?
While I didn’t ‘learn’ much from the fundraising process itself, the FEEDBACK we got throughout the 60 days was absolutely outstanding. If anything, doing a Kickstarter campaign was exactly what we needed as a forcing function to ship product, get feedback, and improve our product and add backlog items for improvement into our sprints. We achieved so much and have really begun to hone in our platform focus, our user personas, and our go-to-market strategy. In bullet points, our learning is quite simple:
- Fundraising is a full time job. You must have meetings every day. I remember hearing one entrepreneur say that you must have at least 10-12 meetings per day. While this isn’t impossible, and I’ve certainly had days where I had about that many meetings, it’s about pounding the ground, cold calling, getting your message out, and asking asking asking. I find it fascinating that many first time operators don’t fully understand this. You cannot simply [build it and they will come]. You must be the driving force. If the lead operator isn’t doing it, who will?
- Kickstarter forced us to get our shit together. Our 1-week sprints have availed us much. Delivering weekly code and improving our application has not only been instilled in us, it is now an absolute part of our company culture. This encouraging cultural discipline WILL be our success in the long term.
- Feedback, as always, is king. The best feedback comes not from screenshots, but actual code delivered, functioning and working, so we can get real feedback from actual users on what is working, what needs to be improved, and what needs to be scrapped. We did a ton of this in our 8 weeks of sprinting during the 60 days.
- Media is absolutely required. Many of you know I’m a media powerhouse. I’m delivering content every single day to the web, whether it’s on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Newsletters, Facebook, and more. Video content IS and MUST BE part of any fundraising strategy. We now live in a world where you must do this to get the message out, get eyeballs, and ensure top of mind. We learned a lot about our subscribers and our viewers of what they like, are willing to watch, and what helps us convert viewers to supporters.
- ASK ASK ASK. Some of you have seen my 30+ minute video on the power of [asking]. Asking is always free, but you must take the time to intentionally ask. If you’re not going to ask for help, who will do it for you?
- Never give up. While we were fully prepared to have the probability of “failure to raise,” I’m proud of our what our team has accomplished during this epic journey. Don’t be deceived, even I had moments (like always) where I felt like the traction we were having wasn’t [good enough] or my emotions weren’t at the highest of highs. This is to be expected. The fundraising process (and startups in general) fully thrust you into the entire spectrum of emotions: Joy, excitement, frustration, and even a bit of despair, and more. They key is to appreciate the emotions for what they are. You’re human after all. You’re a human, learning. You’re a human, trying. Isn’t this what life is anyway? Building a startup just pits you against all of these emotions in a shortened timeline. Maybe this is why I have so many gray hairs.
FINAL BOSS? – Nope. Just the Beginning
Now that we’ve raised over $260,000 of our $250,000 goal, we’re really just beginning.
Having some funding will help us this year improve our product to where it needs to be. I’m considering this success as a small seed round to keep the wheels moving.
While the amount of hard work was necessary for maturity as a company and personally for me, we begin the even harder work of building an amazing product and seeking Venture Funding to go even bigger.
I’m so proud of what our team has accomplished this past 2023. 2024 has just begun and the max pain of raising a $5M venture round will begin soon enough.
Am I masochistic enough?
Thank you to all who have supported us in 2023. I can’t wait for our team to deliver an automotive/motorsport platform that has never been seen in the market before. We have a long way to go, and we’re really just getting started.
If you’re one of our investors from our venture network, please reach out to us. We have an amazing value-proposition now backed by real investment, tens-of-thousands of supporters, and an even more validated product-market-fit. We’d love to have a conversation about how you can support us and win with us.
All the best,
ps